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.
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.
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
No, they didn't and no it's not. Heck, it doesn't even appear in the FIRST TEN PAGES of Google results for your suggested search.
You are welcome on my lawn.