Slashdot Mirror
Reddit and the Struggle To Detoxify the Internet (newyorker.com)
In an article published on The New Yorker this week, Andrew Marantz discusses the state of free speech on the Web and takes a look at Reddit, the internet's fourth-most-popular site, after Google, YouTube, and Facebook. Some excerpts from the story: On November 23, 2016, shortly after President Trump's election, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman was at his desk, in San Francisco, perusing the site. It was the day before Thanksgiving. Reddit's administrators had just deleted a subreddit called r/Pizzagate, a forum for people who believed that high-ranking staffers of Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, and possibly Clinton herself, were trafficking child sex slaves. The reason for the ban, according to Reddit's administrators, was not the beliefs of people on the subreddit, but the way they'd behaved -- specifically, their insistence on publishing their enemies' private phone numbers and addresses, a clear violation of Reddit's rules. [...] Some of the conspiracy theorists left Reddit and reunited on Voat, a site made by and for the users that Reddit sloughs off. Other Pizzagaters stayed and regrouped on r/The_Donald, a popular pro-Trump subreddit. Throughout the Presidential campaign, The_Donald was a hive of Trump boosterism. By this time, it had become a hermetic subculture, full of inside jokes and ugly rhetoric. The community's most frequent commenters, like the man they'd helped propel to the Presidency, were experts at testing boundaries. Within minutes, they started to express their outrage that Pizzagate had been deleted.
Redditors are pseudonymous, and their pseudonyms are sometimes prefaced by "u," for "username." Huffman's is Spez. As he scanned The_Donald, he noticed that hundreds of the most popular comments were about him: "fuck u/spez", "u/spez is complicit in the coverup". One commenter simply wrote "u/SPEZ IS A CUCK," in bold type, a hundred and ten times in a row. Huffman, alone at his computer, wondered whether to respond. "I consider myself a troll at heart," he said later. "Making people bristle, being a little outrageous in order to add some spice to life -- I get that. I've done that." Privately, Huffman imagined The_Donald as a misguided teen-ager who wouldn't stop misbehaving. "If your little brother flicks your ear, maybe you ignore it," he said. "If he flicks your ear a hundred times, or punches you, then maybe you give him a little smack to show you're paying attention."
Although redditors didn't yet know it, Huffman could edit any part of the site. He wrote a script that would automatically replace his username with those of The_Donald's most prominent members, directing the insults back at the insulters in real time: in one comment, "Fuck u/Spez" became "Fuck u/Trumpshaker"; in another, "Fuck u/Spez" became "Fuck u/MAGAdocious." The_Donald's users saw what was happening, and they reacted by spinning a conspiracy theory that, in this case, turned out to be true. "Manipulating the words of your users is fucked," a commenter wrote.
Redditors are pseudonymous, and their pseudonyms are sometimes prefaced by "u," for "username." Huffman's is Spez. As he scanned The_Donald, he noticed that hundreds of the most popular comments were about him: "fuck u/spez", "u/spez is complicit in the coverup". One commenter simply wrote "u/SPEZ IS A CUCK," in bold type, a hundred and ten times in a row. Huffman, alone at his computer, wondered whether to respond. "I consider myself a troll at heart," he said later. "Making people bristle, being a little outrageous in order to add some spice to life -- I get that. I've done that." Privately, Huffman imagined The_Donald as a misguided teen-ager who wouldn't stop misbehaving. "If your little brother flicks your ear, maybe you ignore it," he said. "If he flicks your ear a hundred times, or punches you, then maybe you give him a little smack to show you're paying attention."
Although redditors didn't yet know it, Huffman could edit any part of the site. He wrote a script that would automatically replace his username with those of The_Donald's most prominent members, directing the insults back at the insulters in real time: in one comment, "Fuck u/Spez" became "Fuck u/Trumpshaker"; in another, "Fuck u/Spez" became "Fuck u/MAGAdocious." The_Donald's users saw what was happening, and they reacted by spinning a conspiracy theory that, in this case, turned out to be true. "Manipulating the words of your users is fucked," a commenter wrote.
With unlimited up/down modding, which just reinforces the statement above.
Ars Technica has recently gone the same way and it's brought a once great site down because of it. Contrary ideas get downmodded into oblivion and it stifles the discussion of controversial topics.
A bad thing to do.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
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https://www.penny-arcade.com/c... Good luck changing human nature and all. A noble goal overshadowed only by its ludicrousness.
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
I cant really trust Bolshevik news sources...
How is it an eye for an eye, did The_Donald posters edit somebody else's posts?
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Believe it or not, Usenet is still there. Discussion doesn't have to be centralized.
I wonder if he named the script instance_karma.pl
Take this practice one step further and replace the "loaded" terms used in the post with their opposite - black becomes white, white becomes black, Hispanic becomes... well, white Hispanic or black Hispanic I guess?
Anyways, do it with race only and call ask the question - "Is this racist?" Restating some posts with a 180 deg flip might bring to light some amusing realizations.
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Even what should be a respectable community like say Tor.com has contributors to postings behaving in malignant ways as they abuse their positions to attack and demean people, misrepresent even authors and the moderation staff blows it off as not wanting to make things harder for contributors.
Not that it is limited to online. I've seen judges blow up in courtrooms, doctors display unprofessional behavior and teachers throwing tantrums.
Do bikers mix with the cocktail crowd when they go out for dinner on the town? They do not.
Do teenage girls go to the same concerts as 80 year old women? They do not.
We are defined not merely by what we are but what we are not. Various ideologies are defined in part by their opposition to other ideologies. Given world views conflict.
The mistake of the social networking people is putting everyone in the same room. That was the error.
Nazis are going to exist.
Jihadis are going to exist.
Communists are going to exist.
Evangelical Christians are going to exist.
Etc etc etc... You don't put them all in the same social network. You segregate.
You can have common areas for mainstream groups but keep places open for fringe groups to go or they'll intrude into the mainstream space given no alternative.
Also do not presume to control who believes what by controlling the flow of information.
As the man said: "The internet views censorship as damage and routes around it."
Savvy?
Provide space for NON-ILLEGAL fringe groups to congregate and leave them unmolested in those spaces. Do not censor people.
These are the mistakes. Fix them and the issue goes away.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The Donald is about the worst trash sub there and breaks as many site rules as any of the other banned subreddits, and further it dosent get a significant amount of guilding (money donated for that post) compared to other subreddits yet it is allowed to stay up. Consistency in enforcing the rules would wipe out alt right Reddit subs including T_D leading to mass hysteria, direct threats of violence, racial and sexist slurs, and basically everything else on the checklist to get you banned.
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Once you have your own Reddit, within that you can ban, unban and mute people for whatever reason you want. You can delete any post. You can be a tyrant.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.
Traditional values are what got you to this point. Don't be so quick to discard them. You may not like the result.
Reads an awful lot like the justification for the purging of undesirables in certain regimes...
Gotta love how a manchild CEO losing his shit because people insulted him on the internet is somehow spun as part of a noble effort to "detoxify the internet". Amazing how those who continually denounce Trump for immaturity, a thin skin and lack of professionalism will mentally contort themselves enough to support Huffman in this case. Oh wait, it's the New Yorker, what was I expecting?
But I haven't got a Donald, and my name isn't Moran.
Being offended doesn't really play into this. In fact its a Red Herring. The issue at heart here is how the CEO of the fourth most popular website was acting like a petulant child. Deleting the comments or banning those who abused the system would have been an appropriate response but writing that script was just childish and pointless. It just made his own website worse. In fact, it was probably in violation of his fiduciary responsibility as CEO.
I find it better to ignore those dark souls or even better laugh at them. Yeah defiantly laugh at them.
"Although redditors didn't yet know it, Huffman could edit any part of the site."
This is pretty silly. It's their site, of course they can edit and delete anything they want to.
Why would anyone believe otherwise?
"Liberal chuckleheads" is an atomic statement. Too bad.
The "alt-right" would seem a lot less hypocritical about purges if we didn't know that was what they wanted to binge on themselves.
