Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit
heatst.comWho cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for moderation. For several years now I've seen this non-stop obsession with lambasting reddit as a shit-hole and a left-wing echo-chamber and a shit company run by amateurs and SJWs.
Who cares? The overwhelming majority of redditors subsist on photos of animals and drawings of video game characters. Just leave if reddit isn't friendly to your particular proclivities. If you hate fat people, liberals, feminists and BLM activists there are many places on the internet where you can find common cause.
Reddit has traditionally been a place where free speech is prized above all else. That they might 'censor' the alt right is symbolic. What it is symbolic of is in question though, pick one of:
1) The alt right has become so hateful that regardless of your approach to free speech that allowing it to propagate is unacceptable
2) Societies view of free speech has changed in the face of things like the alt right.
3) The expected role of sites like Reddit has changed as those platforms are used to spread hate speech, false news etc.
I could be wrong, but IMO, it most likely comes down to the fact that the admins happen to be human beings and these particular communities are just starting to grate on their nerves. Pages and pages of highly upvoted direct attacks rattled the CEO to the point where he thought it wasn't a completely insane idea to abuse his developer privileges to silently alter user content in an attempt to troll his critics. That is a pretty telling sign of frustration.
Whenever the admins make any changes, a certain sub-section of the site goes completely insane and spams the site with tons of threads about how the site is fucking terrible and how the admins are fucking idiots with the common thread among these rabblerousers being that they always happen to hate a particular group that is ruining the site and destroying the indomitable reddit free speech ethos.
You're thinking of 4chan. Reddit has never been that--it's been moderated for many years.
It's always been complicated, though. Alexis Ohanion has repeatedly talked about the importance of Reddit as a censorship-free platform and talked up the company as embodying unfettered free speech.
Obviously that's not true, but major figures at the company have said it from the early days up through very recently. And the difference between moderation (in the "no spam, no personal threats, communities enforce their own rules" sense) and administrative speech restrictions is a big and challenging one.
So no, Reddit has never quite been that, but it's been one of their selling points regardless.
Reddit was founded upon values of free speech, at least that is what people were told at the time, even if it wasnt true in the back rooms.
I think the biggest concern is when platforms start to police illegal speech, and countries make political dissent illegal.
Personally, I've always viewed reddit's approach to moderation as non-interventionist and not as something that necessarily enshrined the ideals of free-speech. That is to say, it all seemed more of a growth-hack than anything else; outsource moderation to individual communities and set a policy of non-intervention so that when people complain to the admins they can say something like "subreddits are owned and operated by users, don't complain to us", this formula scaled very nicely and reddit exploded into the behemoth it is today.
But now that reddit has become something of a cultural focal point on the internet, it's started to draw attention from the media at large and suddenly the operators felt a little embarrassed that they had to defend subreddits such as /r/fatpeoplehate, /r/jailbat, /r/niggers etc. So I imagine they just said "fuck it, it's more trouble than it's worth", and despite a month or two of banhammer-whack-a-mole with fuck-stupid-dictator-sjw-cunt-ellen-mao subreddits, the site continued to flourish, and all the free-speech purists finally woke up to the startling truth that reddit.com was really just an internet startup and not a platform to empower the oppressed masses...
Until they banned another subreddit.
>Who cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for moderation.
Except it's not that simple. There's a substantial amount of judicial precedent that you can't refuse service to customers just because you disagree with their ideology or background, otherwise it would be okay to refuse service to supporters of gay marriage for example.
It's appalling that you would even suggest that.
There is literally no "judicial precedent" for a website owner being disallowed from moderating user-submitted content. What are you talking about?
There actually are lots of safe harbor protections for common carriers. Lack of editorial oversight is why sites like YouTube can qualify for these protections, but sites like Gawker wouldn't be able to. (Even though they ultimately got shut down for ignoring a court order or whatever.)
YouTube still takes down videos, comments, channels, etc., and restricts others by age/country/etc.
Sure, but that's within safe harbor rules. If they went and moderated content and comments in a non-reactive way, say by banning commenters whose opinions they found incorrect, that would be legal but could jeopardize their safe harbor status.
YouTube completely censors material, here's a list of the actions they've undertaken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube
And as it states there, they also have censorship based on their terms of service, where they prohibit the posting of videos which violate copyrights or depict pornography, illegal acts, gratuitous violence, or hate speech.
Banning hate speech is, broadly, not equivalent to refusing to make a cake or give someone a room in a hotel. It's appalling that you'd even suggest that.
