And from what I understand, it's been quite effective, too [1]. It seems that removing abusive communities basically reduces the amount of abusive content overall, because there's one less community where that content is acceptable to share. So not as much of a "spillover effect" as feared, which is good news.
That study if I recall correctly completely misses the spillover to other websites, considering only reddit itself - but bans on sites like reddit and Twitter have lead to the rise of sites like Gab, 8chan and Voat in recent years. The spillover is very real, just not on the same site.
One of the authors here. That's correct. The spillover to other sites is not studied.
Based on an (admittedly imperfectly) related paper with Stevie Chancellor & Munmun De Choudhury [1], I would expect that the spillover to other sites results in a 1) smaller, but 2) more committed group of users.
Sure but a registrar / hoster that has just closed one hate site isn't going to let someone spin up another immediately. And soon enough they'll be out of options.
Refusing to provide a free platform for them to publish their thoughts is not in any way, shape, or form equivalent to, or even similar to, the "extermination" committed by Nazis, and desired by their modern adherents.
Save your energy - they just think that reddit banning a pro-racism community or a internet infra company refusing to serve a neo-nazi website basically means that we live in an authoritarian society.
Never mind that the slippery slope argument is a known logical fallacy, never mind that these companies are private entities and can do what they like, never mind that if Nazis ever gain power they will literally, physically exterminate people they don't like, never mind that people are still free to express their own views on public platforms, never mind all of that. Ugh.
The only consolation is that these communities are being censored, taken offline, and driven onto platforms where they cannot reach nearly as many people as before, and that this will continue to happen, no matter what HN libertarians say. And that the tech community is not nearly a-ok with hosting racist speech as HN would make you believe. We are moving forward, and what you're seeing is a last-ditch reaction to pro-racism, neo-nazi communities being marginalized.
>they just think that reddit banning a pro-racism community or a internet infra company refusing to serve a neo-nazi website basically means that we live in an authoritarian society.
No, I think it's unhealthy and may lead to such a society, not that we live in such. Do not confuse a fear of a possible future with an irrational fear of a present that isn't.
>Never mind that the slippery slope argument is a known logical fallacy,
I hope you're aware of the fallacy fallacy, yes? I think that might clear things atleast partially up.
The problem I see here is that this is a slippery slope that my country has gone down in the past already and it pains me to see tendencies of this happening in the us.
>never mind that these companies are private entities and can do what they like
An argument can be made that sufficiently large social networks (2 million users or more, for example) should be held to the same standard as a government by the nature of exerting a real power over the people in the network.
>never mind that if Nazis ever gain power they will literally, physically exterminate people they don't like
I think you misinterprete the argument. My worry is not Nazis. Not that I would consider the US citizens who claim to be Nazis to be real Nazis (they're more like kids playing lets-pretend in comparison).
My actual worry is people who will be hurt by this that you don't see because you and people who want to silence Nazis are wearing blinders on each side of your head.
If you want to prevent Nazis from taking power, the easiest solution is to find out why these people are doing the things they are doing and going against the root cause. Nazi-ism is merely a symptom.
>never mind all of that
First they came... I think you know how the rest goes. I forgot.
>and that this will continue to happen, no matter what HN libertarians say
The daily stormer is on Tor now, no? Can you censor Tor?
All the pitchforks do is to drive these people into places where they are safe from them and where the most dedicated of their followers can fester and boil the ideology.
>We are moving forward, and what you're seeing is a last-ditch reaction to pro-racism, neo-nazi communities being marginalized.
Maybe. Maybe people are reacting to things you don't want to acknlowedge and not to actual neo-nazi communities being banned.
There are risks there and I do hope you recognize that people who say this is bad are not automatically defending Neo-Nazis. As that too would be a fallacy.
At some point one questions, though, the means by which one is preventing speech, and why it's even an effective technique. In doing so, I think the answer would reveal something about the heavy-handed use of politically vulnerable internet infrastructure.
It also raises questions about whether modern societies should expand notions of private and public divisions over digital infrastructure, so that the tools for public assembly might be adapted for the norms of modern communication.
I appreciate that you're trying to trivialise this into some kind of "different sports team" difference of opinion to score a cheap point but you're wrong - these people want others dead, removed, or subjugated purely because they're different.
And that is something that in 2017, the human race should be saying a very strong "No, get to fuck, you scrotes" to.
It hasn't. Therefore we can either shrug our shoulders and let people get on with their subjugations and violations or we can accept that we're not an enlightened race of ubermensch ripped from a Star Trek episode and utilise our "brutish tribe mentality" to protect those who need it.
So just because we don't have yet means we will never? Oh my, I think that might be a fallacy.
Not that you are wrong because of that but you are wrong for different reasons. Possibly because Star Trek has little to do with an Übermensch and considering the context you also used the word wrong.
But I get to decide what's permitted and what's not.
We're going to start with art that I don't understand, then off to literature that I don't care for, when all of that filth is cleaned out, it's on to expressions of thought that everyone intuitively knows are wrong, then we progress to purge politics of incompatible policy and incorrect voting patterns.
> a panelist out-and-out harassed an attendee... and the organizers did nothing
You seem to have misplaced the context which I'm sure was unintentional - the panelist, having been harassed and dogpiled for many years by the racist misogynist attendee, who specifically sat on the front row with many of his fellow harassers to make a point, called him a shithead.
That, sir, is why the organisers did nothing - because he is a verifiable shithead and calling him such in front of an audience is not harassment in any sense of the word.
> The panelist, having been harassed and dogpiled for many years by the racist misogynist attendee
... which is, of course, not true.
> sat on the front row with many of his fellow harassers
Who also didn't harass her.
Honestly, this isn't rocket science.
If I make a video calling someone an idiot, asshole, etc. That in no way is harassment. They don't need to see it. It's not directed at then.
The same goes for other form of communication. Were these people sending harassing messages directly to her? The answer is "maybe once or twice, but there was absolutely no pattern of harassment".
I think you (and her supporters) are misconstruing criticism, and hostile criticism for outright harassment. It's not.
In contrast, there is no question that her behavior violated the rules of vidcon. There is no question that the behavior of the alleged harassers did not violate the rules of vidcon, while they were at vidcon.
The organizers have given an apology to Sarkeesian for allowing a group that has dedicated itself to harassing her over the years to come and monopolize the front seats of that panel.
You would think someone so concerned about the harassment of a key figure supporting the GamerGate movement would actually report the situation in its entirety. It's almost as all of this might not be about ethics in video game journalism after all.
> The organizers have given an apology to Sarkeesian for allowing a group that has dedicated itself to harassing her over the years
I've looked... is there any proof of this?
- phone calls from those people to Anita
- emails...
- twitter messages
- facebook messages...
If there are, I'll be happy to label them harassers. But until then... I have this weird idea that
the rule of law is more important than feelings
The vidcon people (among others) have made it clear that they will violate their own rules in order to "get" the bad people. People who, according to their own rules, have done nothing wrong.
Witch-hunts end up in one place, and only one place. The people who previously were accusers, on trial, for the same offenses.
So again, is there any reason to believe these accusations? If not, why do you believe them?
Edit Apparently asking for evidence was the wrong thing to do.
> This shows that power and political agendas trump peopl's alleged morality.
I'm not familiar with the incident, but I don't think it proves this. If the harassment was real, the organizers could just be incompetent/afraid of interfering/incapable of reading the situation. In which case they're perhaps not suitable for organizing, but doesn't mean it's political.
It seems inconceivable that you are as well-versed in the details of this incident as you seem to be but unaware that the situation is entirely different than what you're describing.
I could see someone being ignorant of the truth and believing the very surface-level description you give here, but your subsequent comments reveal a willful ignorance on your part.
Censorship of nasty harassers would have been welcome in that case, and describing that nasty harassers as she did was hardly harassment, no matter how it might give one the vapors.
Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
---
I am disturbed by the fascination with witch-hunts. My attempts here to ask people to explain themselves have resulted in no explanations (of course). Just accusations.
Well, if those people are so bad, then the rule of law should allow them to be banned and/or punished. If they're not that bad, then the rule of law should be followed. If we're not going to follow the rule of law, then why pretend to have rules?
Maybe I'm weird... but none of that makes any sense to me.
I tried to avoid gigantic quotes from the Vidcon Medium post I linked previously, but I'm assuming you read this:
Our founder, Hank Green, talked with our panelist and said two things:
1. He told her that her comment had violated our policy, but that he understood that there was a broader context (which to be clear, we were blissfully ignorant of until this weekend, and remain inexpert in.)
2. He apologized to her for not having been more aware of and active in understanding the situation before the event, which resulted in her being subjected to a hostile environment that she had not signed up for.
> If we're not going to follow the rule of law, then why pretend to have rules?
Rules are an imperfect tool. People behaving badly while carefully staying within the limit of the rules often run afoul of the intentions of the rule makers; it boils down to trusting those responsible for rule interpretation and enforcement.
They'll have to dig themselves out of a pretty deep hole, reputation-wise. While there are specific subject subreddit with fantastic content, most of the regional subs they carry lots of news and politics have a well-earned reputation for racism and xenophobia, and the more discussion-oriented subs add in misogyny into the mix.
Only the subs with obsessively strict moderation like the science subs (or /r/Canada politics) seem to succeed in discussing issues without hatred.
Meanwhile, Twitter maintains mainstream acceptance despite being the online home of David Duke and various other infamous white supremacists.
It's not a hive of racism, Americans just have become such virtue signalling morons that they call everything racism.
There happens to be a middle ground on many issues. Debating immigration policy isn't racist. Hell, even Emmanuel Macron and Merkel have started to control migration. No country can accept all the world's poor. It's simply not feasible. And the truth is, that is the concern that most Canadians are having. The economy's not great, working class wages and jobs are disappearing, the few places with good jobs have unaffordable housing, and Trudeau's talking about increasing immigration.
You guys can talk about how everyone that wants to debate certain topics is racist, but that doesn't change the fact that politics all over the west are moving a certain direction. The only question is whether we'll simply adjust policy, or wait too long and elect someone extreme as a knee jerk reaction.
Twitter never should have started down the road of censorship. The only people who agree on what should and should not be censored are the people who don't believe in censorship.
I would love to see a statement from Reddit/Twitter... explicitly stating that they will remain politically neutral. There’s certainly content that should legally be taken down, there’s probably content that isn’t advertising friendly and could be taken down. It seems like these companies are being very slanted in their evaluation of the latter category. Basically right leaning = bad, left leaning = good. All I want is impartial.
The subs I've heard about banning were echo chambers dedicated to the idea that "this group of people I don't like ought to be [starved|exiled|thrown from helicopters|raped|enslaved]" and such things. If that makes you think the policy is "right leaning = bad, left leaning = good," that says some pretty nasty things about the modern right, doesn't it?
Could you please put more thought and less provocation into comments on controversial topics like this? It's difficult, I know, but we have to try. The discussions that follow such comments tend to have a desperate attitude that puts thoughtful discussion further out of reach.
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
Ah, that's the crux: racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you hate it, you must be correct.
For me personally, the echo chamber on both sides is enough to keep me far away from both /r/politics and /r/The_Donald.
For example, you cannot say anything positive about Trump on /r/politics. Nothing. There was a screenshot showing that there were 231 negative articles posted and zero positive articles. It's literally propaganda, but from the other direction.
