Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit
heatst.com
heatst.com
Who cares? The overwhelming majority of redditors subsist on photos of animals and drawings of video game characters. Just leave if reddit isn't friendly to your particular proclivities. If you hate fat people, liberals, feminists and BLM activists there are many places on the internet where you can find common cause.
Except it's not that simple. There's a substantial amount of judicial precedent that you can't refuse service to customers just because you disagree with their ideology or background, otherwise it would be okay to refuse service to supporters of gay marriage for example.
It's appalling that you would even suggest that.
And as it states there, they also have censorship based on their terms of service, where they prohibit the posting of videos which violate copyrights or depict pornography, illegal acts, gratuitous violence, or hate speech.
Reddit isn't refusing to service people because of their ideology or background, they are limiting certain kinds of speech. A private organization is entirely allowed to limit certain kinds of speech.
Ideology isn't a protected class. Sexual orientation is, at least in some states.
Regardless, you are not refusing anyone service - you are not banning people from your platform, you are designating your platform as something not be used for certain purposes.
Way overbroad interpretation. The Civil Rights Act prohibits refusal of some kinds of service based on race, color, religion or national origin, and it's pretty much the only national law (in the US) that's relevant here (I'm not counting the 14th amendment or more specific laws e.g. for disabilities).
Notably, there's no federal law protecting supporters of gay marriage. They're state-specific laws, and not at all universal.
I think the biggest concern is when platforms start to police illegal speech, and countries make political dissent illegal.
But now that reddit has become something of a cultural focal point on the internet, it's started to draw attention from the media at large and suddenly the operators felt a little embarrassed that they had to defend subreddits such as /r/fatpeoplehate, /r/jailbat, /r/niggers etc. So I imagine they just said "fuck it, it's more trouble than it's worth", and despite a month or two of banhammer-whack-a-mole with fuck-stupid-dictator-sjw-cunt-ellen-mao subreddits, the site continued to flourish, and all the free-speech purists finally woke up to the startling truth that reddit.com was really just an internet startup and not a platform to empower the oppressed masses...
Until they banned another subreddit.
1) The alt right has become so hateful that regardless of your approach to free speech that allowing it to propagate is unacceptable
2) Societies view of free speech has changed in the face of things like the alt right.
3) The expected role of sites like Reddit has changed as those platforms are used to spread hate speech, false news etc.
Obviously that's not true, but major figures at the company have said it from the early days up through very recently. And the difference between moderation (in the "no spam, no personal threats, communities enforce their own rules" sense) and administrative speech restrictions is a big and challenging one.
So no, Reddit has never quite been that, but it's been one of their selling points regardless.
Whenever the admins make any changes, a certain sub-section of the site goes completely insane and spams the site with tons of threads about how the site is fucking terrible and how the admins are fucking idiots with the common thread among these rabblerousers being that they always happen to hate a particular group that is ruining the site and destroying the indomitable reddit free speech ethos.
Once Voat is overrun by the enemies of free expression, someone else will take the helm and continue. Such is the nature of a free Internet.
"Censorship" just forces people underground to talk amongst other people with the same opinions. While it has some kind of measurable effect on preventing impressionable people from being exposed to their opinions, it also prevents people from discussing alternative views with the ones who were "censored". This is a large part of the reason why everyone was blindsided by Trump, the trump supporters were largely either not speaking up due to social penalties for doing so or only talking on-line in forums where other people agreed with them.
If the goal is to "defeat" the alt-right movement, then I don't think it is necessarily obvious that banning them is the right move. As I said though, maybe it is since it does limit exposure to their views which in theory limits their membership.
Note: Scare quoted censorship due to it not being government run which is what people usually mean when they say censorship.
This is the key takeaway IMO
Every site in the world, if they don't want to be a cesspool full of trolls and baiters, will have to moderate.
You can say something hateful, disrespectful, and even threatening to/about a white person(or people) and twitter doesn't care even if you are reported.
However if you say the same thing about/to a black person (or people) [literally the same sentence with only those words switched out] then when reported you will be banned.
If twitter(and others) would actually apply their rules fairly, a lot of people would be a lot less upset.
you dont have to listen to those subreddits. dont subscribe to them. dont hang out in /r/all if you cant handle seeing things you disagree with.
you just called other peoples views a cesspool of garbage, and youre advocating respect.
I don't hang out at r/all nor subscribe to subreddit I don't care about.
you just called other peoples views a cesspool of garbage, and youre advocating respect.
I am more concerned about a person's behavior more so than their opinion. I look down on baiting, trolling, harassment, etc.
> Like the mod said in his own words, they are not interested in public policy, they are focused on white nationalist racial discussion. To continue on that course without steering into hate speech is impossible.
Unless they are literally calling for people to take action and kill/harass/otherwise harm people I see no reason to "censor" them. From what I've seen, most of that subreddit is hating on other races(which definitely is hate speech) but not calling any real action. I also don't consider calling for legitimate political action to be worthy of "censorship" either, only going outside the political system to directly harm.
the first amendment is an application of that philosophy codified into law.
a company can by choose choose to value the philosophy of free speech, independent of the law.
you cannot use the phrases "freedom of speech" and "the first amendment" interchangeably.
I don't see why the admins don't just edit the posts? No need to ban things.
Until it elects the sort of people who want to see me deported into positions of power. At which point am I obligated to hand them a free platform again?
I don't see anyone fleeing for greener pasture.
