Reddit Removes Communities To Address Harassment, Users Respond 474
New submitter sethstorm writes: As a change to their community management, Reddit administrators have banned multiple communities (known as subreddits) in a bid to remove harassment. In response, users have responded in different ways — some have pointed out the bias of Reddit admins for leaving known harassers alone such as those in the "SRS" subreddit, others have attempted to re-create the banned subreddit "FatPeopleHate", and many have gone to overwhelm Voat (a competitor).
Routing around it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who said, "The Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it"? Yes. It's old. You've probably heard it a million times; but it's so apropos.
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Re:Routing around it. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are technological solutions to this social problem. Filter speech at the client. Program smart filters that recognize those you consider undesirable; but let them express themselves. Banning, like antiobiotics, leads to super versions of that which you are trying to get rid of.
Re:Routing around it. (Score:5, Insightful)
it's not that complicated. there's still plenty of repugnant and hateful content on reddit, but those subs are not doxxing or harassing individuals
the subs banned yesterday is a function of them targeting specific individuals. that's the problem
go ahead and express as much hate as you want, in general. but isolate one specific person for harassment, and you're censored. i accept that, that's a good policy, it makes sense. it's also in line with generally understood freedom of speech laws in the usa and elsewhere. for example: i can be a fundamentalist douchebag and preach destroying western civilization. that's fine. but if i say "we should go after {XYZ} location or {ABC} person," then the authorities have reason to act against you. as they should: you're issuing threats. that's not free speech
likewise, targeting real people online with doxxing and harassment means genuine harm can come to someone. reddit might be in jeopardy legally if a lawyer in a courtroom can say "it was on reddit that the transgressor acquired the person's name and address as a target for this form of hate"
it's repugnant, but it's ok to be amorphously hateful. it's not ok to specifically target individuals. that is a valid threshold and cut off point for a truly free society
no freedom exists that is not in tension with the freedoms and rights of others. naturally, logically, not as a function of government or laws
my right to listen to loud music at 3 AM is limited by your right to get a good night sleep. my right to speed my car as fast as possible is limited by your right to not die in car crash
and my right to hate a group of people is limited by your right to not be harassed and attacked by dimwitted hateful douchebags
so you have no natural right to doxx, stalk, harass, or otherwise target individuals. only amorphous groups. this is a natural logical limit on your freedoms
where you've gone from harmless loser justifiably engaging in free speech, to malicious asshole gunning for a specific person, you should be censored, you should be charged, you should lose your rights. because you are using your rights to threaten the rights of others
the stereotype of a freedom destroying fascist authoritarian government abusing your rights because "evil" is not really the whole story of freedom destruction in this world. the reality is threats to your rights and freedoms comes more often from other citizens around you. the immature shitbag thinks freedom means "i can do anything i want." the mature responsible truly freedom loving individual thinks freedom means "i can do anything i want as long as i don't harm anyone else"
unfortunately, there is no shortage of moronic douchebags in this world who think freedom means they can hurt other people. and so they shall be censored. arrested. prosecuted. imprisoned. as is right in a freedom loving country
abuse your responsibility to not harm others? lose your freedom. face valid censorship for threats (not free speech) or worse. rightfully and 100% compatible with the concept of maximizing freedom
there is nothing about the concept of freedom that says those who destroy freedom deserve to be free
Re:Routing around it. (Score:5, Informative)
Except, yknow, that's complete and utter bullshit. SRS is probably one of the single worst offenders on the internet as far as organized and sustained stalking, harassment, and doxing goes.
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SRS engaged in doxxing only in the past, before the policy was announced
but even if that is not ok to you, then the solution is to ban SRS as well, not let fatpeoplehate get away with abusive behavior
"hey i heard about a guy who murdered someone once, so this guy should be able to get away with murder too"... that's not actually how morality nor the real world works
two wrongs don't make a right
NSFW! (Score:3, Informative)
They banned fatpeople hate but these subreddits still exist: (And I'm not directly linking to them for your own safety)
Then if you want to talk about specific hate speech there is /r/CoonTown and a few anti-Semite ones.
Re:Routing around it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Reddit patently doesn't give a damn getting rid of insufferable assholes, if they did ShitRedditSays and all of the subreddits they've taken over would've been nuked from orbit and most of the SRS bad faith actors permanently banned ages ago. This is about censoring opinions that go against the social justice elite's beliefs.
Re:Routing around it. (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's an undergraduate level political science term actually and it's hardly a conspiracy theory when these people more or less brag about being in the same circles, attending the same cultish indoctrination and groupthink "conferences" (ever notice how creepy XOXO is?), and work together through private mailing lists to blacklist and blackmail people they dislike.
Hell on reddit alone SRS is basically the admin retirement home.