Now, you can argue that you should fight the good fight and that it's immoral to say anything positive about him. Sure, I sort of buy that: If Trump was equivalent to nazis, then we should resist that from becoming a reality.
And yet he's not. From what I've studied of history, the climate today is similar-ish to 1920's Germany. But if you examine the details of how the Nazi party seized power, you'll find they held guns up to people's heads in order to get various statesmen to vote a certain way. The German political institutions were captured by popular vote, then by force. And as long as we avoid the latter, the former isn't necessarily an indication that fascism is on the rise.
But it's hard to make that argument in this climate. If you try, you're shouted down or misinterpreted or outright framed. And that's the central issue here: When you become a zealot, you lose the ability to take advantage of the opposition's good ideas. Are you sure it's true that Trump's entire political franchise has had zero good ideas?
I'm worried that in the process of fighting Trump, we'll lose reason and rationality.
> Are you sure it's true that Trump's entire political franchise has had zero good ideas?
You're not wrong in that its important to hear both sides, but its also important to hear an appropriate amount from each side corresponding to the acceptableness of the ideas. Minority voices are important. When we find ourselves in the majority, we should be responsible for ensuring that those minority voices have a way to be heard. But not that they should automatically be heard equally to majority voices in all spaces.
Trump is a minority voice. The election results and polling are clear on that. So the question becomes more about how much weight we, as the majority, should give to those ideas. And like, I hate to be that guy, but... not much. He doesn't actually seem to have any substantive policies to debate, its just slogans and ideas. The substantive stuff either gets mentioned and then forgotten by the next news cycle (what happened to the national emergency on opioids?), changes on a whim, or is just him talking and other people in his administration (or party) ignoring him and doing whatever they wanted.
I just don't see the value in spending a lot of time/cognitive load considering that perspective on a regular basis, though I do venture into T_D sometimes to see what they are thinking. The current dichotomy of /r/politics vs /r/the_donald seems to have balanced itself out pretty well, I think.
> Trump is a minority voice. The election results and polling are clear on that. So the question becomes more about how much weight we, as the majority, should give to those ideas.
I think this is actually irrelevant; it doesn't matter whether someone's ideas are in a minority, only whether they are good ideas, bad ideas, and the proponent is interested in constructive engagement.
And yet political parties around Europe are and have been popping up representing the same kind of voters. Who don't look to the future with optimism but with skepticism.
I always try to make sure I give a politician as much credit for their intent as possible not just those I agree with but everyone.
No one is just a bag of evil or only good. Yet when we discuss politics we always end up there as this thread is a good example of.
Whatever legacy Trump will end up leaving we don't know yet. It might lead to something amazing even if it wasn't on purpose (certainly happened to Reagan) or it might be that just the right kind of irrationality is actually quite rational in hindsight.
Political decisions often have decades of decay. It's impossible to say what Trumps (the few he has actually made) are going to mean.
I think the problem (e.g. for advertisers) isn't so much that it is one sided, but more about the quality of the content.
3 top post from /r/politics (right now):
* 17 women have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. It’s time to revisit those stories
* South Carolina women’s hoops team decline invite to White House
* Nobody knows where Trump's leftover inauguration funds went, causing outrage and change in Washington
One sided: yes. Something that is problematic for advertisers: probably not.
On r/the_donald:
* Raise your hand if you're the greatest shitposter of all time! GOD-EMPEROR
* MRW I wake up to GEOTUS shitpostsGOD-EMPEROR
* Stand, Never Kneel! They Deserve Our Respect #fucktheNFL#StandForOurAnthem
Now try to be impartial. Is that advertiser friendly? Is that quality content?
T_D is already banned from /r/all. During the election you'd see a T_D post bubble up to the top often enough that Command-F "The_Donald" would give at least 4 out of 200. Now there's not a single post in the top 300. And I don't think they necessarily ran afoul of vote manipulation rules and therefore got banned: the election demonstrates there are just a lot of vocal supporters.
It's something of a myth that T_D needs to be banned in order to appease advertisers. They keep to themselves.
Fortunately spez is smart. Bringing down the hammer on T_D could very well start a civil war. He seems to be wary of this.
The difference between /r/politics and /r/the_donald, is that positive comments about Trump on /r/politics get down voted into oblivion but still are capable of being read and seen, on /r/the_donald, they simply get removed and the user is banned.
To imply that those two are equal, is disingenuous.
Also, one is sub meant for general political discussion and the other is clearly meant to be an echo chamber for one side's ideas. /r/the_donald is awful but at least it doesn't pretend to be impartial.
But it is impartial in that you won't be removed for discussion in good faith, though you may be disagreed right to the bottom.
Spiteful trolling usually gets down-voted to hell as well (thankfully).
A little too often I see hyperbolic vitriol and shitposting persist, and though I don't mind the odd gag, it's not warranted. It clogs the thread as much as anything else.
That subreddit is impartial in itself. It's consensus of the participants, not censorship, if unpopular ideas aren't promoted whichever way they lean.
But they don't ban users for their opinions. They have clearly stated rules about civility in discussion — to my knowledge, those rules are the most common purpose for banning in that subreddit. That and spam.
edit: It would actually be kind of interesting to pull those kinds of statistics and display them — for various subreddits.
>you won't be removed for discussion in good faith,
>though you may be disagreed right to the bottom.
Is there a difference?
Both actions basically say "this speech is not worthy of consideration around here". The difference between making it still available to serve as a warning or removing it entirely is not meaningful IMO.
>Ah, that's the crux: racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you hate it, you must be correct.
As is required to maintain what I would call a "democracy" with "individual rights". We have to be vehemently intolerant of intolerance and marginalization (in general), and this is more important than free speech. Free speech is an artefact of-, not a requirement for democracy. Tolerance is required, however. Some people get this backwards, usually the kind of people who can't keep their foot out of their mouth.
"Is the Second Amendment the Second Most Important?" - "The order of that list, however, still reflects Madison’s view: They come in the same order as the sections of the Constitution that they would have modified."
Democracy was nearly a foreign concept to them and it very gradually evolved in the US after the Bill of Rights passed.
"The Founding Fathers rejected 'democracy' as defined by the Greeks, preferring instead 'a natural aristocracy', whereby only the landed gentry were entitled to a place in Congress."
In what way does this respond to my comment? I asserted that America's amendment does not exist in other legislations and that democracy has been far older than america. None of which are relevant in your comment.
Democracy was nearly a foreign concept to them and it very gradually evolved in the US after the Bill of Rights passed.
"The Founding Fathers rejected 'democracy' as defined by the Greeks, preferring instead 'a natural aristocracy', whereby only the landed gentry were entitled to a place in Congress."
I don't have time to socratically convince you of it, so i'll just spell it out: you can't tolerate intolerance of groups, persons or behaviors (that don't infringe on other people's liberty) in a _democracy_ because it will undermine the legitimacy and thus participation of said group or person within the democracy itself.
I realize that "intolerance of intolerance" is paradoxical in nature, but common sense and a little charity in interpretation goes a long way.
They have before. The results have been noted. Germany was one place where intolerant groups rose to prominence through eventual consensus.
It just happens that on these little internet message boards, the consensus shifts in another favour, and the same seems to be [mainly] true in North American societies, amongst others.
> Racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you hate it, you must be correct.
This isn't about correctness.
The viewpoint is:
Racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you support them, you must be evil and desire harm to others, at very least indirectly.
Even if the racists/misogynists of the world were 'correct' I wouldn't want to live in world where we legitimize that. And that's why a lot of us reject him and his policies wholesale.
Saying "well he's right about free trade" (I don't believe this, but as an example) undermines the rhetorical context of fighting something much worse than bad economic policy.
Shouldn't we first agree on what constitutes racism and misogyny? It's easy to say that others are and forgetting that most people are to some extent.
Also because someone in your view is misguided about race or gender does that mean you should treat them as I am assuming you believe they treat people of other race or gender?
Why is it a better world to live in where you ban one view rather than the other when the result is more less the same. Someone is getting oppressed.
> Shouldn't we first agree on what constitutes racism and misogyny?
I think these are pretty well defined.
Racism: Prejudice against others based on race.
Misogyny: Prejudice against women.
> It's easy to say that others are and forgetting that most people are to some extent.
There's a difference between having a normal level of in-group selection bias and realizing it is wrong, and spouting racist/sexist rhetoric.
> Also because someone in your view is misguided about race or gender does that mean you should treat them as I am assuming you believe they treat people of other race or gender?
No. You still let them speak and vote but you don't listen, and if asked, you tell other people they shouldn't listen. You can refuse to let them use your company to spread their hate.
You have a right to free speech, you don't have a right to someone else's bully pulpit.
The concern that racists are getting oppressed is laughable. I don't understand the mental gymnastics required to justify that thought process.
Lots of things are well defined only to completely fail when it comes to being used in a real context. There are many obvious examples and even more less obvious examples.
Trump is a good example of a person who has said some racist things but even more things that were interpreted as racist.
We are all racist even if we don't want to be, we cannot help ourselves the question then becomes how do we let that affect us and how we act on that.
And so if it only takes one example to show someone is racist then we all are.
It's much less well defined once you look at the entirety and doesn't just take a sentence out of its context.
Language is tricky and defining something well does not mean it's easy to put things into these boxes.
You are right there is a difference and to the extent, it easy to identify this racist/sexist rhetorics we should obviously object to it.
But it's not much different when liberals paint all Trump voters racist. Very often do we see comments that were not meant racist suddenly be attacked simply because of the person who said it.
You are not a better person just because you are against racism if you base your judgment of what constitutes a racist or a racist remark on who said it and we shouldn't listen to you more by your own definition.
You can very easily be a Trump voter and not a racist and you can eve be a Trump voter and against racism or misogyny as that exist on both sides. Yet listening to the public debate one should think it only happens on one side.
Two wrongs don't make a right and yet it seems like most liberals (and I count myself amongst the liberal crowd) basically justify the sentiment you seem to be supporting with something along the lines of "well he/she started".
There are (luckily) very few racist in the Hitler sense of racist.
> For example, you cannot say anything positive about Trump on /r/politics. Nothing.
Not true. There was positive commentary about Trump's speech in South Korea. I think you just misestimate how often the thing he does is perceived by the general public as bad.
>> From what I've studied of history, the climate today is similar-ish to 1920's Germany.
In what respects? As far as I can recall, the US did not just move from a monarchy to a democratic republic 15 years ago as a result of a revolution after loosing a world war.
I think the populist discontent behind Trump is real and concerning, but Pre-WWII Germany and current day US are very, very, different places. I think its fair to request that if you wish to make a parallel with Nazi Germany, you substantiate the claim with specific historic evidence.
I think that remains to be seen. I don't recall any word of him signing any deals with them. He claims they pledged to spend "billions" on weapons and other contracts — that seems to be all we've heard so far.
I'm contrasting that with (my) Canada who has been actively signing with China since the first rumblings of trade discord with the US.
Not saying it's impossible or not true, but I'm wary. That weird angry screaming he did at his bizarre presser the other day was not overly convincing. If it was anybody else, I would have sworn they were on uppers of some kind...
> Are you sure it's true that Trump's entire political franchise has had zero good ideas
Some of the stuff he said on the campaign sounded great - in fact enough to get him elected. It appears he has no intention of implementing it. Does that make it worth discussing? No.
