Reddit cleaning up its act?
November 3, 2017 3:36 PM Subscribe
Reddit has banned several hate groups in the past couple of weeks, including r/Nazi, r/EuropeanNationalism, and r/pol. Also gone: r/NationalSocialism, r/whitesarecriminals, r/Far_Right, and r/DylannRoofInnocent. The new policy explanation says,
The full list of banned groups doesn't seem to be available, but many were tiny and some were not political; r/SexWithHorses and r/SexWithDogs are gone. Ahh… good?
Still up in the air: whether r/The_Donald is facing the axe. Seems unlikely, but if the banned communities' regulars pour into their remaining racist stronghold and start talking the same way, it may also vanish. The unhappy targets have tried to insist that groups that advocate punching Nazis should also be removed; so far, the mods remain able to tell the difference between "single meme" and "entire focus of community." However, it seems likely that Nazi-punching memes will no longer be allowed. (If it means no more pro-Nazi communities, I'm willing to forego the memes.)
This follows years of community activism, where users watched for racist communities whose moderators have vanished, took ownership, repurposed the subreddit name, and changed the policies: r/WhitePolitics is now about paint and appliances: "I just made the subreddit one less haven for spam and racism, and instead a place to post dank memes about the color white." r/race_realism has been flooded with "politically incorrect" posts about cycling, NASCAR, and other aspects of racing: "Polite society doesn't like to talk about it, but the blue shell is completely fair and adds to the balance of Mario Kart." And r/Stormfront has been rededicated to “firsthand reports of severe weather” for the past five years. The same article mentions that r/PUA was taken over and switched to posts about weightlifting and related physical challenges.
Going forward, we will take action against any content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people; likewise, we will also take action against content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals. This applies to ALL content on Reddit, including memes, CSS/community styling, flair, subreddit names, and usernames.
The full list of banned groups doesn't seem to be available, but many were tiny and some were not political; r/SexWithHorses and r/SexWithDogs are gone. Ahh… good?
Still up in the air: whether r/The_Donald is facing the axe. Seems unlikely, but if the banned communities' regulars pour into their remaining racist stronghold and start talking the same way, it may also vanish. The unhappy targets have tried to insist that groups that advocate punching Nazis should also be removed; so far, the mods remain able to tell the difference between "single meme" and "entire focus of community." However, it seems likely that Nazi-punching memes will no longer be allowed. (If it means no more pro-Nazi communities, I'm willing to forego the memes.)
This follows years of community activism, where users watched for racist communities whose moderators have vanished, took ownership, repurposed the subreddit name, and changed the policies: r/WhitePolitics is now about paint and appliances: "I just made the subreddit one less haven for spam and racism, and instead a place to post dank memes about the color white." r/race_realism has been flooded with "politically incorrect" posts about cycling, NASCAR, and other aspects of racing: "Polite society doesn't like to talk about it, but the blue shell is completely fair and adds to the balance of Mario Kart." And r/Stormfront has been rededicated to “firsthand reports of severe weather” for the past five years. The same article mentions that r/PUA was taken over and switched to posts about weightlifting and related physical challenges.
Doing better than Twitter, which still has a Donald around AND open nazis.
posted by Artw at 3:39 PM on November 3, 2017 [18 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:39 PM on November 3, 2017 [18 favorites]
I refuse to be in any way impressed with the social responsibility equalivant of wiping ones ass.
posted by RolandOfEld at 3:45 PM on November 3, 2017 [74 favorites]
posted by RolandOfEld at 3:45 PM on November 3, 2017 [74 favorites]
They left all the misogynist hate groups untouched (r/incel etc). Beyond the fact that they clearly just don’t give a shit about women (I mean, there are subs that masquerade as being about violent sexual fantasies that straight up give tips on how to assault sex workers), as long as they keep those they’ll grow the others back. Misogyny is like the ...scoby starter of violent bigotry.
Fuck. Reddit.
posted by schadenfrau at 3:46 PM on November 3, 2017 [92 favorites]
Fuck. Reddit.
posted by schadenfrau at 3:46 PM on November 3, 2017 [92 favorites]
I think it's just the annual reddit big public scrub of ugly indefensible shit that they do whenever they're being scrutinized. After the scrub is over, let a hundred shit blossoms flower.
They did this when the jailbait subreddit came under scrutiny. After the storm passed, a hundred subreddits serving the same function as jailbait but with weak covers appeared and still exist.
posted by Karaage at 3:54 PM on November 3, 2017 [17 favorites]
They did this when the jailbait subreddit came under scrutiny. After the storm passed, a hundred subreddits serving the same function as jailbait but with weak covers appeared and still exist.
posted by Karaage at 3:54 PM on November 3, 2017 [17 favorites]
Seriously, it’s not even a case of “it’s not enough.” This is a bar banning people with swastika face tattoos but still letting the Klan rent the party room for lynching parties so long as they hang up some balloons.
posted by uncleozzy at 3:54 PM on November 3, 2017 [27 favorites]
posted by uncleozzy at 3:54 PM on November 3, 2017 [27 favorites]
I'd like to believe that clearing out the worst of the overtly violent groups will put some of the others in perspective, and they'll be more willing to listen to complaints that the PUA and other misogynistic subreddits are promoting violence.
I don't actually believe that'll happen, but I have a bit of hope for it.
But mostly... yeah, nice that those are gone; Reddit has not yet achieved "not a horribly offensive site" status.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:56 PM on November 3, 2017 [3 favorites]
I don't actually believe that'll happen, but I have a bit of hope for it.
But mostly... yeah, nice that those are gone; Reddit has not yet achieved "not a horribly offensive site" status.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:56 PM on November 3, 2017 [3 favorites]
Spez made very clear in his last AMA the_treasonousdipshit isn't going anywhere. So lukewarm, cowardly moderation seems to still be in full swing around there.
posted by _Synesthesia_ at 3:57 PM on November 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by _Synesthesia_ at 3:57 PM on November 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
r/Race_realism sounds like a great place to shitpost about engines in UCI competitions. Because let's be honest, there's some very fishy things on Froome's power levels.
Still not opening an account there, anyway.
posted by lmfsilva at 3:59 PM on November 3, 2017 [9 favorites]
Still not opening an account there, anyway.
posted by lmfsilva at 3:59 PM on November 3, 2017 [9 favorites]
/r/incel was banned six months ago. There may well be other misogynistic subreddits—in fact, I have no doubt that there are—but it is not hard to do the most basic fact-checking.
posted by koavf at 4:04 PM on November 3, 2017 [9 favorites]
posted by koavf at 4:04 PM on November 3, 2017 [9 favorites]
For better or worse, r/the_donald is the principal American conservative sub-reddit and reflects reasonably well the beliefs and priorities and sense of humor of some serious percentage (30%? more?) of computer literate Americans with time on their hands (the Reddit demographic). It is laughable to think that if corporate America will ban that, it won't come and ban similarly mainstream liberal sites, especially if "mainstream" progressive stops being about what modest help which non-white people should get to compete, and how high income you should be to go from 35% to 39.6% marginal tax rate, and starts being about actual redistribution of wealth and opportunity and seriously inconvenient corporate regulation.
posted by MattD at 4:05 PM on November 3, 2017 [12 favorites]
posted by MattD at 4:05 PM on November 3, 2017 [12 favorites]
/r/incel was banned six months ago
/r/incels is still there. Invite only, but still there.
posted by Pendragon at 4:08 PM on November 3, 2017 [11 favorites]
/r/incels is still there. Invite only, but still there.
posted by Pendragon at 4:08 PM on November 3, 2017 [11 favorites]
Sen. Mark Warner is interested in exploring Reddit's and 4Chan's roles in amplifying Russian propaganda.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:12 PM on November 3, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:12 PM on November 3, 2017 [11 favorites]
r/incel was banned. r/incels is a private community.
We may wind up seeing more like that, community names one letter off from each other, hosting roughly the same content but being different enough in specifics that only one steps over the ban-line.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:19 PM on November 3, 2017 [7 favorites]
We may wind up seeing more like that, community names one letter off from each other, hosting roughly the same content but being different enough in specifics that only one steps over the ban-line.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:19 PM on November 3, 2017 [7 favorites]
It is laughable to think that if corporate America will ban that, it won't come and ban similarly mainstream liberal sites
Oh, I agree: also subreddits like r/slippery_slope, r/shut_up_the_Overton_window_is_moving_in_my_favor, and r/disingenuous_horseshit would also be in the crosshairs, and we musn't have that.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 4:22 PM on November 3, 2017 [15 favorites]
Oh, I agree: also subreddits like r/slippery_slope, r/shut_up_the_Overton_window_is_moving_in_my_favor, and r/disingenuous_horseshit would also be in the crosshairs, and we musn't have that.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 4:22 PM on November 3, 2017 [15 favorites]
I mean, r/incels — which still exists — still gets to recruit from r/mgtow, r/mensrights, and all the rest of the misogynist hate groups allowed to metastize publicly on Reddit.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:32 PM on November 3, 2017 [12 favorites]
posted by schadenfrau at 4:32 PM on November 3, 2017 [12 favorites]
Absolutely if they're talking to Facebook and Twitter about the Russian influence they should also be looking at Reddit. In the lead-up to the election I would often be arguing with Trump supporters on other online forums and I got into the habit of checking r/The Donald every morning so I could anticipate what the daily conspiracy meme would be. They were literally running back there to get their marching orders. I almost felt bad for some of these idiots how easy it was to stay one step ahead of them. Almost.
posted by mannequito at 4:33 PM on November 3, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by mannequito at 4:33 PM on November 3, 2017 [8 favorites]
You could say the same thing about the Sanders subreddit.