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Accouding to google he is talking about Snoop Doggy.
TIL
Re:Routing around it. (Score:5, Informative)
Who said, "The Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it"?
It was John Gilmore [wikipedia.org]. But he was wrong. Vast swaths of the Internet are effectively censored behind national firewalls, and much more is under the control of a small oligopoly of corporations. John underestimated the power and capabilities of the censors.
Show of Force (Score:5, Insightful)
a small oligopoly of corporations
That might be a major reason for this crackdown. Reddit has unbelievable traffic and reach, so stuff that earns popularity there gets spread to virtually everywhere and everyone.
It's exposure that marketers (of anything: products, politics, whatever) would kill for. They want to buy their way in, but not if some dirty peasant can tell the truth and (through sheer merit) get voted up and be taken just as seriously (or more seriously) than their bought & paid for message.
So Reddit sees advertisers chomping at the bit to throw money at it, but first Reddit has to demonstrate that it can crush contrary opinions at will.
Re:Routing around it. (Score:5, Insightful)
" Harassment has become a real problem"
Only because people bitch and whine too much about it and fall right into the trap of the troll. It's your own stupidity that makes you a victim. Not our fault!
Re:Routing around it. (Score:5, Funny)
"It's other people's fault for being butthurt!"
(Subreddit gets deleted)
"HOW DARE YOU HOW DARE YOU MY BUTT IS HURTING SO MUCH YOU CAN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND"
Yeah, rings a little bit hollow.
Re:Routing around it. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Routing around it. (Score:3)
Re:Routing around it. (Score:5, Insightful)
10/10 - That sounds so reasonable, someone not familiar with the situation might have taken you seriously!
So to clarify for our readers - No liberals, feminists, hams, or Sarkeesians ever need to visit subs like TRP or FPH, etc. They can stay nice and safe in their aggressively moderated echo chambers like XX and SRS, completely avoiding any possible risk of exposure to ideas not fitting with their SJW fantasy world.
Instead, they actively make a point of pissing in other peoples' cheerios. SRS makes one of the best examples of that - "Let's link to things we disagree with so we can point and laugh - and of course, officially we don't want you to go destroy that person's karma, but if you just happen to do it on your own, hey, your choice!". Riiight... But we'll ban FPH for supposedly violating completely new rules that it doesn't even break.
FPH merrily lived in their own world, posting the equivalent of fat lolcats. We can't say the same for the likes of HAES.
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It isn't censorship. If they want to spout their fathate somewhere, they can build their own site. As far as I'm concerned, the current measures don't go far enough. There are still subreddits like coontown, skinnypeoplehate, cuteabortions, etc. Repulsive.
So why is SRS still there? Hell why are there two sets of rules? Here's an example, Kotakuinaction was told they couldn't run any email campaigns with direct links to email or physical addresses. But what happens not even a week out? Not only do other subs keep doing it, but admins were doing it. Sorry, they're going out of their way to create a hug box, much like you want. Here's an idea though, you don't like it--ignore it.
But as for saying it's not censorship? You bet it is. Maybe you can explain
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Reddit is hypocritical, sure. They shouldn't allow any of it, or all of it and face the music. I'm in favor of the first. Away with all those haters. Let them set up their own site where they can spew their venom.
About censorship: saying "we're no longer going to facilitate you trolling and harassing" isn't censorship, when there are other ways of expressing a dislike of obese people that are not banned. Unless you're really strict about it, but then you could even argue that not allowing user names longer
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Reddit is hypocritical, sure. They shouldn't allow any of it, or all of it and face the music. I'm in favor of the first. Away with all those haters. Let them set up their own site where they can spew their venom.
Sounds like you're hating on haters and as such should be banned/censored.
Re:Routing around it. (Score:5, Insightful)
free speech means the government cannot censor your views
free speech does not mean the local newspaper is compelled to publish your hateful letter to the editor
a private entity has every right to curate its content any way it sees fit. it may reject any content it wants, and that is perfectly 100% logically coherent with the notion of free speech: the government, or another individual, has no right to force someone else to say something they don't want to say. nowhere in the concept of free speech is there the concept that reddit *has* to publish something. reddit can be as capricious, hypocritical, random, or vindictive as it wants in censoring any content it wants. it is their website
of course, if their policies are bullshit, they may turn people off, and some other site will take off and reddit will drop in popularity. and that's perfectly ok. and that new site, they too can censor whatever they want. and no free speech violation has occurred
if you hate fat people, for example, and your angry hate against fat people is rejected from any website, then indeed, start your fucking website. and if you think that sucks because now you're lonely on that mountaintop because very few people visit your site, well too fucking bad: maybe no one visits because you're a hateful piece of shit
another thing about free speech is nowhere in the concept is it required that anyone listen to you
no where is it required that no one criticize you
and no where is it required that no consequences will come to your life (your job, your reputation, etc.) for saying hateful things
say whatever you want
but be fucking ready for the consequences. loneliness is certainly one of the possible consequences, and maybe, if you're a hateful asshole, you deserve it
Death of Reddit, film at 11. (Score:5, Interesting)
There have been a lot of strange things going on for a while at reddit.