As we say about startups, ideas are cheap and execution is everything.
It's not propaganda if he's actually THAT bad. I'm being deadly serious. He is not a normal candidate and claiming that it's biased because there are lots of true stories about a bad person is a feature of our media, not a bug!
It says more about Trump's fans that they're willing to overlook his egregious failings and attack and undermine quasi-impartial institutions just to point score than it does about bias.
So... what were the actually bad things that actually happened because of Trump (i.e. because of something he did)? In my view, much like with Brexit, the fearmongering is way exaggerated compared to reality.
Assuming you've been paying exactly zero attention to anything going on, here's a few major things that he is responsible for:
Travel ban targeting Islamic countries
Withdrawal of Paris Agreement
Fired head of FBI when Comey wouldn't declare personal loyalty
Issued a directive to the department of health agencies "waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay" portions of the ACA
Soon to be pretty closely tied to:
Tax bill making graduate school significantly more expensive
FCC votes to kill net neutrality next month
These are, in my opinion, the worst offenses. There are many other things that he is either responsible for or closely related to. A simple google search yields list after list of things he's done both large and small.
I think the major fear is the precedent he sets for divisive politics in the future. He also may cause the US to loose ground to China as far as foreign influence goes, but the first point is what worries me.
The purposeful gutting/disorganization of major federal agencies and operations, the discrediting of the white house's statements, the undermining of existing federal law (see: explicitly sabotaging the ACA), then there's, of course, aiding and abetting enemies in order to win an election.
I just don't know how else to tell you that these things are all very bad. They, to me, should appear bad at face value. We clearly differ in the perception of the world at a fundamental level.
Even if they are bad are they as bad as Bush starting a war?
It's claimed that somehow Trump is the worst of them all. From what you have stated here do you personally think they are worse things than Bush starting a war?
I find it really hard to believe you're arguing in good faith. What is the purpose of a comparison to Bush..? Even if the answer is that Bush was worse, it does not take away at all from how terrible Trump has been. And we're comparing 8 yrs of Bush to not even 1 from Trump, here.
Anyway - yes, I do think that conspiring with hostile foreign entities to manipulate voters and undermine American democracy is worse.
The purpose is to test whether the claim that Trump is somehow worse than everyone else based on the mentioned examples of his bad deeds really holds up to a sanity check.
I think your last sentence much better illustrates who of us are in good faith here though.
I am not changing topics at all. When someone claims that Trump is the worst we have ever had then that of course means we have to compare to what other presidents have done to determine whether this is mostly a disagreement over style or over actual politics.
So... typical politics or unproven allegations. Got it. Not like... starting wars (like 4 previous presidents have done) (although he's still got time, I'll give you that).
I know 2 data points do not make a pattern, but it's really weird that both replies to my comment are in a similar vein from usernames that appear to be variants of "Tom P"
No, it's baseless propaganda and character defamation cranked to 11.
Your hypocritical hivemind tends to overlook that your queen bee accepted tens of millions from the KSA/Qatar in campaign contributions with the knowledge that, in her OWN words, they provide clandestine and logistic support to ISIL. It's OK to be white, it's OK to be American, and it's OK to love your country.
I got banned from T_D for saying that the reason Obama spent more $ on new regulations in his first 100 days than Trump did was because Obama inherited the financial crisis and Trump inherited an 8 year bull market. It was a simple fact that got me perma-banned. Both of the communities are terrible circle jerks.
You're probably placing too much emphasis on the name.
Subreddits are reflective of the moderators and readers. There is no objectively higher criteria to determine whether a subreddit is or should be "free from bias", only that they should reflect the makeup their membership, which they do.
"unbiased" is, if hearing is given to a position, it is either not represented with favor or disfavor, or any expressions of favor and disfavor are combined in such quantity that there is no obvious position with respect to (un)favor.
"objective" is, if hearing is given to a position, it is discussed in terms of empirical data that persists regardless of subjective views or interpretations.
"balance" coverage is giving hearing to all positions, no matter how idiotic or inane. "balance" is giving nazis and jews equal airtime to argue their views on whether the holocaust is a good idea. "balance" is rapists and rape victims debating the merits of rape.
>And as long as we avoid the latter, the former isn't necessarily an indication that fascism is on the rise.
Especially since in most accounts, Trump is more alike with Obama than not. Obama send home hundreds of thousands of immigrants, both back a shameless war machine (in fact Trump was more reluctant about that and more isolationist until the republican establishment forced his hand -- and then press found him instantly, if temporarily, more "presidential"), both have advanced the interests of corporatists, etc. If you didn't have the Obamacare repeal (which I'd call bad) they'd be 99% alike in their results.
One had better table manners and is a better (still ho-hum and totally fake) actor (in the kind of low quality populist soft-PR video like "the President interviewed by Zach Galifianakis" and "Another day at the office", etc that presidents feels obliged to put out post Clinton who popularized that BS to show us how funny and/or everyday people they are) compared to the vulgar billionaire, but that's more or less it.
The larger point is that TPTB tend to ban groups that want communists thrown from helicopters, but are absolutely fine with groups that want fascists thrown from helicopters.
There's a fundamental imbalance in how the standard is applied, and it's clearly ideological.
I understand your point. I lean conservative myself, but go with me on this.
If the people that liberals want thrown from helicopters ( fascists ), are only in that group because they want to throw people from helicopters....
Isn't that the same logic as "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun"? The liberal subs HATE, HATE groups. They aren't calling for random white people, religious people, or fiscally responsible people to be thrown from helicopters.
I've had one too many brushes with r/politics where "liberals" hated people because they were the wrong gender and race. The liberal and conservative subs alike have plenty of people who hate the other side for no good reason.
Sure. Of course the communists tend to be very "you'll be first up against the wall when the revolution comes".
Both sides of that fight seem to have legitimate cause to claim self-defense.
>They aren't calling for random white people, religious people, or fiscally responsible people to be thrown from helicopters.
No, but they do seem to be a hair away from actively endorsing subjugation. A lot of them seem to have already taken steps to make sure that that demographic can't have a voice in their movement. They also seem to have set the precedent that any criticism of their activism from outside their movement makes you an enemy. I get the feeling that a lot of them would do all those terrible things, if they could. There are fundamental tenets of the movement that give people an excellent excuse to do horrible things.
Instead, we could just, not? I liked the "judge people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin" thing we had going on. That's an easy rule to enforce, but less so when you start carving out special exceptions that mostly benefit your voter base.
Any HN mods want to jump in here and suggest maybe HN is a tech forum and not the appropriate place to promote political violence? Or perhaps this brand of hate and hysteria has completely infected this community as well.
You're right, it's not OK. But adding your own flavor of inflammation doesn't help. The way we can improve threads here is to 1) flag and downvotes comments that violate the guidelines, 2) comment civilly and substantively. Add information and insight. The way to do that is patiently and thoughtfully. Slow down and resist responding reflexively—it almost always makes things worse instead of better. If you notice something egregious, feel free to email us at hn@ycombinator.com so you can be sure we'll see it.
This is cute, but I now see comments endorsing this brand of hate and hysteria (albeit with a less violent flair) on HN everyday. If you're going to suggest that you haven't noticed this trend over the past year or two then frankly your request for reporting is disingenuous.
In line with the original top comment, why don't you publicly declare that you you'll treat discrimination/slander of whites/men/conservatives/scientists/free-speech-advocates on this platform just as harshly as you would any other group instead of asking me to send you a dozen emails per day.
I disagree, I think you can tell them they're wrong and list the reasons why $proposed_ideology is better, but talking down to people and considering murder for believing something is absolutely abhorrent behaviour.
FWIW, I hate the left and the right movements in equal strides, the left want me to feel terrible for being born a straight white male in a western post-colonial society, the right want the poor and under-priviliged to suffer and horde things like medical care.
Understanding that there is a grey-scale and that ideologies are not absolute is the only way to proceed in my opinion. Being polarised only turns into fighting because nobodies view gets represented properly instead both sides put up strawmen.
I agree strongly with your first paragraph, and disagree strongly with your second.
Ironically to me, your second paragraph illustrates why your first paragraph matters: As someone belonging firmly on "the left" your description does not fit me at all, at least not in my view.
The problem, then, when someone wants to go to extremes in treating anyone over their perceived ideology is defining what it means to belong to or support said ideology sufficiently strongly to warrant that extreme action.
It's incredibly unpopular today not to buy into even the most extreme left. You can tell by the fact my comment, which was entirely neutral is being downvoted.
Twitter is rife with absolute venom if you even suggest a term such as "mansplaining" is sexist.
One could argue /r/politics is an echo-chamber, too. I mean, it has been anti-Republican for a while, but at this point it's beyond absurd. All I see is Trump news. Like they hardly even talk about bad laws Republicans pass anymore. If it's not Trump-related, it's typically not upvoted/is downvoted.
I think it may be time for Reddit to experiment with removing the downvote button, or maybe give it 25% of the power it has now, or something along those lines.
When /r/anarchism (left leaning sub about anarchism, antifa, communism, ...) mods refused to enforce reddit's rules relating to the incitement to violence, reddit only removed the mods in question instead of closing the sub.
When /r/physical_removal (right leaning sub about pinochet 'memes') mods refused to enforce reddit's rules relating to the incitement to violence, the sub was removed.
When /r/nazi (third position leaning sub about national socialism) - well, I don't actually know whether the mods there refused to enforce reddit's rules. It's been removed.
There are plenty of left-wing subreddits with equal measures of vitriol. Somehow they avoid earning the same opprobrium that the right-wing ones do. This apparent double standard creates the appearance of bias.
If there are plenty, and you are familiar with them, please name a few. It's not possible for us to "investigate on our own" if we don't know what you are considering "equal measures of vitriol".
/r/anarchism and /r/socialism are two that often advocate violence. The latter is dominated by "tankies", which is a term for communists who love Stalin, gulags, and tanks. They frequently take a "kill 'em all" approach. They are also often mocked by other lefties on Reddit, so please don't assume their opinions are popular.
/r/anarchism is a slightly more complicated case. They do advocate violence in a "bash the fash" way. But their intended victims are often those who advocate for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other racist or misogynistic methods. Their violent earnestness is also often mocked by the rest of political Reddit.
/r/LeftWithoutEdge was a sub formed for serious discussion for lefties without resorting to violent speech. It doesn't get enough traffic so I urge any leftists / anarchists here to visit it occasionally.
Edit: I should add that one reason /r/anarchism and /r/socialism are still on Reddit is because they took the warnings of the admins seriously. /r/anarchism dialed their rhetoric back after being told they were on the verge of being banned. Most of the banned right wing subs ignored the warnings, and often doubled-down.
I was responding to a comment that conflated the worst excesses of admittedly terrible communities on Reddit with the whole of the 'modern right.' My goal was to explain the thinking of those who are accusing Reddit of systemic bias against the right. Their assertion is that subreddits advocating violence against right-wing activists are tolerated, while right-wing subreddits are condemned for similar infractions. Whether this is objectively true I do not know. In fact, my interest in politics is minimal and I should probably leave these discussions alone in future. I hope Hacker News does not devolve into another online community overrun with political arguments and petty antagonism.
