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Comment by site-packages1 | Hacker News Reader

I have seen it happen through complaints reaching the all subreddit. However it only seemed to happen to subreddits that were peddling deep hatred against outgroups like people of color, overweight people, or were just vile. Your comment makes it seem like any given subreddit is in danger of quarantining, but anecdotally that doesn't seem to be the case. However, I have an open mind: would you give me an example of a subreddit that was otherwise innocuous yet got quarantined?

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Though technically it wasn't banned, r/star_trek recently got locked from having new posts, and only just the other day became unlocked because the mod agreed to not allow discussion related to r/startrek.

Wait, huh???

r/startrek, without the underscore, is the official Star Trek community. r/star_trek is an alternative community created because r/startrek is very hostile to anyone who doesn't just slobber over anything Star Trek.

So people would join the alternative community and bring up why they got banned on the official one, or how people were being ridiculous in general on the official one.

But I don't buy that there was any meaningful amount of brigading that was happening. I think the official community, being its pious self, didn't like that people were exposing the mods for being arbitrary and condescending, or that anyone was exposing the likely possibility that they were highly controlled by ViacomCBS.

When it got locked, for all intents and purposes it was banned, if not temporarily.

/r/chapotraphouse wasn't any worse then say /r/conservative or /r/politics, but it got banned.

/r/DarkNetMarkets. Just for discussing DNMs, AFAIK.

/r/shoplifting

/r/stealing

/r/beertrade: for trading beers

/r/gundeals for a bit. Several other gun buying subs are still banned.

/r/fakeid

/r/scotchswap: for trading Scotches

/r/cigarmarket

There's more, too.

IMO Chapo was banned as a misguided attempt at balance for banning /r/The_Donald, though it's not like they weren't an unruly bunch. Calls for violence weren't exactly unheard of there, ironic or not.

The rest of those are just banning discussions of illegal activity. Seems like a reasonable policy to me.

Trading beer and scotch isn't illegal, is it though? Neither is buying guns, or visiting/discussing dark net markets.

And it's not like there aren't thousands of other subs that discuss illegal activity. They haven't banned all the drug subs, or the hacking subs, etc. Pretty much any illegal activity you can still find subs for it. /r/streetracing, /r/piracy, etc.

> IMO Chapo was banned as an attempt at balance for the misguided banning of /r/The_Donald

FTFY

Nah. If anything that subreddit was kept around for way too long in a misguided attempt to not appear biased.

/r/chapotraphouse was calling for death on people on the reg with the full support of their moderators. That's why they got banned.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/9m30os/rc...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/bmtdqb/ch...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/c66x0w/1_...

They cracked down on the baseball thing way before they got banned though; after they got quarantined. Yeah, they were saying killing slaveowners is good, but who doesn't think that? It's what the American Civil War was. It's self-defense, and no worse then everyone on reddit that is cheering for Ukraine to win the war against Russia (by killing Russian soldiers) or all the people that said what Kyle Rittenhouse did was good, or countless other calls for violence that occur on all types of subreddits.

This defense falls apart once you remember that this is a pro-communist subreddit that believes 'wage slavery' is a thing. And besides, this is hardly the only instance where content that breaks the sitewide rules was left up by the mods even after being reported.

>They cracked down on the baseball thing way before they got banned though; after they got quarantined.

And the_donald literally disallowed submissions for months before being banned. When reddit has a sub in their sights, they will find a reason.

/r/bigchungus (pictures of fat Bugs Bunny? wha?)

/r/mgtow

2balkan4u was nothing but making fun of the ingroup for the atrocities and other bullshit their contries were pulling

r/watchpeopledie, despite the horrible name it is a very "educational" sub that helped me become painfully aware of my mortality and in many cases helped me become much more aware of my surroundings when I cross the streets, when I'm around elevators and big machinery and so on.

the most recently banned subreddit to my knowledge was about disagreement with public policy for covid lockdowns. the ability to protest public policy is essential to a functioning democracy.

innocuous to thee but not to meee

Instead of being glib, take the challenge: name a subreddit that got quarantined that you think shouldn't have been.

/r/2balkan4you (banned, not even quarantined)

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