
Reddit takes a new direction - tswicegood
http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2012/feb/13/reddit/
======
jasonkester
People tend to think of online communities as democracies where the freedoms
they're accustomed to from their normal lives apply.

So when a post gets deleted by a moderator, people tend to think of it as a
freedom of speech issue. There's a whole constitution out there specifically
defending anybody's right to create a pro-Nazi subreddit, and to otherwise
post anything they please on the site so long as it's not illegal, right?

Not really.

Not at all, in fact. Reddit is not the United States. It's Reddit. Online
communities are not democracies any more than your back garden is a democracy.
You pull weeds, plant seeds, and otherwise encourage the plants in your garden
to comport themselves in a manner that ends up with a pleasing result. It's
your garden, so you have the absolute right to pull weeds. The weeds get no
say.

Reddit seems to have forgotten this for a while, and as a result they started
sliding until they became, well, Reddit. The community we're currently
discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in
cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. And I think we can all
say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit
or 4chan.

~~~
sophacles
* And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan.*

I am honestly not sure we can say that at all. I thoroughly enjoy both hn and
reddit, _for completely different reasons_. Sure, from a strictly legal
standpoint, it isn't censorship or a constitutional issue, but at the same
time, the "anything goes" attitude in places like 4chan and reddit allow for a
lot of creative gems and interesting discussion. People instinctively
recognize that while you may have to schlep thought he muck to find those
gems, it is still important to have an "anything goes place". People will feel
betrayed when they put time and effort into making the community what it is,
and suddenly the rules are changed on them -- all their effort has been co-
opted or may be co-opted, for something they don't want. It feels slimy.

(yes we are all aware there is no contract or law or whatever, blah blah
legalistic point missing, but the decency of it is still in question).

All that being said, I also like the curated, well organized topical community
of HN, because sometimes I just don't want to wade through the crap, but that
occasional preference switch doesn't diminish _either_ form of community
building.

~~~
ugh
For fucks sake. Is that really so hard to understand? Pedos can’t trade their
images anymore (whether legal or not). That’s the extent of the limitation.
How the fuck is that supposed to turn Reddit into something radically
different? It’s this one tiny thing. It’s not some big change that changes
Reddit.

It’s not so hard. Some people just want to be deliberately obtuse. The
slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!

~~~
potatolicious
> _"The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!"_

Ugh. Here we go again.

The fact that the slippery slope argument _can_ be a fallacy doesn't mean that
_all_ claims of slippery slope is automatically a fallacy.

People seem to think the fact that this word exists means they can use it in
all contexts and be right.

[edit] And the slippery slope angle _has_ materialized in this particular
case. No sonner had the jailbait subreddits fallen did people start clamoring
for the shutdown of /r/beatingwomen, /r/deadbabies, and various other
reprehensible subreddits. This certainly hasn't been a we-banned-jailbait-and-
now-everything-is-fine deal that people hoped it to be.

~~~
repsilat
The "slippery slope" argument can be made more strongly here - a few months
ago /r/jailbait was shut down by the admins. There was a lot of hand-wringing
about it, but they were eventually swayed by opinion and some media attention.

This time around there was a post on SomethingAwful talking about a few more
subreddits, and they were all (including several that were explicitly 18+
content only) shut down immediately. For good or ill, we're not in danger of
slipping down that slope any more, we're demonstrably sliding already.

~~~
fluidcruft
/r/jailbait was shut down by the /r/jailbait moderators, not the reddit
admins.

------
Jun8
I can't believe the narrow-minded approach a lot of comments here suggest.
Most of the people seem to subscribe to the argument, which in simplified form
says, (1) the subreddits were full of child pornography (2) the people who
frequent these were "pedos" and therefore (3) it's a good thing that these got
axed.

The terms CP and pedophilia are being thrown around without much thinking, the
same way the general public thinks all who are on torrent sites are pirates
and "hackers are baad and steal your CC numbers". This sort of blunt scare
mongering demagogy is commonly used to create support from the masses, I am
amazed that the HN crowd is also susceptible to it.

Here are the facts as I believe them, please point out the ones you think are
wrong:

1) Some of these subreddits may have contained CP, the illegal ones were being
actively removed by admins.

2) Calling pictures of 16-year-olds in bikinis CP is not very useful and
dilutes the term.

3) What is legal and morally right usually does not overlap 100%. Law may say
one thing about CP and people may feel another thing. This is OK. Also
different cultures, of course, have different attitudes.

4) In light of (3), to me there's "definitely bad CP" and "tolerable CP". The
moral distinction is not clear cut and the law does not differentiate these.
The situation is similar to the 55 mph speed limit, people break it everyday
(avg speed on I-90 is more like 75mph) but if you do 85 the police will get
you. So there's a tolerable zone and to me (2) falls in that category.

5) One has to be very careful with these outcries because they have the effect
of ratcheting the law machine ever more tightly. Remember, no politician will
put relaxation of sex offense laws on their ticket.

But, please THINK A LITTLE AND RESEARCH before you pick up the pitchfork, e.g.
read this (<http://www.economist.com/node/14164614>).

ADDENDUM: For (2), also consider the widespread use of young girls in
advertising and movies, e.g. the Vanity Fair topless photoshoot of Miley Cyrus
who was 15 at the time
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus#Controversies>). This is just one
that came to mind instantly, _many_ more examples can easily be given.

