7 ms·
Reddit Is Tearing Itself Apart
- anigbrowl 10y agoIt's an ill wind that blows no good...
- ky738 10y ago"Its members spread coded hate speech" yeah had to stop nice bias
- wnevets 10y agoyou're right, its not even coded hate speech.
- leurfete 10y agoI took a look at their sub. I couldn't find any hate speech (though I ignored heavily downvoted comments). I'm also suspicious of "coded hate speech" since that concept grants license to attach racist connotations to just about any sentence. Is there a post on r/The_Donald that stands out to you as being hate speech?
- batiudrami 10y agoIt's typically the commenters. /r/The_Donald has rules which are supposed to stop hate speech (and typically they delete posts which are). However, with remarkable consistency, if you find someone spouting bigotry and hatred in another subreddit, they are almost always regular /r/The_Donald posters.
- rrggrr 10y agoIf this is argument for banning the subreddit, as opposed to the user, its no less scary than the offensive speech.
- batiudrami 10y agowhy? they did it for /r/fatpeoplehate for the same reason and it significantly improved reddit.
- jballanc 10y agoI was curious. So I looked. This was the top non-stickied post I saw: https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5fltt9/amy_schumer_and_lena_dunham_are_finally_leaving/ https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5fltt9/amy_schu... To save others the trouble, the title of the post is "Amy Schumer And Lena Dunham Are Finally Leaving The Country" and the image is of two orca whales being prepared for transport. The very non-coded message is that these two women are "as fat as whales" and furthermore that they deserve to be derided based on physical appearance because of their expressed political opinions. I'm no lawyer, but I think that's treading awfully close to "hate speech".
- rrggrr 10y agoIts a fine line between protecting the oppressed and being oppressive. When you misapply "hate speech" by using it to describe satire, or humor in bad taste, you run the risk of losing the "hate speech" tool to devaluation, blow-back and more satire. Some things deserve a response and others really are best ignored.
- jballanc 10y agoAgree completely. Where I have a problem with r/The_Donald is more than any one post, there are patterns that have emerged over time. Hence others calling out "coded hate speech", a concept which I am even more uncomfortable with than "borderline" hate speech. That said, the very colloquialism they use to refer to the opposition ("cuck") is merely a shortened form of a term ("cuckold") with a very long history of being a base insult with rather heavy connotations of misogyny. (i.e. Being "cuckolded", a man whose female partner has exhibited infidelity, is taken as a sign of weakness whereas being a woman whose male partner sleeps around is just de rigueur to the point there's not even a special term for it.)
- disposable235 10y agoYou are reaching for some quite indirect logic here. As someone regularly frequenting 4chan I can assure you that the sole target of the cuck insult is the male's pride. Of course it being a sexul insult it is practically unavoidable that values and the female partner are indirectly involved in how the insult works. Well, technically homosexual couples can also cuck each other, and I have seen the term occasionally used in discussion about homosexual manga. So it really is not about the female. Hell, even the fairly juvenile "ur mom" is more negative towards females than "cuck". When women are attacked you will notice. Slut and whale are still the go-to insults. So please do not shoehorn gender issues into everything. Sure, some assumptions are encoded into it. But it's a goddamn insult, not some friendly disagreement in a debate club. Please adjust your context sensitivity.
- wnevets 10y agohttps://i.redd.it/qhilg1rxa5gx.jpg https://i.redd.it/qhilg1rxa5gx.jpg looks like hate speech to me.
- legodt 10y agoThis is a good way to acrue massive, immediate backlash on HN. Calling alt-righters out for being neonazis and reminding people that hate speech isn't free speech is apparently over the line for a subset of users here.
- throwanem 10y agoArrant falsehood does tend to gravel people, I suppose. I'm not sure what anyone expects to gain by doubling down on the goodthink echo chamber that's just lost them an election. Emotional comfort, perhaps? I'm not without sympathy for the need - but that's a private matter. Governance in the US is public, and refusing to engage in the process merely cedes the field. Demonizing one's political opponents not only cedes the field but energizes them with just resentment, and I should think the events of this past month should suffice anyone as a lesson in why that might not be the best of all available tactics - but perhaps I extend more credit than due.
- leephillips 10y agoWhat falsehoods are you referring to? I'm not that familiar with what's going on on Reddit; but alt-right is in fact just a stupid name for neo-Nazi (as recently codified in the AP style guide).
- sanswork 10y agoThe idea that the other side has a valid opinion just because they won is stupid. A lot of believes don't deserve any respect at all. The constant posts of "You lost because you didn't listen" are silly. The left lost because Donald lied about important things to a lot of people who are desperate for his lies to be true. The only way he holds support is by continuing to lie and blame it on others once he takes power.
