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.
"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)
The censorship on reddit, in general, is insane. There's a tons of deleting going on any time there's a topic that is just a little outside the political tastes of the moderators. Mods have no problem with purging 2000 comment long thread just because there's 100 comments that offend them. Some of them have a flat-out agenda and they're not afraid to show it at all.
But there is something to be said about having the censor cabal out in the open for everyone to see. Compare that with Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, where there is no record of who is determining what is and isn't ok to say.
it's not free speech if you restrict thoughts and ideas. I am not saying reddit is required to be a free speech site, it's not, but you can't be free speech and still censor.
Regardless, reddit claims to be about free speech and still censors. So... irony?
That's a bit Orwellian, since it's outright censorship. Might be better to make it subtler, like allowing the post but replacing the the word "reddit" with "fnord".
I'm kind of appalled at how all the stories I've seen relating to this are giving credence to the various claims made here, such as how Reddit has "entered into a new age of censorship", without even making the slightest attempt to contextualize or explain how absolutely bat-shit nutty it is to make that claim. Reddit enforced its rules and shut down a few vile subreddits that were explicitly and unrepentantly harassing people. That is unambiguously a great move by Reddit. But a lot of people are suddenly screaming "censorship" and, if you read nothing but the news stories, you'd come away with the idea that those screaming "censorship" are right.
This actually feels a bit reminiscent of GamerGate, which for a while was able to have news outlets report on them as if their stated goal of ethics in game journalism was actually what it was about.
Care to give an example of something of yours that was censored? I've been on Reddit for almost a decade and only seen nasty ad hominin attacks and hateful speech censored. Seen plenty of right wing misinformation be downvoted into oblivion, but never censored.
I hate that law and consider it to be a violation of free speech but I do not consider it to be hate speech. You can hate disabled people how much you want for example.
> After complaining some years ago, the mod team was rearranged and now contains people from a wide political spectrum.
Yeah.. that is just a load of bs.
> Maybe Reddit is not your private echo chamber and resits your extreme ideas?
This is just the thing. As soon as you have deviating opinions, now you're instantly extreme. Do you know that I consider the Reddit rules and ideas extreme?
What people like you doesn't seem to understand is the wind is only blowing in your direction for now, it will not stay like that forever. It's sad that people have forgotten the importance of free speech and that censorship has been popularized.
Sometimes it really feels like people read 1984 and brave new world as instruction manuals.
What is going on at Reddit is that the cancel culture has found how to take down content they do not find acceptable and worse persecute those whose content they have taken down or disagree with.
So, using a combination of email blasts, instant messaging, and more, these groups focus down a site or individual. This can involve simple brigade type tactics against posted comments and stories, complete with abusing the site reporting process, to flag users and content they disagree with. Sometimes it requires pressuring those higher up with public shaming for permitting something they may not be aware of by use of the common innuendo of if they don't take action they agree with all the hateful, if any, aspects of the target.
When any social site becomes large enough to receive mentions on other sites and media it immediately becomes a target of groups seeking to control the message and attack those who do not wholly support that message. Even minor disagreements can be sufficient to attract ire.
the moral majority is an authoritarian regime and it will have a further damning effect than any feared religious right that people constantly brought up as an internet or social bogeyman.
the very fact they now state ideas they don't agree with as making them physically uncomfortable to the point they declare if violence should scare anyone. this is code for saying no limits are required to remove the threat.
1984 isn't government oppressing people, it is people oppressing people
* btw - only reddit you can be banned from reddits you never visited for activity on another sub (including just voting apparently)
Reddit didn't censor itself because Americans are not accepting of free speech. Reddit started censoring itself to appease corporate overlords. And the only reason those corpos embrace censorship is to stay out of the political crosshairs. How long did /r/jailbait exist before getting shutdown in 2011...and only because it was featured on Anderson Cooper?
Oh, I love censorship by private organizations†. Censorship is what makes my favorite news website great. Can you imagine what a mess it would be if every damn journalist could write what they wanted? Censors (commonly also called editors) are what make a lot of stuff great.
Also: Are you really outraged by that? What is wrong with you?
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† I make exceptions for critical communication infrastructure that is owned by a single or a small number of private organizations. Reddit is not that. Not by a long shot.
Reddit is legally allowed to censor all they want. Some people, especially people younger than me, like a version of the world where somebody smoothes off the rough edges and hides unsightly things. I think it feels too much like Disneyland.
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.
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