Banning people because they mentioned the alleged ponzi scheming of the CEO's husband,
Making a bunch of crappy sub-reddits defaults, removing other (crappy) sub-reddits as defaults.
This just seems to be the tipping point for a lot of people. I don't think most people really actually cared about the ban, but the way it was done and the obvious other sub-reddit targets that were just ignored, or had excuses made for them.
I just looked back at digg.com for the first time in a couple years from when it flamed out heroically on it's 2.0 launch. It's not horrible now, there doesn't appear to be too much drama on their front page. Looks like delicio.us Just a abc/cbs style repost of yesterdays "hot web news"
supposedly people flocked to voat.to so hard they took down the site.
The other thing people seem to be doing is re-enabling adblock on reddit, and voting with their purse strings by not purchasing gold anymore.
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I just looked back at digg.com for the first time in a couple years from when it flamed out heroically on it's 2.0 launch. It's not horrible now, there doesn't appear to be too much drama on their front page. Looks like delicio.us Just a abc/cbs style repost of yesterdays "hot web news"
Yep, I was there when Digg.com updated their site to nobodies liking, most migrated to Reddit.com. Digg.com is now all but forgotten.
A long fall from their height after shutting down the site when a key to bypass Blueray (?) DRM was posted, then came back on-line and that key was reposted by everybody, it became a popular site over that.
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I just looked back at digg.com for the first time in a couple years from when it flamed out heroically on it's 2.0 launch. It's not horrible now, there doesn't appear to be too much drama on their front page. Looks like delicio.us Just a abc/cbs style repost of yesterdays "hot web news"
I'm being nitpicky, but it was actually their v4 [searchengineland.com] release that drove everyone away. It was sold [theguardian.com] two years later for a mere $500k.
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I first heard about Voat a few months back, as some great censorship-free haven in which anything goes.
It took about twenty minutes of browsing the site before I stumbled on a child porn subreddit (or whatever they called them).
A subreddit (or whatever they called them) like that you can bet will be heavily monitored and not by the site itself. I've seen a bit of baiting being posted, trying to bring those type into the open.
Reddit, like Digg, is eating itself... (Score:5, Interesting)
I occasionally read Reddit, but I get very frustrated watching completely factual information get downvoted or subreddits banned because it doesn't fit users' or moderators' view of the world. Between this and the Ellen Pao controversy, sites like voat might actually have a chance of doing to reddit what reddit did to digg. In fact, voat is doing the exact same thing to reddit that reddit did to digg when reddit posted the infamous shovel logo to welcome disgruntled digg users by welcoming the "fatpeoplehate" refugees. Oh how fickle the social media world has become...
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Slashdot isn't all that better. There are tons of informative posts that go ignored while smug, finger-wagging, vapid posts get modded up. Just look at any "controversial" topic and you'll see a hive of horrible comments. The only difference is that a few days later, it's usually settled down such that almost EVERYTHING is modded down, informative or not, leaving behind only those opinions that have won by popularity.
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Re:Reddit, like Digg, is eating itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm only a casual user of sites like Reddit or 4chan, but it really does feel like censorship is trending on these kinds of sites, and it doesn't make sense. These sites, including Slashdot, are supposed to be regulated by the community. Mods shouldn't have to manage bad content, only bad behavior that threaten the ecosystem of the site, such as astroturfing or spamming.
What's happening isn't responding to community needs so much as selectively shaping the community. It's the online equivalent of gerrymandering.
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That's a good point. If the moderation system was all that, the sensitive souls would brigade every post made in /r/fatpeoplehate and it'd take care of itself.
And naturally the ability to freely create new subs and new accounts mean that any banning is at best temporary.
Astroturfing Their Own Front Page (Score:3)
This is blatant, shameful astroturfing by the admins and ownership hide content and opinions before they have a chance to take off. It couldn't be clearer that the
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Of course they're not afraid of harassment. Some of reddit's top staff "retired" to join SRS, they are the harassers.
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You say selective enforcement, can you give examples of that? Examples where it is clear that they are deliberately ignoring things, rather than just not having got around to dealing with them yet. This is the first round of bans, after all.
