
Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit - lucodibidil
http://heatst.com/tech/reddit-ban-quarantine-alt-right-subreddit/
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vectorpush
Who cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for
moderation. For several years now I've seen this non-stop obsession with
lambasting reddit as a shit-hole and a left-wing echo-chamber and a shit
company run by amateurs and SJWs.

Who cares? The overwhelming majority of redditors subsist on photos of animals
and drawings of video game characters. Just leave if reddit isn't friendly to
your particular proclivities. If you hate fat people, liberals, feminists and
BLM activists there are many places on the internet where you can find common
cause.

~~~
xnemdncn
>Who cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for
moderation.

Except it's not that simple. There's a substantial amount of judicial
precedent that you can't refuse service to customers just because you disagree
with their ideology or background, otherwise it would be okay to refuse
service to supporters of gay marriage for example.

It's appalling that you would even suggest that.

~~~
psychometry
There is literally no "judicial precedent" for a website owner being
disallowed from moderating user-submitted content. What are you talking about?

~~~
Alex3917
There actually are lots of safe harbor protections for common carriers. Lack
of editorial oversight is why sites like YouTube can qualify for these
protections, but sites like Gawker wouldn't be able to. (Even though they
ultimately got shut down for ignoring a court order or whatever.)

~~~
ceejayoz
YouTube still takes down videos, comments, channels, etc., and restricts
others by age/country/etc.

~~~
Bartweiss
Sure, but that's _within_ safe harbor rules. If they went and moderated
content and comments in a non-reactive way, say by banning commenters whose
opinions they found incorrect, that would be legal but could jeopardize their
safe harbor status.

~~~
ebrenes
YouTube completely censors material, here's a list of the actions they've
undertaken:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube)

And as it states there, they also have censorship based on their terms of
service, where they prohibit the posting of videos which violate copyrights or
depict pornography, illegal acts, gratuitous violence, or hate speech.

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jjawssd
If Reddit can not handle free speech, Voat will.

Once Voat is overrun by the enemies of free expression, someone else will take
the helm and continue. Such is the nature of a free Internet.

~~~
ideonexus
Ironic that you've made this comment on HackerNews, a site, it can be argued,
whose appeal comes from its pretty substantial moderation. I can't tell you
how many links I've seen flagged and banished from HN that I thought were
important, but... once I cooled down my outrage, I realized the conversations
occurring on them were pretty toxic. I come to HN because of the focus and
constructive dialogue. I stay away from Reddit (and long ago abandoned /.)
because of the toxicity.

Yes. The alt-right and the_donald reddit community members can move to a less-
popular platform, but that doesn't necessarily mean that platform has just
become more popular. It means the loudest, most-obnoxious people have just
lost their Reddit audience. When 1% of commenters are making 90% of the posts,
that's no longer a dialogue and that drives away readers. Encouraging polite
dialogue and policing abusive behaviors are smart business moves for Reddit
and Twitter.

~~~
basch
I frequent hackernews and /r/askhistorians because of strong moderation. I
support free speech. Communities being moderated are different than platforms
being exclusive to certain communities. (I consider hackernews to be a
community not a platform due to its strict focus.)

I can choose which communities to ignore, lurk in and participate with. I dont
support extinguishing communities I choose to ignore.

You get what you get when you choose to congregate at the firehose nozzles of
twitter and /r/all

~~~
jjawssd
I think this is the most important comment in the whole thread.

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h4pless
Since when has a company enforcing their TOS been discussion worthy? Their
content policy clearly outlines what is considered "Unwelcome Content" and it
seems like the majority of the alt-right thread would be classified as
"Violent Content" under Reddit's terms.

I think a much more amusing enforcement of such policy would be for Twitter to
ban Donald Trump, thereby also banning the @POTUS account for the term of his
Presidency for "Abusive Behaviour" on Twitter such as openly harassing the
cast of Hamilton.

[https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/205701105](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205701105)
[https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy#section_unwelcome_...](https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy#section_unwelcome_content)
[https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311](https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311)

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drzaiusapelord
> The Alt Right is a racial movement and has always been a racial movement.
> Race is at the very core of the alt right and there is absolutely no way to
> be alt right without discussing racial realism, especially from a white
> perspective

Just because you rebrand racism as "racial realism" doesn't mean you aren't
racist and Reddit has no appetite for hosting racist speech. Go start your own
Reddit if you don't like it. That's the wonderful thing about the web, its
easy to make your own discussion forums.

I'm sure Voat will love these guys, meanwhile I don't have to deal with
"racial realism" brigades and trolls on the subs I read. Seems like a win-win
for all involved.

~~~
jklinger410
>Just because you rebrand racism as "racial realism" doesn't mean you aren't
racist and Reddit has no appetite for hosting racist speech.

Why not? People have been rebranding racism for years.

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alexpersian
throw r/the_donald in there with them

~~~
Shanea93
Yes! Lets silence the opinions of everyone we disagree with! Lets take away
their places to talk so they have to skulk in the shadows! Lets pretend
there's no merit to listening to the thoughts of millions of people!

Why stop with removing their access to Reddit? Why not make it downright
illegal to talk about it? Why don't we make it illegal to think about it, too?

I'm exceptionally left-leaning and I don't agree with removing these people
from Reddit, it's censorship of views we don't like, plain and simple. Are we
really so childish that we believe that if we stop these people talking about
it then the problem will go away? They'll just move elsewhere and common
discourse will be more difficult, people will be more entombed in their own
biased beliefs.

~~~
fao_
See, the problem with all of this is that they get the 'left-wing' people to
fight for them. These people have not lost anything but an outlet to abuse
people, and spread their sexist, racist philosophies (If you disagree with
this, try reading through Breitbart without being disgusted at the contents).

Do not worry. These people still have their freedom of speech, they are free
to spray paint swastikas in bathrooms and put threatening letters through the
doors of American citizens, but they will no longer be able to preach their
philosophies on Reddit.

~~~
Shanea93
But why should we not fight for them? I am just as angry about the thought of
us being censored as I am of the thought of them being censored.

It doesn't matter whether what they say disgusts me or not, I don't have the
right to not be offended. People often use Reddit to find news, I believe that
Reddit should have a duty to provide that service in an unbiased way without
inflicting their own views on the people who use their service. All they
should care about it is "is this illegal?"

Yes, I understand that they're a company and not a government agency, it's of
course just my opinion that they have such a duty.

~~~
fao_
> All they should care about it is "is this illegal?"

In many countries, the UK included, many of the posts on the fascist
subreddits _are_ illegal.

> But why should we not fight for them?

Because the value of life should be held to higher value than the 'destruction
of free speech' (Except Reddit isn't doing anything to their free speech,
they're denying them a platform. Which is objectively different). These people
quite literally stand for genocide.

> I don't have the right to not be offended

Yes, yes you do. That's part of free speech, isn't it?

~~~
Shanea93
I live in the UK and wholly agree, the Public Order Act 1986 makes it very
clear where it stands on hate speech, and yet I disagree with it, the same as
I feel about the Snoopers Charter and other such laws. Freedom of speech
should be granted regardless of who is offended by your speech, you should
have the right to say exactly what you want, I have the right to think you're
a dick head for saying it, but you should still be able to say it.

I'm not condoning threatening behaviour or violence, I'm just saying that I
believe that if someone wants to call be a ginger bellend, they should have
the right to do that.

Freedom of speech should be defined as such: Free speech and the right to
freedom of expression applies to ideas of all kinds including those that may
be deeply offensive.

The trick behind it is that your speech here may be offensive to the far-
right, does that mean that you would be okay if they passed a law saying it
was illegal?

~~~
fao_
> The trick behind it is that your speech here may be offensive to the far-
> right, does that mean that you would be okay if they passed a law saying it
> was illegal?

The fundamental difference is that I am not calling for the extermination or
genocide of a group of people.

Speech like that isn't simply 'offensive', in the same way that one person
wanting to kill someone else isn't a simple 'disagreement'.

Death threats are illegal in the UK, for the simple reason that it causes
severe trauma to receive a large amount of them. Calling for the death of a
group of people is just as bad. I honestly suspect you would live differently
knowing that a large vocal group wants to exterminate people with a trait you
carry.

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fatdog
Left needed a new boogyman because the old ones were getting stale. "alt
right" is a perfect candidate.

If you believe people who agree with some of the alt-rightist views must be
held accountable for the standard racists who use that worldview as cover,
then logically you must also make it incumbent upon people of muslim faith to
tug a forelock to "us enlightened folk" in shared outrage and be accountable
for the extremists who act in their name, and for random jewish people to be
accountable for settlements, for catholics to feel they owe you something for
their Irish "freedom fighters," etc.

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chiefalchemist
The question is: Does "stopping" the speech encourage or mitigate IRL behavior
/ action?

In addition, forcing ideas underground will likely strengthen the will and
beliefs of the hardcore believers. That is, when you marginalize those who
profess to be marginalized, you run the risk of enabling them.

Sucks being Reddit but it might actually be all for the better, as ugly as it
is.

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tdkl
Someone should explain the author the difference between racism and a
stereotype (linked meme picture).

~~~
fabian2k
Just read the comments of the OP in the linked meme thread. I don't want to
repeat it here, but there is one that is as racist as they get
([https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/comments/5d8qm6/time_to_st...](https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/comments/5d8qm6/time_to_stop_giving_away_our_hammers/da3wgte/)).

I would also consider the image racist in any case, it's just not the most
racist thing in that thread.

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EasyTiger_
This thread is going to follow the predictable bizarre reasoning about how all
60,000,000+ Americans who voted Trump are racists because 0.01% of them are in
the KKK.

Can we PLEASE keep this shit off Hacker News?

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lujim
Yawn. No big surprise here, and it won't be a surprise when when the_donald is
banned. Reddit users tend to be young and young people tend to lean left. It
is by definition and echo chamber due to how quickly unpopular opinions are
vaporized by downvoting.

What would be more interesting is to see what subreddits are tolerated that
promote excessively immoral or illegal behavior.

