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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"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!

..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.

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.

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