The Efficacy of Reddit’s 2015 Ban Examined Through Hate Speech [pdf]

This gets to a Harvard study I now can't find that suggested that anonymity online is a red herring. Anonymous and whatever the opposite is (named? nonymous?) people are equally likely to follow community norms -- anonymous people are actually slightly more likely to. The problem is not the anonymity, the problem is the community norms, which in the banned subs were horrible.

They shifted to Voat, not other places on reddit. Although that does solve the problem for reddit, the communities didn't disappear.

How good is that corpus of data? Does it show the removed comments of users? (As a non-mod you cannot see the comments that were removed in a sub) Mods use automod to automatically remove posts based on keywords.

That's not an alternative platform. It's just a different group on the same platform.

This study is hilariously flawed, because most users made Alts for these subs.

There are entire communities on Reddit which pride themselves in only posting to their "bad" sub on accounts strictly for that purpose.

While true, it seems this leads to the conclusion "periodically review who has the power to moderate," not "don't moderate."

I'm astounded that on HN, of all places, you've been downvoted for what was considered obvious a generation ago, and obvious to anyone who has lived under authoritarian rule.

People do have the liberty to express their views in the sense that they have no trouble from the law with what they've said online. They do not lose their right to vote because of it. That's freedom of speech.

However, being censored by an organization is something that's very healthy for any organization of a decent size. It helps to keep the mission and culture of the organization consistent with what it's designed for. In reddits case, it decided that it would not harbor hate speech because it didn't want to make its culture include that. This is very similar to a group of friends not inviting you to drinks after you repeatedly said that you think genocide is a good solution.

It's censorship! Which, if done by the government, can be bad. But it's something that we all do when we want to change the culture of our group. It is very puzzling to me that so many smart people on hacker news do not understand why it's beneficial.

I mean, I am certainly given pause by this tidy argument. If private actors not subject to the rules control the means of transmission (or if speaking out in the wrong way threatens your livelihood) then freedom of speech starts to look mostly theoretical. I'm not sure I have an easy answer to the problem myself.

I'm specifically talking about thinkers such as Zeynep Tufekci.

She wrote a rather interesting book but if you want a glimpse into some of her thoughts I like this article:

https://latest.13d.com/will-direct-democracy-give-way-to-aut...

> purges all racist and other arbitrarily prejudiced mindsets

Purges? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purges_of_the_Communist_Party_...

I reach for hyperbole here, because usually the tool that societies reach for to kill ideas is to kill the people that hold them. 99 times out of 100.

> I wish I could find the exact book, but there was a philosopher writing about anti-semitism after WWII.

You may be thinking of Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew

Here's a quote:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

(Thanks to 'geofft and 'tptacek for this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13089118)

the power to 'purge' actors exhibiting what in practice can be arbitrarily and fluidly defined (eg, cultural appropriation) is not a power i want anybody to have.

"It is not a slippery slope if you set clear boundaries."

How could those boundaries ever be clear if they aren't near absolute? Definitions, interpretations, and the cultural mindset change constantly. Prejudice today is different than yesterday, and will change again tomorrow.

I see a remarkable tendency of people to assume that liberal / progressive ideas will always remain free to express, so there's no need to protect all speech. I don't see how this is true.

>My point: Restricting hate speech is not a slippery slope for freedom of speech.

I don't know how you could be aware of what's going on in academia and believe this.

>"I personally believe there is no universal morality, but if I had to pick, I'd argue that the best outcome for the human race would be a culture that purges all racist and other arbitrarily prejudiced mindsets that judge entire populations on untenable grounds (race, gender, etc)."

Out of all the possibly noble things you could pick, you pick prejudice as the item that would be universally-forbidden in your moral code? I understand that race-relations, group-bias topics and intersectionality are in vogue and centre-stage at this moment, but we need to aim higher as a society.

> I'd argue that the best outcome for the human race would be a culture that purges all racist and other arbitrarily prejudiced mindsets that judge entire populations on untenable grounds (race, gender, etc).

Phrasing. You can't just come out and say purging--you have to dress it up a little more.

I do not buy the 'a standpoint can be too extreme to not be worth discussing'. Interracial marriage would have been one of those standpoints as recently as the 1960s. If you find yourself incapable of articulating actual reasons, not emotional appeals, of why certain things are wrong, that is a personal failing and certainly you shouldn't tackle those issues yourself. But those who have thought about these issues should be able to bring them forward and deal with them objectively and dispassionately.

