yeah, and the audacity of using a MLK quote to justify shitposting on a news aggregator isn't helping for me.
a funny consequence of this is that the more reddit/twitter bans content that doesn't align with their advertisers' interests, the more incentive there is to fragmentize the internet yet again. them creating a new website is exactly what every community should be doing - it makes the internet more diverse, even if the content is literal dogshit.
Well, that works as long as the … is some fairly unobjectionable group of people. It doesn’t work if you substitute it with “drunk drivers” for example.
Not sure we should be too worried about “them” coming for a cyberbullying subreddit.
I don't know if being unobjectionable is necessary. It helps, but:
> The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of the groups, you may or may not agree with any of them but wanting Communist ideals isn't inherently bad. Capitalists normally use the phrase that it all sounds good until it meets humans. Same with the socialists, who all they want is socially derived benefits from community owned services, and trade unionists just realise that the only way to gather any strength is through numbers. None of these ideals are bad.
Saying things like "first they came for the neo-Nazis..." completely misses the point.
> Saying things like "first they came for the neo-Nazis..." completely misses the point.
I think the folks using this form understand the history of the saying but are deliberately changing it to show they are OK with the bans as long as they are limited to neo-nazis and the like.
Once it moves past these neo-nazi recruitment forums we can start worrying about whether or not it is a slippery slope.
Well the slope is simply, is this a group that you object to?
If not then you should defend them in the same way that you would want to be defended. If you object to basement dwelling troll groups then the saying will also have no impact on them.
I object to the idea that they must be platformed by reddit and the like, but they can go ahead and create their own company to host their hateful content. I am in favor of network neutrality.
I don't really care if the saying will have an impact on them. As far as I'm concerned they're unreachable -- at least I have zero chance of convincing them of anything, especially if I can only talk with them in a hate forum.
I don't know why anyone is surprised. The edgy subreddits (many of which were toxic cesspools) all warned everyone as they got banned, but people cheered as it happened. Finally the baddies were gone. It was never going to be limited to just them.
On another note, I do not understand why all these banned subreddits that try to migrate to their own site always try to create their own software. the_donald did it famously and created an absolute clusterfuck of a website (and community). There are so many options, there's open source old reddit, there's federating varieties like Lemmy and littr.me (a good choice if you want to run a single community), why reinvent the wheel? If you want to move to an environment like reddit where everyone can interact, but give community moderators full control over their communities, a federated architecture is the way to go, and there are a couple of solutions that work out of the box.
First thread I saw on their new site was "n-word pass" and a comment section full of people who really like using the word
I don't think we're out of the edgy subreddit territory yet lol, reddit can turn this crank a few more times before they get any real backlash I reckon
e: Popped back to double check it wasn't just a moderation miss, that thread's a good 5h old and the thread below "I fucking hate gay people"
Most of these 'edgy' subreddits just normalise bullying. I think it's actually a good thing for the internet that they are pushed off the platform to somewhere less mainstream.
One of the most recent high-profile bans was served to /r/menkampf which existed to call out bullies. "Normalizing" is just another un-word in the long string of ways to say "I don't like it but I have no arguments"
Normalizing means you make something normal. Reddit skews younger, and if the site mainly hosts subs that harass or bully, that's what their audience will see and probably the example they will follow: "Oh this is what we do on this site"
> /r/menkampf which existed to call out bullies.
You mean the sub that took sentences with the word 'white' in them and switched them for 'Jewish' supposedly to 'call out hypocrisy'. "Call out bullies"? Come on...
Hitler memes don't make people accept nazi ideology. I wish we could invent new words on demand like it happened with "normalizing". Happy hitlering, everyone!
Yes, I really think that subs of that kind expose race-mongers who think they are on the right side of the history. Another example is StormfrontOrSJW which is still somehow up
And in the end they didn't come for me because I don't spew hate on forums, nor am I the one user in two million that gets shadowbanned for saying death to jews
I remember when you could say just about any hateful thing on YouTube you wanted, but no lesbians kissing.
I get your point, but reddit will sanitize their site for advertising revenue, and it will become a much less interesting place. I understand people wanting to get rid of jailbait and hate subs, but the fact is that you don't have to look at them if you don't want to, and it doesn't ever end with the obvious bad shit. If they'd just stop there I wouldn't have a problem with it at all.
