Slashdot Mirror
Reddit Removes Communities To Address Harassment, Users Respond
New submitter sethstorm writes: As a change to their community management, Reddit administrators have banned multiple communities (known as subreddits) in a bid to remove harassment. In response, users have responded in different ways — some have pointed out the bias of Reddit admins for leaving known harassers alone such as those in the "SRS" subreddit, others have attempted to re-create the banned subreddit "FatPeopleHate", and many have gone to overwhelm Voat (a competitor).
Getting Shadow Banned means that no one can see your posts except for the logged in user that posted them. In effect it's a particularly devious and underhanded way of censoring posts. Usually carried out by some immature moderator that don't agree with you.
Who said, "The Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it"?
It was John Gilmore. But he was wrong. Vast swaths of the Internet are effectively censored behind national firewalls, and much more is under the control of a small oligopoly of corporations. John underestimated the power and capabilities of the censors.
I have been around here a long time.
I can honestly say that I am dissapointed to see /. post gloating over a row brewing on another community site while at the same time censoring discussion and posts related to the recent and ongoing Sourceforge controversy. Choosing which subs stay and which go is going to upset a small but vocal set of users. They would be stupid not to know this.
In the case of Sourceforge, I think it's much worse to sell out and betry the trust of an entire community. But let's not talk about it!
I was shadow banned from a science related subeddit that is my professional field (40 years) and whose main posters I would bet a large sum of money couldn't pass a high school science class. I never posted anything unprofessional, but generally unpopular. I didn't really care, just stopped visiting a few months ago, wasn't getting anything out of it I didn't already know and people were more interested in personality cults than anything else.
Fark is small enough that a lot of the users know each other by name, it seems like. It's just snarky commentary on odd news stories; kind of meaningless, but some people have fun with it.
Reddit isn't one coherent site. It's 5,000 places, each with a different focus, different content, different rules, etc. I've seen discussions that are better than what I've seen on Slashdot in a long time, but I've also seen some of the most rabidly ignorant chains of messages ever, there. Some of the "communities" aren't organized enough to call them that, but a lot of the subreddits with very specific focuses stay wonderfully on-topic and have insightful contributors. "Reddit" is defined by the subreddit subscriptions held by each specific user, though; my experience of Reddit may be quite different than yours.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
fatpeoplehate got shut down for brigading and doxxing, not simple hate
imgur started removing fatpeoplehate images and in response the reddit sub posted pictures of (chubby) imgur staff and a thread topic about harassing them and identifying specific imgur personnel exploded
you can argue about imgur's removal of fatpeoplehate images as censorship, but you cannot call reddit's actions censorship, as removing threats and harassment is not logically the same as censorship
you could say there are double standards if and where other subs have engaged in doxxing in the past, or if and where other subs still do it, but on a smaller scale. but then the solution is to ban those subs as well, not let fatpeoplehate get away with abusive behavior
there are still plenty of repugnant and hateful subs on reddit that are not shut down. because they aren't doxxing
if voat is going to accept brigading and doxxing, then voat is going to get sued and shut down when, not if, someone gets hurt in real life because of ignorant internet hate
reddit did the right thing, as a matter of simple morality, and as a matter of self preservation in the face of legal standards
if you harass and threaten someone specifically, you're not engaging in free speech anymore, and you, and the forum you are doing it on, are culpable for any harm stemming from that. freedom of speech is not limitless. it is no longer free speech when you threaten specific people
any comment or discussion here about censoring hate is inaccurate
any comment or discussion here about preventing harassment and threats is on topic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They created new rules very recently about reddit being a "safe space". This is something that is, of course, extremely vague. What the hell is a "safe space"?
So suddenly some long time subreddits are getting banned for violating that. They are all shitty splaces, but then other shitty places seem to get left alone. As such people are rightly saying "What the fuck?"
Basically the rule is an arbitrary one. They are saying "We can ban you if you say things we don't like." Now its their site, they can do that if they wish, of course, but that is why users are reacting so negatively. It isn't a clear rule that is being consistently applied, rather it is deliberately vague and being targeted in a scattershot fashion.
Except, yknow, that's complete and utter bullshit. SRS is probably one of the single worst offenders on the internet as far as organized and sustained stalking, harassment, and doxing goes.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
except fatpeoplehate got shut down for brigading and doxxing...
Suuuure they did. That's why SRS was one of the first subs nuked from orbit OH WAIT
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
You think MRA communities are harassers? Hoo boy, never go to srs or any place where the term 'SJW' originated. I've seen so-called progressives give personal information to potential sexual harassers out of spite, I've seen people call in fake bites to get dogs put to sleep out of spite. Death threats, doxxing, getting people fired over lies, harassing family members, it goes on. Or maybe you're familiar, and just refuse to see it; do you think 'no bad tactics, only bad targets?' Do you think there is some righteous end that excuses terrible means?
The reason I post as AC (despite having an account) is that Slashdot is a pain in the ass to login to.
Huh?
I bookmark the login page and when I click on it I get the login page with my username and password already filled in, courtesy of the password save function in Firefox.
Another click and I'm in. What's so hard about that? It even works when I'm traveling and just dipping in to Slashdot using a tablet.
I've found that Reddit's forums in general are moderated quite horribly. It seems that almost everyone there seem to think that the downvote option is meant to be used as the "I disagree with your opinion" button, even though they clearly post that it's not for that purpose.
You end up with a system where everyone who agrees with the groupthink of that particular forum gets rated highly, and any differing opinions get silenced. Basically, it's what would happen to Slashdot if they gave everyone Moderator points including the troll accounts.
Getting Shadow Banned means that no one can see your posts except for the logged in user that posted them. In effect it's a particularly devious and underhanded way of censoring posts. Usually carried out by some immature moderator that don't agree with you.
Moderators of a subreddit cannot shadowban you. Only actual Reddit admins are capable of doing so.
At the top of the comment section, there are two sliders. The left slider is which posts are fully expanded, the right slider is which posts are completely hidden. You have to slide them both fully right if you want to see all posts.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
They banned fatpeople hate but these subreddits still exist: (And I'm not directly linking to them for your own safety)
Then if you want to talk about specific hate speech there is /r/CoonTown and a few anti-Semite ones.