Reddit Admins: Covid denialism and policy clarifications | Hacker News Reader

Reddit Admins: Covid denialism and policy clarifications

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15 pointstoomuchtodo15 comments

I'm still surprised the power mods who got together and decided to make their subreddits private in protest haven't been removed. They have way too much power and it is a terrible precedent to establish. Reddit Admins say they banned NoNewNormal because of brigading, but I don't believe that for one second.

Brigading happens all the time on reddit but it is only selectively enforced. Even so, why should an entire community of 100,000+ subscribers get banned because a few dozen people decided to brigade? Just ban the brigading individuals. But I think most people realize it's a sham justification.

God forbid anyone discusses anything other than the favored ‘vaccines are the magical solution’ partyline.

It’s just the new kind of science, no dissenting voices allowed.

Science is the result of the scientific method.

Whether you agree with science is up to you, and you can voice your opinion on it because in US we have the bill of rights ( thank you, founding fathers... )

But voicing an opinion and labeling it science, without using the scientific method, that's ignorance.

So the old kind of science is a bunch of antivax rumours unbacked by anything?

People with certain medical conditions that leave their immune systems compromised risk death if they get vaccinated. There exist groups of people that cannot be vaccinated reasonably. Should they be completely shut out of society, locked down at home for the rest of their lives?

I'm a fully vaccinated person in support of all adults being vaccinated, and at the same time, I believe that individuals should make that decision for themselves, or their children, with the best guidance they can get from their doctors. It's not up to the government, reddit, or the Twitter mob to decide. It's not a black and white issue, and you're a vicious ideologue if you believe otherwise. It should be a private decision, and it is patently absurd that vaccine proofs are being touted as the new normal.

Thanks for the character assassination! So supporting public health makes you 'vicious' now.

In other news, folks are vicious ideologues if the oppose murder (Individuals should make the decision for themselves!)

No, the old kind of science is scientists disagreeing and ultimately, after putting all ideas out in the open and putting them to the test, people choosing the best ideas they see fit for themselves. That doesn’t involve silencing controversial ideas.

I wonder what Aaron would have said? Would have have also changed his beliefs over time?

There's no way to know for sure, but he was a really principled man. I will say that Reddit isn't just a social media service anymore. It's actually far more powerful than that. I think that powerful individuals and institutions have realized that controlling the presentation of information is Reddit's true value proposition. Just look at r/all or r/popular and you can see that the kind of content that gets featured there is heavily manipulated.

> Just look at r/all or r/popular and you can see that the kind of content that gets featured there is heavily manipulated.

Can you provide an example that showcases the heavy manipulation you claimed?

I suggest you look for yourself and make mental notes of the user names that you see. Reddit enhancement suite is perfect for this. RES will display a cumulative vote count next to the username, If you upvote or downvote everything on the front page for a short period of time you will quickly start to see a handful of usernames routinely at the top. u/DaFunkJunkie, u/kevinowdziej, u/imagepoem, u/relevantlife, and many more. You'll also notice these people are also mods with multi-million karma scores.

If you have an open mind, also look for trends. I notice that r/WhitePeopleTwitter, r/BlackPeopleTwitter, r/PoliticalHumor, r/LateStageCapitalism, and r/facepalm are essentially mirrors of the same kind of 'screen shots of tweets' content that has a constant progressive/leftist message. And often, literally, just cross-posting the same screenshot over the course of a few hours. DaFunkJunkie is notorious for this.

tl;dr: they banned /r/NoNewNormal, quarantined a bunch of other subreddits, and from now on, anything they consider to be COVID misinformation/disinformation will be treated as "content that encourages physical harm" and/or "impersonation".

Participation thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/pfyqqn/covi...

Records request from the Jan 6th Select Committee in the US House to Reddit: https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.hous...

Beware: The admin ( /u/spez) has a history of editing comments in a similar Reddit drama situation ( https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev... ).

Good on them for finally doing the right thing, even if reluctantly

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