10 ms·

I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. To me that seems to be a rather flawe

by veddox 10y ago

I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. To me that seems to be a rather flawed argumentation: a) The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't have jurisdiction over anything but their own little niche of the Internet (which absolutely nobody is forcing you to visit if you don't want to) - so why are you upset when they ask you, within the bounds of their community, to be nice? b) Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other, even going so far as to sending death threats? I think the German constitution (the Grundgesetz) has a point when it says in Article 5, §2 that the right of free speech is limited, amongst others, by every person's right of dignity ("Recht der persönlichen Ehre" - a hard to translate concept). c) On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function. Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom? Free speech is perhaps the most fundamental right of any democracy that must be protected at all costs. It is vital for the continuation of a free nation. However, Imzy is not a nation. It is a little website on the Internet. And it doesn't ban dissenting opinion (the real reason why we need free speech) - it merely asks you to remain polite while stating your's. So what is your problem with it?

yummyfajitas 10y ago
There is more to the idea of free speech than simply the first amendment. This essay explains it well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first-amendment/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first... The general gist is: imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are ostracized from society, rejected from conferences and fired from their jobs. Those of us who favor a broader concept of free speech feel this is a bad state of affairs even if it isn't Congress doing it.
- veddox 10y ago
  I would say that in a society like that, there is more amiss than simply a lack of free speech. After all, there are other human rights. However, I see what you mean, and not being a constitutional scholar I shall cede the point. Nonetheless, you have only addressed one half of a point out of my original three. (You cannot compare a website like Imzy with society at large is what I was trying to drive at in point A.) What do you say to the other two?
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    > I would say that in a society like that, there is more amiss than simply a lack of free speech. Every society (and community) has norms which are acceptable, and those which are not. If a person decides to not live according to those norms they're an outcast and will be dealt with as such. The society is like a living organism which will protect its norms in order to survive akin to an auto immune system. Because of these principles every society lives within its own bubble, too. I suppose Von Trier's Dogville touches upon the subject, but there's countless examples available from Swartz to Snowden. If someone has another (or better, more accurate) example I'm interested hearing yours.
- jasode 10y ago
  >imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are [...], rejected from conferences Your expanded idea of free speech is noble but it's not possible for society to provide. Free speech allowed by the government is possible. Free speech hosted and paid for by private commercial entities is impossible -- in any long-term sustaining way. The "free speech on commercial entities" would require 2 extra draconian laws that citizens would never agree to: 1) a law to force private entities to pay for speech they disagree with on their private platforms and in their private conferences even if that opposing speech causes them to lose the funding that allows for them to pay for it in the first place. 2) a law to force web surfers' eyeballs[1] to view content they don't agree with, and force people to buy tickets to conferences with speakers they don't want to hear Free speech with private commercial entities creates a contradiction of priorities. I've written about this impossibility before.[2] To make it relate to HN readers, imagine after creating a Digital Ocean account and paying $9/month for VPS to host a blog about photography or enthusiast forum about cars, you must now pay for opinion pieces about Trump or Clinton (whichever you disagree with). The draconian law requires you pay for it because nobody's opinion is allowed to be marginalized. Also, the web users visiting that new site are required to show video proof (maybe via iPhone/Android camera) that they've read the marginalized opinions. (To satisfy the proverbial "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" ... if no visitors go to the web page and read it, it's effectively not free speech.) [1] Ludovico technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#/media/File:Clockwork%2771.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#/med... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12158682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12158682
rmc 10y ago
> I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. It's especially curious, because HN does try to have a free speech uber alles approach. If limiting speech is good for HN, why isn't it good for Imzy? It's also important to remember that reddit is very pro-free speech, but bans some protected speech, namely, doxxing. Redditors started to dox people who ran some of the more ahem controversial subreddits. And then reddit banned doxxing.
- gkya 10y ago
  No right is limitless. I don't know about other countries but in elementary school where I am we're taught a person's freedom is limited by the freedoms of others, and freedom of speech is certainly limited by other people's human rights, including the right to human dignity. AFAIK the declaration of human rights include that right. There is no freedom without responsibility, and that's why people who aren't or can't be responsible are often excluded from the community temporarily or permanently.
  - Retra 10y ago
    Elementary school is not the place to learn about the subtleties of human cultural conflict.
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      A good starting point though.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - offa 10y ago
      I must have been doing something wrong then... Elementary school was exactly where the subtleties of human conflict first appeared to me. IMO, it's as good of a place as any to have some of your first (and due to that, perhaps the most important) encounters with what it means to exist within a society.
gopher2 10y ago
Right, exactly. If you own a bar and some person is picking fights all the time or generally acting like an asshole in your bar.. Then you tell them to change their behavior or throw them out of the bar. Or allow it and become "that kind of bar" over time. Press coverage of Imzy has been rather clickbait-y. It's a good angle to get attention I guess. How the actual site and community will feel and plays out in practice will actually feel rather normal. Its not super revolutionary.. Internet forum moderates discussion and participation for better resulting community.
- oxide 10y ago
  >Then you tell them to change their behavior or throw them out of the bar. Or allow it and become "that kind of bar" over time. this is exactly why it isn't censorship. no one has a right to be an asshole on the internet, if you insist, don't be shocked when you get shown the door. no one is obligated to deal with pricks. calling it censorship or pretending to be persecuted for political opinions is disingenuous at best.
marcoperaza 10y ago
>The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't have jurisdiction over anything but their own little niche of the Internet (which absolutely nobody is forcing you to visit if you don't want to) - so why are you upset when they ask you, within the bounds of their community, to be nice? Yes, insofar as the law protects free speech, it does so only against the government. We as individual Americans, should, however, be wary of using privately-owned spaces as public spheres unless they provide broadly similar guarantees that different points of view can be expressed. This is becoming more important as the traditional public sphere is increasingly giving way to privately-run ones (e.g. Facebook and Reddit). >Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other, even going so far as to sending death threats? I think the German constitution (the Grundgesetz) has a point when it says in Article 5, §2 that the right of free speech is limited, amongst others, by every person's right of dignity ("Recht der persönlichen Ehre" - a hard to translate concept). No one is arguing for allowing death threats. This is a classic straw man used in just about every major online debate ever. The German constitution is flawed here. When German police can arrest people for having the wrong opinion, something is badly wrong. >On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function. Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom? The problem is the definition of politeness. The cultural powers have dictated that calling people racist and sexist for disagreeing with you is "polite", while fighting back against that madness is ghastly.
- veddox 10y ago
  > unless they provide broadly similar guarantees that different points of view can be expressed. Note, once again, that Imzy does allow this. They just ask you to remain polite while you do so. (Which appears to me to be a reasonable request.) > No one is arguing for allowing death threats. I didn't say anybody was. I am saying that they are being made anyway, and that that is one of the things we need to stop if we want a culture conducive to a civilized online discourse. > When German police can arrest people for having the wrong opinion, something is badly wrong. I agree, but you misunderstand the difference between free speech and free thought. German police cannot arrest you for holding the wrong opinion, they can arrest you for voicing that opinion in a way that wrongfully infringes on the honour and dignity of another person. (This is the basis for libel and slander laws.)
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
The reason people raise issues of free speech is that Reddit-style sites act more like a public utility and less like a single community. Reddit is a community of communities. The argument is that Reddit itself shouldn't limit speech, but that the individual communities within it can decide for themselves how to regulate discussion.
- tedks 10y ago
  This is the same tired justification of injustice that "states rights" advocates trot out.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    I don't think that really compares.
- Barrin92 10y ago
  and reddit really is just one aggregator among many others, we can play this Matryoshka thing all day.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  There's a huge problem with calling sites like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and the rest utilities is that it implies there's no other means to communicate effectively on the web. The reality is that we have RSS, Atom, blogs, Bittorrent, and many other easy to use technologies for which anyone can share their content. It's not like these are hidden behind console commands on Linux as these are readily available for use via for-pay (and some free) providers. So, your argument doesn't hold in terms of the practical aspects of a utility who has a legal and material monopoly (the web cannot exclude other technologies and their adoptions like say the power grid can).
Retra 10y ago
>On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online [...] That's because the behavior you are seeing online is actually not at all like the behaviors "in real life" that you are comparing them to. In person, you get a lot more information and in a vastly more narrow context, and it's much easier to interpret people under those conditions. For one thing, if you show strong opinions online, people tend to think you're a pig-headed fool, but if you do it in person, they're more liable to think you're just blowing off steam or impassioned. Which is to say, we also tolerate things in person that we do not tolerate online very well.
- overgard 10y ago
  Funny that you're getting downvoted for a nuanced polite response to why online behavior necessarily differs from in person behavior. Apparently being nice doesn't apply to arrows.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  I'm generally nicer online than I am in person; online you can be misinterpreted, and as a cipher behind a username, your entire identity becomes what you just said. In real life, you can be a lot harsher and more blunt, because you don't have to bundle an implicit friendliness into every statement that you make:) In the proximal world, you start building up civility credit with the first handshake and smile.
overgard 10y ago
