Hacker News Reader

Reddit has replaced RSS for me. HN is nice but hyper-curated and very specialized; though I prefer the HN voting system and algorithms over reddit's.

Reddit also has a massive advantage when it comes to companies/games/etc communicating with their fan-communities. It's an excellent medium for it as the type of vote-curation that happens there is great to sort topics of importance and the threaded comments are far better than what you would find on bulletin boards.

Overall, reddit has had a fantastic impact on the internet when it comes to communication, IMO. I hope that sticks.

> On one hand I'm against censorship,

I feel like censorship isn't the right word for this but I can't think of a better one.

It's moderation.

"Censorship" implies suppressing free speech, which this is not. It's simply removing undesirable content from a privately-owned website.

This is absolutely censorship. Censorship doesn't have to be done by governments (this seems to be a weird American blind spot).

Moderation doesn't seem right either, though: the people who wanted to be part of those (toxic, terrible) communities had chosen to go there, and the only times they popped up in other communities was people linking to them as a sign of how terrible the people there are (counterproductive as a strategy).

Moderation implies curating an intermingling of user-generated comments so as to provide a super experience for the people reading those comments. There was no intermingling here.

I think a large part of the anger is that people on Reddit tend to recognize it's a patchwork of communities, each with distinct borders you can't cross accidentally, and they like it that way. In contrast, this decision is motivated by a desire to expand Reddit's appeal to new users and as an advertising platform, both of which rely on it having a good reputation to the outside world.

Isn't it both? I don't see how moderation (in the form of removing/editing content) isn't censorship.

Let me clear it up for you:

Say you post an article about the current state of socioeconomic affairs in the EU in /r/askscience. Your submission will be deleted, because /r/askscience's subject is not to host such articles. There is room elsewhere in Reddit for such an article.

This is an example of moderation.

...and censorship. They aren't mutually exclusive terms.

Get ready for someone to tell you that the legal definition of "censorship" is only if the government does it.

You were 13 minutes ahead of me but I didn't reload the page so I just said it anyway. :)

I think he was implying that it doesn't.

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

Because it's not the government doing it I'd say.

But censorship isn't limited to governments.

People have been saying this since the forum age (at least), but privately-owned websites have become the new public spaces.

Keeping bad content off your own site is just good old-fashioned moderation.

Most forums will delete stuff like this - I assume HN would too, and no one bats an eye.

Censorship is when the content has to be pre-approved by an authority in order to be published at all. If content is removed after it has been published (because it violates some agreements / ethics), that's moderation or "legal-stuff".

Of course, moderation can be misused to a point where it's almost effectively cencorship. But IMHO, the order matters here.

It's censorship, in the context of reddit they have appointed officers who censor objectionable speech.

This precisely fits the common definition of censorship (not the legal one)

Curated speech.

Deleted comment

https://scott.arciszewski.me/blog/2014/08/free-speech-zones

http://xkcd.com/1357/

Yeah, I know. Free speech zones is what the blog post was in response to.

I don't think there is one. I'm pretty sure censorship has a pretty specific connotation, but it's the only term in the ballpark of what is being accused.

Yep. I would post from time to time to point out incorrect "facts" they posted. It doesn't matter how well researched and reasoned your argument is. If you aren't towing the line, you are moderated and banned. They auto moderate and message any user who is voted down by the self-proclaimed shitlords.

It is a pretty disgusting place.

Just like the great Digg v3 Migration to Reddit happened years ago... its happening again from Reddit to Voat.

If the people leaving are the obnoxious hate monger, bandwagoners, and other general trolls that's fine with me.

If Reddit wants to get some of the amazingly creepy stuff under control, I'm all for it.

>If Reddit wants to get some of the amazingly creepy stuff under control, I'm all for it.

But they're not actually doing that, because they're leaving plenty of subreddits that are arguably much worse.

Agreed.

Because they've taken so little action (and because of the way the admins were defending it in the announcement thread) instead of a real step forward this looks like someone pushed them forward 2mm and they're trying to claim victory.

But if some of the worst elements of the site want to take this as an opportunity to abandon the site, I'll feel better about it.

I think you mean "I hope it will happen", because there is no evidence that it is actually happening.

I had never heard of voat.co until just now, but their site appears to be down, which is some evidence that they probably are receiving a ton of traffic from somewhere.

Edit: For the record, I don't think voat.co will become more popular than reddit in the way reddit became more popular than digg. The subreddit system is much more resilient than digg's system was. As others have said, I barely noticed that this was occurring.

I'm betting that a day/week/month from now, Reddit still lives on. Subreddits, which Digg did not have, would make Reddit resilient to such 'migrations'.

If the problem is "bullying", there's plenty of subreddits that exist solely to bully other subreddits. The administration are showing bias and bending around their own rules, but that's not really surprising for a site that shadowbans its users.

