

Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign - kolbe
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/10/reddit-bans-five-communities-in-new-anti-harassment-campaign/
Most notable is &#x2F;r&#x2F;fatpeoplehate, which had become an extremely popular &quot;fat-shaming&quot; community.
======
teraflop
This article dramatically understates the magnitude of the shitstorm that is
currently unfolding. Check out
[http://www.reddit.com/r/all/](http://www.reddit.com/r/all/) if you feel like
seeing all the ugliness.

(And if anyone has any doubts that this is ultimately about harassment, count
how many of the posts on the front page (and their comments) are made up of
personal attacks and/or obscenities targeted at CEO Ellen Pao.)

I don't fault the Reddit admins for trying to clean things up but I can't see
any good that will come of this. To paraphrase a comment that I saw earlier
today and now can't find, it's like trying to get rid of an anthill with a
leaf-blower; you just end up with pissed-off ants everywhere.

EDIT: Ah, found it. It was in the "can I sue Reddit for violating my freedom
of speech" thread in /r/legaladvice.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/39c58h/could_so...](http://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/39c58h/could_someone_sue_reddit_for_banning_and/cs2ch7d?context=4)

~~~
powrtoch
The front page is pretty worrying.

The situation seems almost identical to when Reddit axed r/jailbait: one of
their more embarrassing communities started to get too much attention, its
users were increasingly behaving in a way that was damaging Reddit, and Reddit
decided to kill it (ostensibly for the greater good of the site).

But even though that pissed plenty of people off... I don't recall the front
page being totally dominated by calls for anyone's head on a silver platter.
Reddit's userbase seems to feel especially _threatened_ by Ellen Pao, and it's
hard for me to believe that the difference is anything rational.

~~~
Kalium
Pao is attempting to "clean up"... in an environment that cherishes its
traditional freewheeling and unrestrained discourse. Even if the stuff getting
cleaned up is just the stuff that most people agree deserves it - for some
value of deserves - it's a troubling precedent to set.

Some people find themselves wondering what opinions will be deemed unsafe
next. The policies are not exactly clear-cut, and neither are the actions of
the administration.

~~~
dandelany
> what opinions will be deemed unsafe next.

I think this is a little dramatic. It's not about censorship of "unsafe
opinions" \- you are free to hold your opinion and talk about it, just not on
Reddit. It's akin to a hotel owner disallowing a Klan meeting in the
conference room. I think any business owner deserves that right.

> The policies are not exactly clear-cut

I dunno, the blog post seems fairly clear cut to me. It's not about blocking
content, it's about blocking subreddits whose sole purpose was harassment of
individuals.

~~~
danbruc
I think this is a something without general and clear-cut answer. I don't
think there is something inherently wrong if you run a hotel only for women or
people of a specific religion, probably because your offering is tailored to
your audience in some way. But if every hotel would start to randomly decided
to set up rules who can and can not stay there, I would definitely see this as
a case of discrimination. There is tension between your right to run your
business the way you like and the right of your potential customers to not be
discriminated and there seems not to be a general and easy way to draw the
line.

~~~
Kalium
There are easy ways to draw the line. There are also comfortable ways to draw
the line. There are precious few that are both. Therein, I submit, lies the
tension.

------
spodek
HN users consistently imply this place has better comments than Reddit.
"Reddit is a cesspool." "Can we please not bring this to HN as well." etc.

I've never had a problem avoiding content I didn't like there. Meanwhile I saw
great discussions at various times.

Here, on the other hand, I've nearly stopped reading. Besides the unjustified
elitism, constantly I'd post on a thread here only to see it disappear with no
explanation. I don't understand HN's weighting and it seems to change without
notice, or it did a while ago. Arbitrary curating means someone is arbitrarily
imposing their values on discussions. I prefer allowing legal speech.

I generally preferred Reddit to HN and will probably end up going to Voat.co
like everyone else talks about.

EDIT: Case in point: When I posted the above, the story was number 1 and it
was about fifty minutes old. When it hit one hour, it dropped to number 5. The
stories that it dropped behind were 5 to 12 hours old so I doubt they suddenly
got surges of activity.

In the time I wrote the above edit this story dropped to number 11. Soon it
will probably drop from the front page. Who knows?

I don't understand HN's weighting. Maybe this story is getting downvoted and
user behavior is driving its trajectory, but it seems arbitrary and tells me
to leave the site.

EDIT 2: corrected voat.co address thanks to ljk's comment.