~~~
dkersten
_ADDENDUM: For (2), also consider the widespread use of young girls in..._

Don't forget child beauty pageants. That stuff is IMHO often borderline
pedophilia.

~~~
joering2
I dont get this one. CBP does not reveal anything that would even remotely
bring porn/nudity on my mind. I think its more a matter of your point of view.
Same way I could say that an old man smiling at a 5 years old child on the
subway has something dirty on his mind. There are chances but lets not get
paranoid here.

~~~
dkersten
I've come across them on TV from time to time and the children usually dress
very provocatively and wear clothes and makeup that are usually considered
"sexy" when worn by grown women. Worse still, they seem to often perform dance
routines that are very provocative and sexual in nature. (eg see the end of
little miss sunshine - real CBP seem to be similar)

~~~
sossles
This is what gets me. It's not CBP reddit that is a problem, it's the whacked
out people (parents in this case) who are creating content that are the
'problem'. If you, as a parent, dress your toddler in provocative clothes and
put them in a beauty pagent, then you're being ridiculously naive to think
that people will only ever see this in an innocent light.

------
pilif
While I agree that the world is better off without forums where people can
post their child porn or similar ilk, this policy change in reddit shows that
there's in inherent issue with centralized platforms.

Back when there was usenet, everybody could post what ever they wanted (some
news servers might not have carried the group, but there was no policing the
source).

Same with blogs: You wanted to post content the masses dislike? No problem.
But you want to post that same content to a centralized platform like Twitter,
Facebook or any of Google's properties, now the masses (and/or governments)
dictate the content you are allowed to post.

To really make use of the internet's capability of providing an incredible
freedom of content you can create and publish, you cannot use a centralized
platform.

While sites like reddit or facebook might make it easier for other people to
find your crap^Wcontent, they also make it infinitely easier to have it
removed again.

~~~
phillco
It's a little sad, because there was definitely a sense, a few years ago, that
Reddit was pretty much user-centered and therefore fully unrestricted,
content-wise. You can choose what subreddits you belong to, or make new ones
for whatever subject you want. The admins simply created the platform and set
the defaults. Freedom!

But at the same time, everyone still _felt_ like redditors, even if you were
on /r/investing or /r/TwoXChromosomes or /r/trees or /r/nudecycling. In fact,
you could unsubscribe from all the default subreddits, and join a bunch of
weird unusual ones, and so you'd probably never even _see_ a redditor who
belongs to the "mainstream" community, but you'd still call yourself a
redditor.

Unfortunately, we now see the downside of that group identity, because it
didn't stop the reputation of the "bad" subreddits from bleeding over and
tarnishing the group's. The subreddit boundaries failed, in the end.

~~~
flomo
That to me is exactly the core issue. It's not as if these people were staying
in their obscure subreddit, they were leaking out into advice forums and
posting IAMA pedo threads and so on, scoring upvotes due to typical young male
contrarianism. It was all creating the general impression that this was
acceptable behavior which was commonly discussed by Redditors.

(I saw a post from a sixteen year old boy describing himself as a
"ephebophile" because he liked girls from school. It's just bizarre that kids
are learning this sort of inside jargon and using it describe completely
normal behavior.)

From a broader community perspective, there's no reason to hang out a sign
saying "creeps welcome here". They'll show up on their own, and its not as if
Reddit needs their traffic.

