Comment by AlecSchueler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlecSchueler | Hacker News Reader

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I've been on Reddit since 2008 myself and was an avid user of forums etc for years before that.

When I started on Reddit there was already an element of things having changed, a move away from niche technology discussion towards lowest common denominator stuff and discussion by meme.

In general this was fine as you could just move to smaller subreddits, and the bigger pages had fun cultures that permeated the others and gave it all a sense of unity and shared interest even when you were in your bubble.

The difficult change I've seen in the past few years is the rising number of hate and harassment subs, and Reddit tolerating them. If you scroll through the top of /r/BanFemaleHateSubs or /r/AgainstDegenerateSubs you'll see how bad things have become and how unsafe the general environment is.

It's not that discussion has become worse in an Eternal September way, it's that discussion has become openly threatening, with innocent women having their pictures and social media links shared for strangers to discuss rape and murder fantasy, and this gets 10s of 1000s of subscribers and Reddit routinely ignores reports about it.

> The difficult change I've seen in the past few years is the rising number of hate and harassment subs, and Reddit tolerating them. If you scroll through the top of /r/BanFemaleHateSubs or /r/AgainstDegenerateSubs you'll see how bad things have become and how unsafe the general environment is.

The r/BanThisandThat subreddits are little more than morality police. Many of those posts will take statements out of context or regard any "cis-het" sexual fantasies as threatening to women.

> It's not that discussion has become worse in an Eternal September way, it's that discussion has become openly threatening, with innocent women having their pictures and social media links shared for strangers to discuss rape and murder fantasy, and this gets 10s of 1000s of subscribers and Reddit routinely ignores reports about it.

Firstly, social media accounts aren't secret. Anyone who publishes to a Twitter or FB account cannot claim a retroactive right to privacy. The other contention I have is that Reddit should not punish a written expression of thought merely because it's unpalatable to a certain section of its userbase. Pandering to a moral minority sets up a precedent for the most loudest performing "victims"-of-the-day to decide what everyone else is allowed to say, hear, or think.

Have you looked at the subs they're talking about? They're sharing collections of zip folders of girls openly advertised as as young as 13, they're stalking women via social media sending descriptions of their potential rape to their family, they're robbing women's houses and sharing their stolen belongings, they're flashing, groping and ejaculating on women in public and filming it for upvotes.

Call it morality police if you want but it's targeted sexual violence against minors and women who don't consent. I guess your morality and mine don't align. If I'm in the "morality minority" on this one then that's very sad and I would encourage yourself and other members of "morality majority" to reflect on how women are treated in your society.

Out of interest, would you mind sharing your Facebook or Instagram profile here, so that someone could share you pictures on a subreddit for rape and murder fantasy about you, linking back to the account? It's only fantasy right, would be a shame of the morality police ruined the fun.

I think the point that GP is making is not that every subreddit that a group of people complain about is nothing to be concerned or worried about; rather, that people who inhabit subs dedicated to banning other subs operate within a moral framework which on the whole is dubious at the edges. For example, clamoring to ban consensual non-consent (CNC, a form of kink) subreddits because they perceive it as "normalizing" certain behaviors, or banning content of fictional characters, or banning support groups where various "degenerate" people frequent. These are edge cases which do not fit into the generalization of "jailbait"/"stealthing"/"creepshot" subreddits, which are non-consensual by nature. It's disingenuous to suppose that a subreddit for roleplaying BDSM/risque fantasies between members falls under the same moral realm of regulation as subreddits that post links to childrens' social media accounts to gather risque photos.

I'm all for illegal and non-consensual content subreddits to be banned. That's not all the mentioned "Ban This and That" subs are asking for, so I won't accept their moral opinions beyond the issues of non-consenting and illegal materials. They are prescribing a sexual morality, one which I, and I think many reasonable people, disagree with or at least have qualms with. If you don't believe me, r/BFHS seems to be a hotspot for anti-kink and anti-porn activists who suggest that women with kinks need to "heal"[0]. If that's not moralizing, I'm not sure what is.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/BanFemaleHateSubs/comments/unaa88/c...

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from this. You're giving me an example of a community that has "moralising" elements. I have no doubt that there are people there against pornography and who are willing to openly say they're uncomfortable with certain kinks. I know there are also people in the community who are not like that.

The function of the community is to draw attention to outright abuse that is happening on Reddit in the open. That is a broad mission and will definitely attract a range of people. Some may be moralists or however you want to paint them. Does that mean we should turn away from them or what do you suggest?

Maybe you could join the effort and be a voice of the reason you believe in and speak out against what you perceive as unhealthy "kink shaming" and ensure the topic stays on hand against things that are definitely not "edge cases" (which from my experience is the majority of what's posted).

No doubt it's imperfect "at the edges" but what isn't? It seems dangerous to draw attention away from _the huge issue in the middle_.

If the purpose of the sub is to get other users to visit these 'bad' sub aren't they doing harm be acting as a place to discover these types of subs

The purpose is to have the people who can stomach it visit in order to report them, in the hope they'll be taken down. It raises awareness and creates a conversation about the issue for people who can't visit

Some actors will use it as advertising space but I don't think the blame for that should be put onto the shoulders of those fighting it.

Do you have an idea of how this issue could be avoided without turning a blind eye?

Those subreddits are the only ones doing anything. Reddit is driven by user participation, including users objecting to and reporting behavior.

Like how r/tumblrinaction got banned recently, the members of the sub didn't report themselves for racism and transphobia.

Reddit always had an element of \dchan in it ever since user subs were created. Coontown (and the preceding slur subreddit), FPH etc.

In my view this is just a symptom of the wider populace gaining access to internet forums and the cultural shift mass internet usage brought. As in, there have always been darker corners of the internet, just that the people who frequented them had to have some level of nerdiness/geekiness and {nerds}∩{violent racists} is smaller than {whole population}∩{violent racists}.

There always having been elements of racism and violent misogyny doesn't preclude there being either a quantitative or qualitative shift in how much Reddit as a whole is steered by such ideas.

Back in 2010 there would be discussions about places like /r/jailbait, about the tradeoffs between free speech and public safety etc. Now there are subreddits openly sharing child pornography with links to the social media accounts of the children and their families, and Reddit auto responds that these things don't violate their usage policies when reported.

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