~~~
zxcvcxz
HN isn't very good, but it's a little better than the current state of reddit,
which is like a middle school without adults. At least people try to be
intellectual on HN.

~~~
eruditely
Hacker news is consistently superior to reddit. I think we're just being
difficult.

~~~
namlem
I have to agree. It's not like shitty stuff doesn't get posted here all the
time, but on average, HN is definitely better than reddit.

------
im3w1l
When something that was previously (more or less) politically neutral takes a
stance people get upset. Especially when there is vendor lock-in.

Some thought experiments:

Imagine if Comcast blocked access to all liberal sites.

Imagine if Microsoft word was changed so only pro-liberal documents could be
created. For extra fun imagine if people could be "shadowbanned" so all their
files were silently deleted.

Imagine if Google could only be used to find websites that supported global
warming.

Imagine if Facebook messages could only send "patriotic" messages (as
determined by their moderators).

Imagine if Intel processors could only run non-violent games.

These may seem weird comparisons because when we think of forums, we think of
moderators having the power. But reddit isn't _a_ forum. Reddit is basically a
site that _hosts_ forums. And now it wont host some of them anymore. Not only
will it stop hosting some of them. It stopped hosting them unexpectedly, with
a self-righteous "fuck-you".

~~~
kayamon
That's not an especially useful comparsion.

If Google didn't let people search for what they wanted, they'd just go use a
different search engine.

If reddit doesn't do what people want, there are other websites for them.

~~~
namlem
The google example is bad, but I think it applies to reddit and facebook.
There are no real alternatives to speak of. Now, if they really adopted
policies that harsh, people would leave anyway and the competitors would
experience a massive burst of growth. However, milder forms of biased content
filtering could probably get through.

------
zxcvcxz
I don't know how to feel about this. On one hand I'm against censorship, on
the other I'm against internet bullying.

/r/FatPeopleHate was engaging in both.

In the end reddit is a private site that can do what it wants. Wikipedia
removes things all the time and sites like 4chan remove all sorts of extremely
offensive material.

I'm glad the mods of the hate oriented subreddits have been shadow banned, I
actually think this shit storm is wonderful and I hope the reddit admins
literally pull the plug and shut down. The FPH spammers are complete idiots,
buying thousands of guilds and donating money directly to reddit and hurting
their cause by vote brigading at the same time. They're sealing their fate.

This whole fiasco has shown the true face of reddit, just a whole bunch of
(slightly below) average kids who don't deserve my attention.

I can't wait until reddit dies, but I have no idea where I'll go. I want
something like reddit, but more open and transparent, and with a way for users
to somehow remove mods.

~~~
adamnemecek
> On one hand I'm against censorship,

I feel like censorship isn't the right word for this but I can't think of a
better one.

~~~
rcfox
It's moderation.

"Censorship" implies suppressing free speech, which this is not. It's simply
removing undesirable content from a privately-owned website.

~~~
Goronmon
Isn't it both? I don't see how moderation (in the form of removing/editing
content) isn't censorship.

~~~
mfukar
Let me clear it up for you:

Say you post an article about the current state of socioeconomic affairs in
the EU in /r/askscience. Your submission will be deleted, because
/r/askscience's subject is not to host such articles. There is room elsewhere
in Reddit for such an article.

