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Can you please explain why you think /r/TheDonald should be banned? Should they be banned just because they have different political view than you do? Or is it

by Keepo 10y ago

Can you please explain why you think /r/TheDonald should be banned? Should they be banned just because they have different political view than you do? Or is it because such opinions are not allowed on reddit as whole? This touches something that is bothering me when sites like reddit look like they are apolitical but clearly that is not the case. They picked side (which is completely fine) and in very non transparent way are punishing anyone who doesn't share their opinions (which is not). For the other side it then looks like its all part of hidden conspiracy when in fact it is just people running the site who cannot accept that not everybody shares their view on the world.

jessedhillon 10y ago
They clearly and routinely fall outside the bounds of acceptable discourse, which are already wide on a site like Reddit. Edit: and routinely
- ww520 10y ago
  What are the bounds of acceptable discourse in Reddit?
  - jessedhillon 10y ago
    Oh, here's a thing you could've googled: https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy/ https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy/
    - ww520 10y ago
      Thanks for pointing it out.
      - jessedhillon 10y ago
        I was sarcastic to you because your question was answerable in ten seconds of googling, which suggests to me an insincere line of questioning.
        ww520 10y ago
        Well, acceptable discourse is often used as a vague pretext for censorship. And Googling of "acceptable discourse Reddit" doesn't have much useful result. It's good to clarify the specifics.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    They should be same as everywhere, and when your community becomes fixated on a conspiracy involving Hilary Clinton, Podesta, and a pedophile sex ring you should stop and ask: "How far have I strolled from the herd?"
    - ww520 10y ago
      So basically they have different views, and thus bannable.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
matt4077 10y ago
r/TheDonald should be banned for stupidity. It's not "politics". It's not "the other valid point of view". They did not choose stupid, stupid chose them. /r/AynRandIsGod would also be wrong, but it would be legitimately wrong. Same for r/PracticalCommunism.
- hengheng 10y ago
  Let's maybe not ban opinions because somebody declares them as stupid. There are lots of stupid satire magazines for instance.
  - rtpg 10y ago
    We're not. Stupid things can go make their own websites. Reddit isn't a public service. I'll start worrying if server hosts were doing this, but if Reddit doesn't want a reputation of "slightly better than 4chan", it should try cleaning up a bit.
    - hengheng 10y ago
      Reddit is where you meet people. Reddit has bigger power in directing attention than most advertising networks. Directing attention for private communication is definitely censorship. I actually think legislation has to be brought up to date here. We seem to favor communicating on privately owned websites, but people still seem to have an expectation of freedom of speech. Law should definitely reflect this common expectation.
Lazare 10y ago
Not at all. First, I don't think it really makes sense to say a subreddit has opinions as such; it's simply a place for people to post thing. And while the user's do have opinions, nobody is suggesting the user's themselves be banned. Which brings me to... Second, it's not about opinions. There are much more fringe groups than that sub, and in any case, politically I'm probably significantly closer to the median The_Donald poster than the median Reddit admin. It's not about opinions, it's about tolerance and disruption. Because... Third, Reddit is a business and a community which thrives on promoting free, open, tolerant discourse. Just looking at the political subs there are communists, fascists, anarchists, libertarians, and everything in between, all happily posting away in their little corners, and occasionally participating in discussions that bring out proponents of different views. And then you have The_Donald. The issue isn't their strange, outrageous views (which aren't so much "outrageous" as "what you get if you cross standard American conservatism with standard European conservatism, put it in a blender, filter through the eyes of a 16 year old, and sprinkle with american flags and memes"). You're talking about a site with actual unironic advocates of actual literal dictatorship on it, come on. So when you say: > They picked side I'm not seeing it. In fact I think they're trying so hard to avoid even the appearance of having picked a side, that they're erring on the side of taking The_Donald's side, and in so doing they're harming the site.
BoorishBears 10y ago
I think they should be banned because last times subs were banned the message was pretty clear: If your sub's influence starts to leak elsewhere on Reddit (with its users acting collectively being the key), you'll be banned. The "fat people hate" sub seemed to be banned, not even for its subject matter, but because it's users were spreading their mess into other subreddits as a group. From what I've seen, the same thing is happening with The_Donald
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Mahn 10y ago
  IIRC the "fat people hate" sub was banned because they started doxxing people, which the admins considered crossed the line. It should have been banned earlier though.
  - deelowe 10y ago
    Correct.
- whataboutpizza 10y ago
  So if a sub like /r/randomactsofpizza starts getting popular and discussions of pizza donation spread throughout reddit, they should ban it?
  - BoorishBears 10y ago
    If hordes of users acting on behalf of the subreddit started posting asking for donations in every moderately popular subreddit they'd actually probably be banned. I'm not going to pretend the threshold for where this "pizza subreddit" would be considered a problem might not end up higher than the one for a sub about a figure Reddit's core demographic appears to dislike, but the core principle is the same
- basch 10y ago
  /r/nfl should be banned because paytonface.jpg has leaked? this ideas of "things we like can leak" but "speech that annoys us should be quarantined" is dangerous. personally I find t_d somewhat useful to peak inside and see what the community is thinking on a given day. i can go read the liberal media for a while, see how Sessions is a racist, then peak into t_d and see the rebuttal. maybe if /r/politics was neutral /r/t_d wouldnt be necessary, but personally I like being able to see what each thought group is up to.
Mithaldu 10y ago
It's not about opinions. That particular sub-reddit is a mixture of real people, and trolls who pose as trump supporters to egg the supporters on, as well as scaring and pissing off people against trump. The result being that with little effort and prodding on their side they get to see glorious internet mudfights. However due to the way they're doing it, it's hard to tell which is which. That puts reddit admins in a bind and they have to balance things. Do they keep distance and let subtle trolls go unscathed? Do they take harsher measures and hit actual trump supporters? How much of this spills over into other reddits? How to handle the /all pollution? Letting it get in there just increases the mudfights, but if they take steps they'll be accused of censorships.
- ltbarcly3 10y ago
  I've been browsing The_Donald lately out of curiosity, and it's like 99% memes based on news articles and links to news articles. I see very little there that is objectionable, certainly nothing that seems worthy of shutting it down. Certainly there is a lot of 'things to piss off people against trump', but how is that different from any other political site/sub?
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    It runs afoul of brigading due to the sheer scale. If it managed to stay entirely within the subreddit then the admins would never need to be concerned with it and none of this would've happened.
    - ManlyBread 10y ago
      Brigading is a pretty meaningless term when the whole site is build upon linking to other sites. It's pointless to make a distinction between a link to an external site and to reddit itself.
      - Mithaldu 10y ago
        Well it's a good thing you are not on the reddit administration.
realusername 10y ago
Because TheDonald is a mix of racism, sexism , it's not a political view and it's affecting the whole site now. Absolute free speech can have real consequences, here's a sad example from the Rwandan Genocide (copied from Wikipedia): > The Power groups also believed that the national radio station, Radio Rwanda, had become too liberal and supportive of the opposition; they founded a new radio station, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLMC), which broadcast racist propaganda, obscene jokes and music, becoming very popular throughout the country.[89] One study finds that approximately 10% of the overall violence during the Rwandan genocide can be attributed to this new radio station.
- ManlyBread 10y ago
  But the same can be said about the infamous "SRS" and yet the admins have taken zero actions against it.
  - Melk 10y ago
    SRS isn't on r/All 24/7. SRS doesn't fill up 90% of /rising. SRS is only "infamous" for being a deflector for criticism of far right subreddits. No one has heard from that subreddit for years. There are much more active subreddits that side with SRS if you want to go there, like circlebroke. There are also much more extreme subreddits than the_donald, like TheNewRight. Nobody is talking about banning those subreddits. This isn't a partisan argument. The_Donald is (purposely) interrupting how reddit works. I'm not an American and I have no dog in this fight, but the_donald is ruining reddit for a lot of us.
    - tomp 10y ago
      Don't go to r/All?! (Or maybe adminst could "ban" it from r/all without banning it completely.)
      - zyx321 10y ago
        They drastically reduced the amount of articles from the same subreddit that can be on /r/all at the same time. The page used to be >90% Trump before the change (and >90% Sanders or >90% Obama during their respective campaigns, but of course the admins never bothered doing anything to stop that)
novia 10y ago
Not OP, but over the past year there has been a trend of subreddits like /r/The_Donald banning anyone who doesn't agree with their world view, or even people who come in and simply post facts that refute whatever conspiracy theory the users are on about in that moment. Basically, a set up like this is one that allows fake news to proliferate and spread without level headed users having a chance to post a comment discrediting the source. These are purposely created echo chambers, and anyone who tries top break the circlejerk gets banned. Not to mention they are very very very annoying.