~~~
Helianthus
This is definitely an oversimplification of the history. Censorship is an
active topic of furious debate. r/SRS, which is for all intents and purposes
Reddit's White Guilt, self-censors extremely rigorously even as it invades
other subreddits (not officially, but essentially). r/lgbt splintered to
r/ainbow due to heavy-handed mod censorship (with allegations of connections
to r/SRS and its heavy-handed trolling).

You might say that this is all inconsequential board drama, and it is; but the
arc of it ends with admin involvement. Until now, the admins have explicitly
let mods handle their own subreddits.

------
alecco
Reddit is changing. It's currently in a renewed and stronger Eternal
September. Bastion subreddits like /r/AskScience and /r/Truereddit are reduced
to junk and fads. The hope for the group of moderated subreddits (Republic of
Reddit) didn't really take off, it's just a handful of submitters.

The top voted comments on threads about censorship are mostly 1 to 3 _months_
old users. And now reddit (had to) surrender to a decadent SOPA-supporting
forum and a bunch of trolls from /r/ShitRedditSays (wich starts to look like a
*chan long troll instead of a bunch of ultra-feminists).

Sure, a lot of questionable/creepy subreddits shouldn't be there. But where's
the line? And who draws it? Also, isn't this an ongoing process? Those
subreddits can reopen in minutes with more subtle names. The censorship whack-
a-mole is pointless.

It's weird how reddit was a bastion for resisting SOPA/ACTA but fear mongering
in US can take over a site. It seems that's the real frontier and we are
losing. Next up /r/trees and /r/atheism.

Like so many times before it's time to move on. I wish the best to the
owners/admins, they were cornered and probably had a tough choice. And I
sincerely hope the new users enjoy this new reddit.

~~~
kijin
Exchanging child pornography is illegal in the United States (as well as in
many other countries). There's nothing unreasonable about stating in your TOS
that you can't have a subreddit the very existence of which breaks the law.
Sure, people can try to reopen these subreddits under different names, but
once the rule is in the TOS, they can be reported on and shut down as a matter
of routine. The same applies to warez. Like it or not, you can't operate in
the U.S. while allowing your users to post links to warez.

/r/trees is not the same, and I hate slippery-slope arguments predicting its
demise. Exchanging _actual marijuana_ is illegal in many parts of the United
States. Exchanging _information about marijuana_ is not. You could download
kiddie porn on /r/jailbait, and the fact that those images are actually hosted
on imgur is unlikely to convince any court. But you wouldn't download
marijuana on /r/trees, would you? If /r/trees or /r/atheism ever gets banned,
it will be the result of a completely different kind of pressure. It won't be
a straightforward extension of reddit's current policy on kiddie porn.

Reddit may or may not be dying, but its latest change of policy on kiddie porn
will probably have little to do with its fate.

~~~
alecco
What are you talking about? Reddit had a very strong stance aginst CP already.

And there's a lot of _rules broken on /r/trees_ so it's far from safe. Like
meetups to exchange or people giving tips. That's not legal in US and happens
quite often there.

Same with /r/atheism, a lot of their content can be labeled _hate speech_
under US law. (IANAL)

~~~
tptacek
There's no such thing as "hate speech" under US law. You can, for instance,
proudly march down the streets of Skokie in Klan regalia bellowing about the
need to "exterminate the Jews", safe in the knowledge that the First Amendment
implications of doing so have already been litigated.

There are (dubiously) "hate crime" laws, but they pertain to violent crime.

In a similar vein, I'm not so sure about your legal analysis about "arranging
meetups" and "providing tips" on marijuana forums. The reason mj forums don't
want people arranging meetups probably has more to do with not creating an
easy venue for sting operations.

 _(Disclosure: it's sad it took Reddit this long to apply this rule, and more
than a little repulsive to see people up in arms about it.)_

~~~
alecco
You keep editing your post. My original "I stand corrected" is now out of it's
meaning and it makes no sense to keep editing my answer. I expected better of
you, tptacek.

~~~
tptacek
I didn't edit it to change the meaning of your comment.

On this particular thread, I'd like to make sure my comments are as clear as I
can make them: Reddit did the right thing, and the only complaint I can make
is that they took too long and their reasoning wasn't great.

~~~
alecco
IMHO, they did the right thing in the _wrong way_ for the _wrong reasons_ at a
very troubled time for the community. Also now there's blood in the water so I
doubt this will be the end of it.