This is an example of moderation.

~~~
Goronmon
...and censorship. They aren't mutually exclusive terms.

------
jacquesm
This is probably the best illustration of the 'no broken windows' theory at
work on the web. You can start a new community and keep it 'clean' from day
one, but you can't let your community turn into a cesspool and then one day
decide to clean it up, the inmates will be able to achieve critical mass and
they'll happily burn down the asylum if they can't have their cesspool back.

What I really don't get is that they choose these 5 subreddits to ban, reddit
has at least 50 (and probably more) subreddits that are arguably a lot more
offensive than the ones they just blocked.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _What I really don 't get is that they choose these 5 subreddits to ban,
> reddit has at least 50 (and probably more) subreddits that are arguably a
> lot more offensive than the ones they just blocked._

I think this is the key thing that's really got everyone all in a tizzy. There
are a pile of subreddits that the vast majority of Reddit users would _like_
to see gone: topics that aren't just politically divisive, but are offensive
for the sake of being offensive. Instead, the only thing that's consistent
about Reddit's decisions to police subreddits is that it's inconsistent.
Reddit's administration looks like they're generally OK with whatever's on the
site up until it gets some kind of exposure elsewhere and only then does it
get banned, and then the reasons given for it don't make any sense given the
site as a whole.

I think Reddit is actually in a unique position to start cleaning up their
site. They don't have any real competition at the moment and they have a huge
userbase. They could probably institute and enforce new _consistent_ site-wide
policies and actually get away with it. But this blindfolded "pin the ban on
the subreddit" game is only succeeding in irritating their users and making
the admins look ham-handed.

On a side note, I was a little disappointed to see kn0thing's name prominently
on the announcement. He's always seemed like a smart, level-headed guy. I'd
genuinely love to hear from him how the subreddit banning policy makes any
kind of sense. (Alexis, are you lurking here?)

------
Navarr
Clarification from the Reddit Admins on their announcement post indicate that
they're banning subs where moderators either took no action or encouraged
organized harassment (as in going to other subs or websites and actively
harassing the person in question) as opposed to subs that just post awful
things about people.

~~~
girvo
You'd think so, but they're banning any new sub that attempts to be a "new"
/r/fatpeoplehate -- if it's not about "banning ideas", but "banning
behaviour", then I find that somewhat at odds. I think there's a simpler
answer: FPH ended up on the front-page of /r/all constantly, and the Imgur
staff "doxxing" (I've heard right before they were banned there was something
happening regarding harassing the imgur editors outside of Reddit, though I
don't know how true it is) was enough to get the admins to pull the plug.

If you're monetising a website, and the most active and fasting growing sub on
your website (aside from the defaults) is a subreddit dedicated to mocking fat
people, I think that may make it a difficult sell.

~~~
toufka
Or, if you're monetizing a website and one of the largest hosts of your
content (imgur) is being actively harassed by a minority of your users, you
find a way to mend the insult.

It's becoming more clear that Reddit took action specifically because of the
Imgur insult, and that makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. But
from a wider perspective it looks very focused and targeted - not in a good
way.

~~~
girvo
_> Or, if you're monetizing a website and one of the largest hosts of your
content (imgur) is being actively harassed by a minority of your users, you
find a way to mend the insult._

I said exactly as much in my comment?

------
a2tech
And yet subreddits like 'coonville' and 'GreatApes' still exist and continue
shitting all over reddit. I know it makes my (black) wife feel welcomed when
subreddits she frequents are slammed with the most virulent hate speech you
can imagine.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
People keep bringing up racist subs, but it is unclear what exactly they're
trying to argue. Should Reddit not ban anything because they haven't banned
everything?

I'd love to see them squish some of the subs mentioned, but ultimately today
is just one day, and I'd prefer to see them take SOME action than sit around
waiting for the day that they can sweep Reddit clean in one single swoop
(which won't ever happen).

PS - The two subs you listed have under 5K readers combined. FPH had 150,000.
I've never seen any racist sub on /r/all but FPH was bullying on the front
page daily.

------
sergiotapia
This marks the beginning of the end of Reddit. It's been a long time coming
and Reddit has become a huge promotional platform for pseudo user generated
content submitted by shills and celebrities.

A lot of people are migrating to Voat.

[http://voat.co](http://voat.co)

~~~
sehr
I genuinely hope they do, it would be nice to browse reddit without them

~~~
baby
If you look at parent's URL you will see mostly garbage. The migration of the
shitty reddit to voat.com has begun :)

~~~
robot22
I wouldn't have agreed with you until today.

------
elinchrome
Reddit has become a real cesspool over the past few years. You'll always find
misogyny front and center and you don't have to dig to find racism.

~~~
mynameishere
I've been on reddit for 8 years, and lurked before that. The top submissions
and comments have always, and consistently, been standard-issue PC/liberal in
their overall view.

~~~
HelloMcFly
In the years since SJW turned from a meaningful term into a catch-all for
anyone who advocates for social justice in any way other than qualifying lip
service[1], the general reddit crowd has noticeably moved away from standard-
issue PC/liberal to anglo-centric liberal. Systemic issues of injustice are
portrayed as primarily matters of self-fulfilling prophecy. The protestant
work ethic is heavily espoused for minorities, but it's all systemic issues
when it comes to college grads having a hard time finding a job.

The same is true to a lesser degree[2] for many women's issues, though I
hesitate to mention it because this community isn't immune either.

[1] Ex) "I hate racism as much as the next guy..."

[2] Or maybe I don't appreciate it as much.

