
Reddit bans Alt-Right Group - emilong
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/01/reddit-bans-alt-right-group.html
======
ajkjk
Some explanation here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/5ri97o/ralt...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/5ri97o/raltright_has_been_banned_discuss_this_here/)

"There is a website I can't link that is taking money to crowdfund doxxing
efforts. After the admins banned that domain, the mods on /r/altright
continued to manually approve submissions to that site and added them as
sticky/announcement posts. My guess is that is the reasoning behind the ban."

So they got banned for repeatedly and intentionally, with moderator support,
circumventing Reddit's rules -- not for 'suppression of free speech' or
anything like that. I'm sure the admins were glad to be rid of them, but, they
really brought it on themselves.

~~~
askljkdjklsj
What's the actual incident? Does anybody have details?

Wesearchr was banned from twitter for looking for information about the guy
who sucker-punched Richard Spencer live on video. Is this ban for the same
incident?

This seems a little different from how I normally use the term "doxxing",
which is posting real-life information about a person who would prefer to
remain anonymous. I mean, I'm sure the guy who assaulted Spencer would prefer
to remain anonymous, but others have good reason to oppose that.

~~~
AckSyn
In my experience moderating a popular (default) subreddit, the admins and
other mods will brush under the carpet actions done by the political left that
would have the political right put under notice/(shadow)banned/sub-closed, and
it's gotten worse exponentially show since the heat of the election season
last summer.

Searching for someone who committed a crime vs senseless "doxxing" (someone
who hasn't committed a crime) are two different things. However, when it suits
the reddit admin's purposes they'll outright ignore it or use a heavy hand and
ban people/communities.

They're heavy leftists, so you can guess where this tends to lead things on
that site.

~~~
jaredklewis
How is vigilante justice a good idea here? Why would someone committing a
crime be a good reason to start an internet witch hunt?

If someone has a tip, they should bring that information to the police, not
their local internet conspiracy group.

~~~
AckSyn
Thing is, it's not a conspiracy group's effort, nor was it a witch hunt (which
is looking for something that isn't there).

They (and _many_ others) were pointing people to police if they found anything
out. The pictures were all over the internet and it's impossible to keep your
ID hidden once your face is out there for the world to see.

~~~
jaredklewis
A bunch of white supremacists hunting to identify a man's assaulter. What
could possibly go wrong?

After all, white supremacists have a long history of being fair and impartial
fact finders, simply looking for the truth. /s

------
diego
The important part: the group was not banned for their beliefs or their
speech. It was banned for violating the TOS, in particular for doxxing.

~~~
briholt
This now the default social media censorship tactic. Apply the TOS harshly to
your opponents and loosely to your allies. When an Alt Right sub doxxes
people, they get banned; when an SJW sub doxxes people, they get ignored.

~~~
a_bonobo
Do you have a source for that? Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me

~~~
illuminati1911
Is this a serious question? It's happening everywhere.

For example the famous Milo Twitter case where Milo himself got banned, but
all the radical black hate groups and the actor herself who was posting tons
of racist content didn't even get warning but instead tons on sympathy.

I'm not a fan of alt-right, but for news and social media websites, being so
disgustingly biased and trying to help the radical leftist agenda is one of
the major reasons why things like Trump and Brexit happen.

~~~
rhizome
"Radical black hate groups?" Your slip is showing.

------
Dobbs
/r/altright was banned for doxing. An example can be found on imgur
[http://imgur.com/a/pZ8yN](http://imgur.com/a/pZ8yN) where you can see not
only doxing, but crowd funding to support doxing of an individual they
disagreed with.

~~~
microcolonel
I would disagree with somebody sucker-punching a community member in the face.
If there are no other targets this seems entirely legitimate.

The ban also seems slightly prejudicial, because on the other side there is
/r/antifa where people are bragging[1] about the assault which /r/altright was
trying to solve with this bounty. Granted, /r/antifa seems to be mostly
dissent against this stuff, so it wouldn't be a subreddit shutdown.

I think that _assaulting people you disagree with_ is a far more serious
charge than posting a reward for information which leads to the arrest of a
criminal. The latter is something befitting of a police agency.

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/antifa/comments/5r5rlp/](https://www.reddit.com/r/antifa/comments/5r5rlp/)

~~~
diyorgasms
/r/antifa is run by neo-nazi squatters who want to make antifa look bad. They
probably should be shut down, and there are other places actual activists
organize.

~~~
microcolonel
Not to get too far into it, but it's hard to make antifa look any worse than
they actually are. A bunch of cowardly, destructive, eyes-shut communist
nincompoops parading around in crowds because they are too timid to stand
alone for their indefensibly stupid beliefs; that is, if they're not just
there to fit in.

I don't think you have to be a neo-nazi to appreciate how pathetic and sad
antifa are. I do not think you have to be a neo-nazi to have a knowing laugh
about the thumb-sucking intellectual fragility they represent.

------
marricks
People jump to compare to digg or clamping down on "free speech" but groups
that dox or participate in harassment don't deserve to be sheltered.

Sure, reddit started as a sort of "libertarian dream" but it's pretty clear at
this point that some groups choose to abuse that.

------
singold
If it is a violation of tos shouldn't they ban the user instead of deleting
the subrredit?

Edit: now i've read the comment by 'ajkjk and that makes more sense

------
hackuser
Note that they were banned for doxxing, not for intolerance or hatred.

Generally I strongly favor free speech and believe the answer to 'bad' speech
is more speech. However, there always are limits such as slander, harmful
deception (yelling 'fire' in a crowd), provocation to crime ('assault the man
in the front row!'), and more. I think there may be a way to clearly and
justly draw a line for white supremacist and other hate speech, if and when we
want to do it.

