
Reddit's user revolt is the best thing for Reddit and the internet - drew-y
http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/11/reddit-user-revolt/
======
lingben
What a terribly written, poorly researched, ignorance laden article. Not that
any of the other similar articles about this issue have been any better.

Yes, free speech is exactly about saying and hearing from others that which
one may find "offensive" or "tasteless" or "cruel", etc.

The real issue here is that while the reddit admins and owners are completely
within their right to mold the website and the community it contains to take a
shape of their choosing, there are better ways to go about this than the
hamfisted and juvenile methods they've used up to now.

The real question is this: is their poorly thought out and even more poorly
executed plan actually accomplishing their goal?

Obviously not.

As the admins, you don't create a higher quality community by poking users in
the eye and dancing gleefully at their howls and ignoring any and all
legitimate concerns they bring up in their attempt to engage you.

Here I'm referring to the /r/announcement comments where the admins go to
great lengths to avoid any real dialogue to the many polite and well informed
questions and comments that brought up the painfully obvious issues they won't
or can't address.

It is very very difficult to mold and moderate an online community but it can
be done. There are great examples out there. Go and study them and see what
they did. Each experience is unique but they all have at least one lesson for
reddit admins, should they care to listen and learn from them.

Bringing down the ban hammer indiscriminately on a 'fat hate' subreddit while
allowing hundreds of others even worse (/r/coontown for example or
/r/gasthekikes or many others) may be easier in the short term but it will
accomplish nothing but worsening an already bad situation.

Here's just one example of a community doing it right:

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/03/monster-
hu...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/03/monster-
hunter-4-video-game-communities)

Want more examples? Metafilter, hackernews, etc.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
>The real question is this: is their poorly thought out and even more poorly
executed plan actually accomplishing their goal?

You're assuming that the politically convenient goal of "improving the
community" is the primary motivation behind the decision. Banning those subs
makes a hell of a lot more sense if it's viewed as a political favor. Imgur
staff recently had a tiff with the admins of FPH, /r/neofag criticizes a
specific forum that's popular with the social-justice crowd.

~~~
lingben
That's certainly a possibility. I wanted to give the admins the benefit of the
doubt. Even in such a best case scenario they come across as grossly
incompetent. In your case scenario they come across as corrupt.

------
mjhouse
"All too often cries of "free speech!" are about not being able to say
something that legitimately hurts or offends someone else"

This is exactly what free speech is. The freedom to say things that are wrong,
hateful, misinformed, misleading, vicious, cruel and hurtful as long as no
actual violent or criminal acts are incited.

~~~
angersock
As I've said over and over, the key problem with freedom-of-speech on the
internet and harassment is how to handle people using the point-to-point
facilities to antagonize others in volumes beyond what they could filter
reasonably.

Having ten thousand people on twitter continually tweet at one person, or
email them, or whatever, is kind of like a psychic DDoS. This is a thorny
problem for freedom-of-speech absolutists who can recognize the harms such
things may allow.

However, shitty subreddits? There's nothing there to offend anyone until they
go to the subreddit and become offended. People in those cases are basically
autoharassing themselves.

It's just so shitty to see a few crybabies and a few shitheads drum up enough
drama to cause everyone to forget just how _awesome_ it is that we had this
nice, open platform for idea exchange--even the ones the majority dislikes.

EDIT:

And lest we forget, the newsgroups and BBSs and everything were more than
happy to allow people with nonstandard gender configurations and sexual tastes
to merrily congregate, as they did other weird and sometimes hostile
subcultures.

That people want to remove the facilities to support such formations, now that
$PREFERRED_CULTURE is mainstream enough, is pretty harmful.

~~~
DanBC
> However, shitty subreddits? There's nothing there to offend anyone until
> they go to the subreddit and become offended. People in those cases are
> basically autoharassing themselves.

Fatpeoplehate would often brigade other subs and other sites.

~~~
angersock
Sure, you can maybe get a brief respite by cracking down on the forums where
the chat with each other--but that hardly fixes the problem.

"These people we don't like used this coffeeshop to organize their protests.
Therefore, let's shut down this coffeeshop."

------
dummy7953
Well, a while back, Reddit picked up a bunch of users that used to be on
Digg.com. Maybe it's just time to let certain users go.

It think it's a bit humorous these people complaining about their "free speech
rights being curtailed" when what they have to say follows some specific
subjects. How come the free speech activists haven't created
/r/HowISISShouldCreateItsFirstAtomBomb ?

I think the real issue here isn't censorship, it's legitimacy. These free
speech types want the legitimacy that Reddit has. And Reddit is not allowing
that to happen on their site. But the world isn't coming to an end, people can
type another address in their browser and go to whatever little place they
want to.

And perhaps if the free speechers are concerned that their legitimate
arguments are falling on deaf ears, perhaps they should re-examine the
legitimacy of their hate speech. Reddit doesn't have a responsibility to share
their legitimacy with hate speech. The managers of Reddit have been trying to
build brand equity, why should they sacrifice their efforts to appease people
who spend their free time explaining how awful they are?

Yeah, go to Voat. Or wherever you're welcome. Or make your own web site. But
you can't freeload on the legitimacy that Reddit's brand name provides. If
you're going to make a site about hating fat people, then you're responsible
for making it wildly popular.

Good luck.