Can you also link to some examples of where they are trying to stifle criticism? The few links I've seen happen to be part of larger posts or threads where there is clear trolling, and rather than surgically remove the problematic bits the mods just trashed the whole lot
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Between this and the Ellen Pao controversy,
How did Ellen Pao become CEO? That makes no sense to me....she doesn't really have the experience, as far as I can tell, but suddenly there she was. How did she swing that?
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I get very frustrated watching completely factual information get downvoted or subreddits banned because it doesn't fit users' or moderators' view of the world.
Reddit is like this because people are like this. Every site is the same, it just manifests itself if different ways according to the mechanisms used there.
If you want to change how this happens on social media; first change people.
(Hint: people won't change.)
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But never warm guns, for therein, happiness lies.
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It's pretty rare for factually-incorrect information to get upvoted or factually-correct information buried...I get very frustrated watching completely factual information get downvoted or subreddits banned because it doesn't fit users' or moderators' view of the world.
I never down-mod factually incorrect information because it can still be interesting or informative or funny. It can still spawn discussion. Or, hell, I could be wrong. Maybe some things that I'm absolutely certain can't be facts actually
Specific Threats? (Score:5, Insightful)
it is no longer free speech when you threaten specific people
Amen. It's a good thing, then, that reddit provided specific evidence of such a threat in their ban announcement . . . oh wait . . .
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they might still do that, and they should. transparency
but the events that led to the banning are pretty well established:
imgur started removing fatpeoplehate images and in response the reddit sub posted pictures of (chubby) imgur staff and a thread topic about harassing them and identifying specific imgur personnel exploded
you can argue about imgur's removal of fatpeoplehate images as censorship, but you cannot call reddit's actions censorship, as removing threats and harassment against specific people is
Re:Specific Threats? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pile of BS. They've even come out saying they have no evidence, not even reports. But anyone who's been paying attention already knows that they're out for particular subs and groups of people that "don't fit with what they want" otherwise they'd have banned SRS and SRD, as well as banning all the mods and previous mods like they did with FPH.
I'm sure there's a reason why FPH1/2/3/4/5/6/etc and publichealthawareness were banned as well...I'll bet 'ban evasion' works well for a reason, I mean it's not like admins when they've quit somehow magically become mods of SRS and SRD...
Re:Reddit, like Digg, is eating itself... (Score:4, Informative)
except fatpeoplehate got shut down for brigading and doxxing...
Suuuure they did. That's why SRS was one of the first subs nuked from orbit OH WAIT
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sure, you could say there are double standards and hypocrisy
if and where other subs have engaged in doxxing only in the past, like SRS, before the policy was announced
or if and where other subs still do it, but on a smaller scale
but then the solution is to ban those subs as well
not let fatpeoplehate get away with abusive behavior
"hey i heard about a guy who murdered someone once, so this guy should be able to get away with murder too"... that's not actually how morality or the real world works
two wrongs don
What rules to the reddit admins follow? (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to moderate a couple of forums about a few different video games, sizable at the time but nothing the size of Reddit, for sure. But there were some rigid things about our setup that I liked.
I feel like the backlash (maybe shitstorm is more appropriate) on Reddit is because the users don't feel the admins are playing by a set of rules. They haven't cited any specific rules the banned subreddits were violating, just "harassment" (which they didn't define.) Moreover, the punishment has not been doled out uniformly, with plenty of users pointing out subreddits that also should have been banned if harassment subs are banned.
The judgements being handed down seem, to apparently fucking everyone on Reddit, arbitrary. Like some far off god on Mt. Olympus has suddenly decided mess with people at random.
Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass because I've never had to manage a community the size of Reddit, but this just seems like an admin took offense to something ("got triggered," in the parlance,) and dusted off the ol' banhammer without thinking. I don't know if that's what happened, but that's how it seems, and that sort of abuse of power always triggers (the way the word is really used) a community schism.
That's precisely the problem (Score:5, Informative)
They created new rules very recently about reddit being a "safe space". This is something that is, of course, extremely vague. What the hell is a "safe space"?
So suddenly some long time subreddits are getting banned for violating that. They are all shitty splaces, but then other shitty places seem to get left alone. As such people are rightly saying "What the fuck?"
Basically the rule is an arbitrary one. They are saying "We can ban you if you say things we don't like." Now its their site, they can do that if they wish, of course, but that is why users are reacting so negatively. It isn't a clear rule that is being consistently applied, rather it is deliberately vague and being targeted in a scattershot fashion.
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If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
If you don't like someone's viewpoint, explain why it is wrong, rather than trying to censor them.
Re:That's precisely the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell is a "safe space"?
A space where you're not safe to speak your mind. Lets face it over the past 2 years Reddit has shown quite clearly that they do not condone or promote an open forum where everyone is free to speak their mind.
Re:That's precisely the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Correction, a safe space is where they only allow particular kinds of speech. And anything that might hurt someones feelings is bad speech, it's the same BS that's going on in universities.