Well, lets say you know someone who is a legit flat earther. You're not going to change their mind, because such a belief is unreasonable, but if you attempt to reason with them you elevate their social status and accidentally lend credence to them. This is the Fox News "fair and balanced" model -- if you give equal time to both viewpoints, even if one viewpoint is nuts, people will assume that there's a rational debate being had. HN, for all its good parts, tends to be humorless. I would argue that humor can work as an immune system to bad ideas. When someone says something really stupid, often the best response really is mockery. You wont convince the person you're making fun of, but it can settle a debate pretty fast. Humor doesn't have to be mean to be funny, but sometimes it is. "Be Nice" policies tends to lead to communities that lack this useful sociological immune system, and it can drive out the smart people, to the point where you have a lot of "nice" people arguing some very dumb points.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > When someone says something really stupid, often the best response really is mockery. That's not working for climate change, brexit, the Us election, etc etc etc. Maybe it's time to accept that mockery is a sub-optimal tactic that makes you feel good but is counter-productive.
  - itwaseverything 10y ago
    It might have played slight part. But those have multiple dimensions to them. The worst thing that ever happened to fixing the pollution was calling it climate change. Making wildly inaccurate hyperbolic documentaries and politicizing it to such a degree that it became a defining aspect of our species. Where everyone needed to have an opinion on it, no different than their favorite brand of cereal. When greedy selfish people make doomsday prophecies which happens to make them more money, the people get skeptical. We've been exposed to millions of such prophecies in the past, the average person will just say "Oh? Another one..." Regarding Brexit/US election, I think Obama interfering with peoples choices by telling them what they should pick hindered one side in both events. Brexit and Trump happened because Obama was condescending. Both would have been different results if he had done nothing at all.
gdulli 10y ago
Think of Reddit as a quarantine or a honeypot. The people who don't value decency have to go somewhere.
- nekohacker 10y ago
  I thought that was 4chan?
  - intransigent 10y ago
    Reddit is 4chan for pussies.
    - sctb 10y ago
      Please comment civilly and substantively on Hacker News or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
morganvachon 10y ago
I can't upvote you enough. I've always likened Internet forums to having guests in my home. If I, as a forum owner, invite you into my home, you are expected to abide by the house rules. If my house rules allow you to destroy the furniture, insult my other guests, and generally raise hell, I won't yell at you for it. But if my rules forbid such activity, I'm well within my rights to kick your ass out. Free speech has nothing to do with it; you chose to enter my realm, and in my realm I am the king. The only way freedom of speech enters into it, is if it's a government run forum. Last I checked, Reddit, Voat, Imzy, and others are not government sites, and there is no free speech violation if the forum owners decide to bounce a misbehaving person.
- skybrian 10y ago
  That's correct as far as the law is concerned. However, when you have a very large social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, things get more complicated. A forum's owner has some say but a lot of the conflicts are at the boundaries between forums, or involve the common rules that everyone should follow. It's not a government but at this scale, the moderation starts to look more like privately run governance, something imposed from above onto a community rather part of the community itself.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    True that. Public utilities (traditionally pretty much anything with a network effect) require regulation; the government must get involved, and then governmental ethics ought to apply.
    - hsitz 10y ago
      There exists doctrine in constitutional law where its guarantees are deemed to apply even when the actor infringing the right is a private party. This can occur in cases where a private party is deemed to be a "state actor". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_actor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_actor I would suggest that even large social media organizations are not "state actors", so federal constitutional protections don't apply. Of course, states are free to enact laws on their own to guarantee free speech in social media, if they want. It's just not protected by U.S. Constitution, not a constitutional right. [As an editorial aside, I'm dismayed at the general low level of understanding of constitutional rights in the U.S., even among "well-educated" people.]
Mikeb85 10y ago
I don't think people object to being nice. They object to the current cultural climate where any sort of debate is impossible because any opinion that's outside of the norm is maligned. Hence why so many sites, subreddits, etc..., turn into "circlejerks". Why there's safe spaces and shit in universities. Why opinions, even relatively benign ones, become so polarizing.
wyager 10y ago
> Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other This doesn't pertain to Imzy as all, but asking this question seriously is a very strong indicator that you're completely missing the point of absolute legal free speech protection. "Oh, you're saying bad things about the current government? That's pretty insulting and demeaning towards all these nice politicians and government employees! To the jail with you!" Does it really seem reasonable to you that that saying something "insulting" should be met with force at the hands of the government? That's as anti-liberal as any Sharia law-based Islamic nation that kills people for blashpheming Mohammad. I agree that it is within any website's authority to determine precisely what its users are allowed to say. I just disagree with your weakening of the concept of free speech. Germany does not have a tradition of free speech in any meaningful sense, so their law is not a great example.
tuxt 10y ago
If reddit bans everyone on the site, reddit would be a nice place, definitely no trolling anymore.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>c) On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function. Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom? Because internet communities regularly raid each-other. Someone who's a dick to you on reddit may just be a troll from 4chan with a new-made alt-account. Community and politeness require a relatively fixed set of identities with which to interact.