You'll note that I said that there was an 'apparent' double standard. If may not be apparent to you, but it certainly is to some. You seem like you spend more time on the political parts of Reddit than I, so I'm sure you're well equipped to investigate this yourself.
You're ignoring the subs which are the same thing, from a leftward slant. It does say some pretty nasty things about mankind, that so many of us love to hate.
/r/srs advocates misandry, which is just as hateful as misogyny. /r/atheism can be viciously anti-theist. /r/politics is full of anti-conservative hatred & bile.
I'm not going to blame those nasty subreddits on the left; I'm going to blame those & all other nasty subreddits on the general nastiness of people, no matter what their philosophy or politics.
I am Christian and dislike /r/atheism as much as the next guy (especially when you consider how little they actually seem to understand about what they're condemning), but I think it's one hell of a stretch to equate that with hate speech. And considering there is no shortage of libertarian guys there the qualification as left-wing is dubious in the first place.
"Anti-conservative hatred" as equivalent is ridiculous on its face and whatever "misandry" the SRS guys promote should probably be understood in a context where there is no country on Earth where men are oppressed in comparison to women.
I'm not even saying any of those subs are good, but nobody in their right mind is going to equate them with people advocating genocide or "incels" advocating rape.
Are you really confused about what I meant (the type of extreme free-market politics advocated by figures like Ron Paul or Penn Jillette -- incidentally the latter is a prominent atheist) or are you just being a pedant for the sake of it?
Well, not being familiar with /r/atheism, I wasn't sure if you actually meant what you said and we're drawing an invalid conclusion based on the popular portrayal of libertarians (at least in the US) as anti-bear, or if you meant specifically right-libertarians.
Had I been familiar with /r/atheism, I might have been able to guess which of those was correct.
For future reference, when people say "libertarian" without further clarification, at least in American politics, they almost always mean right-libertarian.
IME, the split is much closer than you suggest between people meaning right-libertarian and not realizing there are more and meaning libertarian more generally, but perhaps associating that with opposition to the left (exluding the use of “Libertarian”—capital “L” in writing, at least when not sloppy—to mean “member of the Libertarian Party", which itself leans right—but not exclusively, I've met left-libertarians who are in the LP.)
You think half of users of the word not realizing it doesn't exclusively mean right-libertarianism is an argument against interpreting unqualified use of the term in that way? That's not how I see it.
While I imagine there is some bias among reddit's staff, because they're people and we all have bias, I don't think it's as simple as "right leaning = bad, left leaning = good". No one there is going to give you a hard time for discussing the influence of Catholicism on the views of William F. Buckley. Even Ann Coulter is in bounds, but the vile far-right 4chan garbage that some corners of reddit spew has no place in a civil forum.
> Nobody can agree on what "politically neutral" means, it's not a useful criterion.
It's pretty easy for a tech platform to be politically neutral. All you need are objective rules for how content "get to the top" and equal opportunity for whatever system is in place to be abused.
That last one is the problem though. Regardless of which side is doing it, there's a sense of unfairness felt by the other side when they see the system get gamed. And it invariably will. Hence the knee jerk reaction to rebalance things, which leads to calls of bias from the other side, and the cycle continues.
> Do you seriously consider unconsenting upskirt photos of women[1] political speech? Not just, free speech, but specifically "political speech"?
No, and I'd kindly ask you not to attribute such a position to me.
But I'm willing to bet someone does think it's political speech. See also NAMBLA, etc. And consider that gay rights boosters would have been put in the same basket a while ago.
> No, and I'd kindly ask you not to attribute such a position to me.
this happens when you're unclear with words or leave a lot of wiggle room. saying "[it] could be argued" and then suggesting you're unhappy with being associated with that position is a bit of a time waster.
Excellent point. Sadly this will likely not happen. Google and Facebook are gradually imposing a highly censored world view.
We can’t effectively reason about social media censorship by analogizing it to meatspace.
Just as virality mechanisms amplify “good” content, they also change the equilibrium state of whose ideas can spread.
Censorship programs work like a squirt of insecticide into a beehive, they kill off some functional parts of the hive organism and eventually lead to the destruction of all of the bees inside.
Similarly, censoring “fake news” or “abusive content” poisons the environment for ideas in a similar way. Ideas are not evaluated objectively. We each react to them emotionally and experience them via the social meaning we associate with them. Prejudices are not rational and are countered by ample evidence, yet there is much prejudice and much religious faith... such beliefs carry a meaning payload enjoyed by their host.
The fear suffered by social media firms (like reddit) is that someone will screenshot a piece of offensive speech alongside an ad paid for by an advertiser, and the advertiser will worry that his/her brand is being associated with that speech.
This is why Colin Kaepernick doesn’t have a job.
Social media firms are thus following in the path of other media firms and are (like The NY Times) putting ad revenue ahead of the first amendment. This isn’t unexpected, these firms are the “tories” of our day.
First off, the first amendment is specifically with respect to congress, and I don't understand why I have to say this so often.
Second, society has always been self censoring, but the internet has thrown a wrench into that by allowing people to escape into pockets of like minded individuals. And you might have noticed that hacker news is fairly heavily censored, and as a result has managed to avoid turning into a cesspool like much of reddit. I think that reddit is worried about advertising, yes, but I also think they are concerned about a decline in engaged usership.
> First off, the first amendment is specifically with respect to congress, and I don't understand why I have to say this so often.
It's also been 'incorporated' against the states (and their sub-governments like municipalities).
But free speech, as a political value, isn't restricted to the U.S. Congress. That may be why you keep repeating something that's mostly irrelevant.
Wanting to "escape into pockets of like minded individuals" is pretty much what Reddit is. I can sympathize with the idea that Reddit, or similar sites, should host anything, as long as it's restricted to 'pockets' that accept it.
A lot of the worst behavior is basically people from one pocket invading other pockets and posting unacceptable content. I think it'd be great if Reddit provided (more) effective tools for the mods to police that.
About the free speech thing, people should say free speech when they mean free speech and not the first amendment. The first amendment is a specific thing with a specific meaning, and invoking it implies the weight of law. Facebook can censor speech without breaking the law. They might be violating the principle of free speech, but not the first amendment.
> About the free speech thing, people should say free speech when they mean free speech and not the first amendment.
My bad – I didn't even notice the comment to which you were replying had done this!
We might be disappointed tho in so far as "first amendment" comes to mean 'free speech' to too many people. I mourn the loss of precision, and I'm a little afraid of people conflating the two ideas too.
OK so I was on my phone trying to hastily type out a comment and I got sloppy. I think the intent was still abundantly clear, even though the loss of precision in my choice of words is unfortunate.
> Social media firms are thus following in the path of other media firms and are (like The NY Times) putting ad revenue ahead of the first amendment. This isn’t unexpected, these firms are the “tories” of our day.
> First off, the first amendment is specifically with respect to congress, and I don't understand why I have to say this so often.
Obviously. I'm referring to the general values that led to the US having protections on free speech.
> society has always been self censoring
You are seemingly idealizing the process by which social shaming encourages conformity.
> the internet has thrown a wrench into that by allowing people to escape into pockets of like minded individuals.
So you either have an idealistic view of an ideologically homogeneous society, or you think that the internet making economies of scale possible for non-mainstream beliefs is broadly a bad thing, regardless of what those beliefs are.
> And you might have noticed that hacker news is fairly heavily censored
I have, and in most cases (other than explicit griefing or bullying) I think this is quite harmful to HN. The content discussed on HN is simply not interesting to most people, which is why HN has survived. It's easy to suffer from hindsight bias and determine that since HN has aggressive moderation HN is better that it would otherwise be.
Someone recently did a study of title edits and found that articles typically drop precipitously after the editors meddle with the title. This is typically because the author's title fails to communicate why the article is interesting to HN readers, while the user-submitted title often does (when they differ).
Worse, the study showed that mods actively bury specific discussions from the site. We really don't know what we're missing due to this, but chances are it's political. This very discussion (critical of social media companies) is of high risk for being censored simply because the main reason for HN article burying is that the article triggers comments that are viewed as overly political in nature.
This view (that political discussion is harmful) is dangerous and naive (and dangerously naive) because it assumes that HN readers are incapable of acting both as techies and as citizens simultaneously, and that with political beliefs nobody will ever change his/her mind based on the merits of someone else's argument. I enjoy HN discussions precisely because I learn a lot. What I learn is not linked to the topic, or to the political nature (or lack of it) of the discussion.
> has managed to avoid turning into a cesspool like much of reddit.
I think the biggest cespool in reddit is /r/gifs and similar fluff that is used by spam marketers to get their content viral. Yes there are things about donald and other obscure and idiotic groups that I've found at random now and then when clicking on the random subreddit button, those are easily ignored.
In fact, the only reason a normal reddit user encounters the morons is because /r/gifs (or similar) are among the default subreddits subscribed to automatically for new accounts, casting a wide net but drastically lowering the bar of discussion.
Gifs are not posted to HN because the community has no interest in that rubbish or any of the similar rubbish it attracts. Reddit would not have a problem if it were not so focused on creating a mass market for ad sales rather than just letting people associate with people they wish to associate with and easily block the bad apples or griefers.
If you are talking about the ideal of free speech then call it that. Not the first amendment.
I am idealizing a process in which social shaming encourages conformity. That is the only reason society works, we learn how to interact with other people through this process.
Yes, I think the the internet allows people to isolate themselves from ideas that differ from their own, and that this is a bad thing.
You might be right about HN moderation. I don't know, but I think the mods do a good job. I also don't think the mods have any problem with discussion of political ideals.
> If you are talking about the ideal of free speech then call it that. Not the first amendment.
I'll be more careful to avoid confusion in the future :)
> I am idealizing a process in which social shaming encourages conformity. That is the only reason society works, we learn how to interact with other people through this process.
Not sure I agree with this. In one sense, the concept of a social contract requires some degree of conformity of opinion, but I think it gets complicated as we expand outward from the basic social contract.
Democracy by its nature involves conflict of opinion. It's an orderly way of letting the 51% control the 49%. In our society we sort of pretend that laws that have 51% support are "agreed upon" by society, but that's not true in the sense of ideological agreement, it's only true in the sense of resolving conflict over what the law should be.
The mechanisms we consider in a democracy have trade-offs. We could require a two thirds majority or a nine tenths majority before passing a law. The stronger majority we require the more we can feel that our democratic process has reflected conformity of opinion, but also we'll have many more areas where no agreement was reached and the conflict is not formally resolved.
Because of the democratic process, laws generally reflect the broader moral values of the culture, but again many laws do not offer a choice between believing value A and believing value not A, they merely rank one value slightly higher than another. Members of a democracy supporting a law may think value A is more important than value B, while those opposing it may consider value B more important. Both groups may profess strong belief in both values.
I'd argue that shaming is a legacy process that is still hanging around from the days when a lot less had been abstracted and institutionalized. In those days, if you saw a neighbor beating his child, you'd perhaps frown aggressively at the neighbor and say "shame on you". These days you can just call child protective services.
Things like smoking in public are frowned upon by many, and considered rude (and are thus shamed), but this is only necessary in places where the law has not yet come to reflect that value. In many states smoking in public places is prohibited except in designated smoking areas.
