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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."
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...
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.
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
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.