Funny, turns out they're a plague on humanity.
Those things only take a hit if your goal with your site is to be a beacon of free expression. These numbnuts damage the credibility and integrity of the site simply by being present on it.
Frankly, given the unending game of whack-a-mole that is banning individuals, I think this is a perfectly elegant alternative.
The internet doesn't owe you a place to be a jackass. Don't like it? Start your own site.
As a matter of fact, you're retarded.
What a load of crap, he just got a load of free publicity for the site didn't he. Bonus points he annoyed a bunch of dicks without censoring them.
The first problem is that everyone is anonymous, and so it is impossible to see the other one as an actual person. So basically everyone acts like a psychopath online. (I even avoid talking to friends that indirectly, because sooner than later, that will ruin the friendship.)
In a small village within the bounds of Dunbar's number, everyone would have to literally face everyone else, and that shit simply would not happen since you would end up in a fistfight, or could not run away from having a talk, or would be thrown out of the village.
The second problem is that everyone is a complete unstable pussy nowadays, with the confidence of a house of cards in a hurricane and more insecurities and triggers than a pubescent teenager. I still remember when we threw words at each other as kids, that would make any special snowflake of today literally sue you for "word rape" or something similarly silly. And we laughed and were friends. Because 1. we actually liked and accepted ourselves, and hence 2. we weren't prejudiced assholes who automatically assumed everyone would hate our guts and mean it is a mean way!
And the third problem is, that purely statistically, with groups of that size, there is always bound to be some person or group, who hates your guts, wants to murder you, and has the means to do so. So anonymity is essential for survival, and we can't fix it, by simply removing anonymity. (Which is why Facebook, with its no-privacy policy, WILL lead to bloody murder. Probably to those who created that policy ;)
And the fourth problem is, that if we separate everyone who might hate each other into a separate group, the result will only be filter bubble echo chambers with circle-jerks in them. (Actually, /. is even worse there, since you are literally blocked from explaining your moderation, by only being able to moderate or comment, when really you should only be allowed to moderate on those that you commented on. Which means you can't just moderate and hide like a coward, but you are forced to be one.)
Apart from the knee-jerk reactions and fantasies of violence I'm sure will be suggested as "solutions" ... what do you think we could do, to solve this?
I wouldn't have anything against separation into separate groups, but we have to keep open minds to prevent echo chambers from forming, even for others, or even if we are super-nice, some will come attack us, sooner or later, anyway.
lol, if your freedom of speech is copy-pasting "fuck someone" a hundred times, I don't need to see that and it adds nothing to constructive criticism. You notice your comment wasn't downmodded? You were mostly respectful and at the very least had SOME valid point behind it.
Also, traditional values got us (in the past 100 years) 2 world wars (never happened before) and slavery. You also shouldn't be so quick to discard new ideas as there are certain things you already shouldn't like the result of.
I don't see the problem.
They're making it go leftward.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
No ungood talk for this happy camper!
Reddit has been waging a war against free speech, and against certain demographics, for the sake of political correctness, for many years now.
Merely recounting some of the facts of journalistic ethical missteps with regards to Gamergate was sufficient cause for massive Orwellian Bannings, Shadowbannings, and Mass censorship. They will also do the same across Reddit for terrorist bombings that dare to mention a privileged group that bombed or killed, such as with the London terrorist knifings, or the Orlando Massacre
If you bring up inconvenient facts that are not politically correct, you can expect to receive the same treatment. You can also expect to have the Inquisitors of SRS downvote brigading your small subreddit. SRS is quite open about being against free speech, and actively opposing non-SJW outlooks. SRS receive active admin support, so they are rarely, if ever, punished. If you resist Admin control over a subreddit, your subreddit is removed.
Furthermore, there is a massive conspiracy of leftist moderators that, in cahoots with the Administrators of Reddit, actively attempt to squelch and censor the views of the Right, and Libertarians. This is not unlike the situation with Wikipedia, and the moderation wars that have occurred there, or the regular invasion of SJW material here, into Slashdot.
Why is this?
Politically Correct speech stands in direct opposition to Free Speech.
The privatization of the Commons
Corporate attempts to push Feel Good communication codes everywhere, to sell More Advertising.
Demonization of Men (White & Asian mainly), like Google
Active attempts to silence political opposition outside the Silicon Valley Worldview
What we need to detoxify is our minds, not Reddit. We can pretend everything is hunky dory. These people exist. Most of them would be could be persuaded. We ignore them at our peril. They vote. In large numbers. In off year elections.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Let's torture people! It's 'funny as hell'! Like those 'funny' home videos. Especially the 'OW MY BALLS' ones! And the neck breaking ones!"
"But if I consider somebody evil, then it's aww-right!! What's WRONG with you?? It's not wrong if he's a criminal/murderer/evildoer/scapegoat!"
Your whole legal system is based exclusively on vile maximum-brutal revenge against the first convenient scapegoat you can grab in the entire tree of causality.
How about this PROTIP?: How about NOT being like the person you despise the most??
How about THAT mind-blowing idea??
You know, it's only as old as the Jesus story! (So >5000 years.)
America; the most un-Christian (and anti-social, so anti-human) country on the planet.
"Manipulating the words of your users is fucked,"
Assuming "fucked" means it's harmful in some meaningful way beyond the complainant not liking it...
My first reaction is it's childish, not "fucked".
Was Huffman's intention to "put words in the mouth" of the poster?
Could this sort of thing expose Huffman's victim to some kind of liability for speech (slander, libel, incitement, etc.)?
Does this sort of thing detract from the credibility of the fourms?
Yeah...after thinking about it for *just* a few minutes, it seems both childish and "fucked".
Huffman says he considers himself a "troll", but in this situation, he's a bully and guilty of abuse of authority.
Certainly not a troll of any pre-September finesse or art.
Legitimate authority--even over a forum that you have created and own--can only be exercised for the benefit of *everyone* (collectively everyone the group--not that it has to be something each and every individual approves of).
Huffman pulled rank to win an argument. He bullied his users and called into question anything anybody posts on his site.
Yah, I'd have to say it's both childish and fucked.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
It's a circle-jerk echo chamber
With unlimited up/down modding, which just reinforces the statement above.
Slashdot is just as bad.
I read /. with zero posts hidden, and you know what? 95% of posts modded down really desperately deserve to be modded down. They're not modded down because they're controversial; they're modded down because they are trolls and assholes trying to be offensive and shocking.
There may be 5% of the downmodded posts that are controversial, but I'd guess probably not even 5%-- and even there, it's likely that the opinion is expressed while offhandedly calling other people posting a "cuck" or a "snowflake" or a "libtard" (or, a "rethuglican", take your pick, left or right) or a "smelly chimp lover".
comment threads without moderation are toxic.
Let me tell you about this place. It's a Democratic Peoples Republic. You'll love it there! What's not to love? All those words mean good things!
... a dubious distinction it shares only with Tumblr and that tells you all you need to know about them. They're at the absolute nadir of the Internet's social ladder.
Reddit and the Struggle To Detoxify the Internet
The CEO wrote a script that redirected insults to him towards prominent members of a group.
Does anyone not see how these two statements don't jive with each other?
Let's say you're a real city slicker, and you're travelling between cities and you stop in at a rural diner for a bite to eat. Or you're some other sort of outsider. Any sort of scenario where a bunch of people are going to see how "people like you" are going to behave. This is going to form stereotypes. To an extent, you are representing the group. Now.... do you spit on the trucker, throw your drink at the waitress, scream wildly, and run away from the bill? Do you purposely antagonize them?
Now, these guys are douchbags, sure. They're certainly not initiating a calm and rational debate. And you know what? I can excuse a bit of tomfoolery and funny shenanigans. But as far as "detoxifying the Internet".... I have to agree, manipulating the words of your users because they said mean things to you is pretty fucked, and it's really not helping.
Imagine people too stupid for facebook. That's the kind of people on reddit.
Modifying content is a form of censorship. He was directly censoring user's opinions of him.
The Internet was built by people who didn't understand the difference between ostracism and bullying. Neither did anybody else at the time, and if anything, people struggle even harder to tell them apart nowadays. This lack of understanding causes terrible damage in all sorts of ways, most of which are beyond the scope of this thread, buy I'll point to Geek Social Fallacy #1 ("Ostracizers are evil") as one of the major factors behind what happened next.
Essentially, the Internet has no effective way to ostracize people because it was created by people who mistook it for bullying. But as a result, it is being taken over by people who really, really need to be ostracized, and who often are in offline contexts. They come online because it's easier to escape off to The Great Enabler rather than confront the reasons nobody wants them around, but the latter is what they really need to be doing. And we have no way to force them into it now.
The problem I have with the Troll attitude is this.
They say stuff like, "Oh I was just having a little fun. Being a little provocative. Lighten up, I was being sarcastic/quirky/eccentric/LOLing."
Except I don't buy it. Trolls only like the "fun" as long as they are in control. You see these people and they talk about how they were having so much fun, but then they left the forum/blog/feed/whatever once they lost control. When the chaos they stimulate actually becomes chaos and a feeding frenzy, and then it turns on the Troll.
Suddenly not fun. Gee, who could have predicted that? Trolls are narcissists pretending to be culture critics, or comedians, or discussion stimulators. Nope, they are none of those things.
There's a difference between admin and user moderation.
If I were to post on this site about how the Holocaust was faked, I'd be downmodded into oblivion (I hope). On certain subreddits, you could be upmodded for such things. And sure, you can believe that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex trafficking ring out of a pizza parlor, and that's all fun and games until someone starts shooting a gun inside.
Like many on this site, I'm a proponent of free speech -- but with user moderation to prevent stupidity. One of the problems with Reddit is that subreddit nature creates echo chambers. As many have pointed out before, websites are private businesses and have a right to kick people out whom they don't like. If someone walks into your pizza parlor and accusing you of running a child sex trafficking ring, you can ask them to leave -- and that's not censorship -- any more than it is a bar kicking out a rowdy patron.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
The company will see a problem when more people leave for alternative platforms that don't censor or worse, edit posts.
The problem is that we have ratings at all, and it's weird to me that the conversation is under the assumption that ratings are necessary. What do they do?
You can browse at +1 and avoid reading the trolls.
They're certainly not keeping slashdot (or reddit, etc) free of trolls, never mind faulty or bad-faith arguments.
Yeah, but if you want to, it gives you the ability to skip over the troll comments and just read the interesting comments.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"He wrote a script that would automatically replace his username with those of The_Donald's most prominent members, directing the insults back at the insulters in real time: in one comment, "Fuck u/Spez" became "Fuck u/Trumpshaker"; in another, "Fuck u/Spez" became "Fuck u/MAGAdocious."
That does not sound like plan to "detoxify the internet" so much as one to replace it with their own preferred toxic garbage/
Sorry "Liberals" we are on to you now. You don't give a crap about liberal democracy, you don't care about the free exchange of ideas. You are not really against violence, or harassment. You only want to be ones to decide who is on the receiving end. You and your leadership in the DNC are transparent pieces of garbage.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
"jackass: anyone expressing things I don't like."
Well, no. Pretty much any idea can be presented with jackassery or without.
Steve Huffman is a sympathizer to white supremacists and refuses to ban them because he thinks racism is "valuable discussion"
it's only freedom of speech if done towards the government, posting crap on someone else's site (whether a personal site or corporate) isn't protected/freedom of speech.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It doesn't say that website/corporation X can't delete your crap post, edit it, or censor it. As far as I know, there isn't a law that says if douchebag A posts a comment on a website that the owner is required to leave it posted and not delete/alter it.
If that were the case, then vote based comment scoring is censorship and my snowflake feeling are hurt so you must promote my comment.
"Comments owned by the poster. Copyright © 2018 SlashdotMedia. All Rights Reserved."
I assume this is to avoid liability. Slashdot can delete posts no problem, but if they start modifying them then I can only assume they take full responsibility for their content. Long story short, Reddit should be no different. It was a stupid thing Huffman did that opened Reddit to all sorts of liability.
