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Comment by justaman | Hacker News Reader

I'm generally against the idea of banning subreddits because they just move elsewhere. However, if this is going to be the official stance of Reddit admins, I encourage them to take a look at /r/sino and a few other communities that regularly violate the rules.

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Kicking them off is advantageous for Reddit because they no longer have to deal with the dramas.

True, but they also sacrifice eyeballs and revenue.

They disabled advertising displayed on those subreddits.

It may be shocking, but sometimes companies try to make decisions that benefit them in the long run. Even advertising companies! It makes sense that a toxic environment will turn off people in the long run, and most well intentioned people (ie the majority of Reddit, Google, or FB employees) want to run a platform that adds value and is not a cesspool.

The realities of staying in business sometimes override that. I don’t think we should consider it a default.

>It makes sense that a toxic environment will turn off people in the long run, and most well intentioned people (ie the majority of Reddit, Google, or FB employees) want to run a platform that adds value and is not a cesspool.

I don't think this is supported by the evidence.

The evidence: the current state of Twitter, Facebook, etc. None of them have the necessary level of moderation and until they do, they will continue to be cesspools.

There is not enough people in the world to moderate social media.

Then it shouldn't exist in this form. Either create a social network structured in such a way that it can be moderated (not my job to figure how) or make them illegal.

I realize I probably didn't make this clear, I don't want to ban user-generated content from the internet, merely that you need to show some proactive moderation and that there needs to be meaningful consequences for inaction. Hate speech is not the same as free speech and these are private services that should be held to a minimum standard in the same way restaurants have to pass a health inspection.

Which is pretty much the reason that my use of Twitter and Reddit is pared down to super specific niches because once you leave your bubble and go to #general it’s an absolute dumpster fire.

If they could actually rein that shit in I would use it more. Just having the tools to filter that stuff out of my feed would honestly be enough. TikTok is pretty much where I go for discovery now because it learned really quickly to not show me any political content.

I don't think it's clear those communities are cesspools, while agreeing there are toxic waste dumps in each of them. I also think it's hard for an outsider to look at these giants and generalize our opinions to evaluate their internal priorities.

> "Even advertising companies!"

Many national brands have been steadily advertising on Fox News throughout the current administration, contradicting your thesis.

It's hard to predict if continued advertising will hurt them. Building a toxic community, if you're trying to build something that will last, is going to hurt a company.

Exactly. When a group move out of Reddit, it's no longer their problem. They can't be blamed for whatever racist/terrorist stuff is posted on donald.win, as it's not on reddit

>I'm generally against the idea of banning subreddits because they just move elsewhere.

The alternative platforms tend to die off, though. Like Voat.

Some do, others stick around. Like Gab, Parler and others.

We'll see. Parler (two years old) in particular is especially young. I'm not sure if Gab (four years old) has the funding to survive another few years. Voat lasted six solid years before running out of cash, so that's going to be my approximate benchmark.

Parler might outlast both if politicians keep moving to that platform. In that case, I might be wrong. TheDonald.win is way too focused, though.

4chan has managed to hang on despite everything. Although many of the spinoff chans have collapsed.

Parler in it's current form probably won't survive the next spree shooter or whatever it causes. It's way too traditional in it's setup as a "normal" US company. The only sites that survive these kinds of things need to be decentralized and find hosting and cloud services from non-traditional sources.

Well Reddit is partly funded by Chinese so keeping r/Sino is understandable

Reddit will not ban sino because the tencent investors wont let them.

What is wrong with /r/sino?

Have you visited it? It's basically a pro-china circlejerk subreddit.

Deplatforming works. A few people follow to other sites, but most don't. It also becomes harder to attract new cultists if one is shut out of major services.

https://gnet-research.org/2020/05/11/weighing-the-value-and-...

Yes, it is one of the methods used by Russian government to silence the opposition. Though the platforms are usually privately owned, they all 'independently' decide that some content can't be allowed on them.

Same will happen with the US. Sad.

This is not true. Russian government does not dictate FB and YouTube (which it does not own), and they would have to force ISPs to block these sites if they wanted to ban the content. I doubt ISPs would ban them themselves.

Do not be so fast with 'not true' claims. Russia has at least three social networks, each with audience bigger than russian audience of Facebook and Twitter combined. All three remove anti-putin groups, etc.

AFAIK, VK does not yet remove anti-putin groups.

Also, VK, OK, what's the third one?

YouTube is prevalent over all of them regardless.

I found data here: https://russiansearchmarketing.com/10-key-statistics-social-...

the third one is Moi Mir (https://my.mail.ru), an extension of by far the most popular email service in Russia. Mail.ru corporation actually owns all three of them.

VK absolutely does remove anti-putin groups and events. [1]

[1]: https://newsland.com/user/4297807604/content/vkontakte-zablo...

VK is much, much more popular than FB is Russia. It's a Russian company and absolutely forced to censor content on behalf of the govt.

If Deplatforming works, I can't wait for the right to start deplatforming leftists!

Hmm, deplatforming...

Is that what the right calls opening the trapdoor on the gallows?

As has been so often quoted on HN, "The 'Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." I see no reason for things to be different this time.

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