~~~
brador
> The protestant work ethic is heavily espoused for minorities

What do you mean here? Just looking for an explanation...

~~~
HelloMcFly
In social psychology research this often refers to the belief that, in
essence, "hard work will bring success." For many, particularly on the right,
it also implies the opposite: the poor/unsuccessful are in their situation
because they are not working hard enough.

It's a bit of a confusing term, because its use from a more theological
perspective (e.g., hard work is a symbol of salvation). I probably should have
used a different term.

------
ChikkaChiChi
Notch has the right idea. Why not just block the subreddits you find
offensive?

[https://twitter.com/notch/status/608706518972788736](https://twitter.com/notch/status/608706518972788736)

Reddit just put the world on notice that they are willing to become user
babysitters, and historically this has never ended well for the company
involved.

~~~
sehr
AFAIK it is literally impossible to ban 150,000 users from your reddit viewing
experience or whatever.

The issue wasn't with the subreddit, it's with what it was doing _outside_ the
subreddit.

~~~
colept
The reddit admins failed to consider the Streisand effect: they made all of
reddit an outlet by taking away the container that kept the hate isolated.

~~~
wetmore
It wasn't isolated. It showed up on the front page of /r/all frequently.

This will die down/blow over in a week or so anyway.

~~~
colept
And now the hate is unconfined. The lesser nuclear solution to that problem
would be to filter out undesirable content from /r/all to isolate it.

------
pjscott
In case anybody was wondering what the five communities _are_ , here's the
list of names:

/r/FatPeopleHate

/r/HamPlanetHatred

/r/TransFags

/r/NeoFAG

/r/ShitNiggersSay

------
mmalon6
My two cents:

1) Reddit is a business and has certain interests at stake. If they want to
seriously monetize their inventory (i.e., subreddits and pages), it needs to
be with content that jives with advertisers. Odious content and sub-reddits
are kryptonite to advertisers. Clorox doesn't want to see their advertising
next to fat-shaming/racist/misogynistic horseshit.

2) Whether or not you think Reddit is suppressing "freedom of speech" is
irrelevant (I personally don't think they are). What matters to Reddit is that
those who contribute objectionable content according to advertisers leave the
site, either because their subreddit has been shut down or because they find
Reddit is suppressing their freedom of speech. All those pages were a cost to
Reddit that had no chance of making money. When they're gone, they don't have
to worry about them anymore. Reddit is probably rooting for other platforms,
like Voat, to get traction so that people who want to post horseshit don't
linger and leave immediately.

------
kzhahou
A few weeks ago, /r/fatpeoplehate started showing up at the top of /r/all,
every day. This was pretty lame, since I prefer /r/all versus home page.

Anyone know how /r/fph suddenly jumped so high?

~~~
girvo
_> Anyone know how /r/fph suddenly jumped so high?_

It was the fastest growing subreddit outside of the defaults, and by far the
most active. Turns out there's a large contingent of people who seem to hate
fat people, at least that's how it seems anyway

~~~
eli
I'm speculating but it seems like an easy outlet for that "being offensive for
its own sake" mindset you see sometimes in kids and young adults. I think it's
part of growing up... It just happens that the Internet allows people to focus
and concentrate that negative energy.

~~~
donw
While that's likely part of it, that's not the entirety of things.

To be fair, I would wager that fatpeoplehate had its share of trolls, but I
would definitely believe that the vast majority of its denizens were former
fat people, and very frustrated at the obesity epidemic in the United States.

Frustration leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. You know the rest.

I speak here from some experience. Several members of my family are morbidly
obese, with BMIs well north of 45.

For the average person, obesity starts at a BMI of 30.

More than a third of the population of the United States qualifies as obese.
Obesity-related diseases are the leading cause of death, and the problem is
getting worse.

There are growing social movements that promote obesity as a way of life. This
is simply insane. Nobody would promote anorexia as positive, or smoking, or
heroin.

Now, this would all be completely fine if it only impacted those that choose
this lifestyle, but the problem impacts all of us, in the form of higher
medical costs, greater danger for service personnel, and in the cost of
infrastructure changes required to support the obese.