You don't have to look at festering wounds either. They're here and they're actively damaging, but I'm sure that if you close your eyes it's nothing bad.
The hyperbole though with this response, that analogy doesn't apply. What other people think and say to each other isn't my business, and no amount of fearmongering is going to convince me otherwise.
> On another note, I do not understand why all these banned subreddits that try to migrate to their own site always try to create their own software.
Not all. The admins of Ovarit [1] decided to use Throat [2] rather than roll their own from scratch. Their fork [3] has had various customizations added over time, but it largely follows the upstream. By all accounts, this arrangement is working very well for them.
> On another note, I do not understand why all these banned subreddits that try to migrate to their own site always try to create their own software
They haven't - they're using https://github.com/Aevann1/rDrama which has already been used successfully for /r/drama's offsite community. They've worked directly with rdrama's developer and community lead.
After all the scandals that Reddit has had you have to wonder how dangerous an ipo would be. I don’t think it will happen but if someone gets far enough in discovery you gotta imagine there’s some wild shit to be found.
As we know most users on a subreddit do not create the content for each other. Its a tiny minority. Additionally, Reddit themselves, in the effort to identify and quarantine/ban bad behaviour labelled subreddits "communities". Previously users would subscribe to a bunch of subreddits as a kind of casual action, now the site itself is framing it as joining a community, as an identity. (Communities from outside can join reddit and create a subreddit, bringing their users but this is a different case and not what I'm talking about.)
Taken together the subreddits themselves can identify their own subscribers as forming a community. However the actual numbers are very low and the cohesiveness of the subreddit is illusory. Subreddits created from within reddit are not communities in actuality. They might have some dedicated people within it, but they won't be able to bring their community and the numbers they would like with them because the community doesn't actually exist.
This reminds me of a part of 4chan history that the old admin (moot) talked about in his final q&a, where people used to post in all sorts of different boards all the time, but over time as the population grew, more people started staying on a single board, causing cultures to diverge, people to form their identities based on a small subset of boards, and starting cross-board flame wars and a general distaste for cross-boarders.
I think these might case studies in societal behavior rather than directly being influenced by moderator action.
We see this repeatedly with communities on Reddit whose sole purpose is to mock other communities. It always turns into brigading and harassment. I’m surprised they lasted this long but maybe it’s just tall poppy syndrome.
The only thing I find really funny about this is that this “take something you disagree with and then advertise it” thing is basically the entire mechanism of how Twitter works so it’s interesting how it becomes far more centralised and organised on Reddit.
Most users acquired after 2016 have no knowledge of the Web 1.5-ish Reddit that used to be, especially if they use the official Reddit app and website.
I'm surprised RES, the Reddit API and old.reddit still work, because it allows for easy blocking of ads and 'features' Reddit is pushing, such as RPAN live streaming and what not.
As soon as Old Reddit goes, I'm gone. I had to use New Reddit briefly to change some settings in a sub I mod (stupid design choice to not let me change them in Old Reddit), and it was absolutely awful. Looked like a worse Facebook, and, like, just let me read the comments and don't show me other posts halfway through.
Essentially a reddit community about making compelling arguments in the hopes of changing someone's viewpoint. I never followed it closely, but from what I remember, the original moderators were worried that Reddit's moderation policies became too draconian whilst simultaneously selectively enforced it AND they made the community moderators bare the brunt of it. Reddit didn't do enough to combat brigading, nor offered a reasonable solution to the kinds of bans redditors were getting.
Eventually they decided to break off from the platform, but their community was too small and the rebranding hurt them in trying to maintain a userbase. They couldn't monetize it and it died.
The current version of the sub that remained on reddit is very ban happy with any semi-controversial viewpoint or anything within the realm of 'wrongthink' getting your thread locked. There's also virtually no mention of what happened. I think they were worried about losing the sub to a dedicated group of people who viewed it as a political indoctrination tool, allowing only a certain set of viewpoints... which ended up being true.
Funny, I’ve followed the sub for a few years and was unfamiliar with this history. It explains a bit how all the threads are fairly boring and repetitive. I’ve never seen the rejected threads for other topics that might be more controversial or true debate.
