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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."
USENET is/was a purely peer-to-peer system with no effective censorship. The downside to this, of course, was massive quantities of spam, which killed it. If someone could effectively solve the spam issue without censoring...
A lot of these have dropped in the last few days.
YouTube Bans Firearms Demo Videos
Citi sets restrictions on gun sales by retail clients by adding arbitrary rules (can only sell to 21+ years-old, no standard capacity magazines, etc)
Sheep often move en masse, as though there was some coordination in effect.
Perhaps that's news to you.
Do you think these policy changes for companies like Citigroup and Youtube happen overnight? I'm sure these companies have been working on these for a while - it's just strange they ALL get announced within 24-48 hours of each other.
I'm not saying there's a conspiracy. I'm just pointing out the timing is coincidental.
Is to ban the sale of rock and roll.
No thanks.
"Citi said that in addition to the policy for new clients, it is starting talks with current clients on their practices and if they do not adopt changes the bank will help “transition their business away from Citi.”
From a financial standpoint this would be called shooting themselves in the foot.
Cracks me up when talking about an anti-gun policy.
"Citi said that in addition to the policy for new clients, it is starting talks with current clients on their practices and if they do not adopt changes the bank will help “transition their business away from Citi.”
From a financial standpoint this would be called shooting themselves in the foot.
This is just Citi throwing a minority under the bus for free publicity. From what it looks like, this is only for corporate accounts (that is, if your business uses Citi as your bank). I imagine gun retailers are a drop in the bucket for them.
The biggest possible hit they'll take is fallout from boycotts from gun groups. Looks like it's already all over social media: https://twitter.com/Citi/statu...
Those born before Netflix might remember network TV shows with bland family content where you never see naked people or hear swearing. When Lucy, of 'I Love Lucy', got pregnant, she was not allowed to be seen on screen in that condition. We listened to Lawrence Welk music and saw the art of Norman Rockwell on magazine covers. We waved the flag on 4th of July and cheered for our baseball team and joined Boy Scouts. Yes, youngsters, that was life before the internet. We had to read National Geographic magazine to see naked people.
But why was that so? Because of the Religious Right. Because of the Moral Majority. Because of Puritans who ran the country. But mostly because of advertising sponsors who were afraid to be associated with anything 'immoral'.
We now swim in porn of all kinds with Game of Thrones and other films by Amazon, Netflix and other new media innovators. We have chat rooms where we are free to swear and say outrageous things. We freely criticize politicians and corporations and media and each other. The internet has freed us from Moral Morons and Patriotic Pimps and Advertising Assholes who suppressed free thought since the Dark Ages.
But it's happening again. The Wild West internet is gradually coming under the thumb of the Pompous Puritans. Facebook, Twitter and even Reddit are shutting down free speech bit by bit. And yes it's largely due to advertising sponsors and partly due to threats by governments around the world.
Was Reddit the last major bastion of Free Speech? Is the internet going to become as bland and mindless as 1956 television?
...omphaloskepsis often...
Guns are not illegal. The purchases on gundeals were all above board NFA licensed businesses that required NFA transfers that included background checks. So, there was no illegal activity going on there. What's next? They ban communities where people hookup because some people consider it immoral? So posting pictures of your genitalia is ok, but getting a good deal on a scope isn't?
It's definitely trying to make the news cycle, and if there are any lessons to be learnt from gamergate, it's being orchestrated, and, I'm not surprised to see some of the same companies involved again.
The rhyme of history is sounding again. When the printing press was invented in Europe, it didn't take long for establishments to see that sharing information was not always in their interests, books got banned, notably political ones. I think we're just in a similar phase as then; some companies are taking it on themselves to consolidate and control what gets shared.
Just like Google, err,, cough cough utube cough, you are clearly showing your political bias.
// never bought a GF an abortion
/// I must be a D
Doesn't matter if you are for or against gun control, you can't deny utube and reddit are left wing.
/ don't own any guns
Voat is contaminated by the racist fuckheads who went there after Reddit purged them. Now any self-respecting person who goes there comes back looking for the clear history button in their browsers.
Better to let that one be and find another alternative instead.
Seems like knowing that you've enabled a murder, an overdose, or a rape might keep you up at night. Maybe Reddit just doesn't want to be a part of it. It's a big old internet. Users that want to sell guns and drugs and sex can go somewhere else.
Is it a response to this, passed by the Senate 2 days ago?
According to the EFF:
You figured it out. It's those damned bow and arrow makers who are behind the conspiracy to get guns banned in order to drive up their sales!
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
If I read correctly, one can still trade chemical weapons. Elephant's tusks seems fine. Human organs trafficking seems to be in a grey zone because of physical contact.
Alas, given that some people consider the Second Amendment to be "crazy and offensive", it's pretty much impossible to avoid the label.
The "Crazy and Offensive" comes when supporters of the second amendment consider the deaths of children to be a reasonable price to pay for the right of crazies to buy assault weapons. In most people's world, there's no way that's not 'crazy and offensive.'
