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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much had to happen. To say that the Victoria situation was mishandled is a severe understatement. I wonder what will happen with communities like FPH and others (that have since moved to Voat). Will reddit lessen their censorship efforts?

Time will tell. IMO, the problem at hand is that reddit is still trying to make advertisers their bread and butter. And advertisers will never be overly attracted to censorship-free spaces.

Even though I may not agree with her aggressively politically-correct agenda (nor does most of reddit), I think it may have been a smart move from a business dev. perspective.

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> Will reddit lessen their censorship efforts?

I doubt it. Garbage like FPH should have been dealt with much sooner. The reason there was a backlash about that at all, imo, is because they let it drag out too long. Reddit was the friend-parent for so long that when it finally came time to enforce some discipline, it came as a shock and felt like a betrayal.

True, although it's important to note that there are still many communities that are much worse than FPH on reddit.

This is why it got so messy when they got rid of FPH. They did a MISERABLE job of defining the line on what is and is not appropriate. If you're going to censor, it better be a well-defined line.

The issue is that these communities aren't frequently in the top of /r/all and causing outside issues. FPH just got too big and too obnoxious to ignore.

Where is the limit? Coontown, does that get banned? Sexwithdogs? Incest? SRS? They seemed to hide behind the vail of harassment and not peak behind the curtain of what reddit really is. Reddits problem is they said anything goes, and then years later they saw what they created.

> Reddits problem is they said anything goes, and then years later they saw what they created

Isn't that basically what I said?

> Where is the limit? Coontown, does that get banned? Sexwithdogs? Incest? SRS?

I genuinely do not know, but they need to find that limit, they need to be transparent about how they came to that decision, and they need to be consistent and fair about applying it to subreddits.

Like I said above, they tolerated it for too long, and then swung the hammer down hard. If you don't house train your dog for three years, and then start screaming at it for peeing on the rug, the dog isn't going to react well.

Banning a number of subreddits that you can count with the fingers on one hand, and zero users, is swinging the hammer down hard? What would be a light touch, then?

FWIW tons of users have been shadowbanned for relatively light infringements (posting about TPP on /r/news, posting negative news items about Pao on various subreddits) since the 5 sub-reddits were shut down.

The limit is when the hate speech goes beyond online posts and starts encouraging harassment in real life. Simple as that. FPH crossed that line.

> Where is the limit? Coontown, does that get banned? Sexwithdogs? Incest? SRS?

Cynically? When they start making /r/all.

My own personal opinion is that FPH was an embarrassment to reddit because it had gained enough traction that it was visible outside of its own little bubble, so they nuked it and took a few other inconsequential subs with it to provide plausible cover that they weren't just straight up censoring FPH for the sake of the brand image.

Erm, why should there be any "discipline" at all?

Discussion sites (HN included) exist solely due to their users' laziness for using and/or creating better Free decentralized solutions and ensuing network effects. In exchange for this ease of use, the site inserts an epsilon of advertising and censorship. This is the extent of their value proposition.

Eventually business/legal skinjobs take over, mistake the community for an owned golden goose, and ramp up the amount of advertising/censorship. The illusion of openness is shattered. The users revolt and move to the next green pasture.

> Erm, why should there be any "discipline" at all?

Because communities need moderators. A free for all is anarchy; enough shitbags will ruin any particular community. I've moderated a small forum, and that was a headache when I just had two trolls to deal with, and I still failed at it - people left because of those two people, enough of them that the forum is basically dead now.

On a more cynical/business perspective, if enough users leave and if enough negative press is printed, your business loses money.

Sure, but the premise of Reddit is that mods can moderate as they see fit. Admins hadn't really been involved in shaping the content as much as keeping things running and legal.

You're talking as if Reddit is doing them a favor by providing them a platform. With your idea of "discipline", Reddit would never become the giant that it is today.

This ignores that advertisement is a good amount of revenue for Reddit (it took is over $8M last year from advertising)[1]. In any case, there definitely needs to exist a balance, and the announcement on Reddit makes no pretense that they'll allow any community like FPH to come back or exist going forward. Even if they didn't need to rely on advertisement, it's better for the community overall to have communities that are hurtful go somewhere else. In my opinion, if FPH etc. are fine at Voat, stay there.

1: http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/reddit-charity/

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