But this is a bit of a digression. Just as majoritarianism is occasionally dangerous in democracy, so is the soft majoritarianism of social shaming. This is because shaming itself is used as an in-group signal, and its use (and power) generally follows from existing social hierarchy. Consider that most politicians would never be seen entering certain night clubs or strip clubs, yet we learn every day about one more of these monsters making incredibly creepy unwanted advances toward helpless women. Yesterday alone there were revelations about Al Franken and George HW Bush.
So those most likely to use shaming, and to model what behaviors deserve to be shamed happen to be the ones who benefit most from the social control it offers. The same applies to members of the clergy (who occupy a shadow political system that used to be the main one before the separation of church and state).
Thus basic social conformity (the stuff people like to shame others about) is not an essential quality of civilization, it is a side-effect of authoritarianism and a mechanism of social control.
It is for this reason that the public must suddenly be protected from "fake news". While the examples used for selling the idea are always fairly clear cut, in actuality the algorithmic changes or human censorship applied to prevent the spread of fake news will surely include anything that endangers the status quo.
The reluctance of advertisers to find themselves associated with a non-mainstream belief reflects the preference of the wealthy firm not to endanger its revenue stream. Similarly, any established group or organization has the same basic desire for self-preservation.
So while some shaming has pragmatic goals... booger shaming children prevents the spread of disease, etc., social conformity is a very blunt instrument that is increasingly incompatible with the modern notion of a pluralistic society. The internet has made a new level of pluralism possible, and it threatens those who hold all kinds of power.
We are being told that we must be protected from fake news, protected from hate speech (even from free speech in some cases), protected from various groups, but in reality what is going on is that powerful interests are teaming up to help themselves cling to power and prevent the massive efficiencies in publishing information from ushering in an increased level of pluralism and the corresponding reduction in their own authoritarian power.
Countries with a weaker hold on authoritarian power (like China) have had to take steps to ban speech and cryptocurrencies already. The mistake we make (due to our penchant for American exceptionalism) is to think that we are not following close behind with the same sort of authoritarianism-preserving convulsion.
It's strange, but I've never considered Reddit a cesspoll. The fact of the matter - and this is why Reddit is successful - is that it has lots of unique subs and a pretty decent voting system which pushes trolls to the bottom, often collapsed.
But if I want to really see what these people are writing, I am free to browse any sub, sort by controversial, and expand the collapsed threads. Win - Win.
Hacker News, OTOH, just seems to 'disappear' wrong-think.
Sure, but you used to be able to just browse the front page. Try looking at the reddit frontpage from five years ago and comparing it to right now. And yeah, there are good subreddits but not very many of them are highly active.
Can you clarify? I tend to use mobile and I have a /r/all (which I never use) and which is the Reddit's defaulted top subs, but I can browse my own 'front page' which seems to be a nice mix of my subscribed subs and popular posts. It's a decent compromise.
Kaepernick doesnt have a job because he won like one game in his last season added to the fact that people want to watch sports for the same reason people do anything in leisure, to escape the troubles of the world(politics). He was a slower R Wilson, a smaller C Newton, and a less accurate D Brees.
Marshawn Lynch has never stood for the national anthem. Not once; even before Kaepernick. He still has a job because he is a great player.
And Lynch is still relatively well-liked despite this particular action because his public appearances are funny and self-aware (see his commercials), in addition to owning a super bowl ring.
>> content that isn’t advertising friendly and could be taken down.
That is a dangerous road. Today they might be taking down otherwise legal content with which advertisers do not want to be associated. Tomorrow they are being asked to remove content with which advertisers disagree. Suddenly my 1000-word rant on the evils of Microsoft's latest OS is being taken down. Rather than being a free space for discussion, reddit will have become just another moderated online forum where nothing of note ever happens.
Reddit's power comes from negative posts. Facebook and twitter makes headlines when people 'like' things a billion times. They lack the capacity for users to express anger objectively. Reddit makes headlines when it empowers 50,000 gamers to dump on EA. Advertisers like EA should be be paying for such feedback. They evidently already listen to it.
Is the slippery slope argument a fallacy when companies have shown that pushing their agenda piece by piece is their M.O.?
Reddit has already shown that they had the capability and the will to edit users posts, not just removing them.
Reddit and other social sites already uses all sorts of algorithms to move content they want to the top and to bury content they don't want.
Companies don't want negative PR about themselves or their products.
Companies advertising on Reddit are Reddit's actual customers.
You put those facts together and being afraid of Reddit eventually censoring posts critical of customers doesn't seem like fallacious thinking.
You don't throw a chicken into a cage with a starving tiger and call it a slippery slope to say that the chicken is going to get eaten
This isn't about hate speech. Hate speech is illegal and should be removed. This is about material that advertisers don't like. Advertisers aren't cops. They don't necessarily care about illegality. Rather, they might tolerate some degree of hate so long as it gets eyeballs. This is about marketing.
This is a lie. Hate speech is not illegal, and the SCOTUS has explicitly made this clear.
To not have an understanding of the critical importance for private individuals to speak freely shows an extraordinary lack of knowledge of history, for one. And you declare you are an attorney in your HN "about" page?
Please explain. I was under the impression the reason why slippery slope arguments are unacceptable is because events do not necessarily cause more extreme events to occur.
Yeah, I've always found it "curious" (as in, bullshit) that Slippery Slope arguments are invalid, but arguments that invoke the Overton Window are perfectly fine.
They're the same concept. And that concept is also in physics. "Things in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted on by an external force".
Not really. "Slippery Slope"-type arguments are fallacious when there is no evidence provided to support the slope. The fallacy is arguing that the closeness of each "step" in the slope necessarily means that these steps will likely happen, but not providing evidence to support that these steps will occur. If one provides evidence which support that certain steps will likely occur, then it's not a fallacy.
As an aside, there is something called the "fallacy fallacy" wherein pointing out a fallacy in someone else's argument doesn't necessarily mean that the argument's conclusion is false.
With that said, I'm not making an assessment of the above poster's reasoning.
It's hard because people will always be mad when their stuff gets taken down and it's hard to tell where the line is. A good example on reddit is that r/the_Donald is often very racist, islamophobic, and misogynistic (and it's not a small portion, often the top comment on a post will be something that is islamophobic) but they don't see themselves as that way. I don't think they should ban that sub but even being impartial politically it's not desirable for most advertising
Can you define "Islamophobia"? It's a serious question, I don't disagree that there's some prejudice against Islam on the western right.
However, a lot of the top posts are ultimately factual claims. Sweden has a rise in grenade attacks and sexual assaults, British police looked the other way when Muslim Men formed a pedophilia group, most terrorism is motivated by Islam, and there are Islamists whose purported goal is to destroy western civilization. Is it Islamaphobic to highlight these things?
Islamists are right wing themselves (or at least their views map better to right wing views than left wing views) so we need a better lens than "left vs right" to determine the boundaries of the conflict.
Snopes says the increase in reported sexual assaults in Sweden could possibly be to do with the definition of "sexual assault" changing in 2013[0]
Regarding the Paedophile ring, I haven't read any material on it - but there have been several high profile non-Muslim paedophilia cases in Britain, and it would be unsurprising to me if police didn't turn a blind eye at some point. There are some claims that police didn't properly investigate reports in the Jimmy Saville case [1]
Regarding the claim that "most terrorism is motivated by Islam" - are you referring to terrorism globally, or in western countries? And what time period are we talking about here? One interesting data point is that Britain is experiencing historically low rates of terrorism (and most of it was related to The Troubles in Northern Ireland, not Islam) [2]
So the facts above are correct, but the root cause is misattributed to Islam?
> The failure to address the abuse was attributed to a combination of factors revolving around race, class and gender—contemptuous and sexist attitudes toward the mostly working-class victims; fear that the perpetrators' ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism and damage community relations; the Labour council's reluctance to challenge a Labour-voting ethnic minority; lack of a child-centred focus; a desire to protect the town's reputation; and lack of training and resources.
Citing snopes and the telegraph? Give me a break. This is a widely documented trend, made worse by the fact that it's illegal to report the demographics of offenders.
Today, through browsing r/popular, I saw a post about a swedish woman having been raped by a refugee. The comments were neither factual or objective. Most actually claimed she deserved it, because she "probably voted for the left".
Be careful about who you try to defend here, just read any top comment. And dont confuse facts with what's really relevant. For instance, a few days ago I saw a discussion about this:
> a police officer is eighteen and a half times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be by a police officer
This is true, and tries to paint a picture of black males being violent (should've seen the comments). But it's two incomparable metrics! Actually, a police officer is ~165 times likelier to be killed by a white male given the same rules.
So yeah, "facts", but always distorted in these subreddits.
I don't think facts themselves are ever really the issue. My opinion is that in how they cherry-pick facts and events to highlight there is an implicit generalization about a group, and I object to that generalization, not the facts themselves. People on the subreddit will often give specific facts or events which by themselves are true but with how they are presented will imply that most Muslims are violent and it's the underlying implication that I would object to. I just went to the subreddit and it was pretty easy to find an article where I think the comments crossed into the territory of 'islamophobic' https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/7djxqv/three_as.... I just
Most of those things you listed are dubious claims at best. However, if you promise you're in good faith, pointing out the crimes of one group disproportionately is a pretty bigoted thing to do. Breitbart had (maybe still does) a section called "Black Crime", in which they exclusively had stories about crimes involving African American people. Hitler's regime would put out news bulletins highlighting crimes committed by Jews. When you focus exclusively on one group and they bad things they're doing, it leaves the impression that these groups are disproportionately committing crimes, making them out to be worse than they really are.
I think it's murkier when one group commits a disproportionate amount of crime - accurate/percise coverage might look disproportionate even though it's actually representative.
I agree that pointing things out can be bigoted, but to the extent that politics addresses questions between friend and foe, it's natural that political expression is bigoted. Feminism is inherently bigoted to the extent that pointing out male dominance is important to the feminist perspective, but I don't think that feminists should be censored just because their discussions might offend people.
"I think it's murkier when one group commits a disproportionate amount of crime - accurate/percise coverage might look disproportionate even though it's actually representative."
You're gonna have to prove that's the case. In just about every study, it's been shown that, no, the crime rates are not disproportionately higher.
"Feminism is inherently bigoted"
No, it's not. Not in the slightest. Wanting equality only looks bigoted to those who benefit from the inequality.
>In just about every study, it's been shown that, no, the crime rates are not disproportionately higher.
Are we even talking about the same thing? There are absolutely groups that commit more crimes than others. Do you honestly need a citation for a claim like, "young men commit more crimes than elderly women?"
>No, it's not. Not in the slightest. Wanting equality only looks bigoted to those who benefit from the inequality.
Feminism isn't bigoted for wanting equality, Feminism is bigoted (but probably correctly so) for highlighting men as the reason there isn't equality. It gets back to my central claim that claims can be bigoted and true/valid/accurate.
IME, much of feminism focuses on patriarchy as a set of structures as the problem, not men, and that the patriarchy is neither exclusively supported by men and their actions nor exclusively harmful to women.
"Are we even talking about the same thing? There are absolutely groups that commit more crimes than others. Do you honestly need a citation for a claim like, "young men commit more crimes than elderly women?""
You should be able to cite something for that claim, yes. But you know we're not talking about those kinds of groups; we are talking about the ones that are highlighted on sites like Breitbart.
"Feminism is bigoted (but probably correctly so) for highlighting men as the reason there isn't equality."
