
New highly unpopular Reddit policy bans popular beer, cigar, and gun communities - losvedir
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/863xcj/new_addition_to_sitewide_rules_regarding_the_use/
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homonculus1
I've always gotten a guilty thrill out of watching reddit's policy shitstorms,
and often agreed with the criticism of their decisions, but this is the one
that truly makes me want leave.

Discussing gun purchases is not only perfectly legal, it is also not even
hateful as many previously banned subs were. I interpret this as a clear,
intentional move toward pushing gun ownership outside the realm of social
acceptability and associating it with illicit and toxic communities. For seven
years I've treasured the freedom to find and freely participate in niche
communities on reddit that wouldn't flourish in the same way elsewhere, and
although I wasn't happy about the sanitization before, it now seems to have
reached an inflection point where political wrongthink is also being targeted.

~~~
Digital-Citizen
It could be schadenfreude to see all of these single-point-of-censorship sites
(including this one) give us all good reason to favor having discussions on
netnews (which is no panacea but far more free, by design, than any discussion
website).

In my view, "moderation points" are censorship. Moderation points are
censorship where the rules are even less clear than Reddit's. The rules for
what's allowed are always changing, and no site has come up with a way to
handle moderation point assignment in a way that is clearly distinguishable
from capricious censorship.

What's legal strikes me as besides the point; the Internet is global so what's
legal in one regime might be illegal in another. But since Reddit (and Hacker
News, for all I know) are hosted in the US, it's worth pointing out that
freedom of speech is trampled on in the US ("Defending Pornography" does a
very good job of discussing how American law has double standards with
sexually-related speech, for example, by offering censorship in ways Americans
would not tolerate for nonsexual speech). Private organizations (such as
Reddit, Hacker News, etc.) have no obligation to honor freedom of speech,
they're allowed to be remarkably censorious. So whether state-based or private
but hosted in the US, free speech is always met with some reaction like "I
believe in freedom of speech but there ought to be limits..." and then we're
off to learn where the limits are with this person, that topic, or this
minute.

~~~
flounders
Usenet may just be the solution for the time being, especially for some of the
displaced subreddits for interest specific discussions and posts. At this
point a protocol looks like it will be the answer like email, IRC and XMPP,
but for forum discussion instead. If IPFS makes some headway with having
dynamic content, that may work better, but I'm not sure where that is at right
now.

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olliej
Needs to be retitled- this isn’t about cigar/gun/beer communities - it states
in the first paragraph that it applies to the /sale/ of those items.

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losvedir
I know the link title is supposed to copy the page's title, but I thought that
would be confusing in this case. But I've since found news articles (e.g. [0])
that better contextualize what's going on, so maybe something like that would
be a better link.

[0] [https://gizmodo.com/reddit-bans-slew-of-communities-amid-
new...](https://gizmodo.com/reddit-bans-slew-of-communities-amid-new-rule-
targeting-1823961868)

------
sunstone
For those who haven't read the policy, what's banned is not the discussion of
beer, tobacco and guns but discussion about _buying_ beer, tobacco and guns
(and other products or services) from private sources.

Clearly there will be some grey areas, such as a legal prostitute in Nevada
offering sexual services. But my sense of this is that some authorities are
leaning on Reddit, just as they have leaned on Craig's List and Backpage (and
others) in the past, to deter dark web type activities.

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chis
An interesting decision. I guess they’re playing it safe but it’s hard to see
how reddit could be held liable for people using their site to exchange beer.

~~~
fatjokes
Accidentally facilitating alcohol sales to minors.

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vincengomes
If this is the direction reddit is going, expect niche subreddits like
emulators getting banned

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SamPatt
One sub closed where people would offer listings on OpenBazaar,
/r/bazaarmarkets.

Most listings there were above board iirc. Not sure what their criteria was
exactly.

------
fatjokes
Tl;Dr new us law means internet platforms are responsible for the content
posted by their users

~~~
losvedir
Which law is that? That would make sense to me as a reason, but wouldn't they
say so in the post?

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/03/21/59...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/03/21/591622450/section-230-a-key-
legal-shield-for-facebook-google-is-about-to-change)

