6 ms·

This is an insightful analogy. To stretch it a bit, I'd say there's an important difference between a fire door and reddit. The fire door knows its job is to p

This is an insightful analogy. To stretch it a bit, I'd say there's an important difference between a fire door and reddit. The fire door knows its job is to prevent people burning to death. Reddit... does it know it's job is to prevent outraged reaction? I think this is one of the things that made facebook so problematic on politics, it can't tell the the good likes, comments and shares from the bad ones. I'm not sure they really had a concept of better and worse. Some stuff isn't allowed, but otherwise? Imagine one post, where Mrs X invites neighbors to meet a local candidate at her house for revolutionary thoughts and biscuits. Another post, where Ms Y rants about Macron voters, Trump, taxes and kids these days. Both are political. One is actually democratic and participatory. The other is cheap, nasty, unproductive and divisive. Does Facebook, in any meaningful sense, value one over the other? Does reddit? Reddit has its non-censorship values. I respect that. It's important that someone does. I also think they want to house the weird, and I respect that too. But, I think unrestricted speech may be an insufficient value, like nondiscrimination or atheism. It's not enough to build on. You need positive values too. Free speech is also problematic, when taken as 'all speech is equal.'

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
>Reddit... does it know it's job is to prevent outraged reaction? // Ha, ha, ha. Cause that'll increase pageviews. Outraged reaction is exactly what all news media is going for because people rant and rave and in passing see more adverts. It's just they want to sanitise the topics according to their advertisers wishes. Reddit doesn't have non-censorship values, it's heavily censored; not all from the top admittedly, but the sanitisation that's gone on in the last few years is huge as Conde Nast have moved to make it a more tempting platform for advertisers.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  Well, yes that's the obvious (and cynical) assumption. It's definitely true as a real pseudo-economic force on the internet and media generally, but let's not just assume reddit are following that "interest" blindly. If you think reddit doesn't have those values, I guess we disagree. I don't see any way of coming to that conclusion apart from fundamentalism, it's either absolute or it's bullshit.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Let's see - Vanity Fair, Wired, GQ - there seems good reason to think that Conde Nast are willing to compromise and go with the click bait, a lot. https://www.wired.com/story/bad-actors-are-using-social-media-exactly-as-designed/ https://www.wired.com/story/bad-actors-are-using-social-medi... .. is the first entry Reddit, is it in the list, nope. I think Conde Nast are prepared to stoop pretty low in the search for dollars before integrity.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - zaksoup 9y ago
      To be fair, Conde Nast also owns Ars Technica, which, in my experience, has a fairly exemplary reputation as far as avoiding clickbait and running good articles. That said, it certainly seems to me like if not as an explicit business decision, Conde Nast certainly has no problem with their properties sensationalizing their media for views/clicks/etc
  - nradov 9y ago
    I'm not a Reddit user but there are plenty of stories out there about how the corporate managers have permanently closed some offensive forums. To be clear, I'm not claiming that Reddit management did anything wrong; they're under no obligation to spend money spreading toxic content. But obviously they don't value non-censorship as a corporate value.
- jorleif 9y ago
  Increased pageviews, yet many users also hate constant outrage and leave the platform entirely. It is not obvious that a platform with civil, high-quality discussion would lose in the marketplace (not obvious it would win either, though).
smsm42 9y ago
> But, I think unrestricted speech may be an insufficient value It looks like you are imagining that every speech has objective "value" which can be determined (maybe it's hard to do, but if we throw enough "big data" magic dust onto it we can get at least close) and then somehow speech can be sorted by value. I think it's completely wrong from the premise up. The value of the speech is a subjective measure. Some people value invitation of candidate X, some people value rants of Ms Y. In fact, if salaries of talk radio hosts and late night comedians tell us something, way more people value rants than measured, polite discussion. Thus I think "value" exists only in the eye of beholder, and trying to objectify it would only mean dismissing the values of part of the audience and emphasizing values of some other part of the audience. I can see why a site may want to do it and why one may want it to happen, if he or she happens to belong to the latter part, but I see no real justification for it.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > Thus I think "value" exists only in the eye of beholder, and trying to objectify it would only mean dismissing the values of part of the audience and emphasizing values of some other part of the audience. And yet we need to do it. As you observed, "way more people value rants than measured, polite discussion", and I'd claim that this is a problem. The "value" may be subjective, but the consequences of both "kinds of speech" are real, and so it would be great to incentivize the kind that leads to a more stable, more just society, and disincentivize the one that causes thoughtless destruction. Yes, I'm aware that "disincentivize" is getting dangerously close to "ban", but I feel we need to try and walk that fine line, if we want to have a society that's better than just random.