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You can speak your mind, as long as your mind doesn't want to troll or post racist/sexist/homophobic abuse. To be honest, I don't really see how Reddit could be any other way without turning into 4chan, and even 4chan eventually had to kick out the worst offenders.
Any commercial service has to prevent itself becoming a cesspit of trolling or it won't last very long. Advertisers will leave, the majority of users will leave, their reputation will fall as low as 4chan's. If you want that kind of place to exist
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I disagree. /. handles it pretty well, I think. Just moderate it down to -1. You can read it if you want.
You can speak your mind, as long as your mind doesn't want to troll or post racist/sexist/homophobic abuse.
On /. I can call you a "nigger bitch faggot" all I want and nothing will happen to my post except it'll sit at -1: Troll and nothing will happen to me except some lost karma that I'll never miss, and you'll tag me (again) as "Foe." And yet /. survives as a commercial entity.
In fact, my bad speech would likely be countered with other, good speech, calling me out for my twatish behavior. Over time, those w
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What the hell is a "safe space"?
A place they can show potential buyers when they plan to sell Reddit.
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Surely if the admins had evidence that rules were being broken they could just ban the people involved and thereby remove that kind of behaviour from their website?
How should they ban the people?
From what I understand, you can easily create new accounts.
And banning IP addresses can affect both other people who happen to share the same IP and not affect the user targeted because they might easily get a new IP.
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or suing former companies for the exact amount her husband owes for illegal schemes
The claims against her husband seem to be from 2012. She filed the lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins in 2012.
So, you're saying that she knew a year in advance that her husband would need money and filed the lawsuit to get it? Or does she have a time machine? Or what?
I'm against harrassment, but censorship is worse! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why we need liberty-minded proponents setting up anonymous mechanisms of communications. Nobody should have the right to censor content online. I don't care who you are. Not even if its a death threat, a bomb threat, or a threat against the president himself. Threats don't kill people people kill people.Yes- words can take a toll, but it's not the same as actual physical abuse. You can get away from online harassment. You can't get away from a school bully. As a gay person I get words can hurt- but a solution is NOT worth the price of censorship. And I'm going to say the worst thing I could because nobody else will: feminists or whoever you are that's crying about nudes being published of you: suck it up. The problem is social, not the person who violated your privacy. Nobody is physically attacking you and if they did it's a social problem- not a communications problem. It's the people physically attacking- not the f'ing words.
All that ever happens from these anti-harassment laws is the government comes in and uses them against people it doesn't like. There are already laws against murder and other other forms of abuse. You don't need another law to tack on to someone whose murdered because they dislike some racial, social, sexual, or other group.
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Wait, what? You don't believe that the people that go through the effort of creating and maintaining their own forum should have the ability to exercise some control over the content being posted on that forum? The comments they host become a reflection of that site and mold its reputation.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely hate censorship and I th
Slashdot you are no better (Score:3, Informative)
I have been around here a long time.
I can honestly say that I am dissapointed to see /. post gloating over a row brewing on another community site while at the same time censoring discussion and posts related to the recent and ongoing Sourceforge controversy. Choosing which subs stay and which go is going to upset a small but vocal set of users. They would be stupid not to know this.
In the case of Sourceforge, I think it's much worse to sell out and betry the trust of an entire community. But let's not talk about it!
Re:Slashdot you are no better (Score:5, Interesting)
and yet here your comment stands, uncensored
i also think slashdot did have a top level story on this topic a few days ago
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Multiple top level stories in fact. The first about GIMP, then another about the hijack of namp, and then another about Sourceforge's response to the criticism.
Re:Slashdot you are no better (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently I've missed something. What precisely got censored?
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I get where you're coming from, but at the same time that's not something I would call censorship.
Censorship is when speech is suppressed. Slashdot choosing not to publish stories is scummy, but it's not the same as preventing users from speaking about it. You can still talk about it, Slashdot just isn't give you a specific platform for it.
When comments get deleted and users get banned, then that's censorship.
Re:Slashdot you are no better (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet here we are, you with a +5 insightful post that is none the less bagging the very site where you have been promoted. Slashdot has ultimately run several articles about problems involving itself and fellow sites sharing a corporate overlord (though on one occasion a considerable amount of pressure was required). They only time they ever censored something they ran a post about the fact on the front page and had a large discussion about the result.
So yes they deserve to gloat, they are in many MANY ways far better and less arbitrary than Reddit.
