Also, reddit is a private company and so is not obliged to provide a platform for anyone's free speech, that also is a facet of freedom.
Free speech is a principle and people should be free to say whatever they want no matter how disgusting or distasteful to the majority or mainstream. This is the ideal of a free society and people who can't make the distinction between supporting the principle and yet rejecting the advocates of idiocy are implicitly advocating some form of government censorship.
Okay. But reddit isn't "those with power". reddit isn't making it illegal to do it elsewhere.
Nope, but then again, being that place is what made it grow so large in the first place.
As long as you are free to create your own community where you can say whatever you want, there is no need for any other community to listen to you.
And it's certainly understandable that Reddit has no wish to be associated with certain speech, but that comes with troubling implications as well. For example, do they not then appear to support whatever they do not ban if we know that whatever sufficiently offends them gets the ban hammer?
For another example, take Google removing Confederate flags. I personally hate that damned flag and would be perfectly happy to join others in burning one to express my feelings about it, but I'm loathe to go around removing them. Please understand that I'm perfectly happy if a few get taken down where they appear that some governmental branch was endorsing it.
But at the same time, that's not quite the same as when Google goes about removing them. Sure, they are free to do as they wish, I have to wonder why Google doesn't do the same for Nazi symbols? Surely they don't support Nazis, but it's hard to make a case for not giving the Nazis the same treatment. They're at least as evil, right? So what explanations are left to us for the disparity? That Nazis don't offend googlers as much? That doesn't seem like a likely reason, but just what's left?
And in the end, where does that leave us? The problem is, I don't think that train of thought has an end, and that's what makes me uneasy. After we remove everything offensive, what's left? It's not like we'll have things that don't offend anybody, so at some point it becomes a matter of choosing which people are okay to offend and which people are not okay to offend.
In the end, I just want to get along with everyone. I don't like the thought of living in a society where everything becomes a matter of whether you are one of Us or one of Them and that's where we appear to be heading.
They don't sell Nazi flags in their store or (afaik) let people advertise using them, so this doesn't seem as inconsistent to me as you make it sound.
https://www.google.com/search?q=nazi+swastica&ie=utf-8&oe=ut...
Not to mention copies of the Mein Kampf, etc.
Thankfully, the various non-Nazi uses of the swastika appear to be the most popular, but you can find plenty of Nazi items. I dislike the meaning of both symbols, so I have a hard time imagining any logic where it's okay to sell one of them but not the other.
We only burn the bad books, right?
Also side note: reading Mein Kampf doesn't make you a nazi, indeed if more people had read it back in the day somebody might have stooped that little corporal.
I guess the argument one could make is that the confederate flag is more dangerous and relevant today, but I don't really buy that.
Occam's razor suggests this is just an easy PR grab. They get a few headlines in mainstream tech press for free, and very minor backlash from "free speech nutjubs" as the only downside.
Reddit spent years building a freewheeling culture. Pao decided to impose standards on that, and her guiding principles weren't well articulated. In the end, it was a really bad copy of Disneyland, and the fact that the effort failed was no surprise.
I'm not sure the company really knows what happened, given that they think they've given their users what they asked for, but they're also telling their users that they're spoiled kids.
I think you nailed it there. I'm not a Reddit user, but from what I have read there never seemed to be clear set of guidelines that were evenly enforced by the Reddit staff.
I'm often weirded by the freedom of speech argument in non critical contexts. These persons life aren't at risk because they can't express opinions, isn't that what is meant by FoS ? not just a free card to be able to let yourself loose in public.
I have no solution, but far too often FoS ends up a noisy non-discussions.
ps: I'll add that I was somehow afraid to express my views on Freedom of Speech. Funny.
No
I personally respect freedom of speech, except hate. For example, HN strongly discourages attacking another member personally (eg. calling someone else idiot). I consider this a reasonable limit on freedom of speech, but concepts and opinions should be fully open for discussion (eg. pro/anti evolution etc). If the discussions are respectful, then anything should be allowed.
