“Not Safe for Brand” (NSFB) or How Reddit Will Censor Controversial Content | Hacker News Reader

“Not Safe for Brand” (NSFB) or How Reddit Will Censor Controversial Content

penetrate.blogspot.com

18 pointsneverminder22 comments

I don't understand the conspiratorial language here. The premise that businesses "love leftist dogma" because it's "non-controversial" is farcical, and an API flag marking something as unsafe for advertisement isn't "censorship."

The slippery slope arguments being employed by certain people in defense of "free speech" are starting to devolve into a swamp. I put free speech in quotes there because I have little doubt, judging from the site's content and my impression of the author's views, they would have no issue at all with censorship of "leftists" and their speech.

One the one hand, as someone more or less on the left, I am a little concerned with the political orthodoxy I see on the left, where there's a package of "correct" ideas of varying quality, and disagreeing with or having varying levels of enthusiasm about any of them is seen as almost worse than rejecting them all entirely.

On the other hand, nearly everyone I see these days who talks about being really passionate about free speech and preventing groupthink seems to be an actual goddamned neo-Nazi whose idea of free speech is the right to scream racial slurs at top volume into the faces of "libtard cucks" until they're driven out of public spaces and they can resurrect the Third Reich without interference.

I realize your statement may be slightly hyperbolic, but I want to reassure you there are many moderate/centrally leaning individuals passionate about free speech and the power of questioning any status quo as a tool to seek truth. (obviously not as many as I might desire, but...) This _cannot_ be an issue that only becomes provenance of the worst kinds, because then it becomes easy to dismiss. One need only be a student of history to see the importance of the above for _breaking_ oppression and tyranny.

(Sorry, not to distract from the OP and the primary discussion, I just felt strongly enough about the above statement to wave a "I promise we're out here" flag.)

The problem is, racial realism and the alt-right are driving a resurgence in anti-Semitic and neo-nazi ideology, and the anti-globalist and anti-progressive movements around the world do feed into that, despite that not being their real genesis or purpose. Trump is (probably) not a white supremacist or neo-nazi but his election caused white supremacists and neo-nazis to come out of the woodwork and the left should not be the only ones concerned about that.

Unfortunately, the left seems to have succumbed to the same sort of race-baiting, extremist paranoia that caused the right to meltdown over two Obama terms and they don't even see it. We can't come together over this issue because the right has embraced racism in the name of defending free speech causing the left to consider "free speech" to be a euphemism for supporting racist ideology.

This is literally a flag for "this thing is uncontroversial enough that we can display ads on it without the advertiser complaining". I don't see how this is a problem for a commercial enterprise that makes its money from advertising.

I encourage anyone reading this to browse around the rest of the linked site and decide for yourself whether the authors are driven by a sincere desire to protect free speech for everyone on Reddit, or if maybe they have another agenda in mind.

So the insidious actions here are that certain subreddits are going to be manually reviewed, and marked as safe for large advertisers based on the absence of objectionable content. And reddit has yet to make a public announcement on this.

Cool? Seems like a sensical approach to monetization for me.

Choosing where to have your brand is really basic advertising stuff.

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That said, it's a little weird to have a global NSFB tag.

Safe for what brand? NRA? Ben & Jerry's? NFL? Chick-fil-a? Planned Parenthood? Hooters? Disney? Communist Party USA?

It further coalesces a division between universally "acceptable, popular" and universally "unacceptable, unpopular" thoughts.

There is already a global "nsfw" tag (applied per-post) for users to flag content as potentially objectionable. I don't see this as a huge step beyond that conceptually, it's the same thing with a different purpose.

But NSFW has a very well-understood definition: obscenity/gore. Obscenity is even a matter of legal interest and gets tried in court.

NSFB is really, really mushy. It's a matter of marketing interest.

Umm ... if it wasn't already obvious, this guy is a nazi. See:

"But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews. They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white." https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/02/americas-race-problem...

Where in those blog posts do you see that he is a member, ally, or ideological proponent of the National Socialist German Workers' Party?

He's a nationalist, but explicitly rejects Nazism/neo-Nazism.

