Reddit reports 18% reduction in hate content after banning nearly 7k subreddits

most of the popular subreddits encourage hate against police and Trump supporters, just see how much cheering you get when there is a video of BLM assaulting someone wearing MAGA hat, or a white "Karen" (typically middle-aged white woman) is humiliated or assaulted by mob, or an officer sprayed and blinded when arresting some looter.

These threads full of raging hate are reaching Reddit front page on regular basis, with tens of thousands of upvotes and tons of social "awards", while anything going against the social justice narrative is shut down immediately, like in that 18% ban which affected many dissenting subreddits.

There are popular subreddits literally encouraging racial segregation, like "BPT Country Club" which requires sending picture of your forearm to prove you're black in order to participate.

This kind of thing radicalizes people on both sides.

>I think it just depends on the number of subreddits

the number of subreddits shouldn't matter, what actually should matter is post volume.

Calls for violence have been against Reddit's policy forever, and is also often illegal. It has nothing to do with minority status.

>that at most advocated violence against [...]

Are we really doing this?

How are landlords not a minority? Are 50% of people landlords? (Asking seriously - I don't understand what definition of minority is being used here.)

Back to coded language to express frustration we go...

I agree "kill all women" reads and is darker for a variety of reasons, but I don't think either statement should be acceptable. I think a high percentage of people who would say "kill all women" would also reply that they're being non-literal and sardonic, but I don't think that would make it acceptable. Both phrases should trigger human review and a ban, in my opinion.

Even without the literal meaning, vitriol towards gigantic groups of people based on at-birth traits isn't healthy or rational for anyone. (To make the comparison more palatable, imagine a complaint about an ex-romantic partner followed by a frustrated exclamation of "fuck men" or "fuck women", depending on the parties involved. I don't see why either of these statements should be privileged over the other.) I think double standards should be eliminated across the board, rather than tipping the scales so that a side that historically wielded them is now subjected to them.

Well said - while this point is somewhat subtle, I think the real reason most people "miss" it is because of a human tendency to overlook pragmatism in the context of language/communication while engaging in even non-heated ideological battles. I.e. they tend to turn a blind eye to colloquial meaning and real consequences in favor of a bias toward literalism as a bad rhetorical tactic.

> When a woman is recounting frustration at being talked over during a meeting and says "kill all men," there's a non-literal connotation based in a belief in patriarchal suppression. When a man says "kill all women" it reads darker, based on a belief that men subject women to violence specifically based on their gender/sexuality.

This might have been true once but the ascent of fourth-wave (misandrist) feminism has made short shrift with the assumption that women who say "kill all men" have a different intention than men who say "kill all women". In both cases it is most likely not to be taken literally, in both cases (humoristic intentions excepted) the message has a dark underpinning. Where in the "kill all women" case there might be a background of literal truth, in the "kill all men" case there is a background of wishful thinking, an idea that society is better off without men, that men are evil and unredeemable.

But everyone says "oh you're missing the context" when challenged on their hateful rhetoric, and no targeted group enjoys being told they ought to die. I don't really see why anyone should be allowed to spread hate speech, even if they don't mean it literally or it doesn't "read darker".

For those of you who don't think in who/whom, note this comment well.

There are many, many people who think this way.

Or we can agree that both statements are wrong, and we should not wait and see the effects of allowing one over the other (we already are seeing dangerous effects however).

I really agree with this. An American Indian friend of mine once said, "It's not like we want another Trail of Tears." Folks who have been beat down know people don't deserve that just for being a certain way.

Now if you're advocating a worldview that carries implicit, targeted violence (looking at you, Neo-Nazis) I think it's a different story. At that point, it becomes a question of what is possible and practical to reduce the overall amount of violence.. even if it means punching someone who wants you dead or subjugated.

>I always find these sorts of discussions sorely lacking an understanding of The Tolerance Paradox.

I can't possibly speak for Popper, but I suspect that he'd disapprove of intolerance from any group towards any other group. Let's not tolerate threats or double standards of any kind, whether it's a man defending that he said "kill all women" sarcastically or a woman defending that she said "kill all men" sarcastically. One can acknowledge that a man saying it should be taken more seriously (for a variety of reasons) while also acknowledging that the acceptance of generalized vitriol towards groups based on at-birth traits shouldn't have directional weighting. This is a blind spot and form of implicit bias I find many well-meaning progressives fall into.

Also, although it doesn't necessarily apply here (since most would agree talking about killing groups of people shouldn't be tolerated), I almost always find that people who bring up Popper's paradox of tolerance tend to wield it like a cudgel to draw arbitrary and absolute lines as they see fit.

> Reports of genuine, targeted violence against reactionaries are almost non-existent

Someone is wearing a MAGA hat. Someone else is wearing a Biden hat.

Which do you think is more likely to be assaulted?

I thought we are trying to stop hate for characteristics someone has no control over (sex, sexuality, race, gender, disability, nationality). I think any "punches" thrown at a group that was just born that way is not fair and the direction should not be a factor. Shouldn't someone be judged on their character and thoughts, not their biology or circumstances? If you aren't doing that then you aren't being genuine for stopping stereotyping and hate.

This includes "majority" populations and those more privileged. We shouldn't give hateful or blanket statements for them as they never decided to be that way. Putting entire groups of people based on some trait they were born with on blast is wrong.