Is there a German word for simultaneously being shocked and the opposite of shocked? Because of course misogyny isn’t a big deal to these fucks.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:36 PM on November 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
Is there a German word for simultaneously being shocked and the opposite of shocked? Because of course misogyny isn’t a big deal to these fucks.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:36 PM on November 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
I do love those takeovers though.
posted by corb at 4:46 PM on November 3, 2017 [15 favorites]
posted by corb at 4:46 PM on November 3, 2017 [15 favorites]
/r/changemyview is problematic, too, imho, and it's frequently held up as an amazing beacon of reddit amazingness. But when your view is about hating people (women, PoC, Muslims, Catholics, Romani, etc.) the OP is allowed to make dozens of posts explaining why their hatred of those people is justified. I think that the subreddit is, at best, a wash in terms of the good it may or may not do.
posted by xyzzy at 4:47 PM on November 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by xyzzy at 4:47 PM on November 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
I always find these stories horrifying and confusing because all the subreddits I read are full of lovely supportive and kind people. People seem to go out of their way to be kind, even when it derails the topic. And then I hear about some of the others. UGH. I don't know why Reddit won't stick with the nice ones and ditch the others rather than letting everyone be tarred with the same brush.
It's like having a community college teaching flower arranging or kitten appreciation in one room and how to destroy lives next door. Why would you want that?
posted by kitten magic at 4:49 PM on November 3, 2017 [23 favorites]
It's like having a community college teaching flower arranging or kitten appreciation in one room and how to destroy lives next door. Why would you want that?
posted by kitten magic at 4:49 PM on November 3, 2017 [23 favorites]
I honestly don't believe a single word that Reddit management spouts. We've heard it all before.
Time will tell, I suppose.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:52 PM on November 3, 2017 [7 favorites]
Time will tell, I suppose.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:52 PM on November 3, 2017 [7 favorites]
I like "r/whatisthisthing" and "r/justrolledintotheshop" and "r/gifrecipes." The place has the potential for a lot of good, and when a subreddit has decent moderation, it's as fun a place on the internet as you can imagine.
I tend to avoid political subreddits like the plague, even the lefty ones. Misogynist and ultra-con/rad-right comments outside of their nasty little dens are downvoted into a red pulpy mess in the looser subs, or result in bannination in the well tended gardens.
They still have a real problem with hate-communities - especially inobvious ones with big, thick fig-leaves like "blackpeopletwitter" - and they move more slowly and with a lighter hand than I'd prefer when they do gather a clue. That said, r/wholesomememes may just wind up saving the world one day.
Still on the fence on r/polandball. Only on the fence at all because it relentlessly punches up, and laughs with, not at. Also this, posted earlier this year.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:53 PM on November 3, 2017 [8 favorites]
I tend to avoid political subreddits like the plague, even the lefty ones. Misogynist and ultra-con/rad-right comments outside of their nasty little dens are downvoted into a red pulpy mess in the looser subs, or result in bannination in the well tended gardens.
They still have a real problem with hate-communities - especially inobvious ones with big, thick fig-leaves like "blackpeopletwitter" - and they move more slowly and with a lighter hand than I'd prefer when they do gather a clue. That said, r/wholesomememes may just wind up saving the world one day.
Still on the fence on r/polandball. Only on the fence at all because it relentlessly punches up, and laughs with, not at. Also this, posted earlier this year.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:53 PM on November 3, 2017 [8 favorites]
I hang around r/callofcthulhu, and r/deltagreen, so I'm hardly a heavy user, but I have been to other subreddits and I have SEEN THINGS, and this is nothing but lip service.
And, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so we'll see if they actually DO anything and if those actions have ANY effect whatsoever.
Place your bets.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 5:04 PM on November 3, 2017
And, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so we'll see if they actually DO anything and if those actions have ANY effect whatsoever.
Place your bets.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 5:04 PM on November 3, 2017
They still have a real problem with hate-communities - especially inobvious ones with big, thick fig-leaves like "blackpeopletwitter" -
r/blackpeopletwitter ends up having a weird racial voyeurism/appropriation aspect but it's not really a hate community is it? Certainly I don't think that's what it was made for - of course the problem you run into on Reddit is the redpill/altright users don't exactly stay put in their sub-communities.
posted by atoxyl at 5:44 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
r/blackpeopletwitter ends up having a weird racial voyeurism/appropriation aspect but it's not really a hate community is it? Certainly I don't think that's what it was made for - of course the problem you run into on Reddit is the redpill/altright users don't exactly stay put in their sub-communities.
posted by atoxyl at 5:44 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
For what it’s worth, /r/againsthatesubreddits highlights a lot of awful shit in “innocuous” places, too, not just the obvious spots, and admins have little interest in dealing with most of it.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:57 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by uncleozzy at 5:57 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
Look, for folks guessing what "might" happen to the donald...you can stop. Go look at spez's AMA from like, last week. He straight up said they're going to leave it up no matter what they do in there for some BS reason like "not taking their rights away." Reddit is a great resource for many people, but it's also rotten at the top.
posted by trackofalljades at 5:58 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by trackofalljades at 5:58 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
Reddit is MetaFilter from the Black Lodge. It is not cleaning up its act. This is like if Charles Manson washed his hair.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:16 PM on November 3, 2017 [19 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:16 PM on November 3, 2017 [19 favorites]
Reddit doesn't delete my harmless jokes about kale.
posted by w0mbat at 6:30 PM on November 3, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by w0mbat at 6:30 PM on November 3, 2017 [5 favorites]
Banning r/changemyview because it allows arguments you dont like to be articulated is the stupidest thing. The entire point of letting that happen is so that you can argue their points & change minds. We're not building the internet to be totalitarian speech control...
If they are so wrong it should be easy to argue the points.
Reddit is incredibly lefty. Go ban /r/gamerghazi, /r/SRS and all the gatbage post-modern patriarchy destroying nonsense. Reddit won't, but it's happy to take adcantage of mental health issues and sexual abuse for political gain, as long as it puts more women in power that believe in lefty policies..
posted by Submiqent at 6:34 PM on November 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
If they are so wrong it should be easy to argue the points.
Reddit is incredibly lefty. Go ban /r/gamerghazi, /r/SRS and all the gatbage post-modern patriarchy destroying nonsense. Reddit won't, but it's happy to take adcantage of mental health issues and sexual abuse for political gain, as long as it puts more women in power that believe in lefty policies..
posted by Submiqent at 6:34 PM on November 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
Not all views deserve airing. Conversing with the holder of said views helps to propagate them, and there is the risk that any format in which they are disseminated may influence other people. There is a value to relegating certain viewpoints to the extent that the consequences for airing them in public outweighs the benefits. The people debating nazis have helped spread nazism during the current flare up.
posted by bootlegpop at 6:40 PM on November 3, 2017 [14 favorites]
posted by bootlegpop at 6:40 PM on November 3, 2017 [14 favorites]
I love that “postmodern” has become a righty buzzword. It’s sort of postmodern.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:40 PM on November 3, 2017 [19 favorites]
posted by uncleozzy at 6:40 PM on November 3, 2017 [19 favorites]
I hang around r/callofcthulhu, and r/deltagreen, so I'm hardly a heavy user, but I have been to other subreddits and I have SEEN THINGS, and this is nothing but lip service.
Delta Green should have taught you how to deal with "things".
posted by Artw at 6:43 PM on November 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
Delta Green should have taught you how to deal with "things".
posted by Artw at 6:43 PM on November 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
LOL at the idea that gamerghazi and SRS are even remotely close to the doxxing and brigading that KiA and T_D do on a regular basis. Troll better.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:44 PM on November 3, 2017 [29 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 6:44 PM on November 3, 2017 [29 favorites]
They do dox. Not here to compare who's worse, I don't visit both.
Same can be said for communism and marxism bootlegpop, especially in terms of recent spread but I'm happy to debate them alongside anything else. Bad ideas are easy to argue down. You guys haven't tried yet.
Postmodernism is an idea worth debating. It is a flawed philosophy based off a critique of modernism and grew a lot post war, arguably influenced by a high degree of PTSD. The more recent political incarbation of postmodernism posists there is nothing in this world except power. This rots away any belief in geniune authority or competence or quality of any kind. It is poisonous. I recommend Jordan Peterson's commets.