>/r/FatPeopleHate was engaging in both.

Blatant lies such as this do not help your side of the argument.

FPH was not engaging in harassment or bullying whatsoever, any instances of this were entirely attempts at false flagging. FPH is not about hate, it is not discriminatory, it is not prejudice, and it most certainly didn't violate any of reddits rules.

What was it about then?

Wikipedia has a stated goal, a public management team engaged in discussion and debate with their users, and something resembling accountability. Reddit has the Silicon Valley's most notorious gender-baiting troll as it's head, virtually zero interactions between the corporate side and the unpaid community managers, and no clear rules on what it does and doesn't allow.

Honestly, the writing should have been obviously on the wall when r/jailbait was banned. I think they could have made up reasonings that would have placated the userbase, but they failed to, and they handled the resulting outrage very poorly. I was sorta surprised that wasn't reddit's 'digg moment', but I thought that the HDCP controversy was Digg's, so maybe I'm just ahead of the wave.

> Reddit has the Silicon Valley's most notorious gender-baiting troll as it's head…

What does "gender-baiting troll" mean?

It means that GW is a white male gamer (this is not supposition, hi GW!) that disagreed with Pao's discrimination lawsuit.

What does being white or a gamer have to do with this?

> What does being white or a gamer have to do with this?

Absolutely nothing, in reality. In terms of Randi Harper though, she is a misandrist using a convenient boogeyman to push her own agenda.

Internet bullying? What? Just don't visit places like r/fatpeoplehate if you are fat. Just turn it off.

You don't have to visit to get bullied. They were literally posting people's Facebook pages, images posted in other subs, and original photos they took themselves.

There are numerous incidents of harassment against other users on Reddit, and even off of Reddit. The admins said themselves they received numerous complaints.

The only reason I have my doubts is the admins are banning several knock-off subreddits as "ban evasion". Essentially the idea of "fatpeoplehate" is banned from reddit, not the behavior of users or the moderators, which is contrary to the claims of the admins.

>The admins said themselves they received numerous complaints.

Come on lol everyone knows that isn't true.

You can turn off messages + friend requests and make your entire FB page private. You can also change the URL. It takes all of 30 seconds.

Are you seriously trying to blame the victims of the bullying and suggest they disconnect from the internet..? I literally cannot comprehend where you're coming from.

This isn't real life. It's access via a screen. In real life, my argument wouldn't stand. On the internet, you are given tools to weather the storm. Shitty people will always exist. Everyone else now has to suffer as casualties of the wide net cast in hopes of eliminating a vitriolic idiots because of a few victims.

Internet hate can often turn into real life hate. Witness: SWATing, emails to employers, ordering pizzas as a "joke".

Not to mention, the number of death threats and threats of sexual violence is climbing at an alarming rate, especially for women and PoC.

I have no idea why people think it's socially acceptable to say things on the internet to people that you wouldn't say to them IRL in front of a police officer.

> Internet hate can often turn into real life hate

> I have no idea why people think it's socially acceptable to say things on the internet to people that you wouldn't say to them IRL in front of a police officer.

Whoa. Incredibly hypocritical of you to lecture others on hate, harassment and tone policing. You have routinely said awful things online and harassed people.

- You tell people to "set themselves on fire", a favorite phrase of yours used to those that disagree with you (http://s2b20blog.mukyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/8-579... & https://twitter.com/search?q=%22set%20yourself%20on%20fire%2...)

- You harassed a data scientist, Chris von Csefalvay, and set your followers on him to the point he quit Twitter after he conducted some research that didn't suit your narrative. (http://s2b20blog.mukyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.jp... via http://s2b20blog.mukyou.com/the-hidden-face-of-hypocrisy-ran...)

- You wrote a non-review on Amazon to bully an author you disagreed with: (http://www.stopthegrbullies.com/2015/06/01/randi-harpers-bul... & http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/06/03/renowned-author-c...)

... just the tip of the iceberg. Now you are posting on HN and masquerading as an online anti-harassment activist. Unreal.

She isn't harassing anyone. When a woman suggests something horribly violent "set yourself on fire" its cute and funny and empowering. Its only threatening and harassment if the source is male.

Thanks for being a voice of reason. Providing actual facts and evidence can quickly invite the usual terms of being either racist, sexist, misogynistic or whatever-phobic.

It is real life, and your argument holds no water.

Yeah, no. Why should they have to go into hiding because you are an asshole? I am perfectly fine with that being shut down.

You can't deny that they're engaging in bullying. They are literally posting pictures of the reddit mods and making fun of them. That's bullying.

A lot of fit people don't participate or enjoy FPH either. I couldn't imagine one of my college professors asking the fat kids to leave when another student starts bullying them.

If you pulled this kind of behavior on just about any college campus you would be asked to leave, this just shows the level of immaturity these people have.