The number of people who seem to operate on this mindset of "killing loads of people would actually be good, but its too nasty to speak of" is really fucking disturbing. There are objective, rational reasons why such things would be monumentally destructive. I also encounter a disturbing number of people who are earnest racists, who believe that certain races have inherent biological advantage over others, but who believe that they are not racists because they find acknowledging that as inhumane. They don't use epithets and they support affirmative action and diversity and such out of DUTY. All the while never being able to learn that they're WRONG.

Amazing and very telling that in your defense of censorship you can use the phrase "arbitrarily prejudiced mindsets" without a hint of irony.

Except anti Semitism isn't just "kill all Jews". If you're the ADL, then it might be "Israel sucks, screw those guys". They'll label it anti Semitism, lump it in with "garbage philosophy" and shut down discussion. Exactly what people are worried about.

So sure, feel free to censor "kill all Jews" but know it is 100% a slippery slope, in no small part because once you are allowed to delete opponents that meet that criteria, you'll try to expand the criteria.

As objectively abhorrent as anti-semitism is, I unfortunately think the issue is not so cut-and-dry for a variety of reasons.

First, just to respond to those 2 points:

1. There's a spectrum of anti-semites. On many parts of the Internet, you will see many anti-semites who won't even hide under the veil of "just joking". They will tell you to your face that they sincerely believe that either the Holocaust was a hoax, or that it was a good thing. (Or it was a hoax but should happen for real.) Many of these people don't come to these beliefs purely through childhood indoctrination but rather exposure to communities and information sources which, to them and in the context of their existing worldview, seem rational and accurate and polarize them further. When you debate an anti-semite on the Internet, you'll often find that a good percentage don't argue in bad faith and actually do cite what they consider to be credible evidence of their claims. This is in the form of links to websites that look superficially scholarly and professional, images and infographics that claim to be backed by studies, and long documentary-style videos. No, the evidence is not good at all (and any accurate information they do manage to present may support something or other but doesn't support their anti-semitic claims), but many genuinely and truly think the evidence they're linking you is damning.

These aren't all random idiots purely looking for an excuse to hate on Jews. Many are brainwashed from what they read and are exposed to, just like any extremist ideology or cult. They're conspiracy theorists.

You can't fight that sort of thing with censorship: you're proving their point when you do that. "They want to hide this information because they know we're right. They're trying to hide The Truth from the goyim masses. We have facts and data on our side, and all they can do is censor and ban us." As futile as it almost always is to actually have a logical discussion or argument with such an individual, rhetoric must be fought with rhetoric, plain and simple. You can't fight rhetoric with "your argument is too ridiculous or evil to be dignified with either a response or even an allowance of existence".

2.

>However, it is not acceptable to argue over whether "All Jews should be killed." A standpoint that suggests the outright destruction of an entire people, or their enslavement or removal of freedoms, is so heinous as to not even be worth discussing the possibility of merit.

First, only a subset of anti-semites believe or say that all Jews should be killed. I know that's a weird thing for me to say. Any kind of anti-semitism is of course despicable and irrational, even the lightest forms of it, but the distinction still needs to be made. It's much easier to talk to and potentially convince someone who merely believes in some common conspiracy theories and harbors low-level ill will towards Jews compared to someone with deep, zealous animosity and murderous intent towards some, most, or all Jews.

Second, as beyond disgusting an argument as that is, even such statements as "all Jews should be killed" must be (in a broad sense) "open for debate" if you truly believe in freedom of speech. If anti-semitism and other fringe ideologies can just be dismissed as banned topics, anti-semites (and far-right people who are against anti-semitism but find censorship to be anathema) will become more empowered, more secluded, more polarized, and potentially more dangerous.

Let's try to analyze what could lead a person to genuinely say or believe something like "all Jews should be killed". Let's assume they're being sincere, and aren't saying it just to be ironic or edgy or to piss people off. Many of these people have above average IQ and seem otherwise kind of normal. So how could this happen?

From what I've seen and experienced, the most common reason for this kind of sentiment is a delusional fear: they actually, truly believe that Jews are actively trying to gang up and exterminate them. Not just them in particular, but all Western Europeans/Americans/capitalists/right-wingers/white people or whatever their particular flavor of Nazism/fascism is. Of course, this is a ridiculous and false delusion, but in their mind it is a clear and present danger, and in their mind all of the evidence actually points this to being true in reality. They really believe they are in some kind of existential war with an organized "Eternal Jew" - a struggle for survival. And they believe that expelling or killing Jews is purely an act of self-defense.

