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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Put another way: In the US at least, r/jailbait didn't actually break any laws (well, maybe some individual posts did, but the whole idea of that subreddit was essentially to ogle underage women/children but in a way that was not explicitly illegal). So with something like this law all social media sites would be forced to host the equivalent of r/jailbait.

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I don't see that as a good counter example. That sort of content should be illegal anyway.

That's exactly what makes it a great example. If we accept the premise that /r/jailbait was not illegal (but "merely" reprehensible), then under this new law, Reddit would have been breaking the law when they decided to ban the subreddit.

A great example maybe to demonstrate inability of current criminal code and judicial systems,

but not a good example to convince someone that privatized censorship is akchally a good thing.

Its because real life is not black and white. Its shades of gray mostly.

And while its ease to spot and codify extreme cases on both sides, its impossible for a law to clearly codify a clear line where good turns to bad.

The 'original' argument for this type of conversation is: what makes a nude picture an art piece, what makes it porn. If we were given 100 photos we would probably agree in most cases whats art and whats porn, but try to write rules for distinguishing them.

It should, but until legislators act, it's legal. That's the issue will the law.

The Constitution would need to amended.

Clothed pictures of minors should be illegal?

Why should it be illegal?

Actually, r/jailbait was removed as a reaction to the FOSTA laws which explicitly carve out an exception to section 230 for content that could be considered related to sex trafficking, so in this sense it actually did create a new legal risk compared to other non-sex related subs.

Yes, as afuchs said, FOSTA wasn't passed to 2018, and that forced things like craigslist personals to close. r/jailbait was closed many years earlier in response to an onslaught of negative media attention.

I thought that subreddit was banned because of the negative media attention that it received. Wasn't that years before SESTA and FOSTA were passed?

Wikipedia says 2011. So yes.

Yes, the timing matched with the negative media attention, similar to the removals of a few Trump subreddits recently.

This has already been weaponized by subs like /r/AgainstHateSubs and other vigilante-like subs. Their tactics usually involve posting in those subreddits from sockpuppet accounts, using hateful or threatening messages. The few times the targeted subs mods aren't on the ball, they mass report the post for hate speech to try and get the sub banned, or the mods banned then later request the subreddit for themselves, something of a trophy I guess. On rare instances, they reach out to their freelance journalist friends to write a hite piece.

> Their tactics usually involve posting in those subreddits from sockpuppet accounts, using hateful or threatening messages.

Any evidence for this?

Do you need any evidence for this? Shouldn't this be handled in the same way you would patch a security hole even if you had no evidence it was being exploited?

I.e. shouldn't Reddit let a community exist, even if some users post content against the rules, as long as the moderators are putting a reasonable, good faith effort to ban such users?

(I don't know if what notadev said is true, or if Reddit bans communities just because users are posting bad content against the moderators will)

Is this not something that Reddit can show is happening? I guess you could avoid things like browser fingerprinting by using multiple machines as well as a VPN, however, if someone is going to that level of effort -- what's the end game?

If the site admins just want an excuse to get rid of a sub that doesn’t align with their political ideology, it’d be pretty easy to not bother investigating.

Don't those subs tend to produce enough hate on their own without having to have anyone fake it? I have a cousin who is down the QAnon rabbit hole, believes a race war is coming, and will happily make new accounts and post all day long to whatever subs he thinks are on the same page as him. He's been through several facebook accounts in just last year.

I can assure you he isn't an antifa plant.

These subs are one of the main drivers for people like your cousin.

They need each other like a married couple.

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