Myth? The site founders are on record in multiple places calling the site explicitly a place for free speech.
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.
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.
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.
It was also pretty obvious that they were attaching the imgur staff.
Except for that time where they attempted to dox the entirety of the Imgur staff which more or less precipitated their ban?
1: http://www.reaxxion.com/9552/reddit-and-imgur-staff-team-up-...
2: http://web.archive.org/web/20150610212104/https://imgur.com/...
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.
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.
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".
HN is an open forum, may I not comment on discussion between two other members?
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 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.