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Comment by CM30 | Hacker News Reader

Reddit definitely suffers from the free speech and social acceptableness clash. That's in part because the site was founded specifically on the assumption that it would allow freedom of speech, without realising that 'true' freedom of speech is basically 'anything goes if it's legal, social norms and rules be damned'.

It's why they're struggling with communities like The Donald and had a lot of previous issues with the likes of Fat People Hate. Because they realised that their original philosophy doesn't really scale well and puts off more 'moderate' users, yet also realise a large portion of their audience joined on the promise of freedom of speech and go ballistic if things get censored.

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Reddit suffers because people in general do not believe freedom of speech is a right.

I disliked the Fat People Hate subreddit, you know what I did... I did not visit the Fat People Hate subreddit.

The communities I join and participate in on Reddit are moderated well and do not suffer from the problem, if you do not like what is talked about on The Donald, don't go there, not that hard.

The problem is people do go, get "offended" then complain or raise hell because the mere existence of speech they dislike is what they want to end. This is not Freedom of Speech, but censorship.

Reddits Original model is the correct one, Allow Communities to form on the platform, and if people do not like the content of those communities they can unsubscribe, or avoid them.

I agree with you here.

However, Reddit and similar platforms usually can't operate under this logic. Why? Because they need to make money to stay online/keep operating. And unfortunately, that means content that alienates advertisers (like a lot of the more controversial subreddits) ends up actively hurting their revenue stream.

They could try and get round this by monetising in other ways (micropayments, subscriptions, purely donations, etc) or by looking for ad networks with real low standards, but those methods likely wouldn't pay enough to keep them afloat.

It's why in the long run, I suspect the answer to the problem isn't a centralised platform that hosts a lot of different communities, but a system that connects individually hosted communities into a 'network' of sorts with similar features to Reddit.

That way, you can have both controversial and non controversial 'subreddits', with the latter paying their own hosting bills and the former either doing the same thing or getting subsidised hosting by the network owner.

It also shuts down any future attempts at censorship by not giving the company running the service any way to edit what happens on any one community.

This is one of the problems with Standards vs Platforms

Usenet vs Reddit

IRC vs Slack/Twitter

etc

I believe the internet is harmed by these Platforms in general and we should go back to Decentralized Standards for communications vs For profit Platforms

> It's why in the long run, I suspect the answer to the problem isn't a centralised platform that hosts a lot of different communities, but a system that connects individually hosted communities into a 'network' of sorts with similar features to Reddit.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just a protocol?

That's all well and good when it was subs like FPH that were easily ignored. The thing that threatened to chase me off of reddit was the_donald. Not because I was "offended"(the new code word for calling someone a pussy), but because it was shitty content that pissed me off. And they figured out how to jack the algorithm to make their sub the most prominent content. I joined reddit for the science and tech, not to be a hit count on some shill's advert campaign.

Losing your target audience is a problem for any company. Free speech is a right insofar as the government cannot ban speech. Private property is a right. Reddit cannot ban me from saying what I want in real life, but they totally have the right to not allow me to say it on their property.

There has never been a single post from the_donald on the default frontpage of reddit, which only includes the default subscriptions, or whatever you change your subscriptions to. According to Reddit admins, almost no one even browses r/all, the only place where there were a lot of the_donald posts. And that isn't even the case anymore, since reddit adjusted their algorithm.

spez talked about how a lot of users(myself included) do in fact browse r/all. And yes, it has been fixed which is a good thing.

Only if you are using /r/all, and if you using that to find good content you are using reddit wrong.

/r/all has always been and will always be trash.

I have 3 modes of redditing in order of importance/frequency: 1. custom fp with many defaults removed, 2. r/all, 3. rarely, but sometimes default fp.

I find that it works. r/all is a lot of memes and time wasters, but can be fun for a quick look at what's going on outside of my bubble. I've found things(like rick and morty) that I wouldn't have found if I hadn't punched up r/all once in a while.

That whole "don't go to that section if you don't like it" works just fine if those things stay in their section. The problem is that they weren't staying in their section. Fat People Hate was known for going into other subreddits and shitposting all the time. The Donald famously abused the rules to get their crap spamming /r/all constantly.

So tell me again how "don't go to those subreddits" is the solution?

>>So tell me again how "don't go to those subreddits" is the solution?

OK, Dont go to those subreddits.

>Fat People Hate was known for going into other subreddits and shitposting all the time.

I was no aware that subreddit's could post anything. Now users that happened to subscribed or vist FPH may also visit other communities, it is up to those communities to then moderator their subreddits,

As to /r/all, reddit should just really remove that "feature" /r/all has never worked, and will never work, that is a non-issue.

No, it's not a non-issue. And once again, if the behavior that would normally be contained within the subreddit leaks out into other subreddits, what happens then? Cause your advice of "don't go there" fails.

The problem is a bit more structural or philosophical. I don't visit subreddit foo, because it is objectively hate speech. Fine, except that reddit's profitability model depends on that subreddit existing and gold being passed around and so on.

By not clamping down on trash content, reddit is monetizing hate speech.

And that's why I avoid reddit entirely. Not because I'm worried my feelings will be hurt by some shitposter, but because that shitposter gets reddit gold and ad impressions that make money for reddit inc. I'm just not interested in participating in that business - in my mind they're not seperable, you can't just ignore r/the_donald or any of the other hives when they're all part of the business plan.

>> objectively hate speech.

Doubtful, Hate Speech is subjective, what is "hate" to person A is not hate to person B.

as an example

>you can't just ignore r/the_donald

You find the_donald filled with Hate Speech, but as a Libertarian I see all kinds of Social Justice, Statist, and other Posts to be "hate filled" that I bet you do not.

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