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).
In all fairness, can an AC really talk crap about someone that actually logs in and has a record? For all anyone knows you're posting things in support of pedophilia in other threads.
ACs really have no moral or ethical right to criticize people that log in and have a history. What would you have us all do? Everyone be AC? Then who would you talk shit about? That other AC?
On the topic of Reddit... I think it is fine so long as they don't abuse the policy. Reddit did delete some stuff that was critical of Pao for example. So that implies that the place is being filtered for self serving purposes which isn't a good sign.
My biggest beef with reddit though is the Shadow Ban. That is some fucking Orwellian shit.
Imagine being censored so completely that you don't even know you were censored. Imagine publishing a book and checking on the book... and thinking it is there for anyone to get. But you're the only one that sees it.
Its fucking creepy.
Now is it a way of dealing with trolls etc? Sure. But only stupid ones. All the smart trolls know about shadow bans and they'll check for it.
The worst trolls in any case are the determined ones. I had one guy on a forum troll the board for about a year. He was banned about twice a week. He'd just change IP addresses and create a new account.
We eventually dealt with him by mocking and showing we didn't care about what he was doing. He got dispirited after about a month of that and went away. But man... he stuck with it for a long time. He must have been banned a couple hundred times.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This is exactly why we need liberty-minded proponents setting up anonymous mechanisms of communications. Nobody should have the right to censor content online. I don't care who you are. Not even if its a death threat, a bomb threat, or a threat against the president himself. Threats don't kill people people kill people.Yes- words can take a toll, but it's not the same as actual physical abuse. You can get away from online harassment. You can't get away from a school bully. As a gay person I get words can hurt- but a solution is NOT worth the price of censorship. And I'm going to say the worst thing I could because nobody else will: feminists or whoever you are that's crying about nudes being published of you: suck it up. The problem is social, not the person who violated your privacy. Nobody is physically attacking you and if they did it's a social problem- not a communications problem. It's the people physically attacking- not the f'ing words.
All that ever happens from these anti-harassment laws is the government comes in and uses them against people it doesn't like. There are already laws against murder and other other forms of abuse. You don't need another law to tack on to someone whose murdered because they dislike some racial, social, sexual, or other group.
I'm only a casual user of sites like Reddit or 4chan, but it really does feel like censorship is trending on these kinds of sites, and it doesn't make sense. These sites, including Slashdot, are supposed to be regulated by the community. Mods shouldn't have to manage bad content, only bad behavior that threaten the ecosystem of the site, such as astroturfing or spamming.
What's happening isn't responding to community needs so much as selectively shaping the community. It's the online equivalent of gerrymandering.
The key is to be utterly immune to the opinions of truly stupid people. You have to be. There are too may of them for their opinions to matter. If we weighted each of them as some very low number then multiplied that by how many of them there are... you'd get knocked by consensus every time.
There are a lot of people that think getting people to agree with you means you're right about science or anything factual. They don't grasp that literally one person can contradict an infinite number of people and be right and the infinity can be wrong.
You be confident in yourself and if the twits want to circle jerk each other off that is their loss. They want their echo chambers which means they don't deserve you.
There are better communities. The small ones are often very clicheish. And the big ones have lots of idiots in them. Slashdot for example. But you want a community where you can a moron a moron... and when they get offended you can start pointing and laughing.
Childish? How else are you going to communicate with morons? They don't understand anything else.
