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It's really interesting to compare Reddit and Twitter on these matters, because both were started by people who intended them to be free speech havens, even if
by flashman 9y ago
It's really interesting to compare Reddit and Twitter on these matters, because both were started by people who intended them to be free speech havens, even if that meant hosting some abhorrent (but legal) content.
As late as 2012 the one of Reddit's founders claimed the site was "a bastion of free speech",[1] but by 2015 the other founder modified this to "a place where open and honest discussion can happen."
It will be interesting to do some analysis and see which other subreddits the users in the banned subreddits migrate to. Often they remain active on the site but their activity becomes more coded (like how fatpeoplehate users ended up on holdmyfries).
[1]https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/15/reddit_cofounder_uturn_free_speech/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/15/reddit_cofounder_ut...
- Daishiman 9y agoWhat changed is that the abhorrent but legal content has gone from being minority, irrelevant and ultimately easily dismissed content to being the centerpoint of political and social issues of our time. It's easy to talk about free speech when the worst of it has no impact to you. When your site begins to be used as a point of validation for abhorrent ideas where people actually carry out illegal and nefarious acts, things change.