When you censor the rest of the internet, the "scum" (aka people with non-PC opinions) will concentrate where they can talk without fear of censorship. You can be a "political-normal" on /pol/ but you won't have the politically-correct wind at your back like you do in so many other places.
Massive props to Moot for keeping 4chan alive as a bastion of free speech.
And that's just the neo-Nazis. /r/anarchism got quite nasty too, at one point, and God only knows what end of the spectrum /r/conspiracy are on.
And that's just the open extremist hate groups and subreddits that raid others on Reddit.
Just today I ran into a DailyKos thread from 2010 debating whether or not to ban reference to some blog on grounds that its text was indistinguishable to the already-banned Stormfront.
The internet is not nearly as censored a place once you get away from Facebook and CNN.
What you call "raids" I call links. Hacker News "raids" blogs everyday. Nothing malicious about it. If you're talking about actual, organized raids in the "you know what to do" fashion... well, I never saw that or any evidence for it.
The whole point of free speech is that unpopular groups aren't shut down for having unpopular opinions.
Reddit's administration has made a point of this as much as they possible. But when you break the rules, you break the rules.
Kind of like /r/shitredditsays (a forum exclusively for raiding other subreddits), which has the blessing of the reddit admins because it's PC...
> Reddit's administration has made a point of this as much as they possible.
Then why is this in the Reddit ToS?
You agree not to use any obscene, indecent, or offensive language or to provide to or post on or through the Website any graphics, text, photographs, images, video, audio or other material that is defamatory, abusive, bullying, harassing, racist, hateful, or violent. You agree to refrain from ethnic slurs, religious intolerance, homophobia, and personal attacks when using the Website.
Reddit is many things, but a free speech zone it is not.
I wouldn't quite say they PC... but I don't know what I would call them. I don't think there is really a term that adequately describes using shock tactics, belittling, and bullying to further an otherwise commendable cause. They are "Un-PC about being PC" I suppose.
None of those groups ever "raided" anyone, unless you define it as linking from one subreddit to another. None of them ever encouraged downvoting, or even participation (although you can't expect them to not participate at all).
Some -- or at least one -- of the Reddit admins is a participant of the SRS (Shit Reddit Says) community which is notorious for being #1 for "brigading" other subs and massively downvoting anything and everything they disagree with. They have never even been considered for a ban to my knowledge, even though they sometimes discuss things like killing men.
It's fine for Reddit to make a decision to ban a subreddit because it might garner some bad press. However, it is ironic that Reddit call, or even consider itself a bastion free speech. They have banned other politically incorrect subreddits before (jailbait).
If you look at the rules which offending subreddits supposedly violated, you'll see that they are really just a tool for Reddit admins to selectively ban whomever they want.
"..regularly raided by Stormfront" -- I actually laughed out loud at this. Please, grow up.
You understand that /r/jailbait wasn't banned for being 'politically incorrect', right?
A lot of people saw this coming when jailbait was banned. As abhorrent as it was, they were the tip of the iceberg in the Great Purification of Reddit. Once that door is open, the admins at Reddit HQ have to meet and defend the content of subreddits instead of merely evaluating the legality of their existence. Which is why I'm not surprised /r/nrs was banned this week. There's plenty more subreddits that will be equally difficult to defend in a corporate meeting.