It's not a breakdown yet (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a certain critical mass of dissatisfaction in a user base/community. Until that point the site can be salvaged. It takes more than an unpopular move by admins/community leaders. There has to be BOTH:
I think it can be generalized to other communities but for web sites in particular there has to be enough dissatisfaction to create a feedback loop of angry users being ignored leads to leadership blunders leads to more angry users. When meta-conversation overwhelms normal conversation there's a tipping point. Slashdot has almost been there. coughcoughbetacough But it takes more than that. At the tipping point administration must demonstrate such disregard for the users concerns that a revolt becomes meta-shared knowledge. Many users knowing isn't enough. They need to know that other users know. [youtube.com] Only if that happens the site will descend into a digg-esque melt-down and hemorrhage users until admins capitulate or the site collapses.
I don't think Reddit has reached that point. In fact, I think this will serve as a safety valve. Users who strongly value freedom of expression will go to voat [http] and everyone else will stay, and not see as many complaints. Obviously this makes the culture more brittle. Reddit is not in danger now but will lead to other problems down the road.
This is a big step toward Reddit becoming an echo chamber. New users will be less likely to stay and it will create its own cultural feedback loop. Those unwilling to toe the party line will find themselves shunned. Users will pretend to go along, hiding how they really feel, leading to a more intense echo chamber. Soon there will be prescribed viewpoints on almost any topic. Reddit will die then. Not with a bang but with a whimper.
Ehh typical for the SJW types (Score:3)
Tolerance means everyone gets to say things they like.
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Tolerance now means you can't say what I don't like.
story summary inaccurate, some comments misleading (Score:4, Informative)
fatpeoplehate got shut down for brigading and doxxing, not simple hate
imgur started removing fatpeoplehate images and in response the reddit sub posted pictures of (chubby) imgur staff and a thread topic about harassing them and identifying specific imgur personnel exploded
you can argue about imgur's removal of fatpeoplehate images as censorship, but you cannot call reddit's actions censorship, as removing threats and harassment is not logically the same as censorship
you could say there are double standards if and where other subs have engaged in doxxing in the past, or if and where other subs still do it, but on a smaller scale. but then the solution is to ban those subs as well, not let fatpeoplehate get away with abusive behavior
there are still plenty of repugnant and hateful subs on reddit that are not shut down. because they aren't doxxing
if voat is going to accept brigading and doxxing, then voat is going to get sued and shut down when, not if, someone gets hurt in real life because of ignorant internet hate
reddit did the right thing, as a matter of simple morality, and as a matter of self preservation in the face of legal standards
if you harass and threaten someone specifically, you're not engaging in free speech anymore, and you, and the forum you are doing it on, are culpable for any harm stemming from that. freedom of speech is not limitless. it is no longer free speech when you threaten specific people
any comment or discussion here about censoring hate is inaccurate
any comment or discussion here about preventing harassment and threats is on topic
oy vey (Score:5, Insightful)
It's fine to harass people on reddit (Score:5, Interesting)
Just do it in the name of feminism and the admins will let everything slide.
/r/coontown is still up (Score:2)
This is not something about harassment.
Board critical of the neogaf forums was killed and no public notice was given out.
Coontown is still up.
I guess reddit loves to be considered "gnaa" central, right?
I'm pretty sure the reddit is run by morons. (Score:2, Interesting)
I was never a user of fat people hate. But i watched it play out overnight.
The way they did it with instant ban. While giving the disingenuous hypocritical bullshit excuses they did.... Just dumb.
Don't the people running reddit know how the internet works? How people work?
Instead of having 'those hateful FPH users' in one contained easily ignored spot. Now they're spread all over and multiplying.
And have the support of most everyone who really hates censorship too.
And all the random users who think t
Re:Reddit.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In all fairness, can an AC really talk crap about someone that actually logs in and has a record? For all anyone knows you're posting things in support of pedophilia in other threads.
ACs really have no moral or ethical right to criticize people that log in and have a history. What would you have us all do? Everyone be AC? Then who would you talk shit about? That other AC?
On the topic of Reddit... I think it is fine so long as they don't abuse the policy. Reddit did delete some stuff that was critical of Pao for example. So that implies that the place is being filtered for self serving purposes which isn't a good sign.
My biggest beef with reddit though is the Shadow Ban. That is some fucking Orwellian shit.
Imagine being censored so completely that you don't even know you were censored. Imagine publishing a book and checking on the book... and thinking it is there for anyone to get. But you're the only one that sees it.
Its fucking creepy.
Now is it a way of dealing with trolls etc? Sure. But only stupid ones. All the smart trolls know about shadow bans and they'll check for it.
The worst trolls in any case are the determined ones. I had one guy on a forum troll the board for about a year. He was banned about twice a week. He'd just change IP addresses and create a new account.
We eventually dealt with him by mocking and showing we didn't care about what he was doing. He got dispirited after about a month of that and went away. But man... he stuck with it for a long time. He must have been banned a couple hundred times.