Every holiday, I got to watch as some of the people I grew up with eat
themselves into an early grave. To listen to them complain about their latest
weight-related medical problem. To hear them make excuses and blame other
people as to why they are sick.

And then these same people would insult my spouse and I, because we control
our diets and exercise regularly.

I do not want to live in a society where this is accepted or encouraged.

While I don't think that mocking fat people will solve the problem, I can
understand how that particular community could grow so fast.

~~~
dylanjermiah
>There are growing social movements that promote obesity as a way of life.
This is simply insane. Nobody would promote anorexia as positive, or smoking,
or heroin.

I think FPH got created as a counter culture to these movements.

>I do not want to live in a society where this is accepted or encouraged.
While I don't think that mocking fat people will solve the problem, I can
understand how that particular community could grow so fast.

I agree.

Rather than focusing on education and knowledge they resorted to insults and
mockery.

~~~
foiboitoi
"Rather than focusing on education and knowledge they resorted to insults and
mockery."

I just wanted to point how that comedy is as if not more effective than
education. Education through comedy is even more-so. This is likely a
healthier outlet than what they could be doing (given mockery was their first
choice of action). Possibly the most peaceful option for this type of
community... Is vandalism, assault or other crimes now further up on the to-do
list? I suppose we might find out now since censorship has created the
opportunity.

------
archagon
People always say that Reddit is fine, you just have to unsub from the
defaults. That's nonsense. The defaults are representative of the userbase of
the site, and their values seep into every crevice. Furthermore, Reddit has
never actually been about "free speech". The vast, vast majority of people who
browse Reddit don't do it because they can say whatever they want; they do it
because it's an esay way to aggregate and consume light content. I mean, this
should be obvious to anyone who uses Reddit with any frequency. The people who
trot out the free speech defense — at least from what I routinely see on the
site itself — are often exactly the ones who enjoy reading vile subs like
/r/fatpeoplehate.

If Reddit can't survive this cleanup, then good fucking riddance.

------
mahouse
This is pretty interesting. The top posts on all of reddit as of now:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/all](https://www.reddit.com/r/all)

~~~
batiudrami
Like the Digg HDDVD encryption drama.
[http://i.imgur.com/0QLFsPo.png](http://i.imgur.com/0QLFsPo.png)

~~~
shpx
I love the irony of (poorly, see #8) censoring the original image

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ae/HD_DVD_Night_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ae/HD_DVD_Night_Digg_Frontpage_before_rose_blog_post_screenshot.png)

------
noahbradley
For an... interesting take on all of this, there's always /r/conspiracy:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/39ddf1/rfatpeop...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/39ddf1/rfatpeoplehate2_has_been_banned/)

~~~
PopeOfNope
Meh. IMHO, the real conspiracy here is Reddit's attempting to make it more
palatable for advertisers so they can at least make an attempt at making
money.

~~~
Hytosys
I would never want my business to boil down to a collective of people who will
undoubtedly be on the wrong side of history. It's bad mojo all around, not
just bad money.

~~~
smsm42
I can't imagine how this could happen to Reddit - if some category of people
is "on the wrong side of history", they are either a minority (however vocal)
or are about to become a minority very soon - otherwise we couldn't really say
the history is going against them, right? If the site is not a niche site but
a broad host-all ad-supported site like Reddit, their income can't depend
exclusively on a minority of users, statistically speaking. They may suffer a
hit for alienating part of the audience, but they should still keep most of
it, so it can't "boil down to" just "wrong side" people.

~~~
Hytosys
The wrong side of history being people who practice or support hate speech.

~~~
smsm42
Quite the contrary - people who want government to ban speech because they
feel bad hearing it are on the wrong side. "Hate speech" is just another way
of saying "I don't like this speech", nothing more. Which is fine - nobody
should be forced to listen to something one doesn't like. But when this term
is abused to justify violence and coercion - governmental and private - as is
frequently the case - then it's the wrong site of history. Of course, Reddit
or anybody has the right to choose which speech to host - but one doesn't need
to invent special category of "hate speech" to express this simple thought.