- fnovd 10y ago"One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem"[1] The rise of neonazism in the US is real. To claim otherwise, to imply that it is an "arrant falsehood," is to be purposefully ignorant. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq-LnO2DOGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq-LnO2DOGE
- skylan_q 10y agoDon't you know? Borders are for Nazis.
- skylan_q 10y agoI love the freedom and exchange of ideas on the Internet. The centipedes are now turning it into their very own echo chamber.
- ryan-allen 10y agoEcho chambers exist for all the other groups, too.
- rrggrr 10y agoAnd that is different from every special interest site on the internet how? Most subreddits are echo chambers.
- tux1968 10y agoI'm no Trump supporter but this piece is brutal in its implicit bias. Essentially, "free speech should not be enjoyed by those that hold the wrong opinion!"
- brianwawok 10y agoThat's not at all how this is going down. There are rules about mobbing other subs with garbage. No one would care If they kept to their own sub.
- tux1968 10y agoEvery sub is allowed to moderate itself how it chooses. Plus, there wasn't a similar outcry when Correct The Record, swamped the site with its paid advocacy before the election. Either you believe in free speech, that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that good ideas will prevail in the end -- or you don't.
- sanswork 10y agoIt was stuff like idiots accusing everyone that didn't support trump of working for CTR that has lead to such a backlash. > sunlight is the best disinfectant What do you think that disinfectant looks like? It is rarely people changing ideas it is more often society excluding people. Which is what is happening here. You don't have to give every idiot a platform to believe in free speech. You don't have to give them anything but the right to speech which they can use on their own sites.
- harryh 10y agoAs someone who reads reddit fairly frequently, this doesn't reflect my experience on the site. In reality there is no unified reddit. I've taken a gander at /r/The_Donald a couple of times (mostly out of morbid curiosity) but other than those few times I've experienced very little impact of whatever it is they are doing. I read some sports subredits. I read some culture subredits. I read some of the bigger basic entertaining but silly subreddits like /r/AskReddit and /r/TodayILearned. And, to be honest, I really haven't noticed much impact by these nefarious elements (or whatever you want to call them). I'm sure others have had different experiences from me, but from my point of view whatever "crazy shit" is going down is mostly confined to certain sub-sections of the site that are easily avoided.
- mikeryan 10y agoI don't see this on my own view of the site. But I click /r/all every so often just to get some variety and that's where you see this in effect. It seems an r/The_Donald post has been in one of the top two spots for the last few months with others in the queue.
- rrggrr 10y agoThe average front page Reddit post is thought to require about 323,500 views says... the internet. Trump got about 13,000,000 votes in the primary election, which is relevant because its though primary voters are more active in the political participation. The point being, I'm not sure given current headlines and the recency of the US election, that the front page stats are out of line.
- senectus1 10y agopretty much the same... but as will all echo chambers, you'll hear what you're listing to. If people are on ranty subreddits they will hear ranty posts. I'm happy with reddit. Its a pleasant diversion that I get to tune to my liking.
- a_bonobo 10y agoLooks like it's a bigger problem for moderators than for users: >“There have been unquestionably instances [where] moderators of other subreddits were targeted by users in The_Donald,” Reddit told Gizmodo, and the leaked chatlogs reveal the extent. >Some moderators had been flooded with constant harassing messages. “One threatened to kill my fucking dog,” a moderator pleaded in the leaked Slack chat. A The_Donald user hacked r/politics and booted half of the moderation team, another told Gizmodo in an email. >“We have had multiple moderators doxxed and sent death threats, we had one moderator who had his truck broken into and vandalized,” an r/politics mod told Gizmodo over Reddit private message.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jwise0 10y agoThis appears to have been flagbombed.
- empressplay 10y agoBecause the article is, quite frankly, bullsh*t.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rrggrr 10y agoThis all amounts to a lack of imagination on the part of Reddit's management. -- If the issue is doxxing, which was occurring to some degree in sites with cross-membership with r/the_donald, then enhanced auto moderation is needed. The tools are out there. -- If the issue is so-called "hate speech" then give users the ability to filter content they find distasteful. -- If the issue is click-bait to offensive or illegal content, then again, there are ample techniques and 3rd party resources for warning about, reporting, filtering and discouraging user click-through. What concerns me is that Gizmodo and Reddit can only think in terms of banning speech. Combined with the recent pile-on over "fake news", I worry that expression on the internet is vulnerable to shill pollution, coercion and overly zealous social equality advocacy. The irony of not applying innovative technology to problems at Reddit is thick, almost suffocating.