Feminism doesn't highlight men. Feminism highlights power structures, many of which are put in place by certain men.
You're demanding that I defend claims I never made / claims you've accused me of making. I'm not going to do it and I'm not going to respond to your messages.
Is stupid to expect ad-driven media properties to be neutral. Just dumb.
Reddit is an ad-supported system. The moment you take advertising, you are now required to maintain editorial control. And that's fine. Advertisers have strict content guidelines, things like: no blood, no violence, no gore, no porn, etc..
Do you think a company like Calvin Klein is going to want to put their fashion ad next to an image of a dead kid? Yah that's not happening.
Instead of setting the expectation on corporations, we need the public to understand what their support of ad-driven media properties mean. And that it's fine.
Reddit isn't a public service. It's not a charity. It's an ad-driven media property, like a TV show or magazine. That's it.
And if conservatives can't accept advertising-based media, they need to find some other outlet to express their views.
Let me put it another way: Do you really think Calvin Klein is going to want to put ads next to images of dead kids? Is that your expectation? If not, how do you expect Reddit to become a profitable company?
Of course, Reddit & Twitter isn't going to state that they're an ad-driven media property, since they want to "appear" unbiased and neutral, but that's completely false. They are absolutely responsible to their advertisers as their core business plan.
Its like Usenet. Lots of unrelated and related NG's. Some are very palatable and high content. /r/electronics, /r/arduino , /r/news ; those sorts of things.
I think there'd be room for lists of "advertising acceptability" while still maintaining the previous freedom of speech ideals they claimed.
Something like:
"Acceptable for all ages"
"Acceptable for most viewers"
"NSFW content, porn related"
"Abhorrent, no adverts unless explicitly request subreddit"
You can find porn companies willing to advert on the NSFW/porn subreddits. Not a terribly big or risque deal.
And then the abhorrent ones (say, /r/watchpeopledie /r/blackpeopletwitter), turn into a users-pay system to keep the subreddit alive. Track the sub and make the users pay their share of advertising.
That way, All groups can stay on reddit. They get their traffic they so desire, and the absolutely horrible groups still can stay, albeit segregated and self-monetized.
You probably don't know but there are NLP and computer vision methods to detect "blood, violence, gore and porn" automatically and stop ads on those pages (subreddits).
Use word vectors to compute similarity of the page content to banned topics, and if it is > threshold, then avoid that page. When word vectors are trained on billions of words they can pick up even the slightest hint of pedophilia. They also understand slang and memes, if present in the training corpus. I think SOTA in content filtering and classification is pretty good today for both image and text.
Another way to filter pages is to follow it in time, for a longer period and if it has multiple positives, then ban it entirely.
Reddit is full of non-advertiser-friendly content. Not just the posts, but the comments. Banning all that content will make Reddit boring to many of its users.
As for content that breaks the law, there isn't much of that in the U.S., for obvious reasons. Elsewhere it's another story.
As to politics, I don't think you can expect any of these sites to be politically neutral. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit -- all show their bias. It's OK, it's part of life in a free market. There is a concern that many voices can be shut out of the market, and so maybe there will, at some point, be a decent rationale for temporary (say, ten years) regulations on digital town squares.
Right. Unrestricted, adult conversation is what makes it reddit, not kindergarten. It's not always respectful but neither is real discourse in person. If you make it all kittens and candy, you will lose many demographics.
What happens when being impartial leads to an appearance of bias?
There was an interesting segment on NPR sometime after Trump won the Republican nomination, looking back on how they had covered Trump during the primaries.
When they got a sense that they had been running more negative things about Trump than they had about the other Republican candidates, or less positive things about him than about the others, they started skipping negative things Trump did or said that would have been top stories if, say, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or John Kasich had said or done them, to bring the total number of negative Trump things they ran more in line with the negative things about the others. Same with positive Trump things...they adjusted to keep those at least in the ballpark as those of other candidates.
In retrospect, they realized that they were simply unprepared for a situation where a candidate would have as many negatives compared to others of the same party as Trump had. If they had set some impartial, objective threshold and covered everything from every candidate that crossed that threshold their news segments would have been something like 90% about Trump.
They had implicitly assumed that no candidate would ever be that far out on his party's bell curve, and so killed legitimate, newsworthy stories to try to make the results match that expectation.
Yeah, Twitter fucked up IMO. They wanted the check mark to mean verification, not endorsement, and ironically after removing the checkmark from people they don't like, its back to square one.
I think the problem is "who gets to be verified?" Why can't I be verified? The implication was that verified users were special in some way (maybe just in a Sneeches "stars upon thars" way), and so giving it to admitted Nazis and white nationalists was seen as saying they deserved to be special. And then taking it away made them and their supporters feel they weren't special anymore.
Right, its all about how people outside of Twitter perceived the checkmark. Twitter made it worse for themselves, because people are just going to find sexist/racist tweets from verified people and get Twitter to un-verify them via negative clickbait PR.
It's kind of an inside joke on reddit now how left-leaning /r/politics is. It frames itself as a generic political news page but it's so biased it's incredible.
Look at /r/politics right now, or any day of the week. Good luck finding one article that isn't about how Trump is literally Hitler. Whether you agree with it or not, I don't see how anyone can say it doesn't have an agenda.
If a group of users come together and upvote content they individually agree with, is it "an agenda", or is it "consensus"?
Unless I missed something, there's nothing inherent in /r/politics that requires it to be a dispassionate collection of links that represent all sides of the political spectrum. Don't get me wrong, it's a pit of human misery that I've long since removed from my subreddit list, but it's what users want it to be.
Or maybe he's an example of incompetence; creating national and international gaffs literally every day. Refusing to normalize his behavior isn't a devious agenda when it's that behavior that has paralyzed the government such that there isn't anything else to report on.
Well, that does make sense that it's a daily story to you if you think that way. I just wish the people who do think this could understand how tiresome it is to see every story infused with a Trump angle. Like this Al Franken story for example, there are no posts about the topic that don't focus on the Trump accusations foremost. Why can't it be examined by itself?
What would you have it focus on: Franken's need to apologize (he did that), status of the victim's case (she accepted the apology and dropped it), need for an ethics probe (Franken proposed one)? The only thing left of interest in this story (beyond the general theme of institutionalized sexism; which let's be fair isn't going to generate conductive discussion online) is the marked difference to how this was handled in comparison to how Trump, Moore, et al have chosen to conduct themselves.
I just used it as an example. I'm not even that interested in it honestly. But when I brought this up it was the first day of the scandal, and you're saying it'd already been talked about enough that we needed to "move on" to remembering that the President has had accusers too? Maybe things just move too fast for me.
Politics wasn't always like that ... it's now a counter-balance to The_Donald. Hard to remain "neutral" when right next door there's not even an attempt.
Why would r/The_Donald be neutral? It's literally called "The_Donald". It's like expecting r/hillaryclinton to be neutral. r/politics is for all political discussion, but it's just a left-wing echo chamber where ideological conformity and cognitive dissonance are at their peak.
This is coming from a 2x Obama voter and lifelong liberal btw.
OK. On social issues I support the general liberal consensus. I'm in favor of more financial regulation (although this stance is embraced by both the far left and right), a one payer healthcare system, and free/cheaper access to college education.
Where I differ, I suppose, is against the left's general trend towards censorship, anti-free speech attitudes, anti-police attitudes, and this moral preening about immigration (I believe in borders and the importance of cultural assimilation if you are an immigrant, like I am).
r/politics is just a name - like the thousands of others on Reddit. The sub reddit is made up of and only exists because of the subscribers / mods wants/wishes. Just because it has a "generic" name, does not mean it needs to be "fair and balanced" /s
It's a horrific source on information on politics, which makes it sad that it is so popular. Unfortunately there are lots of subreddits like that. I can't read a thread in r/conspiracy without feeling bad about the human race. It's a fun (?) game to guess how people can spin any given event. Great rubbernecking material though.
t_d was a promotional subreddit for his campaign, it never claimed to be balanced. It bothers me because I would like to visit a subreddit that actually is balanced, and now there isn't one.
How would this work? I'm curious. Any subreddit created on the topic of "politics" is going to attract armies on each side, who will then use their collective "brigading" (sp) power to influence the sub? Maybe with a strong mod, who tries to balance submissions 50/50 - but then was is the point? If a republican, or democrat is doing something wrong/illegal/immoral - shouldn't we all know about it regardless of potential bias?
I started a subreddit as a safe space for political and current events discussion, but the idea being that you will be temporarily banned for posting biased articles and op eds, titles that misrepresent statements, or comments that attack or do not add to the conversation.
I know it would be incredibly hard to moderate, at least at first. I'm just not sure there is really a desire for such a place since most subreddits seem to be safe-space/echo chambers.
What people tend to forget is that all totalitarian systems that came to power, have their origins form reactive movements acting to ineffectiveness or oppressiveness of existing systems. NSDAP was formed in response to worsening national situation. Reds and Whites were formed in response to worsening national situation. Italian fascism was response to political turmoil in post-war Italy. Quite a few European countries romanced with authoritarian rule (or went borderline fascist) in inter-war period.
Let me turn this question around: what if anti-nazi party came into power, and then to assure that no nazi party would ever come into power, it would implement its own authoritarian system? After all a lot of those governments enjoyed popular support during their rise to power, with people willing to give up their freedoms for sake of perceived security.
Back in McCarthyism it was better "dead than red". What if "its good to throw the nazi off the copter" is just a sign of our societies marching to new era of scare?
I would hope that describes virtually every post war western government.
And many of them have implemented various levels of 'authoritarian' systems to prevent the (re)rise of Nazis. Ranging from the banning of books in Germany to more mundane things like the British police spending a lot of time and money infiltrating neo-nazi groups and banning them. In the latter case exactly the kind of thing you are worried about happened - the powers granted to the police were also used to target other non-nazi groups like environmental protestors. Despite being very critical of police tactics in the latter cases, I still have no problem with the police targeting Nazis.
Anyway, western governments don't need to raise the spectre of Nazis to gain support for increased police and surveillance powers. They have plenty of more recent things to talk about (from Irish terrorists to ETA to Islamic terrorists). This comment thread is evidence enough for that - there wouldn't have been nearly the same emotional reaction to somebody talking about bombing ISIS.
No. I'm saying the police in western countries already have a wide range of powers which they use against Nazi groups (or any other group that's committing acts of political violence). This has not lead to a totalitarian state where mainstream conservatives are being targeted. i.e. the slippery slope didn't happen.
I do think the police should act to try and prevent violent groups from committing violence. Your position seems to be that the state should accept violence as long as the people committing it claim to be political? If anything organised political violence is the type of violence that it's the most important to prevent because it has by far the largest potential for harm.
I can talk about specific things the UK police have done when targeting 'extremist' groups and how I disprove of them if you want (undercover police assuming fake identities to the extent of having children with women in the targeted groups being one). But disapproving of specific things isn't the same as saying the police shouldn't be investigating and infiltrating organisations advocating violent ideologies.
My point is that he has not recognized the dangers of his viewpoint.
It is dangerous to believe "oh, I don't care what an oppressive government does in order to stop Nazis" because a whole lot of people are being called Nazis these days.
The same exact thing happened during the red scare. It was not JUST the revolutionary communists who were literally trying to overthrow the government that got oppressed. A whole lot of other people who definitely didn't deserve it, got oppressed to.