------
jballanc
There is a problem with online communities. Let's call it the problem of
"false association". Humans have been forming communities for millennia.
Inevitably, in these communities, there are bad apples. However, if there is a
child molester that lives in my town, that fact does not (on its own) reflect
poorly on me. Even if that molester was my next door neighbor, there may be a
bit more suspicion ("how could you not know that was going on next door?"),
but I am confident that 9 times out of 10 I would come away with my reputation
unblemished.

Of course, before the internet, communities were a more-or-less involuntary
phenomenon. They were defined by geography, history, a common resource, or a
common industry. Contrast that to online communities that are largely viewed
as self-directed, voluntary organizations. This is the view, I think, that
will eventually have to change.

This view is poisonous for two reasons. First, as we see here, if anyone,
anywhere in an online community (no matter how large) does something
offensive, objectionable, or illegal, the knee-jerk reaction of society today
is to allow that bad apple to spoil the bunch. Second, this makes it very
difficult to form heterogeneous communities online. If I associate with people
randomly online, I am a Google search away from being associated with a
potential thief/pervert/whatever. The end result is that online communities
become insular, or they can only function well under a banner of anonymity,
but anonymity has its own problems.

Reddit, it seems to me, struck a useful middle ground: partial anonymity with
history (I can create an identity that does not lead back to my real life
identity, but can still build up a reputation). Unfortunately, Reddit is still
a business. It seems to me that something like Reddit, but based on a
distributed model, is what we need.

Let's call it...usenet

------
evmar
The comment about "everything that's happened, has also already happened on
LiveJournal" really rings true for me. Recent instance: the breast-feeding
protesters recently descended on Facebook, which is mostly amusing to me in
that they had waited so long. It would be interesting to construct a "here are
the trials any internet community is likely to go through" handbook distilling
these experiences.

------
Locke1689
I'm not against Reddit's move, but I do think they're being more than a little
naive if they think it will stop here.

hueypriest (Reddit admin) says:

 _/r/trees isn't in remotely the same legal area as CP stuff. Not even close.
They'll ban /r/trees when they pry it out of our cold dead hands._

And yet, facilitating a drug transaction is almost definitely illegal. Posting
torrent links is at least legally dangerous. Sure, these things haven't become
problems _yet_ , but neither were the other things a couple years ago.

What the Reddit admins are saying right now is that anything goes, as long as
it doesn't represent a plausible legal threat that can be waged against them.
This is fine. The problem is that Reddit _doesn't know that they're saying
this._ They think it's about CP, but it's not, it's about legal threat.

~~~
diminoten
The slippery slope you describe simply does not exist. "First they took the
CP, and I said nothing..." is not a valid concern, primarily because CP has
_always_ been an issue, and whenever it's come up it's _always_ been removed
from Reddit. This change in position is not nearly as large as it seems.

Contrast, as you seem to want to, with /r/trees. How many posts in /r/trees
get taken down due to their questionable legality? How many posts in
/r/letstradetorrents (apocryphal) get taken down due to their questionable
legality? None and none. The nature of CP on the Internet is unique, and not
viewed similarly to _anything_ else on the Internet. Reddit isn't saying "as
long as it doesn't represent a plausible legal threat that can be waged
against them", they're saying, "as long as it's not CP, and as long as it's
manageable through an ad-hoc process."

Due to the SomethingAwful attack, or due to some other, unknown reason, the
volume of CP was too high to continue to deal with it on an ad-hoc basis. That
is all.

~~~
Locke1689
First, I'm not saying that they shouldn't be taking the position they are. In
fact, I believe that Reddit should always make the best effort to comport
itself to US law in order to protect the site's existence for its users
everywhere. However, I am saying that CP is not the only possible legal threat
and it is naive to assume that it will continue to be the dominant legal
threat going forward.

 _Contrast, as you seem to want to, with /r/trees. How many posts in /r/trees
get taken down due to their questionable legality? How many posts in
/r/letstradetorrents (apocryphal) get taken down due to their questionable
legality? None and none. The nature of CP on the Internet is unique, and not
viewed similarly to anything else on the Internet. Reddit isn't saying "as
long as it doesn't represent a plausible legal threat that can be waged
against them", they're saying, "as long as it's not CP, and as long as it's
manageable through an ad-hoc process."_

I agree that it is not yet a problem. Reddit has not yet been taken down by
the FBI because of widespread drug trade on r/trees. Nor have they been sued
because of torrent links. What I question is how long it will take before
these things become issues?