I think the problem is, the government is letting shootings slide. I mean, earlier this week was another one, much smaller but still, it happened.
When there was a democrat in the house, he could say grand things, knowing that Congress would never approve it. But at least He Was Doing Something About It. He managed to work both sides quite well - make the big evil Republicans the reason he can't pass anything, and at the same time, gun owners were nervous, so every time they'd buy more guns, simulating the economy more.
Now that the entire government is republican controlled, there is no more excuse. Trump can't say he can't do anything about it because Congress won't let him, and everyone knows he loves his executive orders and he's famous for his Get Things Done attitude.
Problem is, he didn't. He made some noise about it, and let it peter it. Then it happened again. And people are at their breaking point. Businesses see that, they realize that it isn't business as usual and they need to Do Something to appeal to the silent majority who do want some form of dun control. (I believe the stats have it around 75% or more. It seems less, but the NRA has a whole pile of money they spend buying politicians and in fact, if one wavers in their support, all that money suddenly goes to their opponent.
The political climate has shifted, and businesses are simply stepping into the vacuum, realizing that while the NRA business is nice, it's not actually necessary, and they get a nice PR boost from being seen as Doing Something.
As long as mass shootings keep continuing to happen (and there's no indication it's going to stop), this is going to get worse. As long as the guy in the White House does everything else other than be seen doing something about the issue, companies are going to reconsider their support. The irony is, the NRA may have one the battle (Trump does nothing), but they might lose the war (popular opinion turns against gun owners, even being brandished as idiots of a barbaric age).
As long as kids are dying in the streets, no amount of tariffs or trade wars matter.
Disarm the common people! Down with freedom and democracy! The Social Justice reich shall last a thousand years!
Reddit - come for the bigoted elitists lecturing everyone about their moral superiority - stay for the censorship!
Yes, probably. That bill is specifically about prostitution, but it mandates review and censorship of user-submitted content. So since these companies are implementing those processes anyway, they're likely trying to fend off further regulation by getting ahead of the censorship curve.
The fact that they're targeting guns isn't really surprising, that most recent Florida shooting is still a pretty hot topic.
Before all the alt-right Nazis go blaming liberal companies blah blah blah - someone should mention the Republican Congress passage of FOSTA. The bill makes it so that website owners can be held liable for posts of their users. Right now it is supposed to specifically target sex trafficking but broad language in the bill and the likelihood of increasing liability is making a lot of companies panic.
No, they probably have the same percentage of shitty individuals as any other loosely grouped mass of people.
If you look into a subculture long enough, you'll always be able to collect a shitton of asshattery, especially if you're not constrained by such thungs as context.
Fake news everywhere ;).
This is as close to a literal marketplace of ideas as we will ever get. The majority favour more gun controls now,
The vocal minority do. As we've seen in all recent elections, your point of view is shared by a minority of the population.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Businesses see that, they realize that it isn't business as usual and they need to Do Something to appeal to the silent majority who do want some form of dun control. (I believe the stats have it around 75% or more.
The stats of those who want stricter gun control are around 10%. The 75% number are those who want "some" form of gun control and who were told that there are none at the moment. The 75% are quite happy with the existing gun-controls, only they don't know it is existing.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
This appears to probably have been caused by FOSTA, which Congress recently passed. That's why it appears that many sites are coordinating these changes - the government is forcing them to by holding websites responsible for users undertaking illegal activities. More details can be found here:
https://boingboing.net/2018/03/22/craigslist-personals-shut-down.html
with some additional links to the Reddit announcement, and an EFF announcement of how Congress is censoring the internet.
"As long as kids are dying in the streets, no amount of tariffs or trade wars matter."
Except...it's not that bad, and getting better.
1) violent crime is continuing a decades-long trend of decrease
2) gun homicides have dropped by 1/3 (!) since a high in the early 1990s, from 18000 to about 13000.
3) https://news.northeastern.edu/... shows that school shootings are down 75-80% in that same span.
By *any* objective measure, gun violence is decreasing significantly. We should be celebrating.wildly at the improvement.
(It's worth noting that both of these numbers have decreased simultaneous with the largest increases in private gun ownership in US history. I'm not asserting causality - I believe the violent crime decline is probably due more to easily available abortions - but certainly it disproves the superficial point that guns cause violence.)
(And as far as your "it's all Republicans, they have no excuse"...erm, they couldn't kill Obamacare despite basically running solely and universally on that platform for the last what, 6 years? I don't think you get how government works.)
-Styopa
It seems that way, because you're basing that opinion on your pre-existing beliefs and not facts.
Here's a list of the top 50 organizational donors to US political campaigns - guess who didn't make it?
Here's another list of the top 50 organizational donors to all federal contributions, not just campaigns - guess who's still not on the list?
Here's a list of the top 75 corporate sponsors of legislation - again, the NRA is nowhere to be found.
You have a choice here - learn that you were incorrect, accept it, and correct yourself, or double-down on the ignorance. Your call, but I know which decision I'd make.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese