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Radical Leftists Built Their Own FOSS Alternative To Reddit After It Banned Them (vice.com)
eeplox shares a report from VICE, adding: "Community-built sites like these are very much needed since Reddit announced they were going closed source": After r/LeftWithSharpEdge was taken down, ziq [one of the subreddit's members] decided to leave Reddit and create an independent anarchist community free from its rules. Raddle.me, which was originally called Raddit.me, is an "alternative that is focused on community building and openness, and not controlled by a corporation," ziq told me. The original name was intended to sound similar to Reddit, but was later changed to avoid potential trademark issues. Raddle doesn't have advertisements or run analytical software, so its size is difficult to calculate -- but that's by design. The site is meant to be an alternative to social networks that profit by monitoring user behavior and serving advertisements. "We have no ads, no tracking, no user profiling and we don't collect or share any user data with anyone," ziq said. The site is community-built and anyone can contribute to the code.
Ziq's commitment to privacy is an appealing virtue for Raddle's users. "I'm always very uneasy about the lack of concern for privacy online," Tequila_Wolf, a user who posts frequently to Raddle, told me in a direct message. "When you have friends on government lists who get harassed at every border because, say, they are members of Anarchists Against The Wall, you know you don't want to get on that list." Raddle ultimately came out of more broad problems ziq and Emma saw with Reddit. Ziq complained about how it has increasingly become a recruiting ground for the alt-right, the social network's overemphasis on America (r/politics, a major subreddit, only discusses U.S.-based politics, for example), and the fact that the site's code isn't open source, among other issues. Emma mentioned what she says is a problem with harassment on the site. "To me, the biggest problem with Reddit is how its administrators ignore the routine harassment and witch-hunts of marginalized people that takes place, with r/The_Donald being the most prominent example," she said.
Ziq's commitment to privacy is an appealing virtue for Raddle's users. "I'm always very uneasy about the lack of concern for privacy online," Tequila_Wolf, a user who posts frequently to Raddle, told me in a direct message. "When you have friends on government lists who get harassed at every border because, say, they are members of Anarchists Against The Wall, you know you don't want to get on that list." Raddle ultimately came out of more broad problems ziq and Emma saw with Reddit. Ziq complained about how it has increasingly become a recruiting ground for the alt-right, the social network's overemphasis on America (r/politics, a major subreddit, only discusses U.S.-based politics, for example), and the fact that the site's code isn't open source, among other issues. Emma mentioned what she says is a problem with harassment on the site. "To me, the biggest problem with Reddit is how its administrators ignore the routine harassment and witch-hunts of marginalized people that takes place, with r/The_Donald being the most prominent example," she said.
sign up. log on. wave to the camera
Right now the site seems to have no way to create forums (The equivelant of a subreddit), this concerns me, as if conversations are to be sequestered to an appropriate forum, then certain viewpoints can be silenced simply by not having an appropriate forum, turning the site into a large echo chamber.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
Listen - I may not agree with them on every position - and may even see them as harmful to some of their own goals... but I do see them as a somewhat helpful kind of crazy.
Why? Because for the past generation or so, we really haven't had any real forces of extreme leftwing pushing anything in the US. Not that this is a bad thing on it's own, mind you - but compared to the insanity of an extreme right wing pushing every button on every part of the societal machine, it's actually destabilizing to have the left version largely missing for so long.
Now, I certainly hear an opposing idea just while I'm typing this - that we have Democrats or college campuses, or something - and if you think of that as extreme left wing, you have no idea how the rest of the world thinks.
Without an extreme to exist as a philosophical sounding board, or as a 'wall' of what's too extreme to bounce against, the left of today in the US is largely crippled in culture - and obsessed with minor points of political correctness/friendiness to business, rather than actually tying to advance a real agenda of change.
I'd actually LIKE to have a crazy left to actually exist out there, willing to be grumbled about and dismissed. I'd like to have something Michael Moore can say "Geesh - those loonie lefties", then make a point that plots a 'sensible middle ground', rather than having nationalized healthcare like many modern democracies seem like some loony idea by reflexive 'moderate' idealists.
So go, you crazy folks - be extreme and let me disagree with you. It's cool with me.
>"We have no ads, no tracking, no user profiling and we don't collect or share any user data with anyone
Two things will happen if the site survives a significant length of time:
1) Whoever is funding it will become a dictator, deleting posts and banning posters with whom they disagree, without admitting they're doing it and in fact doing their best to keep the fact a secret.