I believe Political Correctness has done more harm than it does good. It has created an unhealthy focus on skin colour, reproductive organs, etc to the point of lunacy. Many people struggle to look past superficial features and seem to lost the ability to make reasoned judgements. Any criticism of a woman gets you labelled a misogynist, regardless of how incapable she is. This continues to undermine the credibility of women that are truly capable in their own right. I'm currently managing a team of women. They all got there on their own merit. I would not hire a woman for the sake of political correctness or because I was bullied by a feminist journalist (as is quite common these days). The women in my team were not selected based on their gender - they were selected based on their talents and attitudes. They were available and capable.
This whole Ellen Pao incident made me think about the validity of comments on sexism and racism that are floating around the net. Compare the attitudes towards the criticisms of Steve Ballmer vs Ellen Pao. One of these individuals contributed to the significant growth of Microsoft, the other didn't manage to achieve much that stands out. Both developed a bad reputation as leaders. Yet, one of these people is being defended and the other is not. The major difference (other than Ballmer's financial track record for Microsoft) is their genders. Political Correctness has driven the need to blindly defend women, no matter how incompetent they may be. The hope is that this behaviour will help "women's rights". I view it as doing the exact opposite ... "jobs for the girls".
It saddens me that we seem to be more sexist, less tolerant and more willing to defend incompetence an an attempt to promote rights for selected members of society.
On a side note, I dislike the term "women's rights". Is it so hard to represent "people's rights"? I believe one of these reflects a destructive, prejudiced mindset and creates a bad attitude of entitlement and encourages sexism. If society said we'd defend the rights of everyone equally based on merit, the world would be a much better place.
The problem is that as soon as you draw such a line, you need to appoint a censor to determine what qualifies as "hate". As Christopher Hitchens asked: "To whom would you want to delegate the task to decide for you what you could read? To relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?"
Typically this job falls to the public prosecutors. Who will make mistakes, misapply and pervert the laws. Sometimes with good intentions, sometimes with malice.
It is not just an abstract argument, it has very real consequences. Here in Finland we had a case [1] where an MP (now MEP) was convicted of hate speech for making a point about freedom of speech by asking a question along the lines of: 'Why is it ok to write that Finns might be culturally and genetically predisposed to get drunk and kill people, but not ok to write that Somalis might be culturally and genetically predisposed to rob people and live on welfare?'
These types of laws have very real chilling effects on public discourse. People are unwilling to engage in certain topics, which should be discussed, due to the fear of being prosecuted. In democracies trying to suppress or censor an idea or argument will just end up elevating them. In this case, the party to which the convicted MP belongs ended up becoming the second largest party and are now in the government. They no longer have to argue their case, they can simply implement it (and their immigration program was written by the MP in question).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jussi_Halla-aho#Criminal_charg...
I want more great censorship, not less. If it’s done by people and organisations, at least. Because that’s what we are talking about here, right? Reddit, not governments?
Censors are just editors and that job is not some inscrutable thing. It can be done and it can be done excellently.
I mean, to me this only gets tricky when we are talking about basic infrastructure, i.e. should a paper mill be allowed to refuse to sell their paper to Neo Nazis because of ideological reasons? Should a web hoster be allowed to refuse to sell to Neo Nazis?
But Reddit? That’s easy and I don’t really get what the fuss is about. Nothing would be lost at all if the admins were much, much, much more ban happy and much more pro-censorship. They should be, 100%.
reddit does that actually, until you're a well known user, you cannot submit more than a few per minute, after that delays kick in, if it really was something you wanted to share, you'll come back. No censor involved.
That's just an idea, but you get the point.
Specifically, it seems to me that if you're shielded from seeing that they censored, then they could also be censoring "good" speech too. So the only way it seems you could ensure they weren't do this poorly or deliberately would be to allow everyone access to what they've censored. Which inversely seems to defeat the purpose of having a good censor. Now essentially nothing in censored.
Again, perhaps I'm missing something but if I'm not then I don't understand how you resolve this conundrum.
Edit: Unless you're referring to ex post facto censorship, where everyone sees the "bad" speech, and the speaker is banned for violating "community standards" To pre-emptively ban future speech. But this too still allows "bad" speech, and I suppose you also have the problem of deleting the bad speech. If it's gone, then what substantiates the ban/censorship? Because again, what if the action was either done in error, or maliciously to ban "good" but unpopular speech/speakers how would you know?
