Quite frankly, reddit has way bigger problems than that. I mean, do what you want with your subreddit, no skin off my back. But it is borderline insane to me that this is what is turning people against it. Ignominious.
Yet Reddit, that follows this model, still manages to engage in suppression of on-topic viewpoints that moderators and/or Reddit employees disagree with.
Reddit continues to insist that its sitewide administrative policies are based on behaviour rather than content, though it appears that this is a somewhat narrow distinction, and that behaviours which draw attention … tend to be associated with questionable content.
I’m not criticising the action. I support it. (The reasons are complex and difficult to articulate, though what I had to say ... on Reddit ... about limitations on speech some six years ago seems strongly appropriate. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2g8e8c/shoutin...)
It's the rationalisation which seems thin.
The more so as what I’d based that argument on at the time --- falsely claiming no harm where a harm clearly existed is precisely at the centre of current discussions of the topic. This also seems to be a major, though under-discussed mode, of deceptive speech, and more pointedly a mode in which the downplaying of risk accrues benefits and gains to the parties promoting that message.
That said, Reddit’s lack of principled leadership and very-late-to-the-party redress continues to erode trust in the platform among those who live in a reality-based world and support strong epistemic systems. Which is one of the key challenges the firm faces: neither of the two principle sides in this matter are or will be happy with how it aquits itself.
I’ll note as well that the principles of “free speech” are not synonymous with the US first amendment (which concerns only government limitations), that speech on a privately-operate platform is both not the same as government censorship, but also not dissimilar in many regards, and that in any regard, free speech itself is not an absolute principle but one existing in balance with other considerations. I’ve been thinking in terms of a set of related, though often conflicting principles as Autonomous Communication (or variously: "informational autonomy" or "communications autonomy" --- naming things is hard --- discussed in “Which has primacy?”). The rights to privacy, free-assocation (both positive and negative), against self-incrimination, of obligated disclosure, and to accurate information, all collide, though there are some common principles which might help in adjudicating amongst them. I’m not aware of others offering any similar construction.
The problem with this is that the discourse in those kinds of sites are way too extreme. People who have been kicked off of Reddit and want to _only_ engage in that topic tend to be fanatical. We need companies to embrace _both_ sides.
You seem to be making a statement about the law - I don't think anyone is suggesting that what Reddit has done here is against the law. Instead, what Reddit has done here strikes many people as rather stupid.
Reddit once being a haven away from large corporate interests, has continually succumbed to the mainstream narrative of what’s appropriate.
Sure, there are communities that are horrid, but then there are those that are on the line. And inch by inch that line moves from moral goodness, to corporate interest.
Reddit is no different than Twitter/YouTube/Facebook, only they haven’t covered the same amount of ground.
Given another few years, if that, we’ll see the same censorship practices on Reddit, with the same magnitude, as youtube, facebook, and twitter.
This is essentially account entrapment. Show content they know is in bad faith, then punish them. Or, once a post is deemed in bad faith, retroactively punish them for not having the correct opinion.
I have no problem with the notion that those running reddit suffer from extreme cognitive dissonance over this issue. They've been acting in extremely odd ways for some time now.
Actions like the banning of subreddits for the actions of a few bad actors belie the notion that this is how you and they describe it.
That's insane, I had no idea that Reddit had gone that far. It's pretty crazy that just registering agreement with an idea is enough to be censored. It's like wrongthink from 1984.
So you're probably very against Reddit then? Reddit is inherently feudal in the same way: someone creates a subreddit over which they have near total power and loyal subjects are allowed to subscribe and post at the grace of the moderator lords.
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