Slashdot Mirror
Reddit Updates Content Policy, Bans More Subreddits
AmiMoJo writes: Reddit's new CEO, Steve Huffman, announced new a content policy and the banning of a small number of subreddits today. Additionally, some subreddits will be "quarantined", so users can't see their content unless they explicitly opt in. "Our most important policy over the last ten years has been to allow just about anything so long as it does not prevent others from enjoying Reddit for what it is: the best place online to have truly authentic conversations.I believe these policies strike the right balance."
The names of the nixed subreddits make clear that they're not exactly neighbors exchanging pleasantries.
So, it's banning communities of people who draw distasteful pictures, and those who are racist against black people?
1) Abhorrent as the former are, who are they harming? i.e. what is the objective justification for banning them, beyond, "These people are fucking sick" - probably true, but so what?
2) While the latter appears may include some groups dedicated to posting gore videos posted without subject consent, there seem to be some fairly mild groups among that list when contrasted with other non-racist harassment groups that have not been banned.
among the list of banned subreddits:
/r/CoonTown, /r/WatchNiggersDie, /r/bestofcoontown, /r/koontown, /r/CoonTownMods, /r/CoonTownMeta.
not exactly sterling content that spurs thoughtful collaboration and debate. It harms the reddit brand, but id argue this is less censorship and more spam control. Reddits purpose is entertainment, social networking, and news. If you want flagrant unsubstantiated and indefensible racism, most routers still manage to handle connection requests to the servers at stormfront and about a hundred other different sites.
Good people go to bed earlier.
All kinds of forums, from Facebook on down to unheard of boards with a dozen members, have their rules. Some of them really piss me off, because they want only language, thoughts, and images that would be acceptable in kindergarden, or Sunday School. They REALLY piss me off.
On the other hand - "/r/WatchNiggersDie" - WTF? Hey - you don't have to like black people. You don't have to love them. You don't have to live with a black person. You don't have to talk to them. If you're so bigoted that you can't abide a black person in your life, well, it's your loss. Hate, all you want. You have no right to expect normal people to accept, or even tolerate, the kind of shit I would expect on that forum.
If you're that hateful, go post on Stormfront. You'll be welcome over there, I believe. But, they DO have some rules that you'll have to abide by.
Funny - every community has rules to live by. Even a community of haters. Don't like the rules, go elsewhere, or make your own board.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If I own a restaurant or some other type of public establishment and people come in and have a discussion that is upsetting other customers I have a right to ask them to leave, correct? That is not censorship and that is exactly what Reddit is doing. They are not prohibiting people from expressing themselves, they just aren't allowed to do it on a website provided and maintained by Reddit. If they want to set up their own website they can feel free to do so.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
NO. Stop going to a single site for everything.
<Back in my day> There were forums dedicated to separate topics. I didn't have to worry about someone judging my post on VWVortex by what I said on Slashdot. I kept separate usernames. Now everyone uses the same username for *everything*. And now every site has a 'facebook' login. I *DO NOT* want all of that stuff linked.
Just because it's not government censorship doesn't mean it's not censorship. It's legal, because Reddit doesn't owe anyone the use of the site to say what the owners of Reddit don't want to be said, and you may even agree with them, because after all they did start by banning truly despicable stuff, but it's still censorship.
There's this old joke that has been attributed to many famous people:
A man asks a woman if she would be willing to sleep with him if he pays her an exorbitant sum. She replies affirmatively. He then names a paltry amount and asks if she would still be willing to sleep with him for the revised fee. The woman is greatly offended and replies as follows: "What kind of woman do you think I am?" To which he responds: "We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price."
It's all too easy to give up principles, but there's no coming back from it.
To carry your analogy further, your restaurant would have to be called "Anything Goes" and be launched on the idea that anyone can say anything and that freedom of speech is paramount - superseding all other concerns. The press interview you and have you on record saying that you're proud of the restaurant being a place that is uncensored and self-moderating (in that if people don't like the conversation at a table they are welcome to move to another), with each table out of earshot of all other tables, thus underlining how accepting of all opinions your restaurant is. Jump forward to the present and if you're surprised that patrons are upset that you're banning certain conversations on the basis that you don't like them, perhaps you shouldn't have opened this kind of restaurant in the first place.
Because reddit is the largest news aggregation site on the Internet, and censorship on the internet, whether done by governments or private corporations, is a hot button issue.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Why not allow the USER to decide what they do or do not want to see, rather than using corporate sponsored censorship? I dunno maybe some kind of "block list" they can set for their own account?
The point of free speech principles is that you can't protect the important speech without bringing along all forms of speech, even stupid ones, because the alternative is the slippery slope of censorship and deciding who should have the power to do it. But even in the ideal case, it is the right of *each person* to decide what they want to listen to.
Crazy idea, I KNOW!
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.
— HL Mencken
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
Slowly but surely, Reddit has deliberately reformed itself to be a politically correct echo chamber. The policies only touch those who voice politically incorrect opinions. This is nothing more than thought policing.
This will ultimately be its undoing, and will significantly improve the quality of discussion in whatever follows, as the signal to noise ratio will be considerably higher when the usual parrots are left to their own devices.
This kind of behavior is normal in media once it reaches certain traction, and has happened here in Slashdot as well. This is no longer news for nerds in the sense it used to be, but much more focused on egaliatarian, progressive policies etc nonsense.
See you on the other side.
Sincerely,
-Nearly two decades of Slashdot.
Ps. Captcha: Expelled
Shadowbanning is probably the stupidest form of moderator action. It doesn't address the behavior that caused a need for moderator or administrator action. If anything, for users that don't know that they're shadowbanned it makes them think that their abhorrent behavior is okay because they're still allowed to do it.
The only positive thing that shadowbanning does is to push-off the confrontation so that mods and admins don't have to deal with the day to day pushback from addressing site issues. I suppose that for sites reliant on ad revenue for traffic it also continues to allow that user traffic until the user realizes that they're banned, but it's still a poor way to go about it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
> I have a right to ask them to leave, correct?
Sure you do, but stop claiming your restaurant is a bastion of free speech.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The complaint is about the difference in the treatment of two similar problem subreddits: FPH and SRS, along with the current batch of banned ones.
The former got banned (according to the official explanation) not because of their ideas but because of the behaviour of their members (doxxing, harassing). The current batch was banned because (according to the official explanation) they "are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else".
SRS exhibits the same behaviour that got FPH banned (brigading, harassing) and arguably exhibits the same behaviour that was used to justify the banishment of the current batch: existing "solely to annoy other redditors".
The above posted explanation from the admin admits SRS is a problem but only touches the brigading and anti brigading measures.
It gives the impression that existing "solely to annoy other redditors" was not the real reason for banning the current batch and that "doxxing and harassing" was not the real reason for banning FPH.