Also the direction is a slippery slope too. "Well yes I can direct blanket negative/stereotypical/hate statements against Indians because I myself am a disabled, trans minority" ad-infinitum.

I don't think it should be. I think punches above a certain threshold of force shouldn't be permitted, regardless of whether they're aimed left, right, up, down, or diagonally. Also, who exactly is definitively judging these directions in each of these cases? What's the judgment criteria when two people reside among a distribution of different relative directions across multiple different parameters?

I think eliminating double standards in the enforcement of these policies is crucial for them to be effective and accepted by a community. You're just trading one set of implicit and explicit biases in for another, and many of the same issues start to bubble up. Yes, certainly not all of the same issues in the case of one group wielding more capability to carry out a threat than another group, but many of the important ones, especially when it comes to matters of epistemology and reasoning.

When punching down it's important to dress it up so it looks like punching up. Attack the innocent who look like the guilty because the guilty are too hard to reach.

Can you provide recent examples?

On their front page right now:

- A post about finishing shampoo and conditioner at the same time

- Celebration of a black female CEO

- Discussion of abortion

- Discussion of Women's only gyms (pros/cons/benefits/etc)

- Discussion about marketing vis-a-vis unhealthy body image

- Inappropriate boss in a meeting

None of those posts are even about men, let alone "hate speech against half the species?" So the emphasis is definitely on you to show that this is a popular usage of the sub.

Subs don't get removed for a scattering of hateful comments, the moderators are expected to deal with those. Subs get banned because their popular purpose is against Reddit's rules or their moderators are unable/unwilling to enforce the rules.

TwoXChromosomes has improved dramatically since it was first made a general sub. I'm sure it drove most of the misandry to other smaller subs. If anything it's a good example that exposing hate and echo chambers to a wider audience can help improve them in some cases.

Theoretically both should fall under the same umbrella as "ideology", but in reality religion is given special protections. eg. in US law, religion is a protected class (you discriminate on it), whereas political affiliation isn't.

Race & religion are sometimes deeply entwined, see Jewish.

Imagine if Jewish ethnicity was a protected class but Jewish religion was not. How would that even work in practice?

"I was not discriminating against the Jews on account of being ethnic Jews but rather on account of their Jewish faith, your Honor!"

What they really want are echo chambers where only approved opinions are allowed.

>They clearly outline their definition of "hate content" in their post about it.

Am I missing something here? I read the post and it's not clearly defined at all. All they did is mention was:

>To generate and categorize the list of keywords, we used a wide variety of resources and AutoModerator* rules from large subreddits that deal with abuse regularly.

>If a subset of users are hurting their business model, driving multiples of other users away from the site, or creating legal liability far in excess of the value the problematic subset generates,

is that's what's happening though? Are advertisers leaving reddit? AFAIK advertisers can already decide what subreddits their ads appear on. Are people leaving reddit to a "nicer" platform? What type of legal liabilities is reddit being subject to?

I think much like cybersecurity there is no "solution". Moderation is a posture, not a result. You have to just stay on top of it or everything will tend towards 4chan given the chance.

Seems pretty clear cut! What about the other 6999?

I mean, I've been seeing out of my window in downtown Seattle hate groups marching on a nearly nightly basis, the difference with these hate groups being that they burn down vehicles, buildings, and other properties and violently clash with the police in order to forcefully enact their hateful/racist political policies, that hate me because of the color of my skin and the political polices I support. But sure, there was one time an entirely peaceful demonstration by people on the other side of the aisle, that was so hateful! They have to be banned, deplatformed, censored, removed, destroyed. But the people roaming my city, setting fire to the building opposite of mine a few weeks back because the owner is an "evil white capitalist"? They're good to go, no hate there.

white shirts and torches - that's so much worse than the BLM riots!

I don't think “places to be hateful on the internet” are in short supply.

This is something I can agree with as being more useful. Anything that can be done to reduce funding to hate groups is fantastic.

But there is a real difference between using deplatforming as a means of defunding hate groups and what happened with Reddit. Reddit itself has no means of monetization. While you could certainly argue that Reddit leads to platforms that do monetize, that is a slippery slope.

I’m a sucker for conspiracy theories, like the Bermuda Triangle. Aliens abducting cows and lizards living inside the Queen. I don’t believe in any of it, but I’ve just loved that stuff since I was a kid. So I actually used to follow /r/conspiracy, but I stopped around the 2016 election when everything started being about American politics.

Not sure what happened, but it went from “the lone gunmen” to “angry American central” over night, and the place has royally sucked since.

Nah r/politics is completely unhinged. I have rarely seen that level of vitriol anywhere else on reddit, even on Trump subs. This isn't just about ideas, this is about how people behave and talk. It's surreal.

It strikes me that having a duality of political groups like this doesn't mean they both have equal legitimacy or deserve equal platform.

American conservatives have pretty eagerly woven prejudice into the ideological fabric of the party. Similarly the party seems willing to promote or at least enable blatant criminality.

They made their socially-regressive bed and now they can lie in it. "Fiscal conservatives" who don't see themselves in the rest of the picture would be right to feel disenfranchised.

Thanks for actually providing details on what was banned. A lot of those are fairly reasonable topics. The 'Watch reddit die' sub recently posted screenshots of gay subreddits banning conservative gays explicitly because they were conservative.

Plenty of alternatives, none that can scale, financially or otherwise.