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Why does the alt-right have issues with them being banned from systems, but don't see issues with themselves banning others from systems. For example, Twitter

• orf 10y ago
  That requires logic and critical thinking though.
• lightbyte 10y ago
  Its extremely ironic that the group claiming to "champion the fight against the social justice warrior and their safe spaces" does pretty much the exact same thing as what they say they hate.
  • api 10y ago
    Welcome to the future where everyone is surrounded by a virtual reality bubble that endlessly strokes their ego by reinforcing their preexisting beliefs. Honestly I see a lot of people doing this and agitating for it. Everyone wants a "safe space."
• corey_moncure 10y ago
  I'm very interested in this topic. Do you have concrete evidence of contrary voices being silenced by administration in /r/The_Donald? It may bear some consideration that this particular sub-reddit is itself silenced by having its stories removed from the front page by algorithm, which to me represents as great a sin or greater.
  • jjnoakes 10y ago
    Greater sin or no, I've personally seen accounts get banned for sharing contrary views in that subreddit. I mean, it's in their sidebar... "No Dissenters".
  • striking 10y ago
    /r/The_Donald has in its sidebar, literally, that people that do not wholly support Trump are not welcome. That being said, I'm okay with that. It's not a place for reasonable discussion, it's just shitpostland. However. Twitter prides itself on being a serious social network with considerations for free speech and the "new media"... being banned from something like that just because of what you believe is silly.
    • robbiemitchell 10y ago
      They're not being banned for their opinions, they're being banned for their actions on Twitter.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • striking 10y ago
        Can you point to some of those actions? I'm having trouble finding any evidence that shows they should be banned. Now, I think their viewpoints are disgusting too. But their views don't affect people, their actions do.
        • FilterSweep 10y ago
          Have you suddenly lost your ability to create a relevant Google/DDG query? I can't, for the life of me, understand how you can't find evidence (example of Alt-right figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos): http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/leslie-jones-twitter-troll-regrets-attacking-ghostbusters-actress/story?id=41808886 http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/leslie-jones-twitter-tro... Now, whether he should be banned for what he did is up for contention. But he knows what he did, and he knows how he attacked her.
          • striking 10y ago
            Yiannopoulos was banned months ago. I'm talking about the current article and the views and actions of those who were freshly banned.
  • kelukelugames 10y ago
    corey "i'm just asking questions" moncure. Do HNers fall for this kind of concern trolling? https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=corey_moncure https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=corey_moncure
  • a_bonobo 10y ago
    It's right in the rules: - No Dissenters or SJWs. AfterBerners MUST Assimilate.
  • croon 10y ago
    There is no data other than available to the mods of The_Donald or reddit at large, but there are A LOT of results just a google away, this was the first hit [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/BannedFromThe_Donald/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BannedFromThe_Donald/
  • voxic11 10y ago
    It's explicitly against the rules of the subreddit to dissent against their narrative or express "social justice warrior" views. See rule iv. > No Dissenters or SJWs. AfterBerners MUST Assimilate
  • beedogs 10y ago
    I've been banned on at least a half dozen accounts for posting anti-Trump comments on that subreddit. So, yeah.
• MichaelBurge 10y ago
  I think the appropriate comparison to "Twitter" would be "Reddit", not specifically the /r/The_Donald subreddit. If they started banning your Reddit account for being a communist, I imagine a lot of people - including "The Donald" - would be angry.
• thecopy 10y ago
  Apples and oranges. /r/The_Donald is a subreddit niche specifically for supporters for Trump, it is standard for a niche subreddit with a specific goal to ban users which attempt to hinder that goal from happening. Hillary-subreddit does the same.
  • mulletbum 10y ago
    I was more trying to express the irony of it, even if one a spot and the other is a platform. Twitter doesn't have a "spot" so it is the platform you get banned from.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• vonklaus 10y ago
  I agree that if is hypocritical however clearly the scale is substantially different. Subreddits are typically echochambers especially small niche non-defaults. Twitter is a platform. Your analogy would be more akin to Reddit banning a subreddit-- which happens. I personally disagree with platforms like google, reddit & twtr editoralizing & policing things like ideology & expression. I certainly lean more libertarian here, but actions like this certainly are a slippery slope. It appears like favoritism in a benevolent view and censorship in a more hard line stance
• JorgeGT 10y ago
  Do Twitter and /r/The_Donald have equivalent mission statements, though? I don't think Twitter aspires to be a meeting point for extreme political views.
  • croon 10y ago
    Isn't that exactly the point? One bans for extreme views/hate speech, one bans for dissent.
    • JorgeGT 10y ago
      /r/AskHistorians bans people who post jokes, I don't know if that qualifies as "dissent". It seems in line with the purpose of the sub.
      • croon 10y ago
        Sure. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? The T_D subreddit explicitly says that dissent is not tolerated, so yes, I suppose it is in line with the purpose of the sub. The problem is with them being upset with twitter for enforcing their purpose: a platform open to everyone to express themselves outside of hate speech/abuse.
