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Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

They even censored

https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/39ddnb/if_you_dont_...

"If you don't believe in freedom of speech for those you loathe, you don't believe in freedom of speech." (1600 points and gone from http://reddit.com/r/bestof)

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It wasn't even removed by Reddit. It was removed by subreddit mods who essentially have full control of a sub. Anyone can create a sub and enforce their own curation or arbitrary rules which is not the same as censorship. From the sub sidebar:

>This is a curated space. >The moderators reserve the right to remove posts, users, and comments at their own discretion.

If I create a subreddit where I ban all posts start with A, is that censorship, or is that freedom for me to run and build my online space as I wish?

How do you see who it was removed by?

Reddit admin staff don't touch any posts in subreddits unless it is something against the site rules like doxxing,personal info or child porn.

Some subs leave a flair or a moderator message on removed submission, if not you can modmail them and ask.

What is a shadow ban like on Reddit?

User keeps seeing their comments, but other users cannot see their posts or their user page. Only Admins can shadowban. Mods can use a tool called automoderator to remove posts by certain users but only in their subreddit.

Minor correction: Posts of shadow banned users are visible, but only after a mod of that subreddit manually approves each one. Basically everything they post is flagged as spam.

That explains a lot. I have a few users whose submissions to my sub are always flagged as spam even though they are fine. They must be shadowbanned.

Interestingly, one of them submits awful content. It's not spam but he is absolutely terrible. I wonder if they shadowban because the algo's figured out you suck.

You can check by trying to visit their user page. If it 404s, they're shadowbanned. The shadowbanning system is terrible. It's not transparent, it just randomly censors people, some of whom happen to be spam, does not notify the people involved and offers no recourse to those who have been shadowbanned. I was shadowbanned a few years ago, I spent about 3 months spamming different reddit contacts, then one day noticed I was unshadowbanned.

To add to this, you can also be automatically shadowbanned by spam filters which, at times, can be quite aggressive. I was once shadowbanned for "getting caught up with a spammy IP address" according to a mod.

That happened to some guy and he kept using reddit as normal for three years until he found out. Took it pretty well. His history is painful to look at. Just talking to himself, nobody ever responds or upvotes him.

Was in /r/TIFU recently, too lazy to get the link.

I saw that too. That's what made me check if I was shadowbanned. I'm not nearly as active as he was, but it made me realize I wasn't always just late to the discussion or something.

Used to; that's what's changing.

No, that part is not changing. What is changing is more rules getting added. They still don't remove anything that doesn't violate the rules.

The only new rule is no harassment.

Adding more rules counts as a change.

He said that they don't touch posts unless they violate the rules. You said that is changing. No, that is not changing. They still don't touch anything unless it violates the rules.

I thought they'd added the harassment stuff as a site rule though, presumably that's how they justify pulling subreddits? So admins could now be pulling posts on that basis?

Yes, theoretically they could. And banning users.

If they were abusing that, we'd know about it. There would be a shitstorm just like this. There has not been.

I reported a user harassing me all over reddit, stalking me everywhere I went for weeks. They did not even ban him. Anecdotal but the bar seems to be pretty high.

As a reply to jfuhrman's comment, Reddit has recently updated their rules to include "Keep Everyone Safe: You agree to not intentionally jeopardize the health and safety of others or yourself." (https://www.reddit.com/help/useragreement#section_reddit_rul...)

So, many of the deleted posts could have been deleted by the admins, in theory.

If I create a subreddit where I ban all posts start with A, is that censorship, or is that freedom for me to run and build my online space as I wish?

It's very much both. Where did you get the impression they're mutually exclusive? The "censorship" word is often only vocalized such when popular opinion objects to it, doesn't make it not censorship.

It's like how Bruce Schneier says that facebook's business model is surveillance. It's a descriptor advertisers and their platforms work hard not to be associated with, that doesn't make it not-surveillance.

In what sense is it ironic? Reddit is a private corporation unaffiliated with the United States Government.

I was wrong, it's not ironic at all. Censoring a post criticizing censorship is perfectly consistent.

Though not entirely consistent with their statement that "we do protect the right of people to express their views".

You will doubtless learn, in your travels, that not every corporation will die on the hill staying true to the maximal interpretation of a throwaway sentence posted on their free service.

That statement was posted 10 hours ago in their official announcement of these bans.

Would remaining true to their statement for one day really have killed them on the hill?

Censorship need not involve a government entity. Censorship is not equivalent to violating the First Amendment.

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