If you want to call it a buzz word, be my guest. You are doing yourself a disservice by lacking a sophisticated understanding of modern political discussion.
More importantly silencing ideas doesnt make them go away.
Why talk about racism openly if you want racism to go away. Surely we should silence that too.
posted by Submiqent at 7:16 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
Same can be said for communism and marxism bootlegpop, especially in terms of recent spread but I'm happy to debate them alongside anything else. Bad ideas are easy to argue down. You guys haven't tried yet.
Postmodernism is an idea worth debating. It is a flawed philosophy based off a critique of modernism and grew a lot post war, arguably influenced by a high degree of PTSD. The more recent political incarbation of postmodernism posists there is nothing in this world except power. This rots away any belief in geniune authority or competence or quality of any kind. It is poisonous. I recommend Jordan Peterson's commets.
If you want to call it a buzz word, be my guest. You are doing yourself a disservice by lacking a sophisticated understanding of modern political discussion.
More importantly silencing ideas doesnt make them go away.
Why talk about racism openly if you want racism to go away. Surely we should silence that too.
posted by Submiqent at 7:16 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
Reddit is incredibly lefty. Go ban /r/gamerghazi, /r/SRS and all the gatbage post-modern patriarchy destroying nonsense. Reddit won't, but it's happy to take adcantage of mental health issues and sexual abuse for political gain, as long as it puts more women in power that believe in lefty policies.
The idea that any of what you mentioned qualifies as "mental health issues" and that leftist women are the ultimate evil speaks volumes.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:20 PM on November 3, 2017 [54 favorites]
The idea that any of what you mentioned qualifies as "mental health issues" and that leftist women are the ultimate evil speaks volumes.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:20 PM on November 3, 2017 [54 favorites]
What most of you are missing is that while these right wing subs exist, the majority of reddit ignores them. And their behavior is not allowed in any other subreddits outside their own. I mod a few large (100K+) subs and most mods actively work to remove and ban behavior that is considered hate speech or threatening at our discretion. And it's rare to see outside of the fool's home subs. I don't like it, but free speech is free speech even for the idiots. Most of their rhetoric is largely mis-information combined with mob mentality. Let them have it. They'll just find other means. I'm more concerned with the evidence of brigading by the Russians to be honest. They are largely responsible for stirring fires up on T_D
Also, don't forget who owns reddit.
posted by peewinkle at 7:33 PM on November 3, 2017 [12 favorites]
Also, don't forget who owns reddit.
posted by peewinkle at 7:33 PM on November 3, 2017 [12 favorites]
And it's rare to see outside of the fool's home subs.
I dunno about that, exactly (and I actually use Reddit too). I appreciate mods who work hard to control it - it's kinda just that any sub where mods don't work really hard it seeps in.
posted by atoxyl at 7:46 PM on November 3, 2017 [7 favorites]
I dunno about that, exactly (and I actually use Reddit too). I appreciate mods who work hard to control it - it's kinda just that any sub where mods don't work really hard it seeps in.
posted by atoxyl at 7:46 PM on November 3, 2017 [7 favorites]
What most of you are missing is that while these right wing subs exist, the majority of reddit ignores them.
A mod policy of "don't like? don't look" is only reasonable if the forums aren't being used as a recruiting platform for hate groups that affect people's lives offline.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:46 PM on November 3, 2017 [30 favorites]
A mod policy of "don't like? don't look" is only reasonable if the forums aren't being used as a recruiting platform for hate groups that affect people's lives offline.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:46 PM on November 3, 2017 [30 favorites]
I think it's just the annual reddit big public scrub of ugly indefensible shit that they do whenever they're being scrutinized. After the scrub is over, let a hundred shit blossoms flower.
This has been studied. Subreddit bans do work to reduce overall toxicity (on reddit), and probably the internet as a whole (by reducing bigots' visibility).
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:54 PM on November 3, 2017 [25 favorites]
This has been studied. Subreddit bans do work to reduce overall toxicity (on reddit), and probably the internet as a whole (by reducing bigots' visibility).
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:54 PM on November 3, 2017 [25 favorites]
If they are so wrong it should be easy to argue the points.
Which is why we no longer have flat earthers, moon landing hoax conspiracy theorists, or anti-vaxers anymore! Because arguing their points made them go away, and giving them a platform to argue from, setting up the debates, that totally didn't function to legitimise their views, nope.
posted by Dysk at 7:58 PM on November 3, 2017 [60 favorites]
Which is why we no longer have flat earthers, moon landing hoax conspiracy theorists, or anti-vaxers anymore! Because arguing their points made them go away, and giving them a platform to argue from, setting up the debates, that totally didn't function to legitimise their views, nope.
posted by Dysk at 7:58 PM on November 3, 2017 [60 favorites]
free speech is free speech even for the idiots
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that private entities are obligated to provide that speech with a platform. Certainly not when that speech is being directly tied to murderers and other violent criminals.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:03 PM on November 3, 2017 [36 favorites]
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that private entities are obligated to provide that speech with a platform. Certainly not when that speech is being directly tied to murderers and other violent criminals.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:03 PM on November 3, 2017 [36 favorites]
Related video on debating the alt-right: Link
posted by bootlegpop at 8:06 PM on November 3, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by bootlegpop at 8:06 PM on November 3, 2017 [5 favorites]
"I don't like it, but free speech is free speech even for the idiots. Most of their rhetoric is largely mis-information combined with mob mentality. Let them have it."
I don't understand the American obsession with radical free speech up to and including hate speech. In Canada it's a criminal offence to incite hatred or promote genocide against an identifiable group based on their colour, race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation or gender expression/identity. It's considered a justified and reasonable limit on expression in a free and democratic society. And we're okay. Its a (attempt at a) Freedom From rather than a Freedom To, and I'm okay with that.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 8:10 PM on November 3, 2017 [53 favorites]
I don't understand the American obsession with radical free speech up to and including hate speech. In Canada it's a criminal offence to incite hatred or promote genocide against an identifiable group based on their colour, race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation or gender expression/identity. It's considered a justified and reasonable limit on expression in a free and democratic society. And we're okay. Its a (attempt at a) Freedom From rather than a Freedom To, and I'm okay with that.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 8:10 PM on November 3, 2017 [53 favorites]
We're not building the internet to be totalitarian speech control...
Sure we are. Look at China. Look at the massive influence of advertising. Facebook/Google/Apple/Amazon.
posted by jonnay at 8:11 PM on November 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
Sure we are. Look at China. Look at the massive influence of advertising. Facebook/Google/Apple/Amazon.
posted by jonnay at 8:11 PM on November 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
It’s simple and basic etiquette and human ethics: if someone in a community of people says your words are threatening to them, listen and use different words unless you like being threatening to other people. If those words are very personal and important to you and you’re convinced they’re true, say that respectfully and explain clearly and politely why you think so. Then if the community hears your reply and doesn’t buy it, drop it and do some soul searching. Don’t keep pushing it. Of course, retain the rights to your own life story so long as you aren’t embelleshing it self-interestedly or lying. Speak ur truth! Just don’t expect to be allowed to speak it at every party you go to and still get invited back.
That’s how I’d recommend doing it. Hell, I get buh-leted all the time and you won’t usually catch me complaining about it (well, okay, couple times; sorry) because I appreciate the effort to keep things flowing respectfully over the long run even if I don’t always feel great about it in the moment. Communities need that flexibility to negotiate the tension between short term impulses and longer term values and personal ambitions. People are twitchy. Even the healthiest person might strain under too much pressure.
Hate speech is not free speech, in the traditional, historical usage of that phrase: it’s a corrosive substance to free speech; it subverts its form but fills that empty cup that superficially looks like it might contain speech with poison and passes it around at parties.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:36 PM on November 3, 2017 [12 favorites]
That’s how I’d recommend doing it. Hell, I get buh-leted all the time and you won’t usually catch me complaining about it (well, okay, couple times; sorry) because I appreciate the effort to keep things flowing respectfully over the long run even if I don’t always feel great about it in the moment. Communities need that flexibility to negotiate the tension between short term impulses and longer term values and personal ambitions. People are twitchy. Even the healthiest person might strain under too much pressure.
Hate speech is not free speech, in the traditional, historical usage of that phrase: it’s a corrosive substance to free speech; it subverts its form but fills that empty cup that superficially looks like it might contain speech with poison and passes it around at parties.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:36 PM on November 3, 2017 [12 favorites]
/r/incels goes private off and on. It will be back in a few days, unfortunately.