  - hnuser1234 9y ago
    What if I don't believe in trying to control people at such a low level? What if I think people should be allowed to be as ranty as they want without having to worry about being "disincentivized"?
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
hnuser1234 9y ago
>Reddit... does it know it's job is to prevent outraged reaction? Says who? Let's get a little more objective first. Its job is to make money, presumably, if not encourage participation by any means necessary. Its job isn't to moderate. Its job is to allow the creation of sub-communities that can be moderated in any conceivable way. Most moderators aren't interested in reducing reactionism, they're just interested in reducing whatever they or their community doesn't like.
ekianjo 9y ago
> Free speech is also problematic, when taken as 'all speech is equal.' Free speech is not problematic, as long as everyone has the right to speak and falsehoods can be debunked - there should be no "safe place" for the exchange of ideas, whether they are good or not. Starting by saying that 'free speech' has a problem is a very, very dangerous place to go to.
- aninhumer 9y ago
  > there should be no "safe place" for the exchange of ideas What do you think a "safe space" is? If you are arguing that there should be platforms where people can speak without being shouted down when the audience strongly disagrees with what they're saying, that is a safe space. In order to construct that space, you have to deny some rights of the audience to speak in that context. And this is the whole problem with naive free speech advocacy. Unrestricted free speech is not possible anymore than unrestricted freedom in general is possible. People cannot possibly hear every single person's viewpoint, so some people will always be denied a platform to speak to some other people. The question is how best to structure our societal discourse. What values are important, and how do we protect them? And the question needs an answer more complicated and nuanced than "free speech". Because when we don't acknowledge the complexity of this question, we become blind to the de-facto decisions that we're making about which speech to prioritise.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    > If you are arguing that there should be platforms where people can speak without being shouted down when the audience strongly disagrees with what they're saying, that is a safe space. In order to construct that space, you have to deny some rights of the audience to speak in that context. No, I am not asking for that kind of platforms. I am saying to let people express what they want to say, and the only restriction to Free Speech should be "direct incitation to violence" (such as asking to lynch someone publicly) as mentioned in the US Constitution. Everything else should be able to be said and be heard, and debated between people as long as they want to debate. And of course you will be responsible for what you say, as an individual, and you will have to face the consequences of your words. But it goes both ways. Restricting Free Speech puts power among the ones in control of Speech. Allowing Free Speech is the only thing you can do to allow even the marginal points of view, even unpopular ones, to be heard.
Intermernet 9y ago
>unrestricted speech may be an insufficient value, like nondiscrimination or atheism. It's not enough to build on. You need positive values too. I agree with this statement, except for the inclusion of atheism in the list. Atheism is literally the lack of a belief. You may as well say "The lack of belief in astrology isn't enough to build on. You need positive values too." Unrestricted speech and nondiscrimination argue for something. Atheism literally argues for nothing.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

>Reddit... does it know it's job is to prevent outraged reaction? // Ha, ha, ha. Cause that'll increase pageviews. Outraged reaction is exactly what all news media is going for because people rant and rave and in passing see more adverts. It's just they want to sanitise the topics according to their advertisers wishes. Reddit doesn't have non-censorship values, it's heavily censored; not all from the top admittedly, but the sanitisation that's gone on in the last few years is huge as Conde Nast have moved to make it a more tempting platform for advertisers.

dalbasal 9y ago
Well, yes that's the obvious (and cynical) assumption. It's definitely true as a real pseudo-economic force on the internet and media generally, but let's not just assume reddit are following that "interest" blindly. If you think reddit doesn't have those values, I guess we disagree. I don't see any way of coming to that conclusion apart from fundamentalism, it's either absolute or it's bullshit.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Let's see - Vanity Fair, Wired, GQ - there seems good reason to think that Conde Nast are willing to compromise and go with the click bait, a lot. https://www.wired.com/story/bad-actors-are-using-social-media-exactly-as-designed/ https://www.wired.com/story/bad-actors-are-using-social-medi... .. is the first entry Reddit, is it in the list, nope. I think Conde Nast are prepared to stoop pