Hacker News Reader

Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

>and that the emotional state of a listener is the responsibility of the speaker

Reddit is not a nonprofit Free Speech machine. It's a business. So, yes, the emotional state of the listener -- in so far as that emotional state (positive or negative) is a determiner of traffic and therefore returns for investors -- is the responsiblity of the speaker (the website itself).

I thought by now we had shed our idealism about platforms and corporations. We've mocked Google's now-defunct "Don't Be Evil" for years. The idea that Facebook is just a way for distant friends to stay connected has been subsumed by the reality that it's actually a privacy nightmare. But the myth that Reddit exists as a bastion of free speech at all costs has somehow held firm. It's puzzling.

View on HN

Myth? The site founders are on record in multiple places calling the site explicitly a place for free speech.

And yet here they are, "censoring" their site to rid itself of content that makes advertisers recoil. Corporate myths exist because the organization benefits from their propogation. Reddit likes to tout itself as a bastion of free speech, but all of us can read the writing on the wall: unfettered free speech is unpalatable to the groups that fund such platforms.

To be fair, most of the things they deleted were also unpalatable to the vast majority of users, not just advertisers, and many were actively detracting from Reddit as a whole. Why shouldn't Reddit be allowed to do what is best for the group? They have no obligation to provide anything to trolls.

Excellent point. Advertisers don't act unilaterally to content based on morality they came up with themselves. Ultimately they are concerned with the perception of their brand by the same people who visit the website and experience the "offensive" content.

The people who are asking for the offensive content to remain on the site are not asking for "free speech" because Reddit isn't free. They're asked for "sponsored speech" -- they want the people who pay for the servers (directly) to sponsor their hate speech, or the hate speech of others.

If this is how Reddit would like to run things, it should become a non-profit and operate on donations. I'm a member of three websites that feature message boards and operate like this. No ads, no data tracking, all funded by donations. The rules vary in strictness among them.

I think there is a common misconception here.

Even John Stuart Mill, one of the biggest proponents of free speech philosophy, was okay in limiting free speech when allowing it would harm or cause damage to others. SCOTUS has also explicitly stated that first amendment (gov censorship) rights do not apply to threats of violence.

The reddit execs have said as much through their communications, that they're okay with allowing hateful and biased communities so long as they're not targeting, damaging, or causing harm to individuals.

People are misinterpreting that as reddit being a "bastion of free speech" without fully understanding what free speech really is.

..but then they turn around and flatten said communities out of annoyance.

A lot of subreddits with the same idea as FatPeopleHate got swept up in their ban despite being run by different people and having never harassed anyone. A racist subreddit was banned out of some vague argument of being the focus of a lot of their time. (In other words, not for violating the rules.)

It feels very much like another instance of what intopieces just described, a transparent PR lie.

That's exactly the point - they're banning behavior, not ideas. They didn't ban all racist or biased communities, just the ones that they saw causing harmful and damaging behavior. Or evading the bans.

And before you demand internal information, just imagine the witch hunt that would start if Reddit had released the evidence of such behavior. That would have caused even more harm, even against innocent bystanders.

The fact that they selectively banned communities based on their behavior and not their ideas proves they are for free speech, but it's not the "bastion of free speech" that some people interpret it as.

..did you miss the part where I said that subreddits who had explicitly not broken any rules were banned?

Nope. I assumed you already knew that you couldn't prove they didn't break the rules when the admins said they did. Unless you think you can prove it without internal information.

It was also pretty obvious that they were attaching the imgur staff.

> never harassed anyone

Except for that time where they attempted to dox the entirety of the Imgur staff which more or less precipitated their ban?

Dox? From what I've understood a user got annoyed with them removing images so a collage¹ were created using the pictures from the, now removed, Imgur "meet the team" page².

1: http://www.reaxxion.com/9552/reddit-and-imgur-staff-team-up-...

2: http://web.archive.org/web/20150610212104/https://imgur.com/...

...and it will get worse.

That is why free speech proponents defend it so vehemently.

Because it is a slippery slope and any ground you give up - that becomes the new normal.

"harm or cause damage" has been redefined such that what this now means is "free speech as long as it's positive". These days, making someone feel bad is considered harm. Obvious hyperbole such as you would use with your friends is considered a serious threat. With these kinds of qualifications/limitations of free speech, what's left is something else.

John Stuart Mill even acknowledged this by disseminating between harm and offense, the former of which trumps free speech and the latter of which doesn't.

Burning flags and racist remarks are discomforting, yes, but sending an individual death threats and stalking them is harmful. Reddit admins asserted that the latter behavior was happening.

Burning flags go beyond discomforting. They don't exist in a vacuum, the context is "we can lynch you and we won't be punished".

Excuse me?! Burning a flag is an act of displeasure at a nation.

You're so right! I read "burning flags" and my brain swapped in "burning crosses"! You're absolutely right, my bad!

You hit almost all of the in vogue anti-free speech equivocations except the "fire in a crowded theater" argument.

Regardless, you've just moved the goalposts from "what is free speech" to "what is violent speech" which contributes nothing to the conversation but adds the specter of "danger", which throughout history has been mostly used by those who wish to curtail political speech under the guise of "safety".

I'm flattered because it's hard to move the goalposts when you never comment or set them to begin with. Did you reply to the right person?

>> People are misinterpreting that as reddit being a "bastion of free speech" without fully understanding what free speech really is.

HN is an open forum, may I not comment on discussion between two other members?

How is that a moving goalpost? And of course you're free to comment however you please, I never implied otherwise.

> Even John Stuart Mill, one of the biggest proponents of free speech philosophy, was okay in limiting free speech when allowing it would harm or cause damage to others. SCOTUS has also explicitly stated that first amendment (gov censorship) rights do not apply to threats of violence.

The SCOTUS and John Stuart Mill would limit the prohibition to actual harm and actual damage and actual threats. Being made to feel excluded from a community isn't harm, having your ethical lapses exposed isn't damage (or at least, it is not actionable), and being told your opinions suck is not a threat of violence.

> The reddit execs have said as much through their communications, that they're okay with allowing hateful and biased communities so long as they're not targeting, damaging, or causing harm to individuals.

That is a fair summary of their words. However, a fair summary of their actions is that they will allow those communities to exist until they become embarrassing for Reddit, and then the banhammer comes down.

The site is a community and is only profitable at the whim of its users. Those users were pitched the idea of a "Free Speech Machine." If the company Reddit doesn't deliver on that promise, the users will go somewhere else- as demonstrated by the Pao blackouts.

Don't be so eager to defend a corporation's right to be profitable. They also have to satisfy their customers/users.

>as demonstrated by the Pao blackouts.

The Pao blackouts were orchestrated by the moderators, a group whose influence I did fail to consider. They're essentially Reddit's paying users, insofar as they pay with their time. Advertisers pay the server cost, though, so I imagine that in an all out battle between the two, Reddit would switch to being completely closed. I understand the community aspect has a wide appeal, but I wonder how much of the revenue-generating userbase exploits that aspect. Are most users subscribed to communities they choose, or are most users subscribed only to the default subreddits?

>Don't be so eager to defend a corporation's right to be profitable.

I neither condemn nor defend. I'm only interested in getting a realistic view of how Reddit plans to proceed as a company and website. Part of that is analyzing who is making decisions and who is influencing those who make decisions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com