Yes. It's worth pointing out that in general it's really really easy to identify these groups because they are entirely open about their aims and ideals. That's the point of them.
Open platforms for discussion are actually one of the best ways to prevent something like the Nazi party from coming into power. And if the Nazi party did come into power, you would not expect there to be impartiality in any major discussion forums in the nation.
Example:
A lot of folks are flabbergasted at /r/The_Donald, but I've always contended that that subreddit exists and developed into its current culture precisely because right-leaning opinions are treated so harshly on most of the rest of reddit. In other words, there was a feeling of suppression and censorship, which leads to the sort of high-energy, irreverent "shit-posting" that is the mainstay of /r/The_Donald.
Open platforms for discussion are actually one of the
best ways to prevent something like the Nazi party from
coming into power.
I used to think that, but my views have become more complicated given allegations like [1]
I agree that public discussion is a powerful tool for changing people's political opinions - but if I think I'm reading a discussion between your peers when I'm actually reading a discussion between two Kremlin trolls, it puts the powerful tool in the hands of people who don't have my best interests in mind.
It's a tough problem to solve - most of the 'obvious' solutions like real name policies I think come with a lot of downsides.
I'm not at all convinced that this actually works. It's a nice liberal idea and it would be great if it worked but the evidence doesn't look good. The US media thought they were doing everybody a favour by giving Trump loads of airtime to expose his awful views. It backfired massively.
I think the biggest problem is that it only works when the other side is willing to play by the rules of the game. If the opposition is willing to blatantly lie even in the face of direct evidence then the normal rules of debate just break down. (I know all politicians lie, but Trump's disregard for political norms is completely different from what you got from candidates like McCain, Obama, Romney or Bush).
Similarly from a UK perspective giving disproportionate coverage to UKIP and Farage just increased their popularity.
> The US media thought they were doing everybody a favour by giving Trump loads of airtime to expose his awful views.
Isn't this just an example of the same phenomenon I was describing? Sure, they gave him airtime, but it was virtually never positive. There was a tremendous lack of impartiality in the media's coverage of the two candidates. This led to the idea of "fake news" and ended up boosting his supporters even more, giving them reason to band together.
I dare say the outcome of the election could have been different if the media had spent less time trying to demonize Trump and simply reported equally on the two candidates with minimal editorializing.
I think what Trump himself did is actually irrelevant to the point I'm making. If Trump did many negative things and few positive things, then all news publications need to do is simply report on what he's doing and leave it at that. No editorializing should be necessary. There shouldn't be any need for him to receive 2-3x as much coverage as Clinton. There shouldn't be a need for major news organizations to officially endorse this or that candidate.
What's so hard about trusting viewers and readers to come to their own conclusions based on honest, simple, accurate, and exhaustive reporting of events and facts?
"I think what Trump himself did is actually irrelevant to the point I'm making."
It's not. They're reporting on what Trump did. If that's mostly negative, then the coverage is, by necessity, going to be mostly negative. You wouldn't be upset that most of the coverage now of Harvey Weinstein or Louis C.K. is negative, would you?
"If Trump did many negative things and few positive things, then all news publications need to do is simply report on what he's doing and leave it at that."
That's what they did.
"There shouldn't be a need for major news organizations to officially endorse this or that candidate."
That's been a tradition for editorial boards for a long time. Note: That's the editorial, or opinion board. Not the newsroom.
"What's so hard about trusting viewers and readers to come to their own conclusions based on honest, simple, accurate, and exhaustive reporting of events and facts?"
Well, for one, everyone knew the same things about Trump, and yet he was elected. But you're really going to have to prove that what you're asking for didn't happen.
So you are in favor of fascism as long as it takes your side and smothers the 'awful views' and 'blatant liars' of the opposition, as defined by you, I assume.
While the KPD made many stupid mistakes, and frankly given their Stalinist policies at the time were not much better than the NSDAP in most respect, it was the power hungry right wing parties that entered into a coalition government with Hitler and voted for the Enabling Act.
Which has nothing to do with the fact that the street battles between communists and nazis allowed Hitler to take 30% of the vote in two consecutive elections.
The left wins elections when it is the victim of violence, it loses when it tries to use violence itself.
You're changing goalposts. If the right had not been willing to suspend democracy in the name of their own hunger for power, 30% or not Hitler would not have gained power.
Well said. I think the left in America today are closer to the true Nazi's than they realize. The campuses of today are churning out SJW's who are often racist (against white/europeans), fine with violence against their opponents and have quite simply been radicalized in some ways to hate the first and second amendment.
Universities are tools of capital. That their products are the finest specimens of bourgeoisie sensibilities is not a bug, it is a feature. The world view people leave with is designed to destroy worker solidarity in the most efficient way possible.
This is happening all over. Twitter is banning/de-verifying mostly right-wing users, Shopify is stopping carrying stores for right wing people like Milo etc etc.
In Milos case there is soliciting views of neo nazis and video examples of defending child rapists. Quite apart from not wanting your company associated with that content there is probably a legal need to distance ones self to avoid litigation in some countries.
He made a joke about his own experiences as a young gay man on the Joe Rogan podcast. He has continually distanced himself from the Alt-Right and neo-Nazis. He has also recently married his fiance, who is a person of colour.
He sang the US national anthem while a group of white nationalists gave a Nazi salute in front of him, then claimed his myopia prevented him seeing it. It’s a bad comedy at that point.
It's extremely telling that false statements made against predominantly right-leaning individuals in this thread maintain their prominent hue, whilst true statements correcting those beliefs are fading to a less visible hue.
You know he acknowledged what he said and did and apologised? You can read the leaked emails and read his statements and listen to what he said. What’s false?
Your "right leaning" is another person's hate speech. There's no onus on these privately owned web sites to be your definition (or mine) of "politically neutral." If you don't like them start your own platform or use a different one.
>There's no onus on these privately owned web sites to be your definition (or mine) of "politically neutral."
You're right. However when there are copyright violations on Reddit, they claim it's a platform and they're not responsible for the content on it - ultimately the users are responsible. And then the courts agree and decide that ultimately the violation rests with the user and not with the platform.
However, as they increase the moderation of their platform, they move closer and closer to being responsible for the content. At some point of restriction, they're completely responsible for the content on their platform.
They're welcome to operate the site however they want, but they shouldn't reap the advantages of a public platform while advancing their private interests.
> At some point of restriction, they're completely [...]
seems to me that there is no "completely" unless they literally screen and evaluate every single post before accepting them. until that point's it's all matters of degree.
Someone needs to put a stop to this bad meme... On social media, advertising is not an endorsement of the content. This might be the case for traditional media, but social media is different. Advertisers and platforms need to recognize the difference, to accept the lack of control over user-generated content as a feature, and to push back on unfair criticism. But perhaps their real goal is increasing their control over social media content.
Wait, what makes it different? There's the old adage that half of your advertising money is wasted, you just have no way of knowing which half. Why would you willingly spend it on putting your ads next to content you don't want to associate with your brand? It seems exceedingly likely that this is the half that isn't productive.
(This is also what I don't get about the Twitter fake-account-number business and the YouTube videos-targeting-children business - if I were an advertiser, I would have no interest in spending money advertising to bots or to young children. I would prefer to pay for ads in front of 4 million users I want to reach than in front of 5 million users, 1 million of whom I don't want to reach. Why are advertisers not pushing back hard on inflation of account metrics?)
How we treat advertising on social media is a matter of convention, a social negotiation. If we agree that it's just targeting demographics and not endorsing the actual content, then that is what it means, and advertising dollars wouldn't care about the content. The effectiveness of social media advertising doesn't need to be sensitive to content.
And maybe it isn't totally different from newspapers and TV news programs. Just like we don't associate advertising on news media with the often violent and disturbing content of the news itself, we don't need to treat social media advertising as endorsing its user-generated content. And in fact, we haven't been doing that until the recent YouTube controversy.
In a free country you can sell a pair of sneakers to someone with different set of political beliefs if you want to. Thats what you do in a civil society.
I’m sorry but if you’re advertising on a platform for hate groups, you’re financially supporting them, and I can choose not to do business with you because of it.
I'm a creator, and your logic impacts me financially, although I don't depend on this money, here's why: Advertisers don't even know my channel exists. The only thing an advertiser knows about my channel is that my viewers tend to watch tech-related videos, and can be associated with other related metadata produced by deductive reasoning alone. When it comes time for XYZBlenderCorp to invest in advertising, they don't get presented with a list and short bio of all the channels their ad will be displayed in conjunction with, they get presented with a friendly demographic filter with sliders for age, and combo boxes for geographic location and other classifiers.
If an advertisement for a video tutorial series teaching people how to use the 3d software Blender should happen to show up along a "Will It Blend" video, nobody should lose their job (or your money) over it. This mentality is ignorant of everything we know as technology professionals about how this business is run; so much of this process is automated and there is no conceivable way for it to not be. There are not enough humans needing jobs on this planet to manually sort video for prospective advertisers in the way you expect.
I would argue that not moderating content is what would make you lose advertising money:
There was a huge push back from YouTube ads after it was revealed big advertisers were shown on violent/extremist content, or videos about catastrophes ("Buy Kellogg's cereals!"... 400 killed in ____) ;
YouTube has since improved their detection algorithm (even if it has more false positive, likely) to keep advertisers on the platform. It they didn't do this, the only alternative would be to WHITELIST advertisers, which would mean that nobody would pick you and only the big names would get revenue.
The filters are only as good as they have to be. If the filters didn't work at all, nobody would pay for them. If the filters showed adult content intermixed with children's content, that would be a problem. Intermixing Blender with "Will it Blend" videos likely isn't a problem, but if it was integral to the platform and really bad, it could drive the Blender community away.
"This might be the case for traditional media, but social media is different. "
Please explain. Unlike "traditional social media" Reddit is organized into "like-minded" or themed mini-communities. Advertisers certainly know the type of content posted to these communities.
I'm thinking of the bigger picture here, especially taking into account the way YouTube was unfairly attacked.
The whole point of social media is for users to generate the content and to decide for themselves what makes content good or bad. In the past, advertising would fund the service, targeting specific demographics. It was never seen as endorsement of specific content.
Now advertisers want to start dictating the terms, to decide what specific content they approve of. Social media starts to look like traditional, sponsored, top-down media. This defeats the whole purpose.
Social media is selling out, and we are mistakenly cheering this on as a good thing.
Why should GM or Ford or Sony advertise on a site that allows literal Nazis to congregate and discuss Nazi things and talk about how they hate non-Nazi? And maybe even organize rallies?
“But it’s only 0.002% of the content!”
It doesn’t matter. As soon as a news report says ‘Ford advertises with a site that supports Nazis’ those ads are gone.
So Ford won’t buy ads there in the first place.
And it doesn’t matter that the amount of content is quite small. Or that ‘supports Nazis’ means ‘doesn’t kick them off’.
Ford doesn’t want that story or any anything like it. And if it does happen you can bet every other big brand is Goni for to quickly figure out if they’re doing the same and pull their ads.
This is business. And VERY few companies of any size want to be associated with violence against women, Nazis, beastiality, or a lot of the other really seedy stuff that exists in the depths of Reddit.