What I'm asking is: what is it about CP that makes it the only possible legal
threat that Reddit can face? Reddit is still a maturing community that can
evolve in many different ways. Reddit's policy is _not_ about CP specifically,
it's about credible legal threat. This is not what they say, but what they
mean. If you think otherwise, I invite you to tell me what they will do if a
non-CP related legal threat comes along.

------
trb
Policing a community is where humans excel and policies/computers fail.

I ran a community once, with around 30k active users. Definitely not big, but
we faced the same problems. Our solution was simple, aside from adhering to
the law: "Mods delete what looks icky".

We felt that automated systems would always fail (users would use "4" instead
of "a"), and strict policies always led to debate about whether something was
allowed or not.

Instead we tried to recruit mods that knew the community, the direction it was
heading and were able to keep a level head. Sure, someone went overboard once
in a while and deleted o.k. stuff, but we'd just remove their mod privileges
and reinstate what they deleted (thinks were removed from the database 14 days
after they were marked as "deleted").

We were never accused of harboring pedophiles, or going overboard with
removal. Those that complained about free-speech were always radical political
groups well outside of "acceptable" for most communities.

The key is to find moderators in line with the community, in a benevolent
dictator way. No idea if reddit could find enough of those, but it worked well
for us and should scale with community size, as reddit has a larger pool to
recruit from.

~~~
redslazer
The problem is that reddit mods are self selected from within their
communities by the other mods in that community. The quality of the moderators
varies wildly and most subreddits are not run very professionally (obvious
exceptions like /askscience exist).

Sure reddit has overall mods but they do not usually get involved and
communities manage themselves which usually leads to a lack of coherent policy
in regards to what is acceptable and not.

------
starfox
Doesn't every website that gets used by the unwashed masses eventually have to
deal with this problem? How does facebook or youtube deal with it? How did AOL
deal with it?

Is the issue just that Reddit is run by a smaller team than these larger
companies?

~~~
raganwald
Facebook is obviously thriving as a business but arousing indignation and ire
over their policies, which ban breastfeeding photos but allow hate speech.

So I woud say they have decided to live woth a certain ongoing level of
shitstorming as a cost of doing buiness.

~~~
nbm
Facebook does not ban breastfeeding photos in general -
[https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=340974655932193#Does-
Face...](https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=340974655932193#Does-Facebook-
allow-photos-of-mothers-breastfeeding)?

------
josefresco
What about utilizing the community to police this undesirable content? I'm
sure that opens up other exploits but if the community wants to stay healthy,
it has to take responsibility for itself and not just rely on the admins to
come up with a magic algorithm that will solve the problem.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Reddit isn't one community, it's sort of like usenet, there are lots of sub-
communities that can easily be oblivious and invisible to one another.

~~~
Mrow
This is the reason I scoff when people try to describe an average "Redditor".
With the sheer amount of traffic coming through their site it's impossible to
come up with an accurate generalization of what the community as a whole
feels, even with the small percentage of traffic actually commenting and
voting.

I would like to see a lot more emphasis be put on the decision between serving
the will of the users, establishing a set of ideals that Reddit chooses to run
things by, or a mixture of the two.

------
sien
It's surprising how people have these discussions and don't discuss Metafilter
- the discussion site that works.

What has set Metafilter apart from slashdot, K5, Digg and Reddit was that
after the initial burst of building a good community it became $5 to join.

That keeps out the morons and pays for moderators to get rid of the asshats.

If HN wants to keep up the quality before the hordes arrive it'd be a good
move here too or it will be a matter of time before the idiots kill the place.

------
rseymour
"I originally cut my teeth on sites and services that, frankly, make 4chan and
reddit (today’s all-too-frequent bogeymen) look like a knitting circle."

WUT NET WUZ THIS GUY ON? K5/adequacy/early slashdot/b3ta/whatever... nothing
like the internet of today. the volume of users alone leads to emergent
(gross) behavior that before was drowned out in an invisible minority. USENET,
IRC, same thing. You could find shady things if you looked for them, but no
one (I knew of) actively did. Occasionally gross stuff would pop up in a
listing of newsgroups, but you just didn't click.

No one envies reddit, but they should've changed their policy earlier. Better
late than never.