> Why the Future of Nationalism is Far from the Mess that is "White Nationalism"

> To my mind, it's a mistake to identify as pro-white or neo-Nazi when what we want is much simpler...That means that each nation rules itself, makes its own rules, and does so through culture instead of the bureaucratic governments that absorb infinite money, make crazy rules, become corrupt, and kick down your door in the night because you said something socially unpopular on Farcebook or Twitless.

> In my view, those who want to be "pro-white" should shift to this generalized nationalist program

https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2013/11/why-future-of-nationa...

EDIT: I definitely don't agree with his views; I'm just don't want HN to devolve into factless name-calling/labeling. I wouldn't call indiscriminately call anyone with far-left views "commies". We already have Reddit.

Thank you for your pedantry - You are indeed correct that the author of the linked site does not appear to be a current member of a political party that ceased to exist some 70+ years ago.

He or she does, however, appear to be a neo-Nazi, a white nationalist and a white supremacist.

CommieBobDole, it's not pedantics; I simply saw his public denouncement of white nationalism/white supremacy/neo-Nazism (while still supporting general nationalism/cultural unity) and took it at face value.

If you disagree, you might explain why.

Here's an article from the site calling for less race-baiting because it's harmful to the public perception of white nationalism, thereby hindering white nationalists from reaching their goals:

https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2015/05/you-can-fight-for-rac...

Here's an article that suggests it's counterproductive to beat up gay people because again, it's unpopular, and instead advocates that they be segregated and their behavior outlawed as an unpleasant nuisance:

https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-word-on-homosexuals...

Here's a link to a donation campaign being run by the organization "White Revolution" with the context that if white nationalist groups were more practical like this, the author would like them more.

https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2011/04/unbelievable-white-na...

Here is a link to a lighthearted funny meme about Anders Breivik, a neo-nazi who murdered 77 people.

https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2014/01/anders-breivik-king-o...

The general tone of the site seems to be that of a white supremacist and neo-nazi who believes that others who share his or her goals are not effective and should adopt other tactics in order to achieve their aims.

If you're not able to see this, I have to question whether you've reviewed the material your commenting on, or if you're incredibly politically naive, or if perhaps your questioning is not entirely in good faith.

So the author is calling for less violence against minorities, wants to remove racist language from public discourse, but he must still be racist because he does not totally condemn racists who happen to want the same goals as he does?

Not criticizing, I just want to know if this is a fair assessment. I do not know how I feel about this in general, but in specific, his short term goal of reducing violence makes him a more tollerable enemy.

> but he must still be racist because he does not totally condemn racists who happen to want the same goals as he does?

Yes, because those goals are racist.

He's racist because of his belief in and support for white nationalism and racial segregation, and the genetic and cultural superiority of the white race, and his definition of "western civilization" in purely (pun intended) racial terms. He's racist because he views the presence of non-white people as a form of pollution and believes in racist conspiracy theories like white genocide.

Being racist and civil is still being racist.

I'm not sure "genetic superiority" is in his list of claims. But in any case, going back to the original point, there's some real muddling of terminology here.

Racist != Nazi

My great grandmother was racist. Woodrow Wilson was racist. Neither one was a Nazi.

>My great grandmother was racist. Woodrow Wilson was racist. Neither one was a Nazi.

Fair enough. Racist but not full Nazi.

The mix of conspiracy theory and condescension in this article is really obnoxious.

Reddit has already devolved into a forum for 15 year olds to post nonsense jokes. Those of us who knew how reddit used to be and still occasionally visit tend to stay away from the main subs and visit for very specific reasons.

We should make another forum-aggregator to replace reddit and it's terrible moderation system, but it probably just won't get big enough.

I have been patiently waiting for an alternative to Reddit. In this time, I have been reading books, and hacker news. Going back to Reddit feels like an extreme regression.

Should I give up on the hope that one day we'll see another, better Reddit? Digg died when they redesigned their site, I was hoping we'd see the same thing with reddit, rinse and repeat...

There is an offshoot of Reddit that I frequent and enjoy, it was made by a former Reddit dev: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes

I've got 2 more invites for those are that interested.

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