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Reddit Continues To Protect Racist Language In Favor of Free Speech (digitaltrends.com)
In a thread about Reddit's 2017 transparency report, a user asked CEO Steve Huffman whether posts containing racism or racial slurs violate Reddit's terms. Huffman revealed that said speech are permissible on the site. "On Reddit, the way in which we think about speech is to separate behavior from beliefs," Huffman clarified. "This means on Reddit there will be people with beliefs different from your own, sometimes extremely so." Digital Trends reports: It's unclear if Huffman's comments are representative of Reddit's company policy, but protection of hate speech can -- and do -- lead to online harassment and cyberbullying. A recent study from Pew revealed that as many as 40 percent of Americans have experienced some form of harassment online. And even if hate speech may still be protected content on Reddit, Huffman was quick to point out that any threat of violence is not tolerated on the site. "When users actions conflict with our own content policies, we take action," he said. This distinction is consistent with Reddit's prior policies for enforcement. "Going forward, we will take action against any content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people; likewise we will also take action against content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals," the updated terms read, noting that "context is key."
Surprised to see you saying that, since you were so upset when they banned subreddits like FatPeopleHate and CoonTown.
Reddit's approach is sensible. The problem was never the language, it was never a free speech issue, it was that those subreddits were harassing people.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They never had any intention of consuming the cake. People have mapped it out, the Gay couple drove past something like a dozen other bakeries specifically to target this one because they are such screeching blue haired drama queens that they cannot physically function without calling inordinate amounts attention to themselves. The news made it out to seem like it was a surprise that the bakery wouldn't serve them, but that bakery had a well established reputation by then. The bakery was targeted because of their religious beliefs, it's the very definition of discrimination but because it's cool to be gay, the other protected class won this round.
"The left" isn't okay with it. Some people on the left are okay with it, and other people - like you - generalize their beliefs to make a point that has no merit. Your idea isn't terribly fleshed out. Let's say a baker doesn't want to bake a cake for me because I'm black. No problem, right? I'll just go to another baker who will. Except, I live in a town with a bunch of racist fucks like this guy and the one black lady who wants to be a baker can't open a store because the racist building owners won't rent to blacks, the racist service workers wouldn't hook up her utilities if they did, the racist supply company won't sell her ingredients, and the racist bank wouldn't lend her money to start the business, and racist media wouldn't let her advertise to grow it. You can't just give your money to someone else if there's literally no one else to give it to because your minority status is at odds with the rest of your community. And I can already hear your next argument: well move someplace where that's not the case! Just re-read that paragraph and instead of a single business, apply it to entire towns, counties, even states. The entire point of these laws is that this actually happened in America and we agreed that we're better than that.