His site his rules. This isn't the fucking government. He can censor whatever the fuck he wants to.
You people don't know what the fuck censorship is. Stop labeling everything you don't like censorship. Jesus Christ.
LUL. This happen a while ago and nothing of consequence happened. You rubes will continue visiting the site and like it.
Now tip your masters on the way out you fucking plebs.
Shit site with admins that will edit user data. Anything you read there is suspect.
Daily censorship for wrongthink. Approved harassment for those wrongthinkers too.
They are useless for any actual information or news.
Untrustworthy and unreliable to an extreme.
And so much smug clueless narcissism it should be a crime.
If reddit didn't have cat pictures. You could shut it down and lose nothing of value.
"Antifa" really doesn't exist in America.
MODS! They're posting fake news again!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)
"The Antifa movement is a conglomeration of autonomous, self-styled anti-fascist groups in the United States."
Have gnu, will travel.
I haven't been on reddit for a while. In fact, where I go "Back to reddit" is the meme of choice.
then Reddit decided to kick them out and now we all have to deal with them!
I have long thought that a really good moderation system would allow a handful of reasonable people to outright edit what was being posted, to change tone and make more reasonable what someone was saying.
It would however be hard to find people neutral enough about some subjects to be able to edit properly though, and not punish one side over the other as so often happens when a small group of people have editorial control.
It just seems like if it's done well, it could be a really great way to let people speak while somewhat neutering trolls, and a way to let people know if they were getting out of line without harsher mechanisms that would get them more defensive. It would also bring some people back from the edge of anger. Or at least get them angry at the mods instead, which is fine.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've been on Slashdot under many different handles almost since its inception, and I would say that in the past 5 years or so it has failed. Why? Probably just because more people are online, and you only get along with most people personally, not by "discussing controversial topics" but by dealing with them in daily interactions.
I agree that slashdot has failed, but i think the reason is different. Back in its heyday, stories in the firehose which were voted up made the front page. Today, voting doesn't really matter; the editors find and post stories according to their own agenda (e.g. Trump bashing and SWJ stories). That filter/selection process by the editors far outweighs any moderation.
Aha! So you admit it was an eye for an eye!
HIs analogy is stupid. Because The_Donald isn't "your little brother" it's your bully. He can only do so much because teachers are watching but he's going to tease you day in and day out because it amuses him or he's broken inside or he's jealous of you or whatever. The point is that you don't treat your bully like your little brother. You don't "feed him a snack" especially when he's already demonstrated he won't respond to attempts to persuade. He should have been able to predict exactly what happened. The Donald created a conspiracy theory that was right. We're still living the ramifications of that. Because now you can't tell The_Donald they're wrong because they'll call back to the Spez incident. They're STILL spamming him last I checked (which to be fair was a few months ago).
He VALIDATED them. The way Jimmy Fallon validated Trump by fluffing his hair. Dunno what's up with these "Bros" who think they can just bro out with anyone and it'll just be good and fun. Hoffman should have banned The_Donald a long long time ago. You can't save that subreddit and there is no obligation to keep it. The irony is that compared to all the other work around solutions they've tried. Banning subs legitimately works. No banning coontown doesn't stop anti-black racism but it did drastically reduce the ability of the coontown collective to focus and collect together. The same with incel and fatpeoplehate and all the many subs that have been banned. It's not a perfect solution (and it was never supposed to be) but it is readily performable and demonstrably effective.
He can censor whatever the fuck he wants to.
Sure, but you can't just say it wasn't censorship.
The tradition hasn't been as consistent over time as you think.
The sudden injection of "antifa" into the discussion, with stories of "antifa" demonstrations and counter-rallies was clearly initiated by somebody who isn't familiar with American slang or even English pronunciation.
No, it came about more because people don't want to just come out and say they are pro-fascist. So they are against the people against it instead.
"One commenter simply wrote "u/SPEZ IS A CUCK," in bold type, a hundred and ten times in a row."
Just because the delivery is off, it does not mean the message is wrong.
