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Comment by afuchs | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

> 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)

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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