Take a moment to just accept the craziness of it all. These people aren't playing with the same cards as us. They're fundamentally working off of a different impression of reality. They're on an unsupported fork of the "global/history" repo. All of their ideas and thoughts can be traced deterministically from initial delusional seeds that they accepted and integrated long ago.

I think the best explanation for most of these kinds of anti-semites is that they are a delusional/psychotic community of interrelated cult-like groups. And sure, there's generally no convincing crazy or delusional people, but you definitely aren't going to convince a, say, schizophrenic that he/she just needs help by decreeing "it is now illegal to think or say the things you are currently thinking and saying". (And no, I'm definitely not saying most anti-semites have schizophrenia or something, but I also would not be surprised if there's a disproportionate amount of overlap. I'm just using schizophrenia as an analogy.)

It's not easy, but racists and sexists can sometimes be convinced to soften their views or even change their stances. For example, Daryl Davis, a black man, managed to befriend many KKK members and leaders and convince them to completely rethink their entire ideology. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis#Career_as_writer_a...) He treated them with decency, kindness, and an open mind (even though they did not deserve it), and many of them eventually came to treat him the same way and reject much of their ideology.

Or take the case of the son of the founder of Stormfront. Stormfront is (or was, before their domain registrar revoked their registration) one of the biggest and most fervent anti-semitic/racist/extreme-right communities out there. Derek Black, the founder's son, helped maintain the website until he ended up befriending some Jewish people in college. After merely being exposed to the fact that they and their families were kind, ordinary people for a few years, he renounced his racist views and dissociated himself from the website and his family. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-...)

Both of these situations required years of exposure to opposing viewpoints presented in a respectful way to change their views.

They will never, ever be convinced to change their views if your response is solely to prevent them from discussing certain things or to ban them from places or even to advocate for (or ignore) violence towards them. (One might say "but they advocate for violence towards minorities", but as explained, that can be an oversimplification. And even when it is literally true, two wrongs don't make a right).

>My point: Restricting hate speech is not a slippery slope for freedom of speech. I personally believe there is no universal morality, but if I had to pick, I'd argue that the best outcome for the human race would be a culture that purges all racist and other arbitrarily prejudiced mindsets that judge entire populations on untenable grounds (race, gender, etc).

Again, we're entering dangerous territory. A private community/company, even one acting as a de facto common carrier of communication like reddit, certainly has the right to ban people who make heinous speech like this. But as a society, ideas like "we must purge all racists and arbitrarily prejudiced mindsets from our population" are untenable, unsustainable, and may be playing right into the other side's hands even aside from the slippery slope arguments and how exactly we should or could set clear boundaries of racism and prejudice. Even if we could theoretically set these clear boundaries (and we can't), this is still folly. The founding fathers and their predecessors in the Enlightenment knew this all too well. Freedom of speech really is an all or nothing thing. If something happens purely within the bounds of speech (e.g. the speech is not directly inciting or calling for a crime to occur), it must be permissible under the law.

I think this paper shows that this did help improve the overall balance of toxicity in reddit. But it does not (and pretty much cannot) show how this affects the greater ecosystem of hate speech online. No doubt the vast majority of the people who posted in those banned subreddits have been using many other websites and applications before the ban and are continuing to organize and communicate after the ban. They're just not doing it on reddit anymore.

And this is not something I would normally ever include in a comment, but since this is such a sensitive topic and since my comments here could plausibly be seen as some kind of tacit concern trolling that's secretly supporting anti-semitism or Nazism, I do feel it's relevant to mention that I'm Jewish myself and am extremely aware of the dangers and evils of anti-semitism and fascism.

> I'd argue that the best outcome for the human race would be a culture that purges all racist and other arbitrarily prejudiced mindsets that judge entire populations on untenable grounds (race, gender, etc).

Except most people are not good with nuance. Distinguishing justified judgment from unjustified is pretty much hopeless. Just read any thread anywhere discussing any politically charged issue, like sexism and racism. Purely factual statements are always labelled sexist or racist if they don't support a particular narrative, and sexist or racist sentiments that follow that narrative are applauded. And of course actual sexism and racism is similarly absurd.