Re:Reddit.... (Score:5, Informative)
I was shadow banned from a science related subeddit that is my professional field (40 years) and whose main posters I would bet a large sum of money couldn't pass a high school science class. I never posted anything unprofessional, but generally unpopular. I didn't really care, just stopped visiting a few months ago, wasn't getting anything out of it I didn't already know and people were more interested in personality cults than anything else.
Re:Reddit.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"people were more interested in personality cults than anything else"
which is exactly why I only post as AC.
I have had a few accounts here, and every time I would manage to offend some group of people somehow and *anything* I posted would immediately get set to "-1". Oddly enough, I have had many AC posts go to "5" over the years.
I don't understand it, so I don't play the game.
Re:Reddit.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The key is to be utterly immune to the opinions of truly stupid people. You have to be. There are too may of them for their opinions to matter. If we weighted each of them as some very low number then multiplied that by how many of them there are... you'd get knocked by consensus every time.
There are a lot of people that think getting people to agree with you means you're right about science or anything factual. They don't grasp that literally one person can contradict an infinite number of people and be right and the infinity can be wrong.
You be confident in yourself and if the twits want to circle jerk each other off that is their loss. They want their echo chambers which means they don't deserve you.
There are better communities. The small ones are often very clicheish. And the big ones have lots of idiots in them. Slashdot for example. But you want a community where you can a moron a moron... and when they get offended you can start pointing and laughing.
Childish? How else are you going to communicate with morons? They don't understand anything else.
Reddit has been a censor's paradise for years. It is why so many companies wanted to move their boards to reddit. Really easy to silence people that say your new product is bullshit/designed by cross eyed kittens. Anywho, the trick is to not take these people more seriously than they deserve to be taken. Which in the case of the truly stupid is not at all.
Re:Reddit.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The key is to be utterly immune to the opinions of truly stupid people.
The problem, of course, is that it is impossible to be immune to the opinions of truly stupid people if they can down-vote each and every one of your posts with no limits. This plus the same with up-votes is where the Reddit circle-jerks come from. Slashdot's system where you get 5 or 15 votes every few weeks only if you're a regular reader works so much better it's like night and day.
Re: (Score:3)
Value my life? What would threaten it? Some furious 12 year olds?
Please cite a real world example of cyberstalking leading to actual harm.
I'm not aware of any.
I've seen some people get sent creepy shit in the mail or have their employers called, or had people call in false police reports... beyond that. Not a whole lot.
The worst thing I can credit as possible would be swatting. And I don't think I'd get hurt. I think I'd be embarrassed because the police would see my skull and crossbones boxers that I'm wea
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
[citation needed]
Seriously though, why do you need to keep yourself anonymous on a totally different site? Lets see the thread you were banned in so we can determine if you were drunkposting bullshit in a science subreddit or if you were actually right and got banned because circlejerking in a science area.
Also, reddit has a bunch of autobans for really stupid things like doubleposting links. Have you actually contacted a mod and confirmed why you were banned?
Re:Reddit.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reddit.... (Score:4, Informative)
At the top of the comment section, there are two sliders. The left slider is which posts are fully expanded, the right slider is which posts are completely hidden. You have to slide them both fully right if you want to see all posts.
Re: (Score:3)
The sliders above the comment section.
Move them.
Re:Reddit.... (Score:4, Informative)
I've found that Reddit's forums in general are moderated quite horribly. It seems that almost everyone there seem to think that the downvote option is meant to be used as the "I disagree with your opinion" button, even though they clearly post that it's not for that purpose.
You end up with a system where everyone who agrees with the groupthink of that particular forum gets rated highly, and any differing opinions get silenced. Basically, it's what would happen to Slashdot if they gave everyone Moderator points including the troll accounts.
Re:Reddit.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not immune to leaving dbag comments when annoyed, sorry.
No, no you are not immune ;)
(okay, neither am I, but that's not why I posted, so let me get to that...)
Also, the moderation system which prohibits commenting and moderating in the same story guarantees reduction in quality.
I believe that's a rule which is put in place as a balance, to prevent someone with mod points unduly influencing an argument in which he or she is an active participant. Sure, 5 points doesn't go very far, but in the right places one could definitely put influence and pressure in a sub-thread against whomever you are crossing mental swords with.
Personally, I don't mind it at all, as it does something I find enjoyable as a challenge: do you mod, or do you jump in and clarify? It forces you to think carefully about whether or not what you want to say is worth undoing the influence you placed into the thread. If you haven't modded *or* posted anything yet, you again have that bit of decision-making to do before you apply a mod anywhere... you get one or the other, your pick.
It's a neat way to force you to pre-consider a course of action, which IMHO is something that most of the Internet has a severe lack of.