They like to screw with the /r/inceltears mob. Both need to be ended.
posted by Talez at 8:47 PM on November 3, 2017
They like to screw with the /r/inceltears mob. Both need to be ended.
posted by Talez at 8:47 PM on November 3, 2017
it's not even the private/nonprivate/dedicated/whatever hatefilled subreddits that really drive the point home that it's a toxic horrible site. every single time i've googled a sort of niche question, about an author, or an artist, or something in a game, or something travel-related, there's always someone in a subreddit discussing this exact thing. and every time i've clicked on those links, no matter how pleasant and helpful the general discussion is, there is always, always, always some disgusting fucking side convo that isn't bad enough by that community's standards to downvote. the grossness supposedly contained within the hate sites is instead casual and unremarkable and wholly pervasive, like a systemic infection.
i'm currently having some trouble with a puzzle in the new assassin's creed and i would literally rather throw away the game, burn my playstation, and then drown myself in a septic tank than click on the reddit links discussing the puzzle.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:16 PM on November 3, 2017 [27 favorites]
i'm currently having some trouble with a puzzle in the new assassin's creed and i would literally rather throw away the game, burn my playstation, and then drown myself in a septic tank than click on the reddit links discussing the puzzle.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:16 PM on November 3, 2017 [27 favorites]
Reddit has made the bold choice not to allow literal Nazis on their platform.
posted by Amplify at 9:17 PM on November 3, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Amplify at 9:17 PM on November 3, 2017 [3 favorites]
and i've made pretty much that exact comment fairly frequently over the past 10 years here and every single time someone smugly tells me that i should just consider visiting less terrible subreddits and i'm just like. your FACE is a terrible subreddit, good day sir.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:19 PM on November 3, 2017 [21 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:19 PM on November 3, 2017 [21 favorites]
Nazis with a pretend interest in free speech can go fuck themselves. It's 2017, we are under no obligation to pretend their bullshit is real.
posted by Artw at 9:59 PM on November 3, 2017 [18 favorites]
posted by Artw at 9:59 PM on November 3, 2017 [18 favorites]
It's 2017, we are under no obligation to pretend their bullshit is real.
Well, actually,* we should remember that not only is their bullshit real, but "kill the jews" is not an idle theoretical hypothesis - like "i'm gonna kill the next person who doesn't use their blinker" - it is an actual goal. Something they desire, and long for.
Their bullshit is real, and should be treated as real. It should be opposed at every step as though it were real and deadly serious. Because it is. The violence inherent in white supremacy underpins every thought, word, and deed of every nazi and it is that violence which is corrosive to civil society and cannot be countenanced. It must be destroyed by any means necessary.
But at no point, ever in a million years, can you ever believe that rhetoric is "not real". You can be assured that it is.
*rhetorical device, possibly used to poor effect.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:17 PM on November 3, 2017 [8 favorites]
Well, actually,* we should remember that not only is their bullshit real, but "kill the jews" is not an idle theoretical hypothesis - like "i'm gonna kill the next person who doesn't use their blinker" - it is an actual goal. Something they desire, and long for.
Their bullshit is real, and should be treated as real. It should be opposed at every step as though it were real and deadly serious. Because it is. The violence inherent in white supremacy underpins every thought, word, and deed of every nazi and it is that violence which is corrosive to civil society and cannot be countenanced. It must be destroyed by any means necessary.
But at no point, ever in a million years, can you ever believe that rhetoric is "not real". You can be assured that it is.
*rhetorical device, possibly used to poor effect.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:17 PM on November 3, 2017 [8 favorites]
I don't understand the American obsession with radical free speech up to and including hate speech.
The compromise I’ve come to personally is: it is very, very important to me that the official law not jail people for ideologically different free speech - because I know I will not always have people I support in power, and I don’t want people to be sent to jail for expressing anti-government ideologies.
However, there is a broad, broad difference between “you shouldn’t be sent to jail” and “we should give you a platform to express said views that no one can interfere with.”
posted by corb at 10:19 PM on November 3, 2017 [19 favorites]
The compromise I’ve come to personally is: it is very, very important to me that the official law not jail people for ideologically different free speech - because I know I will not always have people I support in power, and I don’t want people to be sent to jail for expressing anti-government ideologies.
However, there is a broad, broad difference between “you shouldn’t be sent to jail” and “we should give you a platform to express said views that no one can interfere with.”
posted by corb at 10:19 PM on November 3, 2017 [19 favorites]
Their bullshit as in a concern for free speech is not real. The nazi bits, yes, very much real.
posted by Artw at 10:50 PM on November 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 10:50 PM on November 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
Which is why we no longer have flat earthers, moon landing hoax conspiracy theorists, or anti-vaxers anymore!
We have better than that now - we have moon deniers. Which, fortunately, does not have a strong enough following to have their own subreddit.
Although maybe if Reddit had more kooks, the Nazis and "MGTOW" crowds would not want to be associated with them, and go elsewhere.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:05 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
We have better than that now - we have moon deniers. Which, fortunately, does not have a strong enough following to have their own subreddit.
Although maybe if Reddit had more kooks, the Nazis and "MGTOW" crowds would not want to be associated with them, and go elsewhere.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:05 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
Although maybe if Reddit had more kooks, the Nazis and "MGTOW" crowds would not want to be associated with them, and go elsewhere.
Reddit has plenty of kooks. It's just that Nazis have no standards and MTGOWs are too stupid to have any.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:04 AM on November 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Reddit has plenty of kooks. It's just that Nazis have no standards and MTGOWs are too stupid to have any.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:04 AM on November 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Postmodernism is an idea worth debating. It is a flawed philosophy based off a critique of modernism and grew a lot post war, arguably influenced by a high degree of PTSD.
whut
posted by jokeefe at 12:36 AM on November 4, 2017 [9 favorites]
whut
posted by jokeefe at 12:36 AM on November 4, 2017 [9 favorites]
I don't understand the American obsession with radical free speech up to and including hate speech.
do you think that we would trust the trump administration to fairly decide what is hate speech and what is not? this isn't a hypothetical - you are talking about giving trump, a crypto-nazi himself, the power to censor speech
you are also talking about a country in which one of my local pawn shops displays a sign saying that there is no 1st amendment without the 2nd amendment backing it up (paraphrase) - meaning "we're armed and you're not shutting us up"
good luck with trying to change their minds, although i don't know that they're pro-hate speech
private parties can easily choose to ban nazis from their servers and should - and we can certainly stay off of services that won't do this, and should
but i don't trust my government to do this - especially a system that can elect a monstrosity like trump
posted by pyramid termite at 1:01 AM on November 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
do you think that we would trust the trump administration to fairly decide what is hate speech and what is not? this isn't a hypothetical - you are talking about giving trump, a crypto-nazi himself, the power to censor speech
you are also talking about a country in which one of my local pawn shops displays a sign saying that there is no 1st amendment without the 2nd amendment backing it up (paraphrase) - meaning "we're armed and you're not shutting us up"
good luck with trying to change their minds, although i don't know that they're pro-hate speech
private parties can easily choose to ban nazis from their servers and should - and we can certainly stay off of services that won't do this, and should
but i don't trust my government to do this - especially a system that can elect a monstrosity like trump
posted by pyramid termite at 1:01 AM on November 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
welcome to the jordan peterson realm
Yeah, Jordan Peterson caters to bigots by couching his dog whistles in pseudointellectual gobbledygook. I tried to give him a listen on a podcast; he struck me as wholly insincere, and his ideas were alarmingly vacuous.
And hisfans followers parrot the same, empty talking points. I find that guys like he and Stefan Molyneux, with their cults of personality, are the real threats out there.
*fun bonus: here is a podcast between Peterson and Sam Harris which arrived at an impasse...
If you hate yourself, give it a listen.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 1:28 AM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
Yeah, Jordan Peterson caters to bigots by couching his dog whistles in pseudointellectual gobbledygook. I tried to give him a listen on a podcast; he struck me as wholly insincere, and his ideas were alarmingly vacuous.
And his
*fun bonus: here is a podcast between Peterson and Sam Harris which arrived at an impasse...
Harris: The resulting exchange, however, was not what our mutual fans were hoping for. Rather than discuss religion and atheism, or the relationship between science and ethics, we spent two hours debating what it means to say that a proposition is (or seems to be) “true.” This is a not trivial problem in philosophy. But the place at which Peterson and I got stuck was a strange one. He seemed to be claiming that any belief system compatible with our survival must be true, and any that gets us killed must be false. As I tried to show, this view makes no sense, and I couldn’t quite convince myself that Peterson actually held it. The response on social media suggests that most listeners found our exchange as perplexing and frustrating as I did.