The point being that the "untenable grounds for prejudiced mindsets" is sufficiently slippery in and of itself that you haven't escaped the slippery slope argument. People will understand "untenable grounds" to mean what they want it to mean, and we're right back here where we started.

The argument for unrestricted free speech then is, do you have more confidence in the position that speech of type X is unequivocally morally wrong AND that whoever is enforcing morally righteous speech understands the proper nuance not to overreach, or do you have more confidence in the position that people ought to be able to speak about their beliefs without violent reprisal? Because I think these are mutually exclusive.

> so heinous as to not even be worth discussing the possibility of merit

Right, so, what's the clear boundary here? If it's specifically mass murder, ok. "Arbitrarily prejudiced mindsets", however, is not well defined, and therefore subject to slippery slope effects.

Almost all prejudices start with some nugget of truth, if only a correlation with the causation backwards. Further, humanity frickin loves lumping people trying to tell the truth with those who build nasty stereotypes on said truth. In fact, there is no sharp line between them. For instance, the guy in this thread getting downvoted to bedrock for pointing out that being fat is bad for you. Is that person being hateful? (I can't tell, but I collapsed the threat so maybe there's real evidence in there I missed) When do you start restricting that sort of thing, just pointing out awkward facts? Good luck coming up with a clear boundary we can all agree on, because oh yeah, you have to get consensus on that or you've solved nothing.

For a good example of slippery slope in action wrt anti-semitic hate speech, look at how the BDS movement is attacked as both of these things.

Note: I don't support BDS. But I don't consider it to be either anti-Semitic nor hate speech, and the fact that many people who support hate speech legislation genuinely believe that BDS does qualify as hate speech, puts me firmly into the anti-hate-speech-laws camp. Simply put, I don't trust democratic majoritarianism to provide a definition of these things that I would consider acceptable, much less good.

Furthermore, given that hate crimes are directed towards minorities, and hate speech legislation is passed by majorities, I would posit that in any case where that speech actually makes a difference (i.e. where it can translate to tangible action), the majority will always immunize itself. Meanwhile, it will use such laws selectively against minorities (e.g. see all the right wing politicians referring to BLM as "hate group").

Reddit's founders have stated otherwise, though they've also been less than consistent on the point of free speech.

Private / commercial actors do have accountability, though it can be difficult to trace.

I'm neither arguing against limitations on public discussion, or defending private fora as equivalent to public spaces (I disagree with both views). But I'm noting that in a strict interpretation of your comments, neither statement is true.

Right. And if we're going to talk about the social value of free expression, that has to include consideration of how certain unconstructive behaviors undermine that value. And how people may go out of their way to defend those unconscrutive behaviors if they serve to push people out of conversations with whom they disagree.

You're confusing making fun / criticisms of with hatred. Fat acceptance movement is absolutely batshit insane, it promotes unhealthy lifestyles, it causes early deaths, it costs billions of dollars, it increases everyone's insurance costs.

I'm yet to see anything of scale on reddit/voat that represents hate of fat people, and not of the lifestyle or the dumb ideas that the movement comes up with.

Is this not just a matter of "the joke of the times?" Whatever is currently trendy can almost certainly be found referenced in every front page thread. Currently it's DJT, previously it was the FPH, etc. The masses shift targets, but fixating on a current trend seems pretty steady.

Isn't it just the fact that comments like these result in being banned?

That's one of the arguments of the paper - there's some good evidence that a lot (of course not all) of those accounts simply stopped posting.

I agree. I see those as symptoms (assuming there's anything there at all). The important question is whether there's something driving them to that state.

The bringing-out is itself a kind of context. That kind of critical/analytical context is far, far different from simply setting up a forum in a huge social media site where impressionable people sometimes congregate. It's like the difference between a biology lab where students perform dissection and a dirty, stinking, public restroom where people graffiti on the wall and poop in the urinals.

"I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all it ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light injustice must be exposed with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion, before it can be cured."

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

Sibling comment has the context and, really, these are two different things. Letting a nasty forum stay open is not at all the same as protesting segregation.

We are having a conversation on Hacker News. Any sampling from HN's user base, including your sample of 1, is biased. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a high probability that:

1. you have at least average intelligence

2. you can entertain logical arguments, since software development involves a lot of mathematical logic

3. you are heavily exposed to American culture and San Francisco's progressiveness, even those of us that are not even living in the US ;-)

4. you have a good education, either from an Ivy league school, or because you are an efficient autodidact

5. you are middle class and have your basic needs satisfied by your salary

Don't get me wrong, but there's a high probability that you're living in a bubble, just like most of us here and you're really not representative of the average population.

