
How Reddit became the Alamo of the Internet’s ongoing culture war - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/06/12/censorship-fat-shaming-and-the-reddit-revolt-how-reddit-became-the-alamo-of-the-internets-ongoing-culture-war/
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epistasis
What's shocking to me is the amount of effort that these harassers put into
their activity. I'm the third comment on this page according to my preview,
and the other two add up to ~200 words of nonsense "reasoning" by people that
feel they're making an argument with logic, but seem to be unable to realize
the basic contradictions in what they're saying.

By their fruits you shall know them, and what these harassers are doing to
reddit clearly shows what they did inside their subreddits.

~~~
panic
That's what I don't get about this whole thing. Why do people care so much?
There are plenty of other, much more fucked up things in this world to be mad
about -- reddit deleting a few objectionable communities seems pretty low on
the list.

~~~
mberning
I imagine that these people are miserable in their own right and have nothing
better to do with their time than drag other people down. What well adjusted
and self actualized person has such an abundance of time to devote to
harassing people anonymously over the internet?

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vonklaus
I really don't understand the hiring decision surrounding Ellen Pao. Her
personal/professional scandal already make her a rather ineffectual leader,
and she doesn't seem to embody any of reddit's ideals. They really could kill
the company and they need a strong leader with vision to set the pace

~~~
matt4077
At this point, with the amount of gendered insults and misogyny that's thrown
at her, it doesn't really matter how good she is. You can't let that sort of a
hateful mob have power.

Apart from that, I don't think anybody who hasn't worked with her gets to
judge her. She was a high-level executive at one of the largest vc firms so
she can't be entirely stupid.

~~~
elleko22
"We shouldn't criticise person X otherwise person Y will benefit from it"
hasn't been working very well historically. She can be victim of harassment
and an incompetent CEO too.

I also disagree with "anybody who hasn't worked with her gets to judge her". I
have never worked with David Cameron either, still I feel I can judge his
leadership.

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minikites
Lots of people confusing the "right to free speech" with the ability to
express yourself without personal consequence.

~~~
SixSigma
Reddit promoted itself as "Freedom from the press", I have the tshirt:
[http://imgur.com/i812qdz](http://imgur.com/i812qdz)

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lnanek2
This kind of misses the hundreds of people getting shadow banned for not
agreeing with Ellen Pao's side of the lawsuit for weeks before this, although
that clearly doesn't fit with its pat explanation, so I guess I know why they
left it out.

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anti-shill
the reason reddit needs to crack on the politically incorrect is because if
they fail to do so, the corporate media will demonize reddit, and then reddit
will lose money.

The corporate media is the enforcer of political correctness.

Why? Because the corporate media is supported by advertising purchased by the
big corporations, and so the media is the mouthpiece for the big corporations.

Political correctness helps mold and shape the culture of america.

A politically correct culture helps the big corporations squeeze more
immigrants into America and into the workforce. The big corporations love
multiculturalism and inclusiveness because that helps grow america, help
increase the GDP, helps increase the workforce, increase the supply of labor
etc.

This all helps increase corporate profits. Which means more money spent on ads
in the media.

So the media will demonize and ruin any politically incorrect website that is
on the way up. Hence, reddit dances to the tune played by the media.

~~~
dragonwriter
The problem with your whole theory is that Reddit remains perfectly okay with
politically incorrect ideas and content, what they are cracking down on is
harassment.

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aw3c2
Do not mistake this very opinionated column for news. Sadly it does not even
try to present a balanced view on the issue.

What I would really like to know is why subreddits like coontown (racism
against black people) are still there if fatpeoplehate was banned. What
exactly made them ban it. A little honestly and openness would help everyone,
at least I see no reason against it?

~~~
erikpukinskis
From Reddit admin krispykrackers:

 _" When we are using the word "harass", we're not talking about "being
annoying" or vote manipulation or anything. We're talking about men and women
whose lives are being affected and worry for their safety every day, because
people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten
them, online and off, every day. When you've had to talk to as many victims of
it as we have, you'd understand that a brigade from one subreddit to another
is miles away from the harassment we don't want being generated on our site."_

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zxcvcxz
This is more than just hate against fat people, there are obvious undertones
of anti-feminism and pro-feminism.

I'm personally against the PC "SJW's" that force their ideology on people
under the moniker of feminism, but the crowd that seems to be pushing the pro-
FPH movement is the gamergate crowd. The gamergate crowd needs to distance its
selft from FPH and focus on reddit censorship and censorship in general.

All in all this is pretty embarrassing for reddit and everyone involved. All
this energy put into "censorship" of a sub for hating fat people and hardly
any outrage at things like government surveillance.