Reddit became popular as an irreverent place for free discussion of whatever. There's a big difference in expectation.
Yes. The alt-right and the_donald reddit community members can move to a less-popular platform, but that doesn't necessarily mean that platform has just become more popular. It means the loudest, most-obnoxious people have just lost their Reddit audience. When 1% of commenters are making 90% of the posts, that's no longer a dialogue and that drives away readers. Encouraging polite dialogue and policing abusive behaviors are smart business moves for Reddit and Twitter.
No advertiser is interested in putting out their message right where a random guy can immediately reply with "LIAR!" for everyone to see.
I can choose which communities to ignore, lurk in and participate with. I dont support extinguishing communities I choose to ignore.
You get what you get when you choose to congregate at the firehose nozzles of twitter and /r/all
So it's no about censoring free speech, it's about making the idiot shouting his opinions with a megaphone on the street to do it somewhere else, or at the very least to drop the megaphone.
Why hasn't he outright deleted the subreddit?
If there's a significant amount of content you don't want to see, why are so many people choosing to look at /r/all?
I think a much more amusing enforcement of such policy would be for Twitter to ban Donald Trump, thereby also banning the @POTUS account for the term of his Presidency for "Abusive Behaviour" on Twitter such as openly harassing the cast of Hamilton.
https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205701105 https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy#section_unwelcome_... https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311
Just because you rebrand racism as "racial realism" doesn't mean you aren't racist and Reddit has no appetite for hosting racist speech. Go start your own Reddit if you don't like it. That's the wonderful thing about the web, its easy to make your own discussion forums.
I'm sure Voat will love these guys, meanwhile I don't have to deal with "racial realism" brigades and trolls on the subs I read. Seems like a win-win for all involved.
Why not? People have been rebranding racism for years.
Why stop with removing their access to Reddit? Why not make it downright illegal to talk about it? Why don't we make it illegal to think about it, too?
I'm exceptionally left-leaning and I don't agree with removing these people from Reddit, it's censorship of views we don't like, plain and simple. Are we really so childish that we believe that if we stop these people talking about it then the problem will go away? They'll just move elsewhere and common discourse will be more difficult, people will be more entombed in their own biased beliefs.
Do not worry. These people still have their freedom of speech, they are free to spray paint swastikas in bathrooms and put threatening letters through the doors of American citizens, but they will no longer be able to preach their philosophies on Reddit.
It doesn't matter whether what they say disgusts me or not, I don't have the right to not be offended. People often use Reddit to find news, I believe that Reddit should have a duty to provide that service in an unbiased way without inflicting their own views on the people who use their service. All they should care about it is "is this illegal?"
Yes, I understand that they're a company and not a government agency, it's of course just my opinion that they have such a duty.
In many countries, the UK included, many of the posts on the fascist subreddits are illegal.
> But why should we not fight for them?
Because the value of life should be held to higher value than the 'destruction of free speech' (Except Reddit isn't doing anything to their free speech, they're denying them a platform. Which is objectively different). These people quite literally stand for genocide.
> I don't have the right to not be offended
Yes, yes you do. That's part of free speech, isn't it?
I'm not condoning threatening behaviour or violence, I'm just saying that I believe that if someone wants to call be a ginger bellend, they should have the right to do that.
Freedom of speech should be defined as such: Free speech and the right to freedom of expression applies to ideas of all kinds including those that may be deeply offensive.
The trick behind it is that your speech here may be offensive to the far-right, does that mean that you would be okay if they passed a law saying it was illegal?
The fundamental difference is that I am not calling for the extermination or genocide of a group of people.
Speech like that isn't simply 'offensive', in the same way that one person wanting to kill someone else isn't a simple 'disagreement'.
Death threats are illegal in the UK, for the simple reason that it causes severe trauma to receive a large amount of them. Calling for the death of a group of people is just as bad. I honestly suspect you would live differently knowing that a large vocal group wants to exterminate people with a trait you carry.
To have any kind of discussion, you need to agree on a premise, a set of axioms, a base on which to talk.
In most countries, you take the constitution for that. Or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
That’s the minimal base on which you plan your society, and discuss politics and laws.
Usually, you add more, but it’s the required minimum.
What do you do with people who disagree with that? With people who disagree with the inalienable right to live? With people who disagree with the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" for some races or religious groups?
How can you form a society if you can’t even agree on the most basic ideas?
Maybe, you should actually separate society, split it, if there are people unwilling to make compromises, and holding immutable ideas that are incompatible with the rest of society.
If I see a bully insult someone, I'm not going to sit around and tell the victim to just accept it as "free speech."
And if a bully does that in my house, I'm going to kick him out of my house.
If you believe people who agree with some of the alt-rightist views must be held accountable for the standard racists who use that worldview as cover, then logically you must also make it incumbent upon people of muslim faith to tug a forelock to "us enlightened folk" in shared outrage and be accountable for the extremists who act in their name, and for random jewish people to be accountable for settlements, for catholics to feel they owe you something for their Irish "freedom fighters," etc.
In addition, forcing ideas underground will likely strengthen the will and beliefs of the hardcore believers. That is, when you marginalize those who profess to be marginalized, you run the risk of enabling them.
Sucks being Reddit but it might actually be all for the better, as ugly as it is.
I would also consider the image racist in any case, it's just not the most racist thing in that thread.
Can we PLEASE keep this shit off Hacker News?
What would be more interesting is to see what subreddits are tolerated that promote excessively immoral or illegal behavior.