<personal bias, no time to research this for sure> The extremists weren't going to be swayed anyway by people arguing with them, or even ridiculing them on the internet. If anything, the focused subreddit with its own moderation team can create extra legitimacy by voting down arguments and dissent, or deleting them entirely. Spend some time on thedonald, and see how much actual useful debate there is on the posts attacking Hillary's body.

It's the large, non-participatory cohort of people who may have never read the comments that are being helped by banning these groups, because these behaviors seem less 'normal' and 'legitimate' if you don't see them, especially if you're not exposed to them as jokes and pithy quotes.

Some of the coontown people will slink off to the KKK blogosphere and private message boards, but my point is that many of those with only mild biases won't, and so will lose the chance to be radicalized.

A casual visitor wasn't terribly likely to see counterpoints and ridicule on those parts of Reddit, though, because they banned them with an iron fist. FPH in particular was very consistent in banning anyone who empathised with its targets or questioned any of its dehumanization or its tactics. It was essentially a safe space for hate.

Is the harm then a) that these people are exposed to the larger ideology, or b) that these people don't have the critical thinking tools or habits to see these ideologies for what they are?

I think it's (b).

In life we are exposed to a lot of bad ideologies, and the only thing that can help us navigate these ideas is our own thick skin and critical thinking tools and habits. The only way you develop these are through exposure and practice.

> you can also make your argument explicitly anti-jewish by pointing out that israel would be a far less important strategically if the US did not depend on oil as much

Wait a sec, can you explain how this is anti-jewish? As a person of Jewish ethnicity who does not support many actions of the Israeli government, I fail to see how this makes the argument anti-Jewish. I do concede that it might make it more appealing to those with anti-semitic sentiments.

So patient, persistent effort might yield a small shift in the attitudes of some in the audience.

At what cost in those who see the basic terms of debate validated by engagement? When you're arguing that only some black people should be killed instead of all of them, what harm are you doing by legitimizing the basic question of whether blacks should be killed?

I also have direct experience with the opposite: an older friend (late 50s), socially isolated, who over the last year or two has self-radicalized into a hardcore Muslim hater.

A few years ago he was just a plain ol' gentle soul, and he liked to watch those militant atheist videos on Youtube (I have no opinion about such). I guess one of them had some sort of anti-Islam recommended video that caught his eye, because I remember the day we went out for lunch and he told me about a video he watched about Islam.

I have quite a few Muslim friends so I spent some time gently dissecting what he was saying. None of what I said stuck. Over the following year, he got deep into the rabbit hole, until how awful Muslims are is all he'd talk about.

I had to end the friendship, despite my efforts to talk him out of that, because that garbage had literally become the entirety of what he was into/wanted to chat about. (Objectionable and boring, hah.)

Valid or not, it was a Nirvana fallacy-- just like the idea that there was no point in banning the subreddit because they would move platforms.

Just because you can't achieve an idealized scenario doesn't mean you should not try for some improvement.

I Absolutely have.

Though with rampant censorship these days, few people have to build up any kind of argument to counter these bigots. It's a lot easier to hit a downvote button, or a ban button, than to present a reasoned argument at all.

What a fantastic place the internet is evolving into. A haven for, well, some kind of speech. Not free of course. Restricted and safe speech. Perhaps speech licenses and internet ID's soon? If you say something bigoted we can throw you in jail and fire you. Harass your friends and family too. It's the only way to protect a free and open society.

Reddit also has some absolutely fascist mods. For example, it's well-known that if you post anything that is against illegal immigration (and it gets too many upvotes!) /r/worldnews mods will go through and ban you after the thread dies down.

I was once banned there 48h after a polite discussion on the economic costs (citing various sources) for "hate speech". I got too many upvotes so it was noticed. Appealing to a mod resulted in him "examining my posts on other subs, and given who you voted for the ban will be permanent".

Actual hate speech is one thing, but far-left mods of major subs are using the banner of hate speech to silence well-informed opposing views.

Is the goal changing someone's mind? Or is it making the site hospitable to more users?

Reddit doesn't care what people think, but it sure seems to care how many people are willing to use the site.

Yes, because Nazis and murderers are the last group of people that deserve an open platform.

My understanding of HN votes is that they are supposed to reflect the quality of the contribution to the conversation, not agreement or disagreement.