 _Tolerate all but intolerance itself._

There is some theoretical support:

* Think of tolerance as a social contract: I tolerate you if you tolerate me; or, everyone tolerates you if you tolerate everyone. If you break that contract then you have no claim on everyone else's toleration.

* Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance. _Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them._ [0]

On the other hand, the always incredible Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
makes some good arguments against it, especially that humanity will abuse this
new authority.[1] Partly for that reason and partly to err on the side of
individual liberty, I would apply this rule only when there is a practical
necessity. One requirement would be that the intolerant group poses a threat.
For example, a group of intolerant Jainists in Los Angeles isn't a threat -
they are too few to threaten anyone in that environment. In a tiny town where
they are the majority, or in a locked room with one Confucian about whom they
are saying intolerant things, it would be a threat.

But this all is my personal analysis; I'd be interested in some established
standards such as workplace law, neo-Nazi speech in Germany, etc.

\----

[0] I can't find an authoritative source or discussion, but Wikipedia covers
it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

[1]
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/)
\- Search the page for "paradox of drawing the limits"

------
baudolino
six weeks ago I would have regarded the idea of doing this as inimical to the
principles of free discourse and debate that I feel are fundamental to
democracy and indeed to small-l liberal civilization in general.

now I find myself wondering whether my principles are being contaminated by
the immense personal anger I feel, or whether perhaps my principles weren't as
rationally derived as I had previously believed.

~~~
epistasis
Then you may find this concept interesting:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

Living in an open society does not mean tolerating those who aim to end the
open society. The altright, as a rewarming of white nationalism, which is a
rewarming of Nazism, seems to not be such a huge fan of our open society.

~~~
vixen99
What assumption laden, lazy use of words. You throw them around as smears and
pretend they have specific meaning rather than the emotive symbols they are.

Nigel Farage who convinced a majority of Brits to exit the EU is generally
regarded as being altright. Do we therefore conclude that this British
majority went along with someone who supports a 'rewarming of Nazism'. This is
vile garbage.

Identifying targets precisely and offering arguments is preferable to sloppy
innuendo.

~~~
epistasis
Though you have many insults, it seems that the heart of your argument is:

"Nigel Farage is altright. Altright can't be white nationalism because then
Farage would be white nationalist."

However the alt right is not defined by Nigel Farage, rather if Nigel Farage
wraps himself in that term than he is defined by it rather than defining it,
as it predates him.

Reading anything about the alt-right will show that my estimation of it as
white nationalism is correct. Look at

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-
the...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-alt-
right/2016/11/23/66e58604-b0c2-11e6-be1c-8cec35b1ad25_story.html?utm_term=.3399cc542e8d)

Which points to alternativeright.com

This idea that "this idea is bad, and my politician accepts this idea,
therefore this idea can't be bad" is classic backwards thinking. Your insults
may reveal that this has hit a sore spot for you. We need to be able to talk
about these things rationally, and not emotionally.

------
neotek
Good.

------
JohnTHaller
altright was doxxing, which is against the ToS. Doxxing, regardless of who, is
generally a bad idea. For background, see the reddit Boston bomber debacle.
You're going to get it wrong and end up harassing or harming innocent people.

------
et-al
Anyone remember when they shut down /r/fatpeoplehate? The hate just spilled to
other parts of the site.

I'd be concerned of the same thing happening with this.

~~~
twblalock
I think it's too late to worry about the alt-right spilling over into other
subreddits. That already happened a while ago.

------
PlumNutPrime
Try a platform that lets you run your groups like you want:
www.plumgroups.com.

Setup interest/location based groups and/or install the Chrome extension to
comment on every site you visit. Post anonymously or use you Plum Name.

------
davexunit
Good riddance.

------
carsongross
Well this should be a sane, civil conversation...

------
danjoc
Freedom of speech*

*To those who own the presses.

~~~
zdw
The first amendment only applies to the government making rules restricting
speech.

Reddit is privately owned and run, so they get to make whatever rules they
want.

~~~
stefantalpalaru
> The first amendment

There's more to free speech than one country's constitution. From the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
> includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive
> and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
> frontiers.

~~~
woofyman
Then start you're own web site. Do you have unfettered free speech on HN?

------
arjie
Who honestly gives a shit? Not me. There are a veritable army of unproductive
losers who spend all their time on the Internet. Nearly every occasion where
I've seen people complain about "censorship" from a website, it's unproductive
drivel from these people.

Good riddance, I say. When productive people don't like their speech being
suppressed they create lobste.rs. But these people aren't productive at all.
They're useless wastrels, for whom the psychological kick of receiving an
upvote from their feeble-minded brethren is sufficient to drag them through
the day.

I will continue to use reddit for /r/rust and whatnot and it will be good.

Normally, I wouldn't even enter this conversation but there's this trend where
people assume that these worthless fools are the majority simply because they
spend every waking hour whining about some thing or the other. And then people
act as if they must be placated. When really they should just go away.

------
razakel
I don't think they really had much of a choice. It doesn't look good for a
media company to allow neo-Nazi content to be posted.

------
heydonovan
[deleted as per incorrect information]

~~~
bla2
"has a reputation" is pretty strong; their CEO did it like 4 times in a few
hours. That's not a small thing, but there was appropriate outrage and an
apology. Also, breitbart link, really?

~~~
scentedmeat
Well, they do have a reputation for deleting sub-reddits they don't like. It
would be better, I think, just to come out and say, "we will delete sub-
reddits we disagree with."