~~~
Hytosys
I respectfully deny your simplified definition of "hate speech" and reassert
that history has decided that hate speech is to be prevented (unless we
regress completely to a pre-civil rights society). Your supposed
"justification of violence and coercion" seems misinformed, and I'd like to
hear more about these instances of injustice.

~~~
smsm42
"history has decided" \- what is this? Who is "history"? In US, for example,
there is First Amendment, which guarantees every US person the basic right for
free speech. Of course, not all countries are as eager to protect the rights
of their citizens as United States are, and over the course of history there
were many governments that infringed on those rights. However, declaring that
these infringements somehow come from "history" and not from a bunch of
misguided individuals that have no regard to their compatriot's rights I can
only attribute to supreme arrogance or unwillingness to take responsibility
for their own crimes.

The willingness of the government to infringe on rights of the free speech by
definition can not be any part of "civil rights society" \- quite the
contrary, it is the opposite of it, as one of the most basic rights - right to
speak freely - is being violated.

------
_pmf_
Claiming that insulting obese people in an extremely offensive and aggressive
manner for the sole purpose of personal entertainment has anything to do with
free speech is something that even the average 14 year old Redditor should be
able to recognize as a bit bold.

------
fleitz
They aren't banning behavior, they're banning the expression of certain ideas.

It would be one thing if the group was about beating up fat people, but
posting comments online about them is clearly under the ideals of expression.

If they want to ensure it's behavior and not ideas they should get a judge to
rule on whether the expression would be constitutionally protected.

And yes, as a private entity it is their prerogative to ban certain ideas on
their site, however, they should just be honest about it, they are limiting
speech in a manner that would likely be unconstitutional if they were a
government entity, aka. they are abridging freedom of expression.

------
evanriley
I'm hoping this thread gets deleted, because the shitstorm is just going to
come here sooner or later.

------
jokoon
I really wonder if there's not some money involved into those subreddits. It
seems pretty easy for a PR company to just create fake accounts and build a
popular subreddit and pretend that "the reddit community is angry".

I'm really starting to doubt that plain users can put so much energy in hating
fat people, and I'm really dubious that it would create such chaos.

I wonder if the popularity of reddit has not brought some attention from PR
groups.

------
ejcx
The idea is to make people who are being harassed on reddit feel safe[0]. This
goal is something I think everyone agrees is a good goal. As a policy
decision, I think it is pretty weird they started banning communities instead
of people.

There are a lot of people on reddit and policing individual users would be a
challenge. Would something like a "flag harassment" button have the same
desired affect?

0 -
[http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removing_harassing_subreddits/cs23fzr)

~~~
girvo
_> This goal is something I think everyone agrees is a good goal_

Depends. As it stands, making something a "safe space" is a super broad goal
that has some very fuzzy edges. But then, I enjoy dissent and viewpoints at
odds with my own, and it's a private company that needs to make money, so I
can understand it.

~~~
ejcx
Yes I agree. Everyone attaches their own meaning to that. I only mean it to
be, a website where using it isn't going to get you needlessly harassed,
doxed, threatened, etc. and when that kind of stuff happens, people don't find
it acceptable.

This is clearly a growing pain for reddit. Something like "reddiquitte" only
scales so much.

------
chippy
Digg users went to reddit, and reddit techies went to HackerNews. The classic
early adopters, high technology users were the people going first. They went
because there was a better alternative.

Firstly it's the wrong sort of user that is thinking of leaving reddit - these
are a lot of the latecomers and consumers rather than the early adopters.
Secondly, these types of users will not be going to Voat because it is not a
better alternative.

If someone comes along and creates a better alternative, we will be pulled
towards it, not pushed from something else.

------
fierycatnet
This is like dream come true for voat dot co. I highly doubt there is going to
be mass migration like it was with Digg but Voat is going to get quite a few
users in the near future for what it's worth.

In any case, Reddit has become a new mainstream site full of propaganda,
censorship, shadowbanning, hand-picked news, etc. I've noticed a sharp decline
in the last year or so.

It's not even their new policy, it just feels like it Reddit got big enough to
finally join any other mass media source of information, not in a good way.

~~~
freebsdgirl
> This is like dream come true for voat dot co.

A dream they weren't prepared for. The site has been in failboat mode all day.
Should have designed to scale for all of those users that want to hate on fat
people.

------
thrillgore
I think community oriented websites have stress moments, typically policy or
technical in nature, that signal the period in which uniques begin a steady
drop-off. Digg has its with the move to approved submitters in v4. I fear
while banning FPH was the right thing to do, this is going to stunt the
uniques that Reddit draws.

And i'll leave it at that because it looks like, if the comments are telling,
Hacker News is going full-on Eternal September right now.