Re:Reddit.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what happens when early adopters are allowed to cybersquat, or when participation and enthusiasm plus a large degree of echo-chamber dictate policy.
This is nothing new in the electronic medium. I've seen it happen in Newsgroups back when the World Wide Web was still competing with Gopher, I've seen it in domain-name acquisitions, in IRC channel and network management, in mailing lists, in forums, and most recently before Reddit blew up, in Wikipedia. Anywhere that self-important busybodies can reaffirm each other's beliefs and are free to ban others that they disagree with regardless of merit can have this happen.
Hell, I've even seen it happen on bulletin board systems and on Fidonet. There's a throwback for you...
Re:Reddit.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I was shadow banned from a science related subeddit that is my professional field (40 years) and whose main posters I would bet a large sum of money couldn't pass a high school science class.
So go somewhere that people give two shits about your education when you write, like Everything2 [everything2.com]. There's a community there of people who support one another. Go write with them, and leave alone the boards known for assholery.
Re: Reddit.... (Score:2)
And that affects your visibility in future posts as well. The AC function is prett
Re:Reddit.... (Score:4, Informative)
The reason I post as AC (despite having an account) is that Slashdot is a pain in the ass to login to.
Huh?
I bookmark the login page and when I click on it I get the login page with my username and password already filled in, courtesy of the password save function in Firefox.
Another click and I'm in. What's so hard about that? It even works when I'm traveling and just dipping in to Slashdot using a tablet.
Re: (Score:2)
When you click "reply" while not logged in, it opens up a comment block, but doesn't have a login prompt above it, defaulting you to post as AC. In order to log in once you've started replying, you need to open another tab to Slashdot, log in, go back to your comment, and re-preview it before submitting it (I say "open another tab" because if you don't, the page reloads on login and you completely lose your place and ne
Re: (Score:3)
I kind of wish Slashdot has Reddit's threading features, where you'd be notified when replies were made. I think it encourages active discussion.
You do realize that you can get email for replies, right? It's in the account settings.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, the circle of internet life continues...
Re:Shadowbans for everyone! (Score:5, Informative)
Getting Shadow Banned means that no one can see your posts except for the logged in user that posted them. In effect it's a particularly devious and underhanded way of censoring posts. Usually carried out by some immature moderator that don't agree with you.
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding is that they're addressing that, and will be coming up with other ways to handle...problem posts and posters.
Shadow bans were originally intended to fight spammers and spam bots. Let them keep thinking they're posting, when really nobody's seeing it! Ha ha! Reasonable.
It's also reasonable for subreddit mods to control the standards they set for that community. If the rule is "no personal attacks" and you make personal attacks...your post making personal attacks should be removed and perhaps
Re: (Score:3)
Agreed. And that's what causes subreddit drama. But it's part of the platform. Like I said, I think they're in the process of making new tools to manage these issues better. Give moderators more options to deal with comments and posters that they think are problems, and then it's up to a subreddit and its community to figure out which rules to apply to meet their own standards.
I rather prefer the /. model, where you can say anything you want (that isn't literally illegal) and everybody takes turn moderating
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
A better way: let each user customize their own viewing experience. Don't make choices for others. Give each user the ability to use shadow bans, but only for their own client so you do not affect my ability to read posts you don't happen to like.
Re:Shadowbans for everyone! (Score:5, Informative)
Reddit isn't one coherent site. It's 5,000 places, each with a different focus, different content, different rules, etc. I've seen discussions that are better than what I've seen on Slashdot in a long time, but I've also seen some of the most rabidly ignorant chains of messages ever, there. Some of the "communities" aren't organized enough to call them that, but a lot of the subreddits with very specific focuses stay wonderfully on-topic and have insightful contributors. "Reddit" is defined by the subreddit subscriptions held by each specific user, though; my experience of Reddit may be quite different than yours.
Re:Shadowbans for everyone! (Score:5, Interesting)
Fark is small enough that a lot of the users know each other by name, it seems like. It's just snarky commentary on odd news stories; kind of meaningless, but some people have fun with it.
It was then they tried to appeal to the larger market and grab more market share. That's when it went to shit.
Boobies left the front page. They tried to ban harassing comments. Most things were tongue in cheek inside jokes. (I'm waiting for Natalie Portman to be banned from /.)
Fark, Slashdot and Reddit have left a lot of Internet refugees trying to appeal to the current 15-25 year old demographic or trying to milk a lot of profit out of something. If I had an internet time machine I would love to sit and chat in 2001 Fark or 1999 Slashdot about the current news.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They did announce the other banned subs, just not in the text of the main announcement:
fatpeoplehate (150k+ subscribers)
hamplanethatred (3071)
transfags (149)
neofag (1239)
shitniggerssay (219)