Your poor understanding of the law is appalling.
Reddit isn't refusing to service people because of their ideology or background, they are limiting certain kinds of speech. A private organization is entirely allowed to limit certain kinds of speech.
...judicial precedent that you can't refuse service to customers just because you disagree with their ideology or background, otherwise it would be okay to refuse service to supporters of gay marriage for example
Way overbroad interpretation. The Civil Rights Act prohibits refusal of some kinds of service based on race, color, religion or national origin, and it's pretty much the only national law (in the US) that's relevant here (I'm not counting the 14th amendment or more specific laws e.g. for disabilities).
Notably, there's no federal law protecting supporters of gay marriage. They're state-specific laws, and not at all universal.
> There's a substantial amount of judicial precedent that you can't refuse service to customers just because you disagree with their ideology or background, otherwise it would be okay to refuse service to supporters of gay marriage for example.
Ideology isn't a protected class. Sexual orientation is, at least in some states.
Hating liberals isn't a protected class.
Regardless, you are not refusing anyone service - you are not banning people from your platform, you are designating your platform as something not be used for certain purposes.
Would you cite the judicial precedent that you're relying on? Heart of Atlanta was based on the commerce cause and the civil rights act. I can't think of anything else that would apply.
It's not discrimination to enforce site wide rules against harassment, racism, and brigading (coordinated upvoting). Just because only a few communities are breaking the rules doesn't make it discrimination. Racists and bigots aren't a protected class.
alt-right assholes can learn how to run their own httpd and forum software... Nothing but technical knowledge of how to do so properly is stopping people from renting a $150/mo dedicated server and setting it up.
If Reddit can not handle free speech, Voat will.
Once Voat is overrun by the enemies of free expression, someone else will take the helm and continue. Such is the nature of a free Internet.
Ironic that you've made this comment on HackerNews, a site, it can be argued, whose appeal comes from its pretty substantial moderation. I can't tell you how many links I've seen flagged and banished from HN that I thought were important, but... once I cooled down my outrage, I realized the conversations occurring on them were pretty toxic. I come to HN because of the focus and constructive dialogue. I stay away from Reddit (and long ago abandoned /.) because of the toxicity.
Yes. The alt-right and the_donald reddit community members can move to a less-popular platform, but that doesn't necessarily mean that platform has just become more popular. It means the loudest, most-obnoxious people have just lost their Reddit audience. When 1% of commenters are making 90% of the posts, that's no longer a dialogue and that drives away readers. Encouraging polite dialogue and policing abusive behaviors are smart business moves for Reddit and Twitter.
I frequent hackernews and /r/askhistorians because of strong moderation. I support free speech. Communities being moderated are different than platforms being exclusive to certain communities. (I consider hackernews to be a community not a platform due to its strict focus.)
I can choose which communities to ignore, lurk in and participate with. I dont support extinguishing communities I choose to ignore.
You get what you get when you choose to congregate at the firehose nozzles of twitter and /r/all
I think this is the most important comment in the whole thread.
I think for me the issue is that HN brands itself as being a particular kind of site, for a particular community. Reddit is basically a tool for communities to form and organize themselves. There's a pretty big difference between what the two platforms bill themselves as.
Twitter's become absolutely toxic as well. It's gone insane. They really need to get rid of the Trumpian right-wingers from that platform or it'll end up being harmful to their business.
No advertiser is interested in putting out their message right where a random guy can immediately reply with "LIAR!" for everyone to see.
The trouble with Twitter is there are no downvotes.
Without the draw of getting the big audience of r/all I would not be surprised if communities like the_donald will start to stagnate if they had to move to voat.
I would be perfectly happy if these "free speech lovers" were to decamp en masse for Voat.
Just because you disagree with their opinion does not mean you should want to kick them out. They are not acting upon their views in any way that affects you. Totally free expression is crucial and in no way will it affect you physically. I disagree with almost everything they stand for, but their presence is crucial for an open discussion of issues in our global societies.
Reddit is under no obligation to support, nurture, or pay for the resources required to keep this up. They are under no obligation to implicitly condone this content, as they have taken on an editorial role in the past and now anything they don't ban is in contrast to those things they have. As you pointed out, it's the web. There are many web hosts that will refuse you service for hosting pornography. That doesn't prevent anyone from finding one that will allow it.
Technically you are 100% correct. They are definitely within their rights, as are twitter and facebook. The problem is that we've got a de facto (as opposed to de jure) "censorship" system going on where people with undesired opinions are being forced (whether they wanted it or not) into echo chambers.
"Censorship" just forces people underground to talk amongst other people with the same opinions. While it has some kind of measurable effect on preventing impressionable people from being exposed to their opinions, it also prevents people from discussing alternative views with the ones who were "censored". This is a large part of the reason why everyone was blindsided by Trump, the trump supporters were largely either not speaking up due to social penalties for doing so or only talking on-line in forums where other people agreed with them.
If the goal is to "defeat" the alt-right movement, then I don't think it is necessarily obvious that banning them is the right move. As I said though, maybe it is since it does limit exposure to their views which in theory limits their membership.
Note: Scare quoted censorship due to it not being government run which is what people usually mean when they say censorship.
If they can't voice their opinion in a respectful manner, I don't see why we have to listen to their garbage.
Every site in the world, if they don't want to be a cesspool full of trolls and baiters, will have to moderate.
One of the big problems here though is thing like twitter's recent behavior(I'm using twitter as an example but other sites do it too).
You can say something hateful, disrespectful, and even threatening to/about a white person(or people) and twitter doesn't care even if you are reported.
However if you say the same thing about/to a black person (or people) [literally the same sentence with only those words switched out] then when reported you will be banned.
If twitter(and others) would actually apply their rules fairly, a lot of people would be a lot less upset.
are mockery and satire respectful? what does that make Stewart, Colbert, Bee, Meyers, and Oliver? how about SRD and SRS? they are assholes too but they deserve their space to mock people they disagree with. should /r/atheism be banned for its disrespect towards religion? /r/atheism has the same fervent hate towards people of belief.
you dont have to listen to those subreddits. dont subscribe to them. dont hang out in /r/all if you cant handle seeing things you disagree with.
you just called other peoples views a cesspool of garbage, and youre advocating respect.
you dont have to listen to those subreddits. dont subscribe to them. dont hang out in /r/all if you cant handle seeing things you disagree with.
I don't hang out at r/all nor subscribe to subreddit I don't care about.
you just called other peoples views a cesspool of garbage, and youre advocating respect.
I am more concerned about a person's behavior more so than their opinion. I look down on baiting, trolling, harassment, etc.
> the trump supporters were largely either not speaking up due to social penalties for doing so or only talking on-line in forums where other people agreed with them.
This is the key takeaway IMO
You have a good point about driving people underground, instead of giving them an outlet - but as the article points out,
> Like the mod said in his own words, they are not interested in public policy, they are focused on white nationalist racial discussion. To continue on that course without steering into hate speech is impossible.
I don't see the article's point as a good one.
Unless they are literally calling for people to take action and kill/harass/otherwise harm people I see no reason to "censor" them. From what I've seen, most of that subreddit is hating on other races(which definitely is hate speech) but not calling any real action. I also don't consider calling for legitimate political action to be worthy of "censorship" either, only going outside the political system to directly harm.
Why isn't Spez able to arbitrarily delete subreddits? Why isn't Twitter starting mass deportations? I don't see any reason for them to wait. They can get started right away. It's easy to write a regex that identifies Trump supporters and eliminates their accounts quickly. Why haven't we started yet?
Automating a way to identify what people belong to what groups is possible, buts its definitely not as easy as a regex
Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN.
Will do sir
And reddit has on multiple occasions refused people the right to "totally free expression". Freedom of speech is about the government not shutting you down for airing your views, not a company.
freedom of speech is a philosophy.
the first amendment is an application of that philosophy codified into law.
a company can by choose choose to value the philosophy of free speech, independent of the law.
you cannot use the phrases "freedom of speech" and "the first amendment" interchangeably.
> Totally free expression is crucial and in no way will it affect you physically.
Until it elects the sort of people who want to see me deported into positions of power. At which point am I obligated to hand them a free platform again?
> Just because you disagree with their opinion does not mean you should want to kick them out
I don't see why the admins don't just edit the posts? No need to ban things.
Ha ha, good one. Wasn't Reddit CEO's ass on fire recently for doing exactly that?
Yeah, that was the joke. Reddit can do what it wants, its sort of a cesspool anyways, banning 1 or 2 subreddits won't change it.
Yeah, and I think according to him, even the reddit team was really pissed at him for his actions.
How can you have an intelligent discussion without a lot of racism and hate thrown in? It's impossible.
It's not really a free speech issue to be honest. As far as I can tell some of these sub-reddits, like the_donald in particular, are well organised and know how to push their posts to the front page (the rare time I open /r/all, their posts are almost always among the top ones, despite being very low quality content).