by veddox 10y ago

yummyfajitas 10y ago

There is more to the idea of free speech than simply the first amendment. This essay explains it well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first-amendment/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first... The general gist is: imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are ostracized from society, rejected from conferences and fired from their jobs. Those of us who favor a broader concept of free speech feel this is a bad state of affairs even if it isn't Congress doing it.

veddox 10y ago
I would say that in a society like that, there is more amiss than simply a lack of free speech. After all, there are other human rights. However, I see what you mean, and not being a constitutional scholar I shall cede the point. Nonetheless, you have only addressed one half of a point out of my original three. (You cannot compare a website like Imzy with society at large is what I was trying to drive at in point A.) What do you say to the other two?
- Fnoord 10y ago
  > I would say that in a society like that, there is more amiss than simply a lack of free speech. Every society (and community) has norms which are acceptable, and those which are not. If a person decides to not live according to those norms they're an outcast and will be dealt with as such. The society is like a living organism which will protect its norms in order to survive akin to an auto immune system. Because of these principles every society lives within its own bubble, too. I suppose Von Trier's Dogville touches upon the subject, but there's countless examples available from Swartz to Snowden. If someone has another (or better, more accurate) example I'm interested hearing yours.
jasode 10y ago
>imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are [...], rejected from conferences Your expanded idea of free speech is noble but it's not possible for society to provide. Free speech allowed by the government is possible. Free speech hosted and paid for by private commercial entities is impossible -- in any long-term sustaining way. The "free speech on commercial entities" would require 2 extra draconian laws that citizens would never agree to: 1) a law to force private entities to pay for speech they disagree with on their private platforms and in their private conferences even if that opposing speech causes them to lose the funding that allows for them to pay for it in the first place. 2) a law to force web surfers' eyeballs[1] to view content they don't agree with, and force people to buy tickets to conferences with speakers they don't want to hear Free speech with private commercial entities creates a contradiction of priorities. I've written about this impossibility before.[2] To make it relate to HN readers, imagine after creating a Digital Ocean account and paying $9/month for VPS to host a blog about photography or enthusiast forum about cars, you must now pay for opinion pieces about Trump or Clinton (whichever you disagree with). The draconian law requires you pay for it because nobody's opinion is allowed to be marginalized. Also, the web users visiting that new site are required to show video proof (maybe via iPhone/Android camera) that they've read the marginalized opinions. (To satisfy the proverbial "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" ... if no visitors go to the web page and read it, it's effectively not free speech.) [1] Ludovico technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#/media/File:Clockwork%2771.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#/med... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12158682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12158682

