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The subs I've heard about banning were echo chambers dedicated to the idea that "this group of people I don't like ought to be [starved|exiled|thrown from helic

• coffeevradar 9y ago
  There are plenty of left-wing subreddits with equal measures of vitriol. Somehow they avoid earning the same opprobrium that the right-wing ones do. This apparent double standard creates the appearance of bias.
  • reefoctopus 9y ago
    Feel free to provide examples of the double standard.
    • coffeevradar 9y ago
      You'll note that I said that there was an 'apparent' double standard. If may not be apparent to you, but it certainly is to some. You seem like you spend more time on the political parts of Reddit than I, so I'm sure you're well equipped to investigate this yourself.
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        Well, who cares. There will be an "apparent" bias to some of these guys unless they delete everything but the red pill and The_Donald.
  • hank_pank 9y ago
    Shit Reddit Says (r/srs) is a good example of this. By the way, I'm dead, right?
  • mrgoldenbrown 9y ago
    If there are plenty, and you are familiar with them, please name a few. It's not possible for us to "investigate on our own" if we don't know what you are considering "equal measures of vitriol".
    • coffeevradar 9y ago
      I was responding to a comment that conflated the worst excesses of admittedly terrible communities on Reddit with the whole of the 'modern right.' My goal was to explain the thinking of those who are accusing Reddit of systemic bias against the right. Their assertion is that subreddits advocating violence against right-wing activists are tolerated, while right-wing subreddits are condemned for similar infractions. Whether this is objectively true I do not know. In fact, my interest in politics is minimal and I should probably leave these discussions alone in future. I hope Hacker News does not devolve into another online community overrun with political arguments and petty antagonism.
    • charcoal23 9y ago
      /r/anarchism and /r/socialism are two that often advocate violence. The latter is dominated by "tankies", which is a term for communists who love Stalin, gulags, and tanks. They frequently take a "kill 'em all" approach. They are also often mocked by other lefties on Reddit, so please don't assume their opinions are popular. /r/anarchism is a slightly more complicated case. They do advocate violence in a "bash the fash" way. But their intended victims are often those who advocate for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other racist or misogynistic methods. Their violent earnestness is also often mocked by the rest of political Reddit. /r/LeftWithoutEdge was a sub formed for serious discussion for lefties without resorting to violent speech. It doesn't get enough traffic so I urge any leftists / anarchists here to visit it occasionally. Edit: I should add that one reason /r/anarchism and /r/socialism are still on Reddit is because they took the warnings of the admins seriously. /r/anarchism dialed their rhetoric back after being told they were on the verge of being banned. Most of the banned right wing subs ignored the warnings, and often doubled-down.
    • busterarm 9y ago
      /r/anarchism /r/strikeaction /r/militant are some of the more obvious choices.
  • eduren 9y ago
    Feel free to name subreddits
• zeveb 9y ago
  You're ignoring the subs which are the same thing, from a leftward slant. It does say some pretty nasty things about mankind, that so many of us love to hate.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    Which ones do you have in mind? What left-wing sub is there advocating racism or misogyny?
    • zeth__ 9y ago
      Sanders for President if we are to believe the wall street journal from 2015/2016.
    • PeachPlum 9y ago
      try posting "It's OKAY to be white" in a popular subreddit
      • dingo_bat 9y ago
        How can you post such a racist comment?
      • s73ver_ 9y ago
        Because that statement has a pretty big white nationalist connotation.
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        Wow, people react negatively to a catchphrase of avowed racists? You can't really expect people to completely ignore context.
    • zeveb 9y ago
      /r/srs advocates misandry, which is just as hateful as misogyny. /r/atheism can be viciously anti-theist. /r/politics is full of anti-conservative hatred & bile. I'm not going to blame those nasty subreddits on the left; I'm going to blame those & all other nasty subreddits on the general nastiness of people, no matter what their philosophy or politics.
• daxorid 9y ago
  The larger point is that TPTB tend to ban groups that want communists thrown from helicopters, but are absolutely fine with groups that want fascists thrown from helicopters. There's a fundamental imbalance in how the standard is applied, and it's clearly ideological.
  • jackmott 9y ago
    You are supposed to throw fascists from helicopters.
    • hank_pank 9y ago
      Are you joking? I can't tell. Supposed as in... according to Marxism, or something? I don't get it.
    • aaron-lebo 9y ago
      abstaining from jokes about murdering people is usually a good rule. It is a joke, right?
    • Veelox 9y ago
      I'm not sure if you are serious or joking...
    • dijit 9y ago
      I disagree, I think you can tell them they're wrong and list the reasons why $proposed_ideology is better, but talking down to people and considering murder for believing something is absolutely abhorrent behaviour. FWIW, I hate the left and the right movements in equal strides, the left want me to feel terrible for being born a straight white male in a western post-colonial society, the right want the poor and under-priviliged to suffer and horde things like medical care. Understanding that there is a grey-scale and that ideologies are not absolute is the only way to proceed in my opinion. Being polarised only turns into fighting because nobodies view gets represented properly instead both sides put up strawmen.