------
kooshball
My biggest concern over all this is that the policy change came so quickly
after the SA thread (similar timeframe as the Anderson Cooper clip). Even
though startups and usually praised for moving quickly, I agree complete with
the OP that this can be a major directional change (positive or negative) for
Reddit overall. This kind of stuff should be thought over long and hard,
rather than come down from their parent company. Reactionary policies that
sprouts from avoiding bad PR will be good for the short term, I just hope they
thought it all out what they will do in the long term.

~~~
ubershmekel
Not that I'd like to defend this move, but it probably has been on the table
for a long time now. /r/jailbait was banned and reinstated enough times for
the discussions to have gotten old in reddit HQ by now.

~~~
kooshball
So the result of the discussion was to keep all the other questionable content
available until a PR shitstorm starts to brew?

If they already made a decision why would they not act on it at the same time
/r/jailbait was banned?

This whole thing smells like they got their hands forced, which is what
worries me.

~~~
evan_
my interpretation- they were WAITING for an outside party to speak up about
it, so they could say "well, x party forced our hand" to shift the blame.
Reddit (the company) is _terrified_ of upsetting its userbase, lest it go the
way of Digg.

------
erickhill
I think playing the 'endless game of whack-a-mole' really is their only option
in the short term. Yes, it can get expensive. But if they want to continue on
their current insane traffic trajectory and gain a wider audience, they need
to be on top of the human moderation process.

This traffic report isn't accurate, but the trend is right (from what I've
heard): <http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com/>

------
sjs382
Every time I see k5 get mentioned, I get all nostalgic and think there will
never be a community as eclectic as k5 ever again...

~~~
nooneelse
I get similar pangs of nostalgia.

------
doki_pen
Reddit is open source. If anyone thinks that this will ruin them then step up
to the plate and compete on "freedom of speech"

------
DannoHung
Y'know, it's one thing to be against laws that are ostensibly made in favor of
prosecuting child pornography because they can be abused to censor things that
are politically unpopular... it's a whole other bucket of beans to be against
removing stuff that's basically child pornography because you think something
that's politically unpopular might be removed.

~~~
jquery
> basically child pornography

Nothing that got banned was "basically child pornography." That's why there is
blood in the water.

~~~
DannoHung
It was a collection of subreddits for the purpose of eroticism focused on
children. It wasn't child porn, but it's as close as you can come without
actually getting arrested.

You're full of shit if you're trying to tell me otherwise.

~~~
ghani
The subreddits are as close as you can get to being illegal, but I think
there's still a large (or at least significant) difference between the two. My
only basis for that is my gut reaction, but I think it was what jquery was
getting at. Not that they're truly unrelated.

------
TheSOB88
It's interesting, I think, how much sheer emotion there is behind these child
protection issues. Is there anything more emotionally provocative than the
thought of harm to your children? Your own flesh and blood, who you've raised
from before they could crawl. The amount of emotional and physical pain you've
gone through (and willingly continue to go through) for your children far
surpasses any other possible source.

Of course, people do overreact sometimes, but I think this is our instinct for
a very good reason.

~~~
alex_c
I think the strength of the emotion is perfectly understandable. The
unfortunate side effect is that it makes rational discussion very difficult -
because it's such an emotional issue, it's easy to misunderstand what others
are saying, or to see something as much more black and white than it actually
is.

The worst part is this emotional response is so easy to exploit. It can be
"think of the children" laws with unintended (or intended) side effects. Or,
like in this case, it can be used as a weapon to attack a person or community
(even if I agree with the outcome, this particular instance feels like SA
attacking Reddit either out of genuine outrage or, more likely, for shits and
giggles).

------
wavephorm
Reddit had the biggest hissy fit of all about how child porn laws like SOPA
were going to go too far and ruin the internet. And here they go banning
anything involving a bathing suit.

The hypocricy is strong in this one.

~~~
nkohari
Uh, SOPA wasn't a child porn law. It was a copyright enforcement law. By
definition it didn't cover anything regarding illegal pornography, because
illegal things aren't subject to copyright.

------
zotz
I've been banned from posting articles on some larger subreddits some time
ago. My political, economic and historical opinions aren't welcome for some
reason.

My point? Reddit began banning political opinion long before it banned kiddie
porn. Reddit's admins don't give a damn about freedom of speech and opinion.

~~~
buro9
You've touched upon an incredibly grey area. Most forums will ban trolls, but
therein lies the problem: define "troll".

I don't know what you said, where, and in what context... but I don't give
benefit of doubt on this. Nor do I think you're guilty either... all I do know
is that running a community is hard, and one of the things that the people of
the community look to moderators to do is to keep the peace.

A difference of opinion can be minor, or major. And depending on the topic it
can be quite offensive to some.

