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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

Since there's no objective definition of "hate content", this is akin to them patting themselves on the back for outright censorship based on their own arbitrary definitions.

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They clearly outline their definition of "hate content" in their post about it. [0] They go over the methodology and dig a bit into the results. It looks like a good start.

[0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/idclo1/unde...

>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.

They link to their full content policy in the first paragraph: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy

Ignoring the fact that a private entity should be able to censor as they see fit on their own platform, Reddit is a business, it's not a charity. 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, then Reddit absolutely should be patting themselves on the back for mitigating risk by removing those problematic users. It's a sound business decision.

>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?

Nearly every woman I know who uses reddit doesn't announce their gender. Plenty of my chosen family won't touch it with a fifty-foot pole simply because they're way too likely to run into something that genuinely makes the rest of their day harder.

And, anecdotal as it may be, I think it's interesting to mention these aren't softies either... the thing they all share in common is that they work too long and too hard making ends meet to willfully spend time browsing a site that can go from fun to making them feel very unsafe in the blink of an eye. Sure you can "just get over it" when you read something nasty online. But if you've lived your life in relative fear, it takes a ton of energy to do so.

> Are advertisers leaving reddit?

I can't speak to if they are leaving Reddit, but they are absolutely leaving other social media platforms such as Facebook as well as traditional media platforms for exactly this reason.

> Are people leaving reddit to a "nicer" platform?

I don't have this data at scale. Anecdata I have suggests that most people I know have been turned off by the sheer level of vitrol which appears on Reddit these days.

> What type of legal liabilities is reddit being subject to?

Regulatory risk in the form of being made responsible for user submitted content which they really don't want to be. If even a subset of hateful users go on to commit violence in the real world and it turns out that they fermented their ideology on Reddit and Reddit did nothing, it could renew calls by lawmakers to make site operators responsible for user submitted content. Such a regulatory change could potentially take down the entire business.

There is also a smaller, related business continuity risk from Reddit's providers. Look at what happened to 8chan. In response to 8chan not regulating hate speech, CloudFlare terminated their service and no US provider would touch them with a 10 foot pole. it took them 3 months and a total rebrand to get back up. While Reddit is a much larger entity, they are not immune to this risk.

Booting these users gives them plausible deniability at little cost and also allows them to make a stronger case to lawmakers if questioned.

Well I guess they will find ways of expanding the definition of including turning innocent gestures, images, emojis, etc into 'dog whistling' signals which is only picked up by the hysterical extremes on both sides.

Again, how does one draw the line on 'hate speech' or 'hate content'?

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.

That doesn't follow. There being no objective definition for a metric does not imply that all subjective definitions are useless metrics.

> Since there's no objective definition of "hate content", this is akin to them patting themselves on the back for outright censorship based on their own arbitrary definitions.

There's no objective definition of "tall", and yet it's still a useful adjective.

Even if that's what they do, so what? It is their website. They can do what that want with it. If you don't like it, don't use it. You are free to say and believe what you want, but that doesn't mean you can do it on my website.

The_Donald promoted the Charlottesville hate rally, people with white shirts and torches.

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!

A small minority in both broke into violence (someone was murdered at Charlottesville).

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