      • deleted 9y ago
• foolfoolz 9y ago
  so /r/politics will be banned?
  • randomerr 9y ago
    No, /r/politics_destroy_democrats and /r/politics_destroy_republicans would be
• goodfight 9y ago
  No, it means that Reddit has a left leaning bias.
  • H99189 9y ago
    I think left "leaning" is a bit understated.
    • dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      Is there an upper bound on "leaning"?
      • H99189 9y ago
        Leaning just implies that they aren't completely fallen over to one side, which I think is very much the case.
  • NaliSauce 9y ago
    Maybe to give a concrete example: When /r/anarchism (left leaning sub about anarchism, antifa, communism, ...) mods refused to enforce reddit's rules relating to the incitement to violence, reddit only removed the mods in question instead of closing the sub. When /r/physical_removal (right leaning sub about pinochet 'memes') mods refused to enforce reddit's rules relating to the incitement to violence, the sub was removed. When /r/nazi (third position leaning sub about national socialism) - well, I don't actually know whether the mods there refused to enforce reddit's rules. It's been removed.
    • s73ver_ 9y ago
      /r/nazi was removed because it promoted Nazism.
• sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Ah, that's the crux: racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you hate it, you must be correct. For me personally, the echo chamber on both sides is enough to keep me far away from both /r/politics and /r/The_Donald. For example, you cannot say anything positive about Trump on /r/politics. Nothing. There was a screenshot showing that there were 231 negative articles posted and zero positive articles. It's literally propaganda, but from the other direction. Now, you can argue that you should fight the good fight and that it's immoral to say anything positive about him. Sure, I sort of buy that: If Trump was equivalent to nazis, then we should resist that from becoming a reality. And yet he's not. From what I've studied of history, the climate today is similar-ish to 1920's Germany. But if you examine the details of how the Nazi party seized power, you'll find they held guns up to people's heads in order to get various statesmen to vote a certain way. The German political institutions were captured by popular vote, then by force. And as long as we avoid the latter, the former isn't necessarily an indication that fascism is on the rise. But it's hard to make that argument in this climate. If you try, you're shouted down or misinterpreted or outright framed. And that's the central issue here: When you become a zealot, you lose the ability to take advantage of the opposition's good ideas. Are you sure it's true that Trump's entire political franchise has had zero good ideas? I'm worried that in the process of fighting Trump, we'll lose reason and rationality.
  • philipodonnell 9y ago
    > Are you sure it's true that Trump's entire political franchise has had zero good ideas? You're not wrong in that its important to hear both sides, but its also important to hear an appropriate amount from each side corresponding to the acceptableness of the ideas. Minority voices are important. When we find ourselves in the majority, we should be responsible for ensuring that those minority voices have a way to be heard. But not that they should automatically be heard equally to majority voices in all spaces. Trump is a minority voice. The election results and polling are clear on that. So the question becomes more about how much weight we, as the majority, should give to those ideas. And like, I hate to be that guy, but... not much. He doesn't actually seem to have any substantive policies to debate, its just slogans and ideas. The substantive stuff either gets mentioned and then forgotten by the next news cycle (what happened to the national emergency on opioids?), changes on a whim, or is just him talking and other people in his administration (or party) ignoring him and doing whatever they wanted. I just don't see the value in spending a lot of time/cognitive load considering that perspective on a regular basis, though I do venture into T_D sometimes to see what they are thinking. The current dichotomy of /r/politics vs /r/the_donald seems to have balanced itself out pretty well, I think.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• akerro 9y ago
  >that says some pretty nasty things about the modern right, doesn't it? Of modern left is too sensitive and too unable to accept that other have different opinions. Point of view depends on point of sitting...
• ksk 9y ago
  >The subs I've heard about banning were echo chambers dedicated to the idea How does your speculation or the fact that you simply have heard these things make your argument any persuasive? What is the actual ground reality?
• mtgx 9y ago
  One could argue /r/politics is an echo-chamber, too. I mean, it has been anti-Republican for a while, but at this point it's beyond absurd. All I see is Trump news. Like they hardly even talk about bad laws Republicans pass anymore. If it's not Trump-related, it's typically not upvoted/is downvoted. I think it may be time for Reddit to experiment with removing the downvote button, or maybe give it 25% of the power it has now, or something along those lines.
  • tzs 9y ago
    > All I see is Trump news 13 out of 25 of the front page of /r/politics right now (sorted by hot) are Trump news. 16 out of 25 if sorting by top. That doesn't seem excessive, considering how vocal Trump is.
• sctb 9y ago
  Could you please put more thought and less provocation into comments on controversial topics like this? It's difficult, I know, but we have to try. The discussions that follow such comments tend to have a desperate attitude that puts thoughtful discussion further out of reach. > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html