But I do have the ability to trust people and I know when I enjoy something.
So, this all might sound very abstract, but I do know that I like the censors (they call themselves editors) working for certain newspapers I like. I trust them to make good decisions, partly just because I don’t have time to make those decisions myself.
And that’s obviously not perfect – but this whole nerd dream of provable correctness and absolute, guaranteed access to the truth all the time … it’s all unachievable bullshit anyway. Sometime you just don’t know. Sometimes you just have to live with that. I live with it and I like it.
Honestly, this comes across as "He loved Big Brother"-level creepy.
Do you have some sort of trust issues? I mean, sometimes I’m willing to trust other people, that’s all. I don’t have to believe that everyone is evil and out to get me. So when I read a newspaper I like I have a general trust that the editors (censors) have done their job … because what else can I do? What else can you do?
I don’t have the time to sit around 24 hours by the newswire … and even then, the people writing that and reporting that … how do I know I can trust those absolutely? I can’t. That’s all.
We humans are forever doomed to not know the truth always all the time. And no one is an island and sometimes you just have to trust other people. And that’s healthy and that’s ok.
Well it's crucial that the censors are people who like you. If they didn't like you, you probably wouldn't be such a fan of censorship. That is to say, the only reason you're in favour of censorship on reddit is that you're reasonably that the censors will be people like you, which really is no more than sophisticated tribalism.
If I didn’t like the censors at Reddit I would do the same thing. I think that’s normal and healthy.
> The problem is that as soon as you draw such a line
At some point, hate speech most definitely infringes upon the reader's rights. The canonical example is yelling "FIRE! FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater and causing a stampede; your right to free speech doesn't trump everybody else's right to be safe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
[A] United States Supreme Court decision concerning enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 during World War I. A unanimous Supreme Court, in a famous opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., concluded that defendants who distributed leaflets to draft-age men, urging resistance to induction, could be convicted of an attempt to obstruct the draft, a criminal offense.
> Both developed a bad reputation as leaders. Yet, one of these people is being defended and the other is not.
You mean Ballmer?
We know nothing specific and substantial about internal Reddit politics, so the cause for seeing all this hateful scapegoating can only be some kind of mass stupidity.
I'm sorry. You don't respect freedom of speech then. Drawing an arbitrary line on what you (or anyone else) considers acceptable isn't free speech.
Put it this way: Things that were unacceptable in the 1950s are completely banal and uninteresting now. Things that were considered in poor taste in the past are horribly offensive now (look at Andy Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's). Are you going to be some society guardian, constantly updating what is and isn't acceptable to say as our values shift with the times
I have thought much on these as common person, neither in an academic setting nor who has to deal with these issue frequently.
Lot of time I would argue with myself why can't we have everybody have equal rights ? Why we need to specially fight for rights of women and be feminists or to project the issue to broader sense, where we talk or act about any group. Personally I believe that while the ideal case as it should be is equal rights for everybody, the problem is the inequality created by negative discrimination over the ages. It is more like we are trying to correct the wrong doing over the ages by believing that a positive discrimination for the groups would offset the historical prejudice.
These are personal thoughts. Please feel free to correct.
I want to pull this quote out and address it directly, because it's a valid concern with a real answer. The reason we don't represent "people's rights" is because all people do not need their rights defended. To use an analogy, think of our system for measuring the level of endangered for animals, from "Critically Endangered" to "Least Concern." Is it sensible to say, 'Well, aren't all species important to the ecosystem? Why do we seek to protect Garrulax courtoisi but not Megascops watsonii?' This is because the former is nearly extinct, while the latter is ubiquitous. The cause of "social justice" -- the oft-derided 'warriors' of anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, etc -- is to correct years of disadvantage. It's not accurate to call, say, attempts to further women in technology as 'sexist'. In fact, that's co-opting the term to obfuscate the original issue.
Overall, your heart is in the right place -- it does seem like our attempts to further minorities comes off as patronizing (like affirmative action). But, in the end, the good that is done outweighs the bad so long as we adequately train the individuals we put forward through these initiatives such that no one believes they only 'got it because of their gender' (which to me is no different than 'got here through someone she knows' -- this is how most business seems to be done in the world!)