by Keepo 10y ago

jessedhillon 10y ago

They clearly and routinely fall outside the bounds of acceptable discourse, which are already wide on a site like Reddit. Edit: and routinely

ww520 10y ago
What are the bounds of acceptable discourse in Reddit?
- jessedhillon 10y ago
  Oh, here's a thing you could've googled: https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy/ https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy/
  - ww520 10y ago
    Thanks for pointing it out.
    - jessedhillon 10y ago
      I was sarcastic to you because your question was answerable in ten seconds of googling, which suggests to me an insincere line of questioning.
      - ww520 10y ago
        Well, acceptable discourse is often used as a vague pretext for censorship. And Googling of "acceptable discourse Reddit" doesn't have much useful result. It's good to clarify the specifics.
- matt4077 10y ago
  They should be same as everywhere, and when your community becomes fixated on a conspiracy involving Hilary Clinton, Podesta, and a pedophile sex ring you should stop and ask: "How far have I strolled from the herd?"
  - ww520 10y ago
    So basically they have different views, and thus bannable.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

matt4077 10y ago

r/TheDonald should be banned for stupidity. It's not "politics". It's not "the other valid point of view". They did not choose stupid, stupid chose them. /r/AynRandIsGod would also be wrong, but it would be legitimately wrong. Same for r/PracticalCommunism.

hengheng 10y ago
Let's maybe not ban opinions because somebody declares them as stupid. There are lots of stupid satire magazines for instance.
- rtpg 10y ago
  We're not. Stupid things can go make their own websites. Reddit isn't a public service. I'll start worrying if server hosts were doing this, but if Reddit doesn't want a reputation of "slightly better than 4chan", it should try cleaning up a bit.
  - hengheng 10y ago
    Reddit is where you meet people. Reddit has bigger power in directing attention than most advertising networks. Directing attention for private communication is definitely censorship. I actually think legislation has to be brought up to date here. We seem to favor communicating on privately owned websites, but people still seem to have an expectation of freedom of speech. Law should definitely reflect this common expectation.

Lazare 10y ago

Not at all. First, I don't think it really makes sense to say a subreddit has opinions as such; it's simply a place for people to post thing. And while the user's do have opinions, nobody is suggesting the user's themselves be banned. Which brings me to... Second, it's not about opinions. There are much more fringe groups than that sub, and in any case, politically I'm probably significantly closer to the median The_Donald poster than the median Reddit admin. It's not about opinions, it's about tolerance and disruption. Because... Third, Reddit is a business and a community which thrives on promoting free, open, tolerant discourse. Just looking at the political subs there are communists, fascists, anarchists, libertarians, and everything in between, all happily posting away in their little corners, and occasionally participating in discussions that bring out proponents of different views. And then you have The_Donald. The issue isn't their strange, outrageous views (which aren't so much "outrageous" as "what you get if you cross standard American conservatism with standard European conservatism, put it in a blender, filter through the eyes of a 16 year old, and sprinkle with american flags and memes"). You're talking about a site with actual unironic advocates of actual literal dictatorship on it, come on. So when you say: > They picked side I'm not seeing it. In fact I think they're trying so hard to avoid even the appearance of having picked a side, that they're erring on the side of taking The_Donald's side, and in so doing they're harming the site.

BoorishBears 10y ago

I think they should be banned because last times subs were banned the message was pretty clear: If your sub's influence starts to leak elsewhere on Reddit (with its users acting collectively being the key), you'll be banned. The "fat people hate" sub seemed to be banned, not even for its subject matter, but because it's users were spreading their mess into other subreddits as a group. From what I've seen, the same thing is happening with The_Donald