If you hate yourself, give it a listen.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 1:28 AM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
I keep seeing about Jordan Peterson, and I haven't decided what to make of him yet. In one talk, his description of postmodernists and Marxists is just wrong. So, like, why should I have to sort through his noise? As another example, in his "theory" of PTSD treatment in this short clip, he strings together a number of provocative ideas into a plausible story, but as scientific and philosophical red flags doesn't seem at all interested in validation i.e. checking how much of what's plausible is actually true. That doesn't seem a scholarly attitude at all. It's easier to destroy than build and that applies to knowledge, too.
posted by polymodus at 2:18 AM on November 4, 2017
posted by polymodus at 2:18 AM on November 4, 2017
do you think that we would trust the trump administration to fairly decide what is hate speech and what is not? this isn't a hypothetical - you are talking about giving trump, a crypto-nazi himself, the power to censor speech
I didn't realise your president made your laws. Don't you guys have some kind of parliament or something? Or is it literally like, the president personally does the thing, or it doesn't get done because the president represents the entirety of government? Huh.
posted by Dysk at 2:43 AM on November 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
I didn't realise your president made your laws. Don't you guys have some kind of parliament or something? Or is it literally like, the president personally does the thing, or it doesn't get done because the president represents the entirety of government? Huh.
posted by Dysk at 2:43 AM on November 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
The Trump administration has already issued de facto gag orders on certain types of scientific speech, requiring the EPA and other scientific agencies to undergo political review prior to publication. Seems our "parliament" hasn't done much about that yet.
posted by xyzzy at 4:02 AM on November 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by xyzzy at 4:02 AM on November 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
Those are restrictions on particular government agencies, not on particular types of speech in and of themselves, so rather different to what's under discussion. Defining and outlawing hate speech would require legislation, and would thus not fall to the office of the president.
posted by Dysk at 4:40 AM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 4:40 AM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don't understand the American obsession with radical free speech up to and including hate speech.
First Amendment Absolutism is as much a part of American Idiocy as Second Amendment Absolutism. And, in my 60 years I've come to accept that it is just as harmful.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:51 AM on November 4, 2017 [13 favorites]
First Amendment Absolutism is as much a part of American Idiocy as Second Amendment Absolutism. And, in my 60 years I've come to accept that it is just as harmful.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:51 AM on November 4, 2017 [13 favorites]
Postmodernism is an idea worth debating. It is a flawed philosophy based off a critique of modernism and grew a lot post war, arguably influenced by a high degree of PTSD. The more recent political incarbation of postmodernism posists there is nothing in this world except power. This rots away any belief in geniune authority or competence or quality of any kind. It is poisonous. I recommend Jordan Peterson's commets.You literally have no idea what postmodernism is.
posted by prismatic7 at 5:05 AM on November 4, 2017 [25 favorites]
one might even say that a defining American attribute is absolutism
posted by kokaku at 5:11 AM on November 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 5:11 AM on November 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
Defining and outlawing hate speech would require legislation, and would thus not fall to the office of the president.Yes. Such legislation has been passed before. And SCOTUS threw it out.
posted by xyzzy at 5:26 AM on November 4, 2017
And we're okay. Its a (attempt at a) Freedom From rather than a Freedom To, and I'm okay with that.
A more nuanced version of the "Freedom To"/"Freedom From" that I've seen is "Freedom To Do" vs. "Freedom To Be". In the American (and, to a lesser extent, "Anglo-Saxon") world, freedom is Freedom To Do. You're free to soar or sink to the level Nature, God and/or Providence allow you to reach. Your Freedom To Be is constrained by the fact that it's your responsibility, and nobody else's, to secure the means to be; the whole "pursuit of happiness" thing. Elsewhere, freedom is the Freedom To Be, which is ensured by institutions such as a welfare state, redistributive taxation and restrictions on the Freedom To Do where it adversely impacts others' Freedom To Be (which is a more maximal stance than the American maxim that "your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins").
posted by acb at 6:26 AM on November 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
A more nuanced version of the "Freedom To"/"Freedom From" that I've seen is "Freedom To Do" vs. "Freedom To Be". In the American (and, to a lesser extent, "Anglo-Saxon") world, freedom is Freedom To Do. You're free to soar or sink to the level Nature, God and/or Providence allow you to reach. Your Freedom To Be is constrained by the fact that it's your responsibility, and nobody else's, to secure the means to be; the whole "pursuit of happiness" thing. Elsewhere, freedom is the Freedom To Be, which is ensured by institutions such as a welfare state, redistributive taxation and restrictions on the Freedom To Do where it adversely impacts others' Freedom To Be (which is a more maximal stance than the American maxim that "your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins").
posted by acb at 6:26 AM on November 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
The place has the potential for a lot of good, and when a subreddit has decent moderation
It's this. Speaking of Reddit as a whole is almost as impossible as speaking of the internet as a whole. It's a very fast moving chaotic amateur hour, not a carefully curated community with specific views, like, you know, Metafilter or other hand-crafted Internet delights. There are posts from PhDs discussing thesis topics, and posts from nine year olds who need to know how to tell mom they just broke a lamp, and these posts are adjacent and, often, equally popular.
If I want a thoughtful literature recommendation, I'll probably use AskMe, but if I have a problem compiling a Linux kernel or need to find an obscure action figure from the 1970's, Reddit will deliver much more info, much more quicky, because the place seems to be about 80% engineering bros. (That has, you know, good aspects as well as bad, and they're both predictable.)
Like Facebook, Reddit has good, well-moderated, fun places, as well as horrible stinky pits. The fact it's such a giant website (it's often one of the five or six biggest websites in the world, by traffic) means it contains just about everything imaginable. It's undermoderated, I agree, but some of the worst sections are also the most moderated... just moderated by people that you may not consider the best possible people for the job. It's a disorganized federation.
For MeFites who don't quite understand or know it, the best way to think of it might be that Metafilter could exist as part of Reddit. It would be one single, invite-only subreddit (a liberal, progressive, friendly one with cats stuck in photocopiers). It would have ten or twenty thousand users, and it would be well run by five or six moderators. And if one stayed in r/MetaFilter, or some of the other well-run, friendly, places, one would probably love Reddit.
But... then there are also thousands of other subreddits, from great to awful, each with from a dozen to a million users, each moderated by a half-dozen moderators of all possible type, enforcing their own rulesets and moderating discussion to what they each feel is appropriate.
Facebook, too, somehow encompasses a world from best to worst, from admirable to criminal, though with much, much stronger moderation and what, maybe a thousand times the staff and budget of Reddit or MeFi? But note that despite near-limitless resources, Facebook is still a frequent home to hate groups and many distasteful things, and probably always will be, because of the modern tech-driven business model of "let the users do create the content they want" to drive revenue.
Without something like fifty times the staff size (which would break it, since there's no revenue to support that), Reddit simply can't be manually curated enough to keep the hate out any more than the whole Internet could be. Heck, even that probably would not work (again, see Facebook). That leaves technological solutions, which are always... imperfect.
Politically speaking (hot topic this year) Reddit, Facebook (and I'm confident even Metafilter) were certainly infiltrated and manipulated by waves of influence from everything from mostly-harmless paid Clinton staffers to automatic Russians last year -- watching some of the same subreddits transform from month to month from pro-Hillary echo chambers to what we now know were soviet propaganda machines... and often back, a month later, was bizarre -- and I don't think it's ever really stoppable.
As above, bigger budgets and better intentions won't solve the problem. Insulating ourselves into our own safe communities won't help (we all learned that last year, right?); so maybe we just need better tools and better training as information consumers, so we know how to analyze and sort a mountain of new info everyday, hopefully with some technology to help us do so.
Those are my pre-coffee thoughts, anyway, which should be obvious from the prolix scatteredness. I edit better in the afternoon.
posted by rokusan at 6:51 AM on November 4, 2017 [8 favorites]
It's this. Speaking of Reddit as a whole is almost as impossible as speaking of the internet as a whole. It's a very fast moving chaotic amateur hour, not a carefully curated community with specific views, like, you know, Metafilter or other hand-crafted Internet delights. There are posts from PhDs discussing thesis topics, and posts from nine year olds who need to know how to tell mom they just broke a lamp, and these posts are adjacent and, often, equally popular.
If I want a thoughtful literature recommendation, I'll probably use AskMe, but if I have a problem compiling a Linux kernel or need to find an obscure action figure from the 1970's, Reddit will deliver much more info, much more quicky, because the place seems to be about 80% engineering bros. (That has, you know, good aspects as well as bad, and they're both predictable.)
Like Facebook, Reddit has good, well-moderated, fun places, as well as horrible stinky pits. The fact it's such a giant website (it's often one of the five or six biggest websites in the world, by traffic) means it contains just about everything imaginable. It's undermoderated, I agree, but some of the worst sections are also the most moderated... just moderated by people that you may not consider the best possible people for the job. It's a disorganized federation.
For MeFites who don't quite understand or know it, the best way to think of it might be that Metafilter could exist as part of Reddit. It would be one single, invite-only subreddit (a liberal, progressive, friendly one with cats stuck in photocopiers). It would have ten or twenty thousand users, and it would be well run by five or six moderators. And if one stayed in r/MetaFilter, or some of the other well-run, friendly, places, one would probably love Reddit.
But... then there are also thousands of other subreddits, from great to awful, each with from a dozen to a million users, each moderated by a half-dozen moderators of all possible type, enforcing their own rulesets and moderating discussion to what they each feel is appropriate.
Facebook, too, somehow encompasses a world from best to worst, from admirable to criminal, though with much, much stronger moderation and what, maybe a thousand times the staff and budget of Reddit or MeFi? But note that despite near-limitless resources, Facebook is still a frequent home to hate groups and many distasteful things, and probably always will be, because of the modern tech-driven business model of "let the users do create the content they want" to drive revenue.
Without something like fifty times the staff size (which would break it, since there's no revenue to support that), Reddit simply can't be manually curated enough to keep the hate out any more than the whole Internet could be. Heck, even that probably would not work (again, see Facebook). That leaves technological solutions, which are always... imperfect.
Politically speaking (hot topic this year) Reddit, Facebook (and I'm confident even Metafilter) were certainly infiltrated and manipulated by waves of influence from everything from mostly-harmless paid Clinton staffers to automatic Russians last year -- watching some of the same subreddits transform from month to month from pro-Hillary echo chambers to what we now know were soviet propaganda machines... and often back, a month later, was bizarre -- and I don't think it's ever really stoppable.
As above, bigger budgets and better intentions won't solve the problem. Insulating ourselves into our own safe communities won't help (we all learned that last year, right?); so maybe we just need better tools and better training as information consumers, so we know how to analyze and sort a mountain of new info everyday, hopefully with some technology to help us do so.
Those are my pre-coffee thoughts, anyway, which should be obvious from the prolix scatteredness. I edit better in the afternoon.
posted by rokusan at 6:51 AM on November 4, 2017 [8 favorites]
The weird thing about our country is even if we could agree on a reasonable definition of hate speech (that didn't include NFL players taking a knee and "happy holidays") white nationalists would still be able to march in the streets toting semi-automatic guns -- they'd just have to switch to the "protecting white lives" side of the record.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:24 AM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:24 AM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
I didn't realise your president made your laws.
give the guy a break, he's only been working on it for less than a year between golf games - parliament? - by the end of trump's first term, congress' only job may be to vote for the head caddy
seriously, your being snarky about trump only shows me that you don't really understand what we're dealing with - it's bad - the guy wants to pull network licenses for reporting things he doesn't like - and you think he should be give MORE power over speech
i don't know - people talk about punching nazis all the time, and yes, i find it amusing to see nazis punched - but communists were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people also - so does that mean a rightwing person can punch socialists? prohibit their speech to protect the rest of us?
i don't want to have governments given the power to decide who gets to speak or who gets to be punched with no consequences - it didn't work in weimar germany, did it?
posted by pyramid termite at 8:32 AM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
give the guy a break, he's only been working on it for less than a year between golf games - parliament? - by the end of trump's first term, congress' only job may be to vote for the head caddy
seriously, your being snarky about trump only shows me that you don't really understand what we're dealing with - it's bad - the guy wants to pull network licenses for reporting things he doesn't like - and you think he should be give MORE power over speech
i don't know - people talk about punching nazis all the time, and yes, i find it amusing to see nazis punched - but communists were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people also - so does that mean a rightwing person can punch socialists? prohibit their speech to protect the rest of us?
i don't want to have governments given the power to decide who gets to speak or who gets to be punched with no consequences - it didn't work in weimar germany, did it?
posted by pyramid termite at 8:32 AM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
Without something like fifty times the staff size (which would break it, since there's no revenue to support that)
Yeah, I’m actually fine with this. You write as though Reddit is simply a hapless corporate victim of the “way things are,” when in fact they helped grow this version of the internet. They provided a place for nascent and largely discredited bigotries and ideologies of hate to develop unfettered, to grow into communities with a never ending supply of new recruits available in the Reddit userbase itself. And they didn’t care, because it helped them grow, too. They helped to create these modern versions of old monsters, perhaps more so than any other company except Fox News. Maybe even more so, because Reddit helped take it global.
Reddit is not powerless in the face of conditions outside their control because they helped create those conditions in the first place.
Fuck Reddit. If what it takes is shutting Reddit the fuck down, then shut it down. The most amazing part is that it doesn’t make money! It’s effectively subsidized hate mongering covered up with kitten meme pasties.
Shut it the fuck down and build something that doesn’t allow bigotry to weaponized and grown in its platform. I am 100% fine with that outcome.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:45 AM on November 4, 2017 [17 favorites]
Yeah, I’m actually fine with this. You write as though Reddit is simply a hapless corporate victim of the “way things are,” when in fact they helped grow this version of the internet. They provided a place for nascent and largely discredited bigotries and ideologies of hate to develop unfettered, to grow into communities with a never ending supply of new recruits available in the Reddit userbase itself. And they didn’t care, because it helped them grow, too. They helped to create these modern versions of old monsters, perhaps more so than any other company except Fox News. Maybe even more so, because Reddit helped take it global.
Reddit is not powerless in the face of conditions outside their control because they helped create those conditions in the first place.
Fuck Reddit. If what it takes is shutting Reddit the fuck down, then shut it down. The most amazing part is that it doesn’t make money! It’s effectively subsidized hate mongering covered up with kitten meme pasties.
Shut it the fuck down and build something that doesn’t allow bigotry to weaponized and grown in its platform. I am 100% fine with that outcome.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:45 AM on November 4, 2017 [17 favorites]
Somebody mentioned MetaFilter as a SubReddit. WHY OH WHY aren't all the SubReddits independent websites like MetaFilter? Why do we NEED them all collected together under an umbrella like the Advance Media Corp?
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:50 AM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:50 AM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
because the place seems to be about 80% engineering bros.
lol well that explains why, despite years of dipping in and looking for subreddits that would interest me, I have never, ever been able to find a single one.
Turns out "engineering bros" don't anything to say about the things I love and do on a daily basis.
Okay, except I have to admit I sometime check out r/relationships but that's just for the gawking at train-wrecks factor.
posted by Squeak Attack at 9:14 AM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
lol well that explains why, despite years of dipping in and looking for subreddits that would interest me, I have never, ever been able to find a single one.
Turns out "engineering bros" don't anything to say about the things I love and do on a daily basis.
Okay, except I have to admit I sometime check out r/relationships but that's just for the gawking at train-wrecks factor.
posted by Squeak Attack at 9:14 AM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
Shut it the fuck down and build something that doesn’t allow bigotry to weaponized and grown in its platform. I am 100% fine with that outcome.
I really don’t think you would be. Who would police this new Only Acceptable People space, after all? I mean, you can hate all of Reddit (though, again, that seems like hating the whole open internet to me) but when I think through the logistics of government supervision or control over public web forums, I hate the prospective outcomes a lot more, myself.
And Reddit is far, far, far from the worst harbor of hate speech or general unpleasantness. I mean, it’s not even Something Awful. Heck, YouTube comments are often worse.
I really don’t think this is a problem that can be solved supply-side. The information and messaging and communication is going to happen, somewhere. We need better (intellectually) armed and trained info consumers. (Including me, who fell for the whole “Don’t worry, Hillary can’t possibly lose to that clown” narrative that was daily pablum in the internet’s safer spaces. If I’d spent a bit more time among the wolves, studying, I might have taken the risk more seriously.)
posted by rokusan at 9:38 AM on November 4, 2017
I really don’t think you would be. Who would police this new Only Acceptable People space, after all? I mean, you can hate all of Reddit (though, again, that seems like hating the whole open internet to me) but when I think through the logistics of government supervision or control over public web forums, I hate the prospective outcomes a lot more, myself.
And Reddit is far, far, far from the worst harbor of hate speech or general unpleasantness. I mean, it’s not even Something Awful. Heck, YouTube comments are often worse.
I really don’t think this is a problem that can be solved supply-side. The information and messaging and communication is going to happen, somewhere. We need better (intellectually) armed and trained info consumers. (Including me, who fell for the whole “Don’t worry, Hillary can’t possibly lose to that clown” narrative that was daily pablum in the internet’s safer spaces. If I’d spent a bit more time among the wolves, studying, I might have taken the risk more seriously.)
posted by rokusan at 9:38 AM on November 4, 2017
people talk about punching nazis all the time, and yes, i find it amusing to see nazis punched
For a lot of us, nazi-punching is only okay because there's no other way to deal with them - we'd much rather turn them over to the cops for inciting violence, for illegal discrimination in their business practices, for parental interference and/or contributing to delinquency, and various other crimes associated with "this person is working against the community that has given them life and shelter." But since the authority figures refuse to prosecute overt attempts to destroy America's ideals, we're left with "punch them on camera."
WHY OH WHY aren't all the SubReddits independent websites like MetaFilter? Why do we NEED them all collected together under an umbrella like the Advance Media Corp?
Because time is short; tech skills are limited; having a swarm of people interested in a topic doesn't mean any of them have the resources and skills to maintain a website. Why buy a car from a mega-corporation instead of building your own from scratch, which would have all the features that you care most about? Websites have a considerably lower tech buy-in, but the principle holds: if what you want is "talk with these other people," why create an infrastructure for that if one exists already? Noticing the flaws in the existing offering often comes later, when you're entrenched - and even if you notice the problems, getting away is a non-trivial tech problem.