How far are you willing to take that? You could potentially prohibit satire.
No. That's the exact opposite of free speech. Free speech is meant to protect the most disgusting, heinous, pointless, hateful, ignorant, foolish speech.
That's the whole freaking point - nobody wants to silence unoffensive opinions.
>ps: I'll add that I was somehow afraid to express my views on Freedom of Speech. Funny.
It is funny. Because it's the people who want silence others' free speech who repeat the "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" meme as justification for their horrible actions.
No it's not. It's meant to protect speech which the politically powerful find objectionable. It's not about protecting abuse, but protecting ideas. Rebellious and revolutionary ideas, for example.
This is all a canard anyway - Reddit is not the (US) government. They get to set the rules for communication in their playground. If you don't let them do that, then you are infringing on their freedom of expression. Reddit can only say 'no' on their own systems; they don't stop you spreading whatever disgusting, heinous, pointless, hateful, ignorant, or foolish speech in other forums.
If you want free speech the way you describe it, then you need to go to an unmoderated forum. Incidentally, on the front page of HN at the moment is a request for help in removing child porn from a web service, because the owner doesn't have enough resources to moderate it. If you ever wanted a clear example of where free speech is not meant to protect disgusting material, that's got to be it
Saying that people should be open to your arguments privileges those ideas you yourself hold. How do you tell which arguments get such treatment?
I didn't say at all people should be open to my particular arguments, but to arguments in general.
If it's arguments in general,
* you can't hang up on salesmen,
* you can't kick 911 conspirators off your unrelated forum,
* you can't remove most trolls,
* you can't ban homeopathy threads from /r/science,
* etc.
In general, you lose the ability to moderate conversations in spaces you own, or decide what you spend your time doing. This is, to be honest, a pretty extreme idea if taken literally.
Or you could deem salesmen, 911 conspirators, trolls and homeopathy proponents as "crazy and confused", but who decides that? How is that any more unwanted than posting critical meta commentary to /r/fatpeoplehate?
I imagine a concrete implementation of this idea as a meme that people themselves would recognize this as a good rule and that they would consider it as a decision aid whether or not to participate in a certain group.
The loophole, then, is to define ideas the politically powerful find objectionable as abuse.
Ugh. "horrible actions" as a description for calling people out who threaten, belittle, insult and harass other people and claim that is "protected speech".
By the way, even in a context, where the term "freedom of speech" is really adequate (so, when talking laws and government actions, for example), freedom stops where you infringe the rights of others. That's the whole point of states: To balance the natural freedoms of one person with the rights of other people, thus providing stability. Which is why you can't steal, for example. That's a freedom that had to be balanced against the rights of other people.
While I agree that pointless, hateful etc. speech deserves protection one word I almost never see in the reddit free speech wars is *dissent. As in "free speech is meant to protect speech that opposes or challenges orthodox opinion and conventional wisdom."
It's almost like the most vocal part of reddit gets off on being offensive for its own sake and is more concerned about the right to call fat people names rather than defending free speech generally. It does seems like they are flying the free speech flag purely out of narrow self-interest.
How many of them actually give a crap about free speech outside of their "community"? How many of them regularly downvote opinions they don't agree with, I wonder?
Hah yeah because speaking up against these mobs can lead to getting DOXed. What an insane world we live in.
>Reddit is a private company and so is not obliged to provide a platform for anyone's free speech, that also is a facet of freedom.
We must be careful not to confuse commercial viability with government censorship. At some point, advertisers will leave a website that continues to foster vitriol/hate speech/illegal content because they do not want their brand associated with it. This is freedom of speech in action.
I tend to agree with what I think you're saying but I wonder if you realize what a controversial opinion that can be to some people. Consider the reaction to Rand Paul's criticism of the Civil Rights Act. Should one be able to operate a restaurant/business/country club that won't serve [blacks, LGBT, Muslims, whites, hispanics, cops, etc]?
If we were talking about what's legal to publish in your own newspaper, I agree.
If we're talking about what's appropriate to force others to view by brigading with a small number of people to take over a website to use it as its own platform to harass its CEO, I disagree.