------
Eupolemos
I'm all for moderation, be it votes weighed by algorithms or by taking a
stance on communicative quality. I'm for it, because otherwise easy
gratification comments is all I'm ever going to see.

But I am very much against the "For Safety!" stance. That is not what Reddit
is about. I don't think angry Redditors is for Hate, they are against Safety.

IMHO, that is pretty simple.

------
digitalzombie
Ugh... the majority of the ban was pretty reasonable. The fatpeoplehate was
the one that got many redditors' panty in a bunch.

Now I'm stuck with all these fatpeoplehate post on the front page.

------
themeek
I do not know about this specific case (looking at the subreddits I truly
doubt it is an example) but there are examples of systems using anti-
harrassment as a means to censor particular groups, links, and ideas.

With a title like "'Troll hunting' algorithm could make web a better place"
([http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-04/14/google-
algori...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-04/14/google-algorithm-
predicts-trolls-antisocial-behaviour)) this algorithm seems like a true boon.
It's only slightly suspicious (and can easily be explained away) that two of
the three websites used in its study were political websites. You'd have to be
pretty zany to leap to the conclusion that the paper had anything to do with
censorship.

It would look worse if one of its co-authors (Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-
Mizil) received funding from the DoD to study the propagation of information
through social media online
([http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.01383.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.01383.pdf))
as part of DARPA SMISC - a strategic communications (DoD term for propaganda)
research group that studies how information flows on social media and how to
direct and disrupt it.

Many researchers take grants from all over though, and anything in this area
of study is likely to get investment from the DoD. So still it's more
reasonable to think that, since he works in that area, of course he will
receive DoD funding.

Yet it was posted with 22 likes to NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of
Excellence
([https://www.facebook.com/StratComCOE](https://www.facebook.com/StratComCOE)),
a Facebook wall also contains a review of a book called "The Weaponization of
Social Media" and announces its participation in a conference on “Cyberattacks
and Propaganda: the Battlefield of Future”.

As evidenced (again) as recently as this week by a group of people who run an
anti-TPP website, there is an inter-website system for blocking posts to
certain content
([https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/38pmg8/hey_redd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/38pmg8/hey_reddit_someone_is_trying_really_hard_to_erase/))
- Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc all simultaneously blocked this website.
Whether this was an error or not (it probably was), it points out there is a
centralized system for blocking content.

Both the Facebook emotion experiment and the Facebook vote experiment had ties
to funding to the DoD (and Air Force though blurbs about funding from the Air
Force, which handles cyber in the US, was erased from the academic's page when
there was public attention; it was reported to be a clerical error).

This is not to say that this is used inside the US to block US contibuted
content. While the history of the United States Government in applying
strategic communication and information support to US audiences has been
slippery, and the Smith-Mundt Act (anti-propaganda law) was recently weakened
under the justification that global interconnectedness of conversation, news
and social media makes it difficult to prevent US propaganda intended for
foreign audiences from making it back home.

The new CEO of Reddit is on the board of a Washington Defense Thinktank. This
anecdote doesn't imply anything. But it does mean that you should be asking
Reddit and its CEO hard questions, you should be skeptical of intentions, and
you should demand that Reddit - like all other companies that own your
communications and socialization - keep themselves to the highest possible
standards.

------
cousin_it
Has any large website ever managed to stay censorship-free?

~~~
baby
any website is "moderating" its content. Even 4chan.

------
themeekforgotpw
The West is so inconsistent. It will cheer as Charlie Hebdo mocks the prophet
of a quarter of the living people on Earth.

"Free speech!"

But then it will close down forums where some people say mean things about
some other people.

"Propriety!" "It's 'curated' or 'managed', not censored!"

~~~
andrewflnr
It's almost as if The West isn't a monoculture, and contains people who
disagree with each other.

~~~
themeekforgotpw
I don't think we can characterize it as that. Of course there are people who
disagree with one another (everywhere).

This comment above is about consensus - or its approximate form - that ends up
dominating the conversation.

------
cft
I truly hope that this will have one of two outcomes:

1\. End of Chairman Pao's CEO term

2\. End of Reddit.

I find only these two outcomes desirable, because the third one is chilling
free speech in the internet, the one that Ellen Pao is gunning for.

~~~
wetmore
Lol, take it to /r/conspiracy bud.

------
drhodes
AAAAAnd reddit just jumped the shark.