rmc 10y ago

> I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. It's especially curious, because HN does try to have a free speech uber alles approach. If limiting speech is good for HN, why isn't it good for Imzy? It's also important to remember that reddit is very pro-free speech, but bans some protected speech, namely, doxxing. Redditors started to dox people who ran some of the more ahem controversial subreddits. And then reddit banned doxxing.

gkya 10y ago
No right is limitless. I don't know about other countries but in elementary school where I am we're taught a person's freedom is limited by the freedoms of others, and freedom of speech is certainly limited by other people's human rights, including the right to human dignity. AFAIK the declaration of human rights include that right. There is no freedom without responsibility, and that's why people who aren't or can't be responsible are often excluded from the community temporarily or permanently.
- Retra 10y ago
  Elementary school is not the place to learn about the subtleties of human cultural conflict.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    A good starting point though.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - offa 10y ago
    I must have been doing something wrong then... Elementary school was exactly where the subtleties of human conflict first appeared to me. IMO, it's as good of a place as any to have some of your first (and due to that, perhaps the most important) encounters with what it means to exist within a society.

gopher2 10y ago

Right, exactly. If you own a bar and some person is picking fights all the time or generally acting like an asshole in your bar.. Then you tell them to change their behavior or throw them out of the bar. Or allow it and become "that kind of bar" over time. Press coverage of Imzy has been rather clickbait-y. It's a good angle to get attention I guess. How the actual site and community will feel and plays out in practice will actually feel rather normal. Its not super revolutionary.. Internet forum moderates discussion and participation for better resulting community.

oxide 10y ago
>Then you tell them to change their behavior or throw them out of the bar. Or allow it and become "that kind of bar" over time. this is exactly why it isn't censorship. no one has a right to be an asshole on the internet, if you insist, don't be shocked when you get shown the door. no one is obligated to deal with pricks. calling it censorship or pretending to be persecuted for political opinions is disingenuous at best.

marcoperaza 10y ago

>The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't have jurisdiction over anything but their own little niche of the Internet (which absolutely nobody is forcing you to visit if you don't want to) - so why are you upset when they ask you, within the bounds of their community, to be nice? Yes, insofar as the law protects free speech, it does so only against the government. We as individual Americans, should, however, be wary of using privately-owned spaces as public spheres unless they provide broadly similar guarantees that different points of view can be expressed. This is becoming more important as the traditional public sphere is increasingly giving way to privately-run ones (e.g. Facebook and Reddit). >Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other, even going so far as to sending death threats? I think the German constitution (the Grundgesetz) has a point when it says in Article 5, §2 that the right of free speech is limited, amongst others, by every person's right of dignity ("Recht der persönlichen Ehre" - a hard to translate concept). No one is arguing for allowing death threats. This is a classic straw man used in just about every major online debate ever. The German constitution is flawed here. When German police can arrest people for having the wrong opinion, something is badly wrong. >On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function. Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom? The problem is the definition of politeness. The cultural powers have dictated that calling people racist and sexist for disagreeing with you is "polite", while fighting back against that madness is ghastly.