So it's no about censoring free speech, it's about making the idiot shouting his opinions with a megaphone on the street to do it somewhere else, or at the very least to drop the megaphone.
Spez has already weighted that subreddit so it rarely shows up on the front page.
Why hasn't he outright deleted the subreddit?
/r/all is not the front page. t_d is not a front page default subreddit. people should not visit /r/all if they dislike seeing the firehose. or get gold and use filters and strengthen your filter bubble walls.
This is what confuses me the most. t_d never shows up on my front page because I'm not subscribed there.
If there's a significant amount of content you don't want to see, why are so many people choosing to look at /r/all?
People want /r/all to be a community of stuff they like, without stuff they disagree with. Those people seem to disagree with the idea of a content agnostic platform. How would those people feel if gmail stopped delivering ultra left liberal emails.
Weighted? No, they changed it against single subreddits dominating in general.
Nope, just t_d now. He completely banned it from r/all
Voat won't get taken over by the enemies of free expression. That's not how it'll fail. Voat will fail because there's a lack of people to harass on voat, and you're not allowed to use voat to brigade other services.
Yes, everyone leaves for Voat, Voat crashes, and then everyone goes back to Reddit. Most people go to Reddit for their cat memes, not to hate on people.
Correct. And those people which are easily offended should not stray outside of their cat meme subreddits. And all will be well.
It would be even more well if all the porcupines that are so proud of their prickly needles would grow into pretty badgers.
Hacker News is already overran by "freedom haters".
I don't see anyone fleeing for greener pasture.
How would you see that? It isn't the real world where you could see less people around or something.
HN's DNA is civil, professional discussion of the Silicon Valley based, VC-backed, millionaire-minting Ruby on Rails landing page creation industry. Users know what they're here for.
Reddit became popular as an irreverent place for free discussion of whatever. There's a big difference in expectation.
Since when has a company enforcing their TOS been discussion worthy? Their content policy clearly outlines what is considered "Unwelcome Content" and it seems like the majority of the alt-right thread would be classified as "Violent Content" under Reddit's terms.
I think a much more amusing enforcement of such policy would be for Twitter to ban Donald Trump, thereby also banning the @POTUS account for the term of his Presidency for "Abusive Behaviour" on Twitter such as openly harassing the cast of Hamilton.
https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205701105 https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy#section_unwelcome_... https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311
> The Alt Right is a racial movement and has always been a racial movement. Race is at the very core of the alt right and there is absolutely no way to be alt right without discussing racial realism, especially from a white perspective
Just because you rebrand racism as "racial realism" doesn't mean you aren't racist and Reddit has no appetite for hosting racist speech. Go start your own Reddit if you don't like it. That's the wonderful thing about the web, its easy to make your own discussion forums.
I'm sure Voat will love these guys, meanwhile I don't have to deal with "racial realism" brigades and trolls on the subs I read. Seems like a win-win for all involved.
>Just because you rebrand racism as "racial realism" doesn't mean you aren't racist and Reddit has no appetite for hosting racist speech.
Why not? People have been rebranding racism for years.
throw r/the_donald in there with them
Yes! Lets silence the opinions of everyone we disagree with! Lets take away their places to talk so they have to skulk in the shadows! Lets pretend there's no merit to listening to the thoughts of millions of people!
Why stop with removing their access to Reddit? Why not make it downright illegal to talk about it? Why don't we make it illegal to think about it, too?
I'm exceptionally left-leaning and I don't agree with removing these people from Reddit, it's censorship of views we don't like, plain and simple. Are we really so childish that we believe that if we stop these people talking about it then the problem will go away? They'll just move elsewhere and common discourse will be more difficult, people will be more entombed in their own biased beliefs.
I don't think you're familiar with /r/the_Donald's rules. The number one rule is no dissenting. Not even polite discussion is allowed. They've already entombed themselves.
See, the problem with all of this is that they get the 'left-wing' people to fight for them. These people have not lost anything but an outlet to abuse people, and spread their sexist, racist philosophies (If you disagree with this, try reading through Breitbart without being disgusted at the contents).
Do not worry. These people still have their freedom of speech, they are free to spray paint swastikas in bathrooms and put threatening letters through the doors of American citizens, but they will no longer be able to preach their philosophies on Reddit.
But why should we not fight for them? I am just as angry about the thought of us being censored as I am of the thought of them being censored.