2) When the money runs out, they'll convince themselves that 'just a little bit of advertising is OK', and slowly sell out.
Reddit is too big to lump into a single category. It has multiple communities from all across the political spectrum.
Is /r/latestagecapitalism left wing? Yes. /r/thedonald left wing? No.
Is
Typically reddit puts up with subreddits as long as they don't advocate or end up used to commit violence. Both /r/politics and /r/thedonald want each other gone, but it's not happening until it becomes evident that purpose of the subreddit itself is problematic. It's not the level of political extremism, it's what the sub is getting used for and advocates for that dictates whether or not it's allowed.
Calling liberals or conservatives a "cancer on our nation that should just fuck off and die" isn't actually against the rules. Saying "so-and-so is a liberal/conservative, here's his/her address, go get 'em wink wink" is against the rules. If you have enough of the latter on your sub, it's getting the boot.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
If you think Liberal == Radical Leftist, then you have your head up your ass.
Peoples' political views can fall across a wide spectrum. It's convenient to demonize your opponents by shoving them all to one extreme end of that spectrum. Convenient and wrong.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Left winger here. I'll happily debate politics with people interested in a calm (if passionate) rational discussion. I will not waste my time arguing with somebody spewing racist dogwhistles with no intention of listening or thinking about the points made.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
SoylentNews was at least up during recent "offline mode" downtime of Slashdot.
What they really dont like is the presence of anyone who does not agree with them.
So they have gone and made their own little club, out the in the back shed, where they can make sure anyone who does not agree with them will be kicked out (the equivalent of the 'no girls!' club sign). They will make their big plans there, all competing to out do the others in how 'revolutionary' they are.they will virtue signal until they are red in the face and their 'community' will slowly shrink as anyone who isnt revolutionary ENOUGH this week gets excluded.
Meanwhile the rest of the world will get on with actual life, something they will be less and less in touch with.
Sad? yes.
Pathetic? yes.
But hey, its no different 'because its on the internet', the only odd thing here is that someone thinks its newsworthy. Its not.
I have a colleague who said "fucking liberals" when I told him it's stupid to think that electric car technology isn't going to improve in the future.
To him, liberal is just an insult, he has no idea what it actually means.
Antifa and BLM are regularly killing police? On what planet?
I would guess he's talking about the high-profile shooting of five Dallas police officers and the subsequent victims' relatives' lawsuit against BLM. However, we don't have any evidence the shooter was a member of BLM, just that he was angry over police shootings of black men. He was once a member of the New Black Panther Party, but they kicked him out because they thought he was too dangerous.
I prefer to not call people nazis unless they are actually nazis. I find it lessens the impact of the term to misuse it.
And rational does not mean they agree with me - far from it. Rational means their arguments and positions support their professed viewpoints, nothing more or less. I have no interest in having arguments with people that won't be honest with themselves or me.
If somebody tells me that public health care is bad because the government wastes tons of money despite heaps of evidence to the contrary, I cannot have a debate with them because they do not believe in research, logic, or honest debate. If they tells me public health care is bad because the government's role is not to provide health care, then I can talk with them, because while I disagree with that viewpoint there's nothing wrong with the logic itself.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
In order to keep the narrative of white racism alive, "activists" keep turning to more and more ephemeral forms of racism, most of which require no conscious action at all on the part of whites. Conveniently, whites can not refute these racist acts nor can they really change, they can only *atone* for their inherent racism. Racism has become a kind of secular "original sin" -- an inalienable state of being for which they may only pay penance.
Unfortunately as more and more non-white ethnic groups immigrate and rise within the United States, it's becoming apparent that the "race problem" isn't "white racism" as broad, whites vs. nonwhites phenomenon, but is instead something more like "Why can't blacks succeed when others have?"
And the laundry list of others is pretty long -- Latinos, many of whom *don't even speak English*, have managed to thrive in the United States. The Hmong, living like it was the sometime before the 19th century managed to get ripped out of their own country by the US war machine and resettled to the prairies of the Midwest and thrived. The *Somalis* managed to escape a live-action version of "The Road Warrior" and thrive in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in spite of the obvious handicaps of negative sentiment towards Muslims *and* being African (inheriting existing negative sentiment towards American blacks).
How have all of these groups managed to establish working communities not defined by broken families and crime despite substantial cultural obstacles in mere decades or less while native African Americans continue to fail? Surely at some point we can start to talk about problems inherent to and unique to African American communities which cannot be blamed on "racism".