See: Dreamwidth - it's got a lot of features much of LJ really wants; it's got an fannish-oriented enforcement policy (they know the difference between illegal porn and fanfic); it doesn't cater to advertisers' whims... but it can't get the activity levels above that critical mass it takes to grow solidly instead of rare trickles when people get upset at enforcement elsewhere.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:47 AM on November 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
For a lot of us, nazi-punching is only okay because there's no other way to deal with them - we'd much rather turn them over to the cops for inciting violence, for illegal discrimination in their business practices, for parental interference and/or contributing to delinquency, and various other crimes associated with "this person is working against the community that has given them life and shelter." But since the authority figures refuse to prosecute overt attempts to destroy America's ideals, we're left with "punch them on camera."
WHY OH WHY aren't all the SubReddits independent websites like MetaFilter? Why do we NEED them all collected together under an umbrella like the Advance Media Corp?
Because time is short; tech skills are limited; having a swarm of people interested in a topic doesn't mean any of them have the resources and skills to maintain a website. Why buy a car from a mega-corporation instead of building your own from scratch, which would have all the features that you care most about? Websites have a considerably lower tech buy-in, but the principle holds: if what you want is "talk with these other people," why create an infrastructure for that if one exists already? Noticing the flaws in the existing offering often comes later, when you're entrenched - and even if you notice the problems, getting away is a non-trivial tech problem.
See: Dreamwidth - it's got a lot of features much of LJ really wants; it's got an fannish-oriented enforcement policy (they know the difference between illegal porn and fanfic); it doesn't cater to advertisers' whims... but it can't get the activity levels above that critical mass it takes to grow solidly instead of rare trickles when people get upset at enforcement elsewhere.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:47 AM on November 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
Reddit is reputedly not profitable despite selling some $8 million of ads/year (with gold and a marketplace to supplement), and while it may be cathartic to tell a corporation to go kill itself, let's be real. Why would the staff or owners, living off lavish salaries paid for by those ads, ever do that?
Hell, agitating for everyone to move to a different platform, would reduce their bandwidth costs. And then, what platform would people move to? Craigslist discussion forums?
Uh huh. Twitter? Hah. Facebook might like if everyone moved to them, but they're worse.
Not to get too meta, but Metafilter's also not feasible as an option. I love this place, but the frequency of relitigating the primaries in fast-moving politics threads should demonstrate that even with infinite dollars, active moderation won't scale to a userbase 100x the size that can generate 2k+ comments every 2 minutes.
The rise of upvote/aged account buying (eg) shows the kind of dedication to subverting the system that happens with that level of popularity.
As long as anything more than a binary choice of upvote/downvote remains too complicated (never mind reading directions) for users, it will remain the popular but bad system that exists on the Internet.
posted by fragmede at 9:50 AM on November 4, 2017
Hell, agitating for everyone to move to a different platform, would reduce their bandwidth costs. And then, what platform would people move to? Craigslist discussion forums?
Uh huh. Twitter? Hah. Facebook might like if everyone moved to them, but they're worse.
Not to get too meta, but Metafilter's also not feasible as an option. I love this place, but the frequency of relitigating the primaries in fast-moving politics threads should demonstrate that even with infinite dollars, active moderation won't scale to a userbase 100x the size that can generate 2k+ comments every 2 minutes.
The rise of upvote/aged account buying (eg) shows the kind of dedication to subverting the system that happens with that level of popularity.
As long as anything more than a binary choice of upvote/downvote remains too complicated (never mind reading directions) for users, it will remain the popular but bad system that exists on the Internet.
posted by fragmede at 9:50 AM on November 4, 2017
i don't know - people talk about punching nazis all the time, and yes, i find it amusing to see nazis punched - but communists were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people also - so does that mean a rightwing person can punch socialists?
Communism, for all of it's flaws, isn't based on violence. The same is true for capitalism and socialism. Nazi-ism is built entirely upon violence. You cannot create a whites only society without arriving at some "final solution to the problem" of the elements of society you wish to exclude. That violence is baked into the ideology. Violence against marginalized groups is a side effect under communist/socialist/capitalist systems. It is the whole point of a nazi one.
Which is to say - there are billions of people living (more or less) peacefully under communist regimes of various flavors. It is possible to advocate for communist/socialist principles and not wish for death [insert group]. We all know full well what those Khaki wearing morons were advocating for, and it wasn't freedom from the oppression of WIC vouchers.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:25 AM on November 4, 2017 [11 favorites]
Communism, for all of it's flaws, isn't based on violence. The same is true for capitalism and socialism. Nazi-ism is built entirely upon violence. You cannot create a whites only society without arriving at some "final solution to the problem" of the elements of society you wish to exclude. That violence is baked into the ideology. Violence against marginalized groups is a side effect under communist/socialist/capitalist systems. It is the whole point of a nazi one.
Which is to say - there are billions of people living (more or less) peacefully under communist regimes of various flavors. It is possible to advocate for communist/socialist principles and not wish for death [insert group]. We all know full well what those Khaki wearing morons were advocating for, and it wasn't freedom from the oppression of WIC vouchers.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:25 AM on November 4, 2017 [11 favorites]
Reddit needs to just delete the bad subreddits and bad threads. Just click Delete. If it drives away people who want to post evil things, that's good.
Then make that a selling point: "We kicked out the assholes. It's safe to come in now. Unless you're an asshole."
posted by pracowity at 10:34 AM on November 4, 2017 [8 favorites]
Then make that a selling point: "We kicked out the assholes. It's safe to come in now. Unless you're an asshole."
posted by pracowity at 10:34 AM on November 4, 2017 [8 favorites]
Why do we NEED them all collected together under an umbrella like the Advance Media Corp?
Because in addition to the technical issues brought above, building communities on your own is hard. For instance, in the mid 2000s, I tried to make a gaming portal/board with some people I've met on the IRC channel of a videogame magazine. Other than the people we attracted via the IRC channel and other channels we were in, we failed to get more than a handful of outsiders, and it's not like the portuguese internet was brimming with alternatives.
Getting people to register and regularly coming back to a bunch of different places is a lot harder than creating r/PTArcade or fb.com/PTArcade and build a community that after a click is accessible in the users' bathroom phone scrolling. It's why I've seen some sites with their own Forum/comments section, but also a staff moderated reddit board and a facebook page and a lot of people would be totally unaware the others have a life of their own. On WCG (SBNation Chicago Bears thingy) there were people occasionally complain about the "meatballs" on the FB page at a time the discussion a the site was a lot less knee-jerky.
There's a reason why you always find people interested in adding new stuff to FanFare (games, sports) or create MetaPolitics. Sure, there's other places to do that, but wouldn't it be better if we could track all discussions in activity?
posted by lmfsilva at 10:55 AM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
Because in addition to the technical issues brought above, building communities on your own is hard. For instance, in the mid 2000s, I tried to make a gaming portal/board with some people I've met on the IRC channel of a videogame magazine. Other than the people we attracted via the IRC channel and other channels we were in, we failed to get more than a handful of outsiders, and it's not like the portuguese internet was brimming with alternatives.
Getting people to register and regularly coming back to a bunch of different places is a lot harder than creating r/PTArcade or fb.com/PTArcade and build a community that after a click is accessible in the users' bathroom phone scrolling. It's why I've seen some sites with their own Forum/comments section, but also a staff moderated reddit board and a facebook page and a lot of people would be totally unaware the others have a life of their own. On WCG (SBNation Chicago Bears thingy) there were people occasionally complain about the "meatballs" on the FB page at a time the discussion a the site was a lot less knee-jerky.
There's a reason why you always find people interested in adding new stuff to FanFare (games, sports) or create MetaPolitics. Sure, there's other places to do that, but wouldn't it be better if we could track all discussions in activity?
posted by lmfsilva at 10:55 AM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
It's funny how every time somebody suggests that a corporation has a responsibility to police the platform it created, maintains, and profits from, the inevitable reply is "SO YOU WANT TRUMP TO DECIDE WHO GETS TO HAVE FREE SPEECH???" And then people for some reason respond to this bizarre non sequitur as if it's some kind of reasonable objection that needs response rather than the inane ramblings of some kind of propaganda-drunk straw artisan.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:28 AM on November 4, 2017 [20 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 11:28 AM on November 4, 2017 [20 favorites]
Reddit is not cleaning up its act; Reddit is cleaning up its PR.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:38 PM on November 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by DarlingBri at 12:38 PM on November 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
Communism, for all of it's flaws, isn't based on violence.
any system of government is based on violence - some tend to be more violent than others
the historical record stands for itself
posted by pyramid termite at 1:11 PM on November 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
any system of government is based on violence - some tend to be more violent than others
the historical record stands for itself
posted by pyramid termite at 1:11 PM on November 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
What the fuck ever dude. If you find some commies legit organising pogroms feel free to take a swing at them.
posted by Artw at 1:14 PM on November 4, 2017 [14 favorites]
posted by Artw at 1:14 PM on November 4, 2017 [14 favorites]
every single time i've googled a sort of niche question, about an author, or an artist, or something in a game, or something travel-related, there's always someone in a subreddit discussing this exact thing. and every time i've clicked on those links, no matter how pleasant and helpful the general discussion is, there is always, always, always some disgusting fucking side convo that isn't bad enough by that community's standards to downvote.
What poffin boffin said, including convos where the conversation itself is fine but the usernames are creepy, rapey, or racist.
It sucks to be reading a good discussion and then realize that some user thought it was a fine idea to register a horrible name.
posted by zippy at 1:49 PM on November 4, 2017 [12 favorites]
What poffin boffin said, including convos where the conversation itself is fine but the usernames are creepy, rapey, or racist.
It sucks to be reading a good discussion and then realize that some user thought it was a fine idea to register a horrible name.
posted by zippy at 1:49 PM on November 4, 2017 [12 favorites]
For all arguments about "freedom of speech" from platform providers the major social media sites are capitalist operations and I would imagine the ultimate decider on policy is impact to short and long-term profits.
As has been pointed out in this thread, these moves have happened in the past when the public scrutiny has been such to prompt this behaviour because the lack of action would be more costly for overall membership numbers than the (short-term, public) removal of these subreddits.
Beyond traffic numbers of having an 'inclusive' site that welcomes people who aren't welcome elsewhere, I wonder how well extremist groups monetise compared to moderate/liberal ones.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:20 PM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
As has been pointed out in this thread, these moves have happened in the past when the public scrutiny has been such to prompt this behaviour because the lack of action would be more costly for overall membership numbers than the (short-term, public) removal of these subreddits.
Beyond traffic numbers of having an 'inclusive' site that welcomes people who aren't welcome elsewhere, I wonder how well extremist groups monetise compared to moderate/liberal ones.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:20 PM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
I figured out that I have ADHD from reading accounts on the (very well moderated) ADHD subreddit. Something that I was suffering with for decades.. I'm now getting effective treatment for because of reddit. :/ The subreddit has been a support group for me while I figured out how to deal with medication titration, how to talk to family and friends about my disorder, what tools and skills work for people like me and what doesn't. Just having a place where I can say, "there's this horrible thing about me that I've hated all my life and I've worked so hard to change and it's just impossible" and have a chorus of people all be like, "yep, that's a symptom, I have the exact same thing, and by the way it gets better with treatment" has been huge for me.
And every other week someone new puts up a, "OMG thank god I found this subreddit you are all amazing and I'm getting treatment and my life is turning around" post.
I've always held reddit at arms length, well aware of the grossness that lived there. So this has been a bizarre experience for me. And I don't know what my point is except, it's hard to hear people dump on the whole site, when part of it profoundly changed my life for the better. Baby, bathwater, and all that. So I'm going to stick around in the sub, and on the knitting sub, and the bullet journal sub, and the AccidentalWesAnderson sub. And I hope at least some of you are there with me to help report stuff when we see it.
posted by antinomia at 4:28 PM on November 4, 2017 [7 favorites]
And every other week someone new puts up a, "OMG thank god I found this subreddit you are all amazing and I'm getting treatment and my life is turning around" post.
I've always held reddit at arms length, well aware of the grossness that lived there. So this has been a bizarre experience for me. And I don't know what my point is except, it's hard to hear people dump on the whole site, when part of it profoundly changed my life for the better. Baby, bathwater, and all that. So I'm going to stick around in the sub, and on the knitting sub, and the bullet journal sub, and the AccidentalWesAnderson sub. And I hope at least some of you are there with me to help report stuff when we see it.
posted by antinomia at 4:28 PM on November 4, 2017 [7 favorites]
antinomia, why be on the knitting sub when there is all of Ravelry? I've looked at r/knitting - it's really slow and so dull.
posted by Squeak Attack at 5:12 PM on November 4, 2017
posted by Squeak Attack at 5:12 PM on November 4, 2017
I'm on ravelry. Same username as here. Just like seeing random people's first knitting projects when I pull up my Reddit feed. Makes me smile.
posted by antinomia at 5:45 PM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by antinomia at 5:45 PM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
Will we get to see a ban on whatever police subreddits there are? Or is state sanctioned and defended violence ok?
posted by symbioid at 7:08 PM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by symbioid at 7:08 PM on November 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
I find it really odd that some people seem to think the owners of Reddit moderating at a subreddit level to remove terrible, terrible subs would be akin to trying to police the entirey of the internets. The internet doesn't have fucking owners that do AMAs yaknow, if they did I'd be all up in there asking some hard hitting questions about why they do things the way they do but until then I will continue to hold out hope that a website owner can be capable of doing the right thing instead of turning a blind eye to nasty shit.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:39 PM on November 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:39 PM on November 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
It sucks to be reading a good discussion and then realize that some user thought it was a fine idea to register a horrible name.
yeah i get this all the time on playstation as well when suddenly i realize that a person i'm playing with in overwatch who is consistently great at teamwork and is thanking me for heals is named i_b34t_wh0r3s or j00killa, and i'm just like dude honestly i could watch you die irl and feel nothing.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:00 PM on November 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
yeah i get this all the time on playstation as well when suddenly i realize that a person i'm playing with in overwatch who is consistently great at teamwork and is thanking me for heals is named i_b34t_wh0r3s or j00killa, and i'm just like dude honestly i could watch you die irl and feel nothing.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:00 PM on November 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
Antinomia the ADHD subreddit has been hugely beneficial to me as well, I participate in a lot of Reddit communities. There are also a lot of the subreddits that I ignore completely, and some that I used to think were OK and that I now ignore as well, these things evolve as their user bases change as well. SomethingAwful was the same way too, but on a smaller scale. There were good threads and there were bad threads that I didn't go into. There were forums that I didn't understand (still do NOT understand FYAD) and there are subreddits that I have no idea who their target audience is because WTF.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 11:47 PM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Hazelsmrf at 11:47 PM on November 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
/r/holocaust,a holocaust denial reddit, is still around unchanged.
posted by Cozybee at 7:04 AM on November 5, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Cozybee at 7:04 AM on November 5, 2017 [3 favorites]
It's funny how every time somebody suggests that a corporation has a responsibility to police the platform it created, maintains, and profits from, the inevitable reply is "SO YOU WANT TRUMP TO DECIDE WHO GETS TO HAVE FREE SPEECH???" And then people for some reason respond to this bizarre non sequitur as if it's some kind of reasonable objection that needs response rather than the inane ramblings of some kind of propaganda-drunk straw artisan.People were talking about the government restricting free speech, starting with a discussion of how Canada criminalizes certain speech that in the U.S. would be protected. Funny thing about discussions, they sometimes wander around and don't always stay just on the topic you're talking about.
So, apparently it was whatever the opposite of a non sequitur is.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:11 AM on November 5, 2017
but when I think through the logistics of government supervision or control over public web forums, I hate the prospective outcomes a lot more, myself.
Sometimes a big amount of government supervision or control isn't necessary. In the past the government simply has to say they will get involved if nothing is done and industries have self regulated (The Comics Code or the MPAA). That and maybe a few costly lawsuits that have a significant economic cost will make these corporations do the math that it is less costly to self-regulate than to keep paying.
I don't think this will ever be perfect (neither are the MPAA or the defunct Comics Code). But I really think corporations have not really even tried. They set up warnings, user agreements, and codes of conduct with a bunch serious language. Then they act surprised when users eventually discover they're just digital scarecrows.
posted by FJT at 8:36 AM on November 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
Sometimes a big amount of government supervision or control isn't necessary. In the past the government simply has to say they will get involved if nothing is done and industries have self regulated (The Comics Code or the MPAA). That and maybe a few costly lawsuits that have a significant economic cost will make these corporations do the math that it is less costly to self-regulate than to keep paying.
I don't think this will ever be perfect (neither are the MPAA or the defunct Comics Code). But I really think corporations have not really even tried. They set up warnings, user agreements, and codes of conduct with a bunch serious language. Then they act surprised when users eventually discover they're just digital scarecrows.
posted by FJT at 8:36 AM on November 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
It sucks to be reading a good discussion and then realize that some user thought it was a fine idea to register a horrible name.
This. I got into Reddit for local stuff and dad jokes. My local mod's name is embarassing AF: I came in expecting it to be sort of late-night-at-the-bar, like waiting in the bar bathroom. Confirmed. I regret that they aren't a purer place but wonder if the vigiliance-at-the-wall against shitheels in good communities isn't a good thing overall. I'll take improvement as a basis for more improvement.
Bro unfortunately is their brand :/
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:46 PM on November 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
This. I got into Reddit for local stuff and dad jokes. My local mod's name is embarassing AF: I came in expecting it to be sort of late-night-at-the-bar, like waiting in the bar bathroom. Confirmed. I regret that they aren't a purer place but wonder if the vigiliance-at-the-wall against shitheels in good communities isn't a good thing overall. I'll take improvement as a basis for more improvement.
Bro unfortunately is their brand :/
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:46 PM on November 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
And now /r/incels is banned. I'm sure some will still have some vitriolic and profanity-laced response but to most of us, this is a good thing.
posted by koavf at 6:43 PM on November 7, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by koavf at 6:43 PM on November 7, 2017 [4 favorites]
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