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Sure he can. Internal consistency so far hasn't been a strength of his, why would honesty?
Censorship is censorship, regardless of who is doing it.
OK, fine. You can't correctly say it.
The group in America call themselves 'Antifa'.
They aren't the real thing, of course, any more than the 'Nazis' in the US are fighting for Lebensraum and the glory of Germany. The real Antifa was the Communist version of the Nazi brownshirts. We aren't in 1930s Germany anymore, and there aren't any violent groups funded by the USSR trying to gain political power here.
But there are groups that want to use the 'Antifa' name for themselves, just like there are groups that want to use the Nazi name. And since that's how they self-identify, that's how everyone else identifies them.
Trump may act out at times. However not everybody who voted for him supports him as a person. What they do support are his policy positions.
If only the people that claim to be liberal actually were like that.
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
--Keyser Soze
Reddit is trash. The administrators and most of the users are liberal zealots. Pizzagate is real, and we'll learn a lot more in a couple of days.
"Antifa" really doesn't exist in America.
MODS! They're posting fake news again!
[...]
"The Antifa movement is a conglomeration of autonomous, self-styled anti-fascist groups in the United States."
Antifa is as much one thing as Anonymous. As a single entity, it doesn't exist. People think it's one thing, but it's not an organization, it's a movement — precisely as your citation states.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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You're confusing the First Amendment with the general idea of freedom of expression. You're correct in regards to the First Amendment; it just says that the government can't jail/kill you for your opinions. Freedom of expression is not bounded by it specifically being government.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for more information on the concept of freedom of expression/speech.
Nazis don't exist in America as an organization. Trump supporters don't exist in America as an organization (half of the GOP merely put up with him). Etc, etc.
Antifa may very well consist of a bunch of independent cells, each unknown to the others. And their command and control might lie outside of America. So yeah, your assertion is accurate on the face of it.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's the catchall, once someone is using it, you have a pretty good idea of their politics.
*/Generally/* the type of people using words like "toxic" will be the kind of people to also wildly call you a nazi or racist for disagreeing with them, or homophobe or any other quite slanderous and outrageous accusation, in an attempt to nullify your discussion. Effectively throwing a dead cat on the table.
"Toxic" opinions range from all kinds of stances, but it need only be saying "all lives matter" or "equality for all, not promotion of minorities over others" etc, that alone can trigger these kinds of people into calling you toxic.
Reddit, twitter and youtube in the last 12 months have really gone on a crusade against people. The sad thing is, in people using such terminology so freely like racist or nazi, they're devaluing the use of the word and allowing real racists and nazis to slip between the cracks. If everyone is a nazi, no one is.
Many of the 'alt-right' horrible people are infact quite liberal, they simply point of the hypocrisy and madness of some of the extreme left claims. Things such as "doxxing is fine, as long as we think they're bad people" or even "violence against people is ok, as long as they're alt-right" (and so on and so forth,..)
The thing with the extreme left is they're just so easy to provoke and get a rise from, you can say something entirely in jest, clearly in jest to people with common sense and they go into an autistic screech. This over reaction, is so wild and inane people can't help but push the buttons of these people. Not because they believe half the shit they say but because the result is hilarious. It's like teasing the kid at school who loses his mind when you call him X name. (To be clear, I was bullied at school myself)
Ahh politics on the web, it's truly become an awful place in the past 2 years, horrifically so. Worst part is, for us non Americans, we didn't give a damn. Americans really are an incredibly political lot, they love discussing it, they identify with it, they follow it closely. Many other countries really couldn't give a damn, but sadly, most content does indeed originate from the states, meaning all kinds of things are now filled with political undertones, tweets, youtube videos, tv shows, movies, music. It's awful for those of us who simply don't (or didn't) care and had ignored all this most of our lives.
"Toxic" indeed,........
Antifa may very well consist of a bunch of independent cells, each unknown to the others. And their command and control might lie outside of America.
Nobody has yet demonstrated a single C&C, which is what makes various Antifa groups independent. At the point at which one has been shown to exist, then it will be reasonable to describe Antifa as a single thing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They RECENTLY fired most of their talented writers...