veddox 10y ago
> unless they provide broadly similar guarantees that different points of view can be expressed. Note, once again, that Imzy does allow this. They just ask you to remain polite while you do so. (Which appears to me to be a reasonable request.) > No one is arguing for allowing death threats. I didn't say anybody was. I am saying that they are being made anyway, and that that is one of the things we need to stop if we want a culture conducive to a civilized online discourse. > When German police can arrest people for having the wrong opinion, something is badly wrong. I agree, but you misunderstand the difference between free speech and free thought. German police cannot arrest you for holding the wrong opinion, they can arrest you for voicing that opinion in a way that wrongfully infringes on the honour and dignity of another person. (This is the basis for libel and slander laws.)

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

The reason people raise issues of free speech is that Reddit-style sites act more like a public utility and less like a single community. Reddit is a community of communities. The argument is that Reddit itself shouldn't limit speech, but that the individual communities within it can decide for themselves how to regulate discussion.

tedks 10y ago
This is the same tired justification of injustice that "states rights" advocates trot out.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  I don't think that really compares.
Barrin92 10y ago
and reddit really is just one aggregator among many others, we can play this Matryoshka thing all day.
norea-armozel 10y ago
There's a huge problem with calling sites like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and the rest utilities is that it implies there's no other means to communicate effectively on the web. The reality is that we have RSS, Atom, blogs, Bittorrent, and many other easy to use technologies for which anyone can share their content. It's not like these are hidden behind console commands on Linux as these are readily available for use via for-pay (and some free) providers. So, your argument doesn't hold in terms of the practical aspects of a utility who has a legal and material monopoly (the web cannot exclude other technologies and their adoptions like say the power grid can).

Retra 10y ago

>On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online [...] That's because the behavior you are seeing online is actually not at all like the behaviors "in real life" that you are comparing them to. In person, you get a lot more information and in a vastly more narrow context, and it's much easier to interpret people under those conditions. For one thing, if you show strong opinions online, people tend to think you're a pig-headed fool, but if you do it in person, they're more liable to think you're just blowing off steam or impassioned. Which is to say, we also tolerate things in person that we do not tolerate online very well.

overgard 10y ago
Funny that you're getting downvoted for a nuanced polite response to why online behavior necessarily differs from in person behavior. Apparently being nice doesn't apply to arrows.
pessimizer 10y ago
I'm generally nicer online than I am in person; online you can be misinterpreted, and as a cipher behind a username, your entire identity becomes what you just said. In real life, you can be a lot harsher and more blunt, because you don't have to bundle an implicit friendliness into every statement that you make:) In the proximal world, you start building up civility credit with the first handshake and smile.

overgard 10y ago

Well, lets say you know someone who is a legit flat earther. You're not going to change their mind, because such a belief is unreasonable, but if you attempt to reason with them you elevate their social status and accidentally lend credence to them. This is the Fox News "fair and balanced" model -- if you give equal time to both viewpoints, even if one viewpoint is nuts, people will assume that there's a rational debate being had. HN, for all its good parts, tends to be humorless. I would argue that humor can work as an immune system to bad ideas. When someone says something really stupid, often the best response really is mockery. You wont convince the person you're making fun of, but it can settle a debate pretty fast. Humor doesn't have to be mean to be funny, but sometimes it is. "Be Nice" policies tends to lead to communities that lack this useful sociological immune system, and it can drive out the smart people, to the point where you have a lot of "nice" people arguing some very dumb points.