It doesn't matter whether what they say disgusts me or not, I don't have the right to not be offended. People often use Reddit to find news, I believe that Reddit should have a duty to provide that service in an unbiased way without inflicting their own views on the people who use their service. All they should care about it is "is this illegal?"
Yes, I understand that they're a company and not a government agency, it's of course just my opinion that they have such a duty.
> All they should care about it is "is this illegal?"
In many countries, the UK included, many of the posts on the fascist subreddits are illegal.
> But why should we not fight for them?
Because the value of life should be held to higher value than the 'destruction of free speech' (Except Reddit isn't doing anything to their free speech, they're denying them a platform. Which is objectively different). These people quite literally stand for genocide.
> I don't have the right to not be offended
Yes, yes you do. That's part of free speech, isn't it?
I live in the UK and wholly agree, the Public Order Act 1986 makes it very clear where it stands on hate speech, and yet I disagree with it, the same as I feel about the Snoopers Charter and other such laws. Freedom of speech should be granted regardless of who is offended by your speech, you should have the right to say exactly what you want, I have the right to think you're a dick head for saying it, but you should still be able to say it.
I'm not condoning threatening behaviour or violence, I'm just saying that I believe that if someone wants to call be a ginger bellend, they should have the right to do that.
Freedom of speech should be defined as such: Free speech and the right to freedom of expression applies to ideas of all kinds including those that may be deeply offensive.
The trick behind it is that your speech here may be offensive to the far-right, does that mean that you would be okay if they passed a law saying it was illegal?
> The trick behind it is that your speech here may be offensive to the far-right, does that mean that you would be okay if they passed a law saying it was illegal?
The fundamental difference is that I am not calling for the extermination or genocide of a group of people.
Speech like that isn't simply 'offensive', in the same way that one person wanting to kill someone else isn't a simple 'disagreement'.
Death threats are illegal in the UK, for the simple reason that it causes severe trauma to receive a large amount of them. Calling for the death of a group of people is just as bad. I honestly suspect you would live differently knowing that a large vocal group wants to exterminate people with a trait you carry.
I don't believe the problem will go away, but I do believe that if enough of us stand up against it, then the bullies won't be so brazen.
If I see a bully insult someone, I'm not going to sit around and tell the victim to just accept it as "free speech."
And if a bully does that in my house, I'm going to kick him out of my house.
> Why not make it downright illegal to talk about it?
To have any kind of discussion, you need to agree on a premise, a set of axioms, a base on which to talk.
In most countries, you take the constitution for that. Or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
That’s the minimal base on which you plan your society, and discuss politics and laws.
Usually, you add more, but it’s the required minimum.
What do you do with people who disagree with that? With people who disagree with the inalienable right to live? With people who disagree with the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" for some races or religious groups?
How can you form a society if you can’t even agree on the most basic ideas?
Maybe, you should actually separate society, split it, if there are people unwilling to make compromises, and holding immutable ideas that are incompatible with the rest of society.
Left needed a new boogyman because the old ones were getting stale. "alt right" is a perfect candidate.
If you believe people who agree with some of the alt-rightist views must be held accountable for the standard racists who use that worldview as cover, then logically you must also make it incumbent upon people of muslim faith to tug a forelock to "us enlightened folk" in shared outrage and be accountable for the extremists who act in their name, and for random jewish people to be accountable for settlements, for catholics to feel they owe you something for their Irish "freedom fighters," etc.
The question is: Does "stopping" the speech encourage or mitigate IRL behavior / action?
In addition, forcing ideas underground will likely strengthen the will and beliefs of the hardcore believers. That is, when you marginalize those who profess to be marginalized, you run the risk of enabling them.
Sucks being Reddit but it might actually be all for the better, as ugly as it is.
Someone should explain the author the difference between racism and a stereotype (linked meme picture).
Just read the comments of the OP in the linked meme thread. I don't want to repeat it here, but there is one that is as racist as they get (https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/comments/5d8qm6/time_to_st...).
I would also consider the image racist in any case, it's just not the most racist thing in that thread.
This thread is going to follow the predictable bizarre reasoning about how all 60,000,000+ Americans who voted Trump are racists because 0.01% of them are in the KKK.
Can we PLEASE keep this shit off Hacker News?
Yawn. No big surprise here, and it won't be a surprise when when the_donald is banned. Reddit users tend to be young and young people tend to lean left. It is by definition and echo chamber due to how quickly unpopular opinions are vaporized by downvoting.
What would be more interesting is to see what subreddits are tolerated that promote excessively immoral or illegal behavior.