Their overall writing quality has gone down, as have most comments.
The once BEST tech site is now rarely worth a read. All in the name of profits.
Farewell, Ars. you were great while you lasted.
Reddit mods are the real problem. They're not normal people.
I personally know one mod who's an unemployed wastrel living off his wife's income. He's on Reddit all the time running multiple accounts.
He also fancies himself as a sociologist and runs these little games with his multiple accounts arguing and debating amongst themselves.
Now this would be harmless if he wasn't also a religious extremist. Having managed to sneak into at least one big subreddit as a mod, he uses that to censor contrary opinions.
But it's Reddit, so shitty behavior is to be expected.
Actions speak louder than words, or whatever label you assign your group.
Actual antifascists don't attack peaceful demonstrators or make having a speaking event at a college require a large security contingent. Antifa at Kings College is just a recent example.
They are no more anti fascist than North Korea is an actual democratic republic.
The owner/operator/admins of a web site can do what they want. It is crazy how so many people on Reddit feel so entitled that they can say whatever they want, and nobody should be able to do anything about it.
Personally, I wish Reddit would do away with the up/down voting completely. Or give moderators the ability to determine whose votes count, so we can actually have some defense against the brigades of trolls. We need more control, not less.
I just wanna point out that the 3 people in this chain bitching about downvotes (Yar, Sol, and Spam) are exactly the kinds of people who would get modded down. They think their atrocious ideas deserve discussion. They've been discussed ad infinitum and you've been told the conservative days are over. You guys say "nu uh". So instead of is too/is not over and over again we're just tired of listening. We're gonna do what needs to be done to fix things and y'all can kindly fuck off.
I can argue all the conservative points all day. I got links, I got quotes, I got everything. The thoughtless phrase, to me, means that even after I have done all that, the response is "nu uh, I'm rite ur rong". It's thoughtless because they've become a broken record. You cannot convince them they are wrong. You cannot convince them their belief isn't normal. They just double down on the derp, as I expect you will. I have been EAGERLY awaiting those so-called better ideas that challenge me, but it looks like the sun will go supernova before I hear one. You got one? All I ever hear is dumb crap like build a wall and kill all the muslims, jews, and blacks. That kind of garbage doesn't deserve discussion. It was refuted about 30 seconds after it was uttered but again they double down.
How many times must you be told your idea is dumb and you should feel dumb for being dumb? As many as it takes, amirite?
It's weird what Reddit considers 'toxic', too. I mean, for some odd reason, they don't appear to have any issue with these subs...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shoplifting/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stealing/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pickpocket/
He actually edit people's comments and made the edits look like what they said.
Forgery and illegal. In criminal cases, it should be a warning to trust online documentation.
Jesus, i was hoping TFA was a quick read, but that's more like war and peace.
TL;FA (Too long; Fell asleep)
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
The tradition hasn't been as consistent over time as you think.
Tradition: how I think things used to be.
Of course traditions change over time... because people change overtime. So any ideas of "tradition" from anti-liberals are more nostalgia than fact, imaginations of a "white picket fence" fantasy that never really existed.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
www.voat.co is better.
Remember, if you dont give the cat a shittingbox, then it will shit all over the house.
www.voat.co is internets shittingbox, and I love it. Freedom of speech, and racism.
Not saying reddit is perfect, or even very good.
But reddit is *much* better than the out-of-control leftist ideologues on facebook, twitter, google/youtube.
And was a moderator of /r/cannibals who banned pizzagater
Traditional values are the only thing holding humanity back from colonizing the solar system. Traditional values have contributed literally nothing to the history of mankind, whether you like it or not.
... detoxify the internet? WTF?
Social media is what made the internet toxic. The only way it can contribute to detoxifying the internet is to self-euthanize.
Face it you sociopathic Silicon Valley brogrammers, you created this via your arrogance. You want to create "disruption", right? Well, disruption leads to anomy and anomy leads to exactly what we are seeing.
Stop trying to blame the world for the disease you created and unleashed upon it, for profit.
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Reddit is unable to find a solution to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
Casteism