Reddit Bans Subreddits Related To Selling Guns, Drugs, Sex, and More (bloomberg.com)

New submitter cornholed writes: Yesterday, Reddit updated their Content Policy forbidding transactions for certain goods and services. From the formal announcement on Reddit: "As of today, users may not use Reddit to solicit or facilitate any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services, including: firearms, ammunition, or explosives; drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, or any controlled substances (except advertisements placed in accordance with our advertising policy); paid services involving physical sexual contact; stolen goods; personal information; falsified official documents or currency." Bloomberg has an interesting write-up on how Reddit is wading into the gun control debate. See this post on Reddit for a full-list of all subreddits banned. "Reddit has been something of a Wild West for users building communities by curating and commenting on content in subreddits," reports Bloomberg. "Sometimes, as in the case with gun sales, marketplaces emerge in the course of conversations within specific communities. With Reddit's increased popularity -- the site is the sixth-most-visited in the world -- has come introspection and stricter content guidelines. The company recognizes its responsibility for having provided a platform for hate groups to flourish and, more recently, the possibility that Russian propaganda on the site may have played a role in influencing the 2016 presidential election."

Comments

Re:time to bring back USENET? :)

[mysidia]

What we need is Catered censors ---- In other words, censors who are Approved by the group they are censoring, For example:
  in a "Gun Sales forum" --- the censors would act according to the wishes of THAT community and not be subject to the OVERALL Public opinion or scrutiny by a Corporate overlord, And then: effective means in place of monitoring the usage and cancelling or revoking the censorship powers in the event that one of the approved censors becomes rogue and starts going against the desires of THAT PARTICULAR community.

PROBABLY the idea would be to have a means of marking spam so it's hidden by default, But concerned citizens can turn on an advanced feature and see all the "Deleted" or "Censored" messages.

Re:1956 redux ?

[labnet]

The Wild West internet is gradually coming under the thumb of the Pompous Puritans

Except these 'Pomous Puritans' are now from the hard left instead of the religious right.

Re:time to bring back USENET? :)

[BlueStrat]

The complete antithesis to free speech would be if you were forced to spread messages you disagree with.

Oh, you mean like a baker forced to bake a wedding cake with a pro-same-sex marriage message when it's against his (Christian) religion? (Muslims get a pass)

Strat