Have you considered that within a particular subreddit that the moderators
were just trying to keep the peace? Has anything stopped you from starting
your own subreddit to voice your opinion?

~~~
zotz
> I don't know what you said

The below article was deleted from the queue in r/politics and I've been
unable to post articles in politics and a few other subreddits ever since,
using a particular handle from a particular IP.

Ron Paul’s Challenge to the Left:
[http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/07/a-question-of-morality-
ron...](http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/07/a-question-of-morality-ron-
paul%E2%80%99s-challenge-to-the-left/)

My point stands: reddit has been complicit in silencing political opinion long
before it began worrying about whether child porn should be allowed or not.

~~~
a_redditor
The behavior you're describing (not being able to submit from a certain user
account from a certain IP) is a result of reddit's quite sketchy spam
filtering mechanism. Unless you have been notified that you've been banned
from a certain community, your posts are simply being absorbed by the spam
filter.

You have also mistaken the views and actions of a specific community for the
views and actions of the site owners. Anyone (yes, even you) can go start a
subreddit whenever they want, and restrict content however they want, even if
that includes suppressing information they don't agree with or banning users
with whom they disagree. The idea behind reddit is that people show their
support for a specific community by frequenting and contributing to it. If you
don't agree with the way a community is being run, you are free to find a
better one or even to start your own.

~~~
zotz
My posts have been actively deleted, not just caught in a spam trap.

I'be had discussions with subreddit moderators and reddit admins. The majority
of them dislike my political opinions, thus the active censorship.

To restate my point: reddit has been actively deleting unpopular political
opinion long before they thought about restricting kiddie porn.

That kind of prioritizing is what's been instrumental in the herd of geniuses
that now inhabit reddit.

~~~
EricBerglund
Reddit and r/politics are not the same thing. Subreddits are user-created
forums moderated as those creators see fit. Each subreddit chooses what it
wants to see, how it wants to be moderated, and who will moderate. A
particular sub community not welcoming you or your ideas is completely
different from site-wide moderation.

------
dholowiski
It's a business decision, plain and simple. Get over it.

------
Mordor
It's simple, shutdown anything criminal and keep the rest open.

~~~
showerst
Sadly it's not that simple. Even if that were the only rule, illegal where?
The rules aren't even uniform among the 50 US states, not to speak of
city/county level, or other countries.

I think that the (unique?) problem with child issues is that if you allow
things that are clearly not illegal (just 'creepy'), you'll draw a community
that 1) Looks illegal from the outside and 2) Will, with very high
probability, be doing illegal things over the messaging system or private/side
boards.

To the greater world, 1 and 2 are enough for a high profile lawsuit or media
blitz that would effectively be a death penalty for the community.

------
throwawaymar2
I confused about why he thinks it ironic that Nabakov is banned... I mean, it
got grandfathered in when child porn laws were written, somehow, but it is
certainly fiction about a paedophile, right? Anything that bans other kiddie-
fiddler fiction while allowing _Lolita_ is quite obviously inconsistent, and
those in favor of this inconsistency probably ought to examine why they like
_Lolita_.

~~~
_delirium
It wasn't grandfathered in; it's unconstitutional, in the U.S., to ban
_Lolita_.

It would be pretty unfortunate if literature couldn't even seriously deal with
the subject! (Incidentally, it's pretty hard to read _Lolita_ as being _pro_
-pedophilia; if anything, it's an extended, mostly negative investigation into
the protagonist's psyche, although many pages in literary journals have been
spent arguing over how to interpret it.)

~~~
kanamekun
The First Amendment is pretty clear that freedom of speech/press is protected
only from Congress and legislation: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging
the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Companies and/or websites can ban almost any speech or writing they would
like. It's not unconstitutional, because corporations aren't considered a
governmental/Congressional body.

~~~
_delirium
That's true; I was objecting to the claim that it was "grandfathered in when
child porn laws were written". The reason a _law_ couldn't ban it is because
of the First Amendment.

~~~
kanamekun
Definitely agree that Lolita is a written text and not a visual depiction of
children engaged in sexual activity. So it's not covered by child porn laws,
and is still protected by the First Amendment.

But wanted to highlight that the law _can_ ban speech, despite the First
Amendment. For example, in 1982 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that child
porn was not protected by the First Amendment:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Ferber>

Laws can also ban material deemed obscene. The Miller test is the standard
there: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v._California>