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Mahn 10y ago
IIRC the "fat people hate" sub was banned because they started doxxing people, which the admins considered crossed the line. It should have been banned earlier though.
- deelowe 10y ago
  Correct.
whataboutpizza 10y ago
So if a sub like /r/randomactsofpizza starts getting popular and discussions of pizza donation spread throughout reddit, they should ban it?
- BoorishBears 10y ago
  If hordes of users acting on behalf of the subreddit started posting asking for donations in every moderately popular subreddit they'd actually probably be banned. I'm not going to pretend the threshold for where this "pizza subreddit" would be considered a problem might not end up higher than the one for a sub about a figure Reddit's core demographic appears to dislike, but the core principle is the same
basch 10y ago
/r/nfl should be banned because paytonface.jpg has leaked? this ideas of "things we like can leak" but "speech that annoys us should be quarantined" is dangerous. personally I find t_d somewhat useful to peak inside and see what the community is thinking on a given day. i can go read the liberal media for a while, see how Sessions is a racist, then peak into t_d and see the rebuttal. maybe if /r/politics was neutral /r/t_d wouldnt be necessary, but personally I like being able to see what each thought group is up to.

Mithaldu 10y ago

It's not about opinions. That particular sub-reddit is a mixture of real people, and trolls who pose as trump supporters to egg the supporters on, as well as scaring and pissing off people against trump. The result being that with little effort and prodding on their side they get to see glorious internet mudfights. However due to the way they're doing it, it's hard to tell which is which. That puts reddit admins in a bind and they have to balance things. Do they keep distance and let subtle trolls go unscathed? Do they take harsher measures and hit actual trump supporters? How much of this spills over into other reddits? How to handle the /all pollution? Letting it get in there just increases the mudfights, but if they take steps they'll be accused of censorships.

ltbarcly3 10y ago
I've been browsing The_Donald lately out of curiosity, and it's like 99% memes based on news articles and links to news articles. I see very little there that is objectionable, certainly nothing that seems worthy of shutting it down. Certainly there is a lot of 'things to piss off people against trump', but how is that different from any other political site/sub?
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  It runs afoul of brigading due to the sheer scale. If it managed to stay entirely within the subreddit then the admins would never need to be concerned with it and none of this would've happened.
  - ManlyBread 10y ago
    Brigading is a pretty meaningless term when the whole site is build upon linking to other sites. It's pointless to make a distinction between a link to an external site and to reddit itself.
    - Mithaldu 10y ago
      Well it's a good thing you are not on the reddit administration.

realusername 10y ago

Because TheDonald is a mix of racism, sexism , it's not a political view and it's affecting the whole site now. Absolute free speech can have real consequences, here's a sad example from the Rwandan Genocide (copied from Wikipedia): > The Power groups also believed that the national radio station, Radio Rwanda, had become too liberal and supportive of the opposition; they founded a new radio station, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLMC), which broadcast racist propaganda, obscene jokes and music, becoming very popular throughout the country.[89] One study finds that approximately 10% of the overall violence during the Rwandan genocide can be attributed to this new radio station.

ManlyBread 10y ago
But the same can be said about the infamous "SRS" and yet the admins have taken zero actions against it.
- Melk 10y ago
  SRS isn't on r/All 24/7. SRS doesn't fill up 90% of /rising. SRS is only "infamous" for being a deflector for criticism of far right subreddits. No one has heard from that subreddit for years. There are much more active subreddits that side with SRS if you want to go there, like circlebroke. There are also much more extreme subreddits than the_donald, like TheNewRight. Nobody is talking about banning those subreddits. This isn't a partisan argument. The_Donald is (purposely) interrupting how reddit works. I'm not an American and I have no dog in this fight, but the_donald is ruining reddit for a lot of us.
  - tomp 10y ago
    Don't go to r/All?! (Or maybe adminst could "ban" it from r/all without banning it completely.)
    - zyx321 10y ago
      They drastically reduced the amount of articles from the same subreddit that can be on /r/all at the same time. The page used to be >90% Trump before the change (and >90% Sanders or >90% Obama during their respective campaigns, but of course the admins never bothered doing anything to stop that)

novia 10y ago

Not OP, but over the past year there has been a trend of subreddits like /r/The_Donald banning anyone who doesn't agree with their world view, or even people who come in and simply post facts that refute whatever conspiracy theory the users are on about in that moment. Basically, a set up like this is one that allows fake news to proliferate and spread without level headed users having a chance to post a comment discrediting the source. These are purposely created echo chambers, and anyone who tries top break the circlejerk gets banned. Not to mention they are very very very annoying.