I've oft thought AskHistorians (and AskScience, together maybe) would be better as a separate website with more control over form, potential for better community building, and opportunity to fund research and such. In part just dissociating from Reddit seems like it would give it more credence and use as a resource.
I think stackexchange.com has those subforums nailed down. I agree that the subreddits would have more control by moving elsewhere, but they'd lose almost all of their users. A post on the front page of /r/all will guarantee millions of views. Hardly anyone is going to go onto a specific askscience[.]com site.
I wonder what does this mean (for them) from legal perspective.
Aren’t they now much more vulnerable as the content hosts? Besides of other reasons, Reddit has rules to manage their content to comply with rules (Laws as well as app stores and similar).
this doesn't surprise me at all. /r/superstonk is probably next. i've had countless reddit accounts banned in the last 2 years just for asking simple questions about Gamestop. What are hedge funds? hedge funds are fucked.
Some of r/wallstreetbets mods moved over to communities.win, the_donald guys who made their own site now named patriots.win and communities, basically a reddit type clone/alternative.
You can basically make any new sub just like reddit now.
The problem with building another alternative site, you start from scratch. Lots of tools/mods/services(gify) for reddit, even 3rd party like IFTTT integration, have to recreate from scratch.
Same goes for twitter, gab took a long long time, but now they have more features than twitter, gab pay, gab video, gab marketplace, gab groups. But they even censor, even though they say they don't.
I miss the old newsgroup usenet days, they had moderated and unmoderated newsfeeds. I loved reading subs, but then everyone broke out to their own personal websites, killing the good ones. Always wished someone made a website to usenet convertor, turn a reddit sub into a newsfeed, or quora/yahoo questions/stack exchange into a newsfeed. So much easier to search.
43 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 97.5 ms ] threadthe 'cringetopia' subreddit seems dedicated to posting things beloved by basement dwelling 16 year old edgelords, so I can't say I'm surprised.
a funny consequence of this is that the more reddit/twitter bans content that doesn't align with their advertisers' interests, the more incentive there is to fragmentize the internet yet again. them creating a new website is exactly what every community should be doing - it makes the internet more diverse, even if the content is literal dogshit.
Not sure we should be too worried about “them” coming for a cyberbullying subreddit.
> The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- H. L. Mencken
"First they came for the <relatively unobjectionable group but which I wasn't a part of> so I remained silent".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
First they came for the Communists
Then they came for the Socialists
Then they came for the trade unionists
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of the groups, you may or may not agree with any of them but wanting Communist ideals isn't inherently bad. Capitalists normally use the phrase that it all sounds good until it meets humans. Same with the socialists, who all they want is socially derived benefits from community owned services, and trade unionists just realise that the only way to gather any strength is through numbers. None of these ideals are bad.
Saying things like "first they came for the neo-Nazis..." completely misses the point.
I think the folks using this form understand the history of the saying but are deliberately changing it to show they are OK with the bans as long as they are limited to neo-nazis and the like.
Once it moves past these neo-nazi recruitment forums we can start worrying about whether or not it is a slippery slope.
If not then you should defend them in the same way that you would want to be defended. If you object to basement dwelling troll groups then the saying will also have no impact on them.
I don't really care if the saying will have an impact on them. As far as I'm concerned they're unreachable -- at least I have zero chance of convincing them of anything, especially if I can only talk with them in a hate forum.
On another note, I do not understand why all these banned subreddits that try to migrate to their own site always try to create their own software. the_donald did it famously and created an absolute clusterfuck of a website (and community). There are so many options, there's open source old reddit, there's federating varieties like Lemmy and littr.me (a good choice if you want to run a single community), why reinvent the wheel? If you want to move to an environment like reddit where everyone can interact, but give community moderators full control over their communities, a federated architecture is the way to go, and there are a couple of solutions that work out of the box.
I don't think we're out of the edgy subreddit territory yet lol, reddit can turn this crank a few more times before they get any real backlash I reckon
e: Popped back to double check it wasn't just a moderation miss, that thread's a good 5h old and the thread below "I fucking hate gay people"
> /r/menkampf which existed to call out bullies.
You mean the sub that took sentences with the word 'white' in them and switched them for 'Jewish' supposedly to 'call out hypocrisy'. "Call out bullies"? Come on...
Yes, I really think that subs of that kind expose race-mongers who think they are on the right side of the history. Another example is StormfrontOrSJW which is still somehow up
Then they came for the racists
And in the end they didn't come for me because I don't spew hate on forums, nor am I the one user in two million that gets shadowbanned for saying death to jews
I get your point, but reddit will sanitize their site for advertising revenue, and it will become a much less interesting place. I understand people wanting to get rid of jailbait and hate subs, but the fact is that you don't have to look at them if you don't want to, and it doesn't ever end with the obvious bad shit. If they'd just stop there I wouldn't have a problem with it at all.
The hyperbole though with this response, that analogy doesn't apply. What other people think and say to each other isn't my business, and no amount of fearmongering is going to convince me otherwise.
Not all. The admins of Ovarit [1] decided to use Throat [2] rather than roll their own from scratch. Their fork [3] has had various customizations added over time, but it largely follows the upstream. By all accounts, this arrangement is working very well for them.
[1] https://ovarit.com
[2] https://github.com/Phuks-co/throat
[3] https://gitlab.com/feminist-conspiracy/throat
They haven't - they're using https://github.com/Aevann1/rDrama which has already been used successfully for /r/drama's offsite community. They've worked directly with rdrama's developer and community lead.
Edit:looked at it, it looks like a Ruqqus fork built for single community servers. https://github.com/ruqqus/ruqqus
Looks like pretty good software, from a first glance it looks like it has more sensible UX than Ruqqus.
Taken together the subreddits themselves can identify their own subscribers as forming a community. However the actual numbers are very low and the cohesiveness of the subreddit is illusory. Subreddits created from within reddit are not communities in actuality. They might have some dedicated people within it, but they won't be able to bring their community and the numbers they would like with them because the community doesn't actually exist.
I think these might case studies in societal behavior rather than directly being influenced by moderator action.
The only thing I find really funny about this is that this “take something you disagree with and then advertise it” thing is basically the entire mechanism of how Twitter works so it’s interesting how it becomes far more centralised and organised on Reddit.
I'm surprised RES, the Reddit API and old.reddit still work, because it allows for easy blocking of ads and 'features' Reddit is pushing, such as RPAN live streaming and what not.
They promised to keep old going. However they said it won't get new features so it is gonna die a slow but certain death of incompatibility
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19591713
Essentially a reddit community about making compelling arguments in the hopes of changing someone's viewpoint. I never followed it closely, but from what I remember, the original moderators were worried that Reddit's moderation policies became too draconian whilst simultaneously selectively enforced it AND they made the community moderators bare the brunt of it. Reddit didn't do enough to combat brigading, nor offered a reasonable solution to the kinds of bans redditors were getting.
Eventually they decided to break off from the platform, but their community was too small and the rebranding hurt them in trying to maintain a userbase. They couldn't monetize it and it died.
The current version of the sub that remained on reddit is very ban happy with any semi-controversial viewpoint or anything within the realm of 'wrongthink' getting your thread locked. There's also virtually no mention of what happened. I think they were worried about losing the sub to a dedicated group of people who viewed it as a political indoctrination tool, allowing only a certain set of viewpoints... which ended up being true.
Aren’t they now much more vulnerable as the content hosts? Besides of other reasons, Reddit has rules to manage their content to comply with rules (Laws as well as app stores and similar).
You can basically make any new sub just like reddit now.
The problem with building another alternative site, you start from scratch. Lots of tools/mods/services(gify) for reddit, even 3rd party like IFTTT integration, have to recreate from scratch.
Same goes for twitter, gab took a long long time, but now they have more features than twitter, gab pay, gab video, gab marketplace, gab groups. But they even censor, even though they say they don't.
I miss the old newsgroup usenet days, they had moderated and unmoderated newsfeeds. I loved reading subs, but then everyone broke out to their own personal websites, killing the good ones. Always wished someone made a website to usenet convertor, turn a reddit sub into a newsfeed, or quora/yahoo questions/stack exchange into a newsfeed. So much easier to search.