That said, I think the moderation Pao symbolised on Reddit as a whole was a very wrong move. The Community certainly did. All the subreddits are individually moderated and the subreddits are opt-in; there's very little need for an overarching moderation of Reddit major.
Combine this with the rules for moderation being so vague everyone was asking what they actually were, and the reason given was "safety". Safety?
To me, "Safety" is a red-cloth term. It smells of the agenda used to rule the masses by fear and security, and to me Reddit is the exact opposite. But in reality, it was probably just an honest answer to Reddit's Community and investors both, that they wanted Reddit to be a safe product.
Well, nobody joined Reddit because it was "safe". It's the wild west of the interwebs, subreddits progressively darker as you find more weird stuff and you have to tell yourself "no - I don't need that" (who hasn't ventured to r/aww - darkness comes in many shades).
tl;dr Reddit is set up as a wild west with moderated towns, it is counter-productive to clamp down on everything with "safety" as the rallying cry.
This is, joking or not, way out of proportion to what happened, which is, a single harassment-focused group was disbanded.
That wasn't the only event that transpired. I'd venture to say things got really intense after Victoria was let go and sub-reddits accounting for 33% of visits were shut down in protest of how the affair was handled (poor communication, no transition planning). I think the disconnect between the mods and Reddit's leadership is what got Pao fired; not the shutting down of FPH.
They stepped in because moderators of a banned sub was found to encourage and even directly participate in harassment of other people. And they only caved in after a. incessant complaints from the public and b. some personal threats against imgur employees who took down some images the abusers uploaded.
More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/39bzdf/why_wa...
You have the right to say whatever you want, you do not have the right to say it in my home. I'm curious as to whether or not these individuals understand this, or are just another level of troll trying to stir the pot.
Furthermore, I do have the right to say it "in public".
But, where is that "public" on the internet? I can make a website - a home - and invite other people to come visit me and listen to me ramble, or respond etc. But there is no public space, is there? And if not, should there be?
Most people don't own the homes they live in. Yet the landlord still doesn't get to tell them what to talk about over the dinner table. That's great, but imagine the government sold all sidewalks and public places to private interests, which dictated how you should dress and walk if you want to get out of your home, or to work. Should that be allowed?
Imagine getting thrown out of a mall because someone overheard and disapproved of your conversation there. Does that ever happen? I know there there is no clear line, but that there is one; e.g. if you trail other people and talk to yourself or a friend about them (especially if it's nasty and aggressive) in earshot, that's not exactly cool. But what, other than sanity, would stop all mall owners to agree that anyone e.g. declaring to like the color green should be kicked out, and to hire staff to enforce it? Would that be legal? If it was, should it be? And if it wouldn't be legal, why is that? In what ways, if at all, could or should this applied to the internet?
Most people (63%) own their homes in America, and there are protections in place for people who rent. Your landlord cannot monitor you.
When it comes to the mall though, it's more a matter of scope and scale. Overhearing something in a mall affects a handful of individuals and the intent was not to broadcast. If you stand up on a table in the cafeteria and start spouting hate speech, you can and will be escorted out by security.
The internet is different, because you cannot accidentally overhear a conversation. Said anywhere on the internet, especial a place like reddit of HN, it is viewable by the entirety of internet users. So direct comparisons to the physical world will always fall short.
Reddit is only banning subs that brigade.
No. Free speech is a principle that any party can choose to respect. Free speech has been one of the very core values of Reddit right from the beginning, in the form of the ability to create and manage a subreddit with very minimal restrictions.
Being a platform of free speech was the single biggest reason Reddit grew to be the giant community that it is today.
Then Pao comes along and repeatedly shows that she doesn't respect free speech at all. What do you expect the users to do, other than revolt?
It's easy to brush off these incidents as the doings of "the ugliest users", but remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. History books are filled with people being silenced due to their expression of uncomfortable ideas.
For example, John Stuart Mill's utilitarian defense of free speech in On Liberty is equally applicable to private parties and specifically says society and individual people should be open to expression of views they find abhorrent. He specifically covers widespread social ostracism as well as government laws. According to Mill, free speech is definitely not just about freedom from government restrictions.
I doubt you understand the principles of free speech better than John Stuart Mill. Or if you understand his argument in On Liberty and disagree, please explain why.