4 ms·

I would argue that a moderator shutting down a community of 25,000 individuals because of their own personal opinions is just as much if not the greater abuse o

by blitzd 10y ago

I would argue that a moderator shutting down a community of 25,000 individuals because of their own personal opinions is just as much if not the greater abuse of power.

_coldfire 10y ago
Exactly. Didn't make it far through that thread, but what is the proposed alternative? It's a bizarre, kneejerk reaction by a few people that ultimately may harm an entire language still in its formative years.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  > may harm an entire language still in its formative years. Who cares? If people don't want to use the language they won't, and if people do, they will. I refuse to feel bad for the language.
stcredzero 10y ago
This is emblematic of what's wrong with so many subreddits and so much of the social web that comes in the form of "forums" -- it seems like we have entire generations of users who have associated the totalitarian nature of forums with things being "advanced" on the internet. Social media isn't mostly about free thought, free speech, and free inquiry anymore. Nowadays, it's mostly about the rapid dissemination of conformity. Woe betide you if you actually have a nuanced opinion that doesn't fit neatly with either side of an issue. Your fellow posters/commenters will reject their pattern-match and call you a liar and 5th columnist for the other side. Technology came and killed the impulse towards freedom. It taught people through repeated iteration that conformity to the mob was the highest good. It taught smart people that wrangling their way into positions of centralized power to exercise authoritarian rule was the insider move. It taught everyone that suppression of anything that you didn't like was the winning move. It was called the internet.
- threeseed 10y ago
  This is self righteous, moralising nonsense. You are free to say whatever you want on the internet. Set up a blog or website and go nuts. You aren't free to dictate the behaviour of companies who don't want content on their site that is objectionable or factually baseless. Likewise it is just hypocritical and hilarious to complain about conformity just because your opinions don't correspond with theirs. Those people have the right to say and think what they want just like you do.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    This is self righteous, moralising nonsense. You are free to say whatever you want on the internet. Set up a blog or website and go nuts. I'm not so sure you're understanding where I'm coming from. I used to find online a place where I could freely express an opinion without fear of onerous consequences. Back in the old USENET days, there were trolls and heavy-handed moderation and all manner of unpleasantness, but there was also a widespread cultural respect for free speech. Would you say that undoing net neutrality, then Comcast dropping all packets associated with anything expressing an anti-Comcast opinion is good and savory behavior? Would complaining about that be self righteous, moralizing nonsense? The idea that people shouldn't engage in physical violence and intimidation could by the same logic be called self righteous, moralizing nonsense. ("FFS, just go and work out, take karate, or buy a gun or something!") Well, of course not. There is tremendous value in an open society where people can depend on the rule of law, driveable roads, electricity, plumbing, etc... Being civilized is literally valued at trillions of dollars in productivity. Likewise, there was tremendous value in open forums where people were free to express themselves and generally agreed to disagree. That's not what we have today. Basically, people bully other people by numbers and social pressure, or through moderation mechanisms. Your idea of "freedom" seems to be like a medieval form of "freedom" where any robber baron can set up a castle and start issuing his own laws and coinage. A truly open society is open globally, and people are free to roam and transact in a relatively relaxed fashion. Now, the morality of today's online world seems to be leaking into the real world, with that kind of deleting "moderation" applied to people's membership in civic organizations. Sorry, but that's petty and non-enlightened. It's like you don't believe the truth will set you free, and it's only pressure, numbers, and mechanisms that will win the day.

by blitzd 10y ago

I would argue that a moderator shutting down a community of 25,000 individuals because of their own personal opinions is just as much if not the greater abuse of power.

_coldfire 10y ago

Exactly. Didn't make it far through that thread, but what is the proposed alternative? It's a bizarre, kneejerk reaction by a few people that ultimately may harm an entire language still in its formative years.

pessimizer 10y ago
> may harm an entire language still in its formative years. Who cares? If people don't want to use the language they won't, and if people do, they will. I refuse to feel bad for the language.

stcredzero 10y ago

This is emblematic of what's wrong with so many subreddits and so much of the social web that comes in the form of "forums" -- it seems like we have entire generations of users who have associated the totalitarian nature of forums with things being "advanced" on the internet. Social media isn't mostly about free thought, free speech, and free inquiry anymore. Nowadays, it's mostly about the rapid dissemination of conformity. Woe betide you if you actually have a nuanced opinion that doesn't fit neatly with either side of an issue. Your fellow posters/commenters will reject their pattern-match and call you a liar and 5th columnist for the other side. Technology came and killed the impulse towards freedom. It taught people through repeated iteration that conformity to the mob was the highest good. It taught smart people that wrangling their way into positions of centralized power to exercise authoritarian rule was the insider move. It taught everyone that suppression of anything that you didn't like was the winning move. It was called the internet.

threeseed 10y ago
This is self righteous, moralising nonsense. You are free to say whatever you want on the internet. Set up a blog or website and go nuts. You aren't free to dictate the behaviour of companies who don't want content on their site that is objectionable or factually baseless. Likewise it is just hypocritical and hilarious to complain about conformity just because your opinions don't correspond with theirs. Those people have the right to say and think what they want just like you do.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  This is self righteous, moralising nonsense. You are free to say whatever you want on the internet. Set up a blog or website and go nuts. I'm not so sure you're understanding where I'm coming from. I used to find online a place where I could freely express an opinion without fear of onerous consequences. Back in the old USENET days, there were trolls and heavy-handed moderation and all manner of unpleasantness, but there was also a widespread cultural respect for free speech. Would you say that undoing net neutrality, then Comcast dropping all packets associated with anything expressing an anti-Comcast opinion is good and savory behavior? Would complaining about that be self righteous, moralizing nonsense? The idea that people shouldn't engage in physical violence and intimidation could by the same logic be called self righteous, moralizing nonsense. ("FFS, just go and work out, take karate, or buy a gun or something!") Well, of course not. There is tremendous value in an open society where people can depend on the rule of law, driveable roads, electricity, plumbing, etc... Being civilized is literally valued at trillions of dollars in productivity. Likewise, there was tremendous value in open forums where people were free to express themselves and generally agreed to disagree. That's not what we have today. Basically, people bully other people by numbers and social pressure, or through moderation mechanisms. Your idea of "freedom" seems to be like a medieval form of "freedom" where any robber baron can set up a castle and start issuing his own laws and coinage. A truly open society is open globally, and people are free to roam and transact in a relatively relaxed fashion. Now, the morality of today's online world seems to be leaking into the real world, with that kind of deleting "moderation" applied to people's membership in civic organizations. Sorry, but that's petty and non-enlightened. It's like you don't believe the truth will set you free, and it's only pressure, numbers, and mechanisms that will win the day.