DanBC 10y ago
> When someone says something really stupid, often the best response really is mockery. That's not working for climate change, brexit, the Us election, etc etc etc. Maybe it's time to accept that mockery is a sub-optimal tactic that makes you feel good but is counter-productive.
- itwaseverything 10y ago
  It might have played slight part. But those have multiple dimensions to them. The worst thing that ever happened to fixing the pollution was calling it climate change. Making wildly inaccurate hyperbolic documentaries and politicizing it to such a degree that it became a defining aspect of our species. Where everyone needed to have an opinion on it, no different than their favorite brand of cereal. When greedy selfish people make doomsday prophecies which happens to make them more money, the people get skeptical. We've been exposed to millions of such prophecies in the past, the average person will just say "Oh? Another one..." Regarding Brexit/US election, I think Obama interfering with peoples choices by telling them what they should pick hindered one side in both events. Brexit and Trump happened because Obama was condescending. Both would have been different results if he had done nothing at all.

gdulli 10y ago

Think of Reddit as a quarantine or a honeypot. The people who don't value decency have to go somewhere.

nekohacker 10y ago
I thought that was 4chan?
- intransigent 10y ago
  Reddit is 4chan for pussies.
  - sctb 10y ago
    Please comment civilly and substantively on Hacker News or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

morganvachon 10y ago

I can't upvote you enough. I've always likened Internet forums to having guests in my home. If I, as a forum owner, invite you into my home, you are expected to abide by the house rules. If my house rules allow you to destroy the furniture, insult my other guests, and generally raise hell, I won't yell at you for it. But if my rules forbid such activity, I'm well within my rights to kick your ass out. Free speech has nothing to do with it; you chose to enter my realm, and in my realm I am the king. The only way freedom of speech enters into it, is if it's a government run forum. Last I checked, Reddit, Voat, Imzy, and others are not government sites, and there is no free speech violation if the forum owners decide to bounce a misbehaving person.

skybrian 10y ago
That's correct as far as the law is concerned. However, when you have a very large social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, things get more complicated. A forum's owner has some say but a lot of the conflicts are at the boundaries between forums, or involve the common rules that everyone should follow. It's not a government but at this scale, the moderation starts to look more like privately run governance, something imposed from above onto a community rather part of the community itself.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  True that. Public utilities (traditionally pretty much anything with a network effect) require regulation; the government must get involved, and then governmental ethics ought to apply.
  - hsitz 10y ago
    There exists doctrine in constitutional law where its guarantees are deemed to apply even when the actor infringing the right is a private party. This can occur in cases where a private party is deemed to be a "state actor". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_actor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_actor I would suggest that even large social media organizations are not "state actors", so federal constitutional protections don't apply. Of course, states are free to enact laws on their own to guarantee free speech in social media, if they want. It's just not protected by U.S. Constitution, not a constitutional right. [As an editorial aside, I'm dismayed at the general low level of understanding of constitutional rights in the U.S., even among "well-educated" people.]

Mikeb85 10y ago

I don't think people object to being nice. They object to the current cultural climate where any sort of debate is impossible because any opinion that's outside of the norm is maligned. Hence why so many sites, subreddits, etc..., turn into "circlejerks". Why there's safe spaces and shit in universities. Why opinions, even relatively benign ones, become so polarizing.

wyager 10y ago

> Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other This doesn't pertain to Imzy as all, but asking this question seriously is a very strong indicator that you're completely missing the point of absolute legal free speech protection. "Oh, you're saying bad things about the current government? That's pretty insulting and demeaning towards all these nice politicians and government employees! To the jail with you!" Does it really seem reasonable to you that that saying something "insulting" should be met with force at the hands of the government? That's as anti-liberal as any Sharia law-based Islamic nation that kills people for blashpheming Mohammad. I agree that it is within any website's authority to determine precisely what its users are allowed to say. I just disagree with your weakening of the concept of free speech. Germany does not have a tradition of free speech in any meaningful sense, so their law is not a great example.

tuxt 10y ago

If reddit bans everyone on the site, reddit would be a nice place, definitely no trolling anymore.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>c) On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function. Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom? Because internet communities regularly raid each-other. Someone who's a dick to you on reddit may just be a troll from 4chan with a new-made alt-account. Community and politeness require a relatively fixed set of identities with which to interact.