- orblivion 10y agoThe "hate speech" filter would have to be turned on by default for offline users, or else it's sort of pointless. Not sure if that would affect their reputation for being content neutral.
- jbob2000 10y agoReddit isn't a technology company, they're a media company. They were owned by one of the largest media companies, Conde Nast, for a while. Their goal isn't to solve social network problems, their goal is to increase their reach as much as possible. Reddit is the center of attention right now, their reach is huge, why would they change anything and risk losing that?
- JurgenJugglar 10y ago>these two women are "as fat as whales" and furthermore that they deserve to be derided based on physical appearance because of their expressed political opinions. Comedic body shapes paired with comedic political views and philosophies. What's wrong with it? They tried cheap virtue signaling and lost the bet. Boo hoo my sympathies. To deride the visual and linguistic imagination of cognitive entities as "hate speech" is stupid. "Oh no cognitive entities can generate from a set of infinite propositions and not those that fit within my limited range of experience and thinking ability"
- jballanc 10y agoThe question at the crux of it, and this is where it gets complicated, is would the same joke be made if they were men? Or a bit simpler of a question would be: were there overweight male celebrities that denounced Trump and claimed they would move to Canada should he win, and have any jokes been made at their expense related to their weight? If the answer to either question is "no", then this post qualifies as hate speech by the Wikipedia definition: > Hate speech is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation. In the law of some countries, hate speech is described as speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it incites violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group. i.e. The speech was intended to "disparage or intimidate a protected individual or group" where the "protected individual or group" is these two women as the post "attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender".
- JurgenJugglar 10y agoWomen are teased for physical defects, men for mental defects. Deal with it. Literally. Deal with it. Men and women have actual differences. And just because there's a term paired with a definition doesn't mean that the term isn't ridiculously stupid, in so far as it seeks to pass judgment on the natural tribality of apes. You should read up on the impact of sex and gender differences in pharmacology. Or just observe everyday interaction.
- faggotfromspace 10y ago"Do you want ants? Cause this is how you get ants." is really appropriate here. /r/the_donald is one of the few major subreddits that isn't anti-Trump (for example, see side of /r/jokes). When you confine half of your politically active user base to one sub, it's bound to become a monster. Calling it "problematic" and inventing a "hate speech" "code" doesn't somehow make it any less legitimate than any other Reddit community.
- tzs 10y agoI got banned from /r/The_Donald today. There was an article complaining about the main stream media for criticizing Trump's saying that flag burners should have their citizenship revoked and be jailed, when Hillary Clinton said exactly the same thing in 2005, and citing the Flag Protection Act of 2005, which Clinton co-sponsored. I'd never heard of that, so took a look at it. It did indeed make flag burning illegal (possible fine and jail time, no stripping of citizenship)--in two specific circumstances. 1. When the primary purpose and intent was to incite or produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace, or 2. When the flag was stolen from the US or from US lands. E.g., if you stole the flag from a government building and burned it, that flag burning would be illegal. Bringing your own flag to burn, fine (unless the primary purpose and intent was to produce imminent violence). I posted that information, and noted that this seemed to be written to try to stay within the bounds of allowed restriction on speech under Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). I noted that this was not anywhere near "exactly" the same as what Trump said, which appeared to be just blatantly unconstitutional. That earned the ban. I asked the moderator that banned me what rule I had violated, since it was not at all apparent to me. Here are their rules: • Do not violate Sitewide Content Policy • No Trolling/Concern Trolling • No Racism/Anti-Semitism • No Releasing Personal Information or Doxxing • No Vote Manipulation, Brigading, or Asking for Votes • No Dissenters/SJWs, this is a pro-Trump subreddit • No Posts About Being Banned From or Linking To Other Subreddits • Ban appeals, suggestions, concerns (including sticky choices) go to modmail • No Posts About Trump Assassination Threats (Send screenshots + Archive.is link to the FBI). • Please do not behave in a way outside of the subreddit that would reflect poorly on it. The moderator's answer: "The President Elect's.". I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, and cannot ask because he slapped a 72 hour ban on messaging the moderators on me. I frankly don't know what to make of /r/The_Donald. I've occasionally seen substantive discussion of Trump's proposed policies on there, including criticism, that was up voted and the critics were not banned. But it also seems to be full of complete and utter idiocy. I can't tell if it was supposed to be a serious group that got taken over by the trolls and idiots, or if it was supposed to be a trolling joke group from the start, and the substantive discussion was just from people who had not figured that out yet.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mzw_mzw 10y agoGizmodo? Isn't that the revenge porn outfit that was sued into bankruptcy a while back?