Reddit has been a censor's paradise for years. It is why so many companies wanted to move their boards to reddit. Really easy to silence people that say your new product is bullshit/designed by cross eyed kittens. Anywho, the trick is to not take these people more seriously than they deserve to be taken. Which in the case of the truly stupid is not at all.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
it's not that complicated. there's still plenty of repugnant and hateful content on reddit, but those subs are not doxxing or harassing individuals
the subs banned yesterday is a function of them targeting specific individuals. that's the problem
go ahead and express as much hate as you want, in general. but isolate one specific person for harassment, and you're censored. i accept that, that's a good policy, it makes sense. it's also in line with generally understood freedom of speech laws in the usa and elsewhere. for example: i can be a fundamentalist douchebag and preach destroying western civilization. that's fine. but if i say "we should go after {XYZ} location or {ABC} person," then the authorities have reason to act against you. as they should: you're issuing threats. that's not free speech
likewise, targeting real people online with doxxing and harassment means genuine harm can come to someone. reddit might be in jeopardy legally if a lawyer in a courtroom can say "it was on reddit that the transgressor acquired the person's name and address as a target for this form of hate"
it's repugnant, but it's ok to be amorphously hateful. it's not ok to specifically target individuals. that is a valid threshold and cut off point for a truly free society
no freedom exists that is not in tension with the freedoms and rights of others. naturally, logically, not as a function of government or laws
my right to listen to loud music at 3 AM is limited by your right to get a good night sleep. my right to speed my car as fast as possible is limited by your right to not die in car crash
and my right to hate a group of people is limited by your right to not be harassed and attacked by dimwitted hateful douchebags
so you have no natural right to doxx, stalk, harass, or otherwise target individuals. only amorphous groups. this is a natural logical limit on your freedoms
where you've gone from harmless loser justifiably engaging in free speech, to malicious asshole gunning for a specific person, you should be censored, you should be charged, you should lose your rights. because you are using your rights to threaten the rights of others
the stereotype of a freedom destroying fascist authoritarian government abusing your rights because "evil" is not really the whole story of freedom destruction in this world. the reality is threats to your rights and freedoms comes more often from other citizens around you. the immature shitbag thinks freedom means "i can do anything i want." the mature responsible truly freedom loving individual thinks freedom means "i can do anything i want as long as i don't harm anyone else"
unfortunately, there is no shortage of moronic douchebags in this world who think freedom means they can hurt other people. and so they shall be censored. arrested. prosecuted. imprisoned. as is right in a freedom loving country
abuse your responsibility to not harm others? lose your freedom. face valid censorship for threats (not free speech) or worse. rightfully and 100% compatible with the concept of maximizing freedom
there is nothing about the concept of freedom that says those who destroy freedom deserve to be free
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
it is no longer free speech when you threaten specific people
Amen. It's a good thing, then, that reddit provided specific evidence of such a threat in their ban announcement . . . oh wait . . .
free speech means the government cannot censor your views
free speech does not mean the local newspaper is compelled to publish your hateful letter to the editor
a private entity has every right to curate its content any way it sees fit. it may reject any content it wants, and that is perfectly 100% logically coherent with the notion of free speech: the government, or another individual, has no right to force someone else to say something they don't want to say. nowhere in the concept of free speech is there the concept that reddit *has* to publish something. reddit can be as capricious, hypocritical, random, or vindictive as it wants in censoring any content it wants. it is their website
of course, if their policies are bullshit, they may turn people off, and some other site will take off and reddit will drop in popularity. and that's perfectly ok. and that new site, they too can censor whatever they want. and no free speech violation has occurred
if you hate fat people, for example, and your angry hate against fat people is rejected from any website, then indeed, start your fucking website. and if you think that sucks because now you're lonely on that mountaintop because very few people visit your site, well too fucking bad: maybe no one visits because you're a hateful piece of shit
another thing about free speech is nowhere in the concept is it required that anyone listen to you
no where is it required that no one criticize you
and no where is it required that no consequences will come to your life (your job, your reputation, etc.) for saying hateful things
say whatever you want
but be fucking ready for the consequences. loneliness is certainly one of the possible consequences, and maybe, if you're a hateful asshole, you deserve it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your rights end where my feelings begin! Shut it down!
What the hell is a "safe space"?
A space where you're not safe to speak your mind. Lets face it over the past 2 years Reddit has shown quite clearly that they do not condone or promote an open forum where everyone is free to speak their mind.
And yet here we are, you with a +5 insightful post that is none the less bagging the very site where you have been promoted. Slashdot has ultimately run several articles about problems involving itself and fellow sites sharing a corporate overlord (though on one occasion a considerable amount of pressure was required). They only time they ever censored something they ran a post about the fact on the front page and had a large discussion about the result.
So yes they deserve to gloat, they are in many MANY ways far better and less arbitrary than Reddit.
a small oligopoly of corporations
That might be a major reason for this crackdown. Reddit has unbelievable traffic and reach, so stuff that earns popularity there gets spread to virtually everywhere and everyone.
It's exposure that marketers (of anything: products, politics, whatever) would kill for. They want to buy their way in, but not if some dirty peasant can tell the truth and (through sheer merit) get voted up and be taken just as seriously (or more seriously) than their bought & paid for message.
So Reddit sees advertisers chomping at the bit to throw money at it, but first Reddit has to demonstrate that it can crush contrary opinions at will.
I had also have significant experience (PhD researcher) in some narrow topics that are frequently discussed in ask science. I've never been forceful enough to get banned, but I did stop contributing because the 6th grade understanding always trumps the nuanced answers, often in a rather hilariously aggressive way. I see that a lot here as well. Non experts also generally fail to understand the dynamism of their topics. I deal enough with this in the real life, what is the purpose of further subjecting myself to this in an environment where I have nothing to gain?
The key is to be utterly immune to the opinions of truly stupid people.
The problem, of course, is that it is impossible to be immune to the opinions of truly stupid people if they can down-vote each and every one of your posts with no limits. This plus the same with up-votes is where the Reddit circle-jerks come from. Slashdot's system where you get 5 or 15 votes every few weeks only if you're a regular reader works so much better it's like night and day.
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