        • JorgeGT 10y ago
          If they were engaging in abuse, I agree that it's hypocritical of them to complain. From the article however it is not clear if they were abusing people or just voicing right wing ideas, which as far as I know, is not forbidden by any TOS: > Several alt-right figures have been suspended from Twitter, but the social network is not saying why
• tajen 10y ago
  Reddit is in a much less monopolistic situation. Twitter is a mandatory medium for public communication. That's which censorship on Twitter is worse than in a subreddit. Besides, it's a long stretch to imagine that right-wing media convinces people to become right-wing. In my case it's rather the opposite: I've been super-over-surcovered with left-wing pro-women communication until my 30s (whether in media or in programmer conferences), I noted that the mantra "Women are oppressed all the time" didn't match what I witnessed in companies (e.g. men from GitHub CEO to Douglas Crockford and all the way down to colleagues are being fired upon unproven accusations by women), which made me investigate the topic only to find that 90% of feminists' arguments are incorrect, which made me search for more reasonable media, aka "right-wing media" according to left-wing media. Liberals have made a speciality of accusing right-wingers of censorship. That left-wing media like Twitter resorts to censorship only reinforces the perception that the world isn't fair and severely biased with double-standards in favour left-wingers. If anything, I wish Brexit + Trump meant the end of the ban on some ideas like discussing immigration or men's rights.
  • _delirium 10y ago
    Arguing that Twitter is so necessary to public communication that it should be regulated as something like a common carrier (perhaps applying the same to Facebook and YouTube) is an interesting argument, but one you usually hear from the left, not the right. The right usually takes more of a hardline private-property viewpoint along the lines of, "private companies should be able to institute whatever rules they want on their platform, start your own if you disagree".
  • FilterSweep 10y ago
    > Twitter is a mandatory medium for public communication What makes it "mandatory" - the fact that they choose not to use an alternative, or the fact that they have not built an alternative?
    • tajen 10y ago
      The network effect. Viewers are on Twitter, so no party can succeed without using Twitter for communication. What's your point, are you saying that new political parties are only allowed to grow if build their own Twitter competitor or have pre-approved ideas?
• lmm 10y ago
  Virtually everyone opposes banning people they agree with but supports banning people they disagree with. Try to compare like with like. If you're talking about subreddits, is the donald any more of an echo chamber than e.g. shit reddit says? (which AIUI autobans people just for posting on some particular other subreddits). If you're talking about twitter they do seem to be applying different standards for what qualifies as "hate speech" depending where you are on the political spectrum.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• ht85 10y ago
  I'm not sure if it makes sense to compare Twitter, a general communication tool used by every demographic, and a subreddit, which is a privately ran community.
• partiallypro 10y ago
  I don't know if you can quite draw that parallel. /r/The_Donald (which I myself am banned from) isn't the entire platform. Twitter is an entire platform. The_Donald is meant to be an echo chamber, much like Sanders for President was, they too would ban people on a whim. However, me being banned from /r/The_Donald is not any where near being banned from Reddit itself. Someone blocking me on Twitter is not me being banned from Twitter. My fear here is that Twitter and Facebook are now political machines, even if I agree with what they are doing -generally-. Facebook is cracking down on "fake news," I saw fake news all the time on Facebook, from left (re: vaccines, GMOs, The Kochs) and right (re: Obama, Hillary, Global Warming.) So, which is Facebook going to crack down on, and which one isn't it going to? I get trolled on Twitter more from the Right, but I do get trolled from the Left as well. Which is Twitter going to crack down on? They don't seem to have an open coherent policy. If I'm harassed by left and right, but I see more of the right being banned, at what point does this stifle speech? Sure Twitter and Facebook are private companies and can run themselves in whatever manner they wish, but if they -do- have a bias, they should be open about it. If Facebook and Twitter wants to win my trust that they are handling this correctly, they should make the data of their bans public. Even old forums have a ban list and often reasons for bans as public. There is no such public face for these two platforms. They don't even have to have names/handles as public, just a graph that shows the data behind it.
• radmuzom 10y ago
  Do you really expect logic from people who consider the right to have the following views equal? "I believe people's sexual preferences are private and the state should not interfere in it." "I believe homosexuality is a crime and all gay men should be killed".
• iopq 10y ago
  Because /r/The_Donald is a community, they don't give out bans for the entire Reddit website, only from their own community. Twitter is not a community, it's a website akin to Reddit which contains communities.
  • mulletbum 10y ago
    Twitter doesn't have an ability to ban you from parts of the community. So they are a single community.
    • iopq 10y ago
      So that analogy falls apart because they're different kinds of websites.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• forgottenpass 10y ago
  Twitter bans them from using Twitter, but the /r/The_Donald echo chamber bans anyone with a counter view to their own. Twitter is effectively the digital commons, run by a professional organization. A subreddit is a subsection of a reddit, a website that lets any user roll up with a clowncar of mods and claim some land within their namespace.
• ta_donk_gt 10y ago
  Those things don't match up like you think they do. The equivalent of /r/The_Donald banning users is equivalent to /r/politics banning anyone who posted critically of Clinton between July and the election (even though The_Donald only claims to support Trump whereas Politics is intended to be more unbiased). These are subreddits with their own admins managing them. Twitter as a company is banning users from their entire platform. The equivalent would be Reddit as a company banning very liberal users.
• gthtjtkt 10y ago
  > /r/The_Donald echo chamber bans anyone with a counter view to their own. When you know there are super PACs literally spending millions of dollars to manipulate people on sites like Reddit, and other subreddits (like /r/HillaryClinton) also ban all dissenting opinions, why would you leave yourself so vulnerable to attack? Just so you can brag about occupying the moral high ground? Reddit's completely opaque, volunteer moderator system guarantees that every single subreddit is biased in one way or another. /r/The_Donald was only doing what was necessary to create a community where people could discuss Trump without being berated and silenced by downvotes.
• douche 10y ago
  You can't just go off and make your own Twitter, with blackjack, and hookers. You can more-or-less do that on Reddit.