Bad meme? Sure. But the advertising thing isn't really relevant IMO.
reddit is smart to rid themselves of subreddits where the top front page posts are often threats or even just fantasies of raping people, even if advertisers aren't part of the equation.
The "good guys" can make a new subreddit but do it right this time.
Advertising is an endorsement of content. You have literally paid money to be associated with the people consuming a specific kind of content. Just because there's a middle man doesn't change that. If you want a platform for your incendiary content you're welcome to pay for it yourself; don't expect companies to foot the bill for you.
This is untrue, and repeating it loud and often doesn't make it true.
The moderators of The_Donald work with reddit to try to keep the subreddit in line. They do not allow anything that violates the site wide rules, but that doesn't mean low ranked comments on low ranked threads don't go unreported.
I'm not saying there aren't a lot of assholes in The_Donald. There are. Some of them have valid political points to make, but most are just trolling and shit posting which was the entire point of the subreddit to begin with IMHO.
Here's the most recent thread (16 days ago) on this issue. /u/spez (the CEO of Reddit) responded [1] to a long list of unreported calls for violence on /r/the_donald, saying:
> Many of these links are probably in violation of our policy, but most are unreported, which is what alerts the mods and our team, especially when there are few votes. We'll consider them reported now.
> Generally the mods of the_donald have been cooperative when we approach them with systematic abuses. Typically we ban entire communities only when the mods are uncooperative or the entire premise of the community is in violation of our policies. In the past we have removed mods of the_donald that refuse to work with us.
> Finally, the_donald is a small part of a large problem we face in this country—that a large part of the population feels unheard, and the last thing we're going to do is take their voice away.
The reporter's response [2] said:
>> most are unreported, which is what alerts the mods and our team
> I don't accept that excuse. These were gathered by searching for phrases that should be included in their AutoModerator config. These calls for violence are mod enabled.
There's definitely some validity to ignoring cherry-picked violations of low ranked comments and threads. But many of these should be caught automatically, just by watching for words and phrases like "kill", "hang", and "shoot". You'd have a lot of false positives, but a moderation and administration policy that was less tolerant of these calls for violence would not have this track record.
What about r/The_Donald violates the rules other than going against your political preferences? There are left-wing sub-reddits that openly call for armed revolution, violence against the "bourgeoisie" and the police, destruction of property, etc; but I'm sure they're OK to exist, right?
Probably referencing a bestof post that popped up a week or two ago. Someone found like 30 ban worthy comments.
Only think is, the vast majority were 1 point comments, some were negative, and the only one that had considerable upvotes was an anti-muslim comment on the thread about a terrorist attack (if someone's going to overreact, that's when).
The question is perfectly valid. It is implied that Reddit will assign some level of consistency to these policies. If they don't, that shows they may be hiding their true intentions.
Asking "what about left-wing subreddits" is whataboutism. Nobody is claiming bannable content shouldn't be banned because it's left-wing (except GP's implication).
they also host /r/SRS which has been doxxing reddit users for longer than /r/The_donald has existed. Rarely see that one brought up anymore, really makes you think.
Supposedly it's been blocked from reaching the front-page. But no one cares that <insertantidrumpfsubhere> gets to the front-page with 40k points and only 10k subscribers
It's not blocked, some posts do make it there occasionally. Previously they were able to rocket things to the front page by taking advantage of the fact that Reddit places a huge weight on the first few upvotes, so getting a lot of votes quickly almost always meant making the front page. Reddit had since changed the algorithm so that technique isn't as effective anymore. I would wager they just don't have the actual numbers normally to make the front page without gaming the algorithm. They have lots of subs but there active user count was always very low for the number of subs they have.
I don't see why people care so much. Its just another echo chamber that can be completely ignored. Clearly the benefits of free flow of information outweigh the drawbacks so its best to just accept the drawbacks.
I filtered out /r/the_donald forever ago and I'm only reminded of it when a new anti-trump echo chamber spams its way to the top of /r/all. Now I have dozens of those filtered but its hard to keep up.
It's hardly a sandbox, but more of an inlet with a lot of spillover. There's anecdotally been a HUGE spike in bigotry and white supremacy on what used to be good subs since last year when that sub grew in numbers. Looking at the post history of these users, it almost always includes t_d.
When your business model is advertisement based, this is the inevitable outcome. The users are the product, and advertisers are the customer. Furthermore, non-government entities are under no legal obligation to protect speech in most jurisdictions.
This is just like the banning of /r/jailbait, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc from the the last time reddit "cleaned house".
Some of the most blatant subs will be banned, or quarantined, and despite repeated calls for action things that are still-bad, but slightly-less-bad, will remain. Until the next purge - including /r/srs, /r/the_donald, and similar.
> Reddit also has a business incentive to clean up its act: It needs to appeal to marketers—and live up to its investor’s expectations. In July, Reddit raised $200 million at a $1.8 billion valuation.
> [truncated]
> Mr. Huffman didn’t give specific numbers, but said Reddit’s ad revenue had grown fivefold over the past two years, from a small base.
I'm sure given the scale of the userbase the property is worth something substantial, but $1.8 billion for a 10-year old company that, AFAIK, has never turned a profit is nuts.
Either 1) investors saw something in the revenue growth numbers that painted a rosier picture about the future, 2) the entire valuation is illegitimate, or 3) the tech world is really that bubbly right now.
We're heading to another tech bubble. I've been talking with local economists and fund managers, Most of them that unless the new tax plan really takes off the tech and housing bubble is going to burst late 2018 or early 2019. Yes, housing is coming back hard again.
Reddit is swarming with Russian bots and they still have a whole network of white supremecy and various hate subs, operating both out in the open and ‘quarantined’.
All these companies have been pushing this "Russia did it!" narrative with very little evidence or reason backing their claim. My theory why the whole Russian conspiracy is a thing is because its easier to dehumanize Russia as "the bad guys" rather than face the facts of how many people are opposed to you in your own country.
Edit: I'm not in denyal that Russia had nothing to do with the election but I think Russia's involvement is grossly over represented. Its so much easier to say "Russia did it" while ignoring why subreddits like /r/thedonald or the right propaganda caught on so much.
If you really believe there is no evidence, you just aren't looking, or you are very selectively deciding what qualifies as evidence. The reality is that Russia is run by a guy who assassinates political opponents and whose glory days were those of the USSR.
This is a long-running conflict with Russia. There really are issues in the US that need to be fixed (as the Soviets gladly pointed out about Jim Crow in the 1950s/1960s), but Russia is also geopolitically smart enough to attack those vulnerabilities. If you just sit down and consider why and what advantages Russia would have in spreading propaganda, it is hard to believe they aren't doing it.
Huh? Pushing? The social media companies continually denied it until pressed. It was the US Intelligence Community that "pushed" it.
And the French Intelligence Community. And the Canadian Intelligence Community. And the Netherlands Intelligence Community. And the British Intelligence Community. And the German Intelligence Community...
Is there a difference between writing the content yourself and upvoting fringe content with 1,000 fake accounts while suppressing the inverse with the same?
The fringe is emboldened and encouraged and given an artificial air of legitimacy. The challenge or alternative viewpoint is suppressed.
It is still psychological warfare and the key point isn't really the individual composing the post.
Though in all fairness - based on the articles about the IRA and the experiences I've had I do think that that they have individuals posting and writing their own content.
So what are reasonable Reddit alternatives that don't act as outlets of banned subreddits? Once you start banning stuff left and right, it's a slippery slope, making large groups of population feel weird/forcing them to learned hopelessness. It would be better instead to train some ML for content classification, then set user preferences about what triggers them, and then warn users that some submission might disturb them, requiring additional click to see the content in question. There ML would be just a helper, not sole arbiter-of-truth, and even an imprecise one won't have a stifling effect on free speech.
Of course, if Reddit owners/investors feel they need to fully submit to requirements of their advertisers, there is little they can do, and should just max profit and see if they can survive with a lot less "love" from their users.
How exactly does one put a warning on "Posting here may cause you to get death threats, brigaded, doxxed, etc..."? I think Reddit's problems are that their most fervent users are their biggest problems. They actively encourage trolls. Whatever was good about Reddit needs a better site to go to.
You can simply blur the post like Quora does and by clicking on it it would reveal. There is already one mechanism in place by voting threshold, but very popular posts in certain subreddits might not be ad-friendly.
I am looking at social media as a form of reinforcement learning, especially the exploration phase; by censoring it the exploration phase is significantly weakened, leading to worse results in the end. So maybe evolutionary argument would be to allow all kinds of crazy ideas (with some requiring a bit more work to read), and let people themselves to decide which ones would be used in exploitation phase? In the past when a single stupid idea was forced upon everyone by authority (e.g. nazis), people didn't have any means to counter it. With open discussion spaces some people might find excellent counterexamples immediately, clearing the issue for millions right away why a certain idea is a really bad one.
Reddit's problems go far deeper than just the type of content they have though. Specifically, the fact that it creates a space for polarizing opinions and encourages groupthink through the upvote system would seem to be anathema to what most advertisers are looking for. Perhaps they can start running the same advertisers as Alex Jones and Breitbart who don't seem to be as shy of divisive content.
I wonder if they couldn't institute some scheme where they flag subs as "dirty" or some more politically correct term when those subs contain offensive but legal content.
This would allow showing advertisers a checkbox when they post an ad that asks whether they are okay with showing their ad on a dirty sub.
Pitch it to advertisers as you'll reach more people for the same cost, but your content may be shown by user posts that some may consider offensive.
They have a "quarantine" system they use for highly offensive subreddits (like gore and violent content). These don't appear on the /r/all aggregate listing and can only be viewed if you associate an email with your account.
But for subreddits that break sitewide rules (doxxing, inciting violence, etc) they just ban the subreddit outright instead of quarantining it.
>once you start banning hate speech it's a slippery slope
Or maybe the slope ends with nazis. Just a thought. 4chan will always exist as the bastion for your juvenile ideas of "free speech" (and all of the baggage that comes with it).
What I don't understand about this new trend of companies trying to make their content "Advertiser friendly" is that those same advertisers seem to be fine advertising during events like the Vegas Shooting.
I'm just hoping this trend of making your websites rated G dies off sooner rather than later.
I don't see the connection between the shooting and advertisers. If you are American I understand that the Las Vegas shooting probably affected you very much. There is a lot of violence going on around the world, so what do you suggest?
I don't think advertisers associate their ads with violence when cnn reports on it and I don't think they should associate social media websites with the minority of offensive content they host. Reddit and YouTube aren't identified by their edgy content.
Any other non-Americans just fed up with this peurile black-and-white, Left-vs-Right tribalism that all discussions of US politics have seemingly devolved into over the last few years?
It’s like watching a bizarre caricature of some dystopian satire.
I follow UK politics a bit and am American and have difficulty seeing any substantive difference between the right/left divide in the UK and the USA, but I am only reading the BBC headlines. In the USA, many people can trace the right left not working together to 1990's or so with Newt Gringrich, so it's not a recent phenomena either.
I'm an American and I'm fed up with it. What pisses me off the most is that, IME, nobody fits into either of these categories. It's devolved into a one-dimensional Left or Right, when really most people are mixed on every issue.
There are a lot of people who might be smart in one arena and then open their mouth about some other subject and reveal how not smart they might be in a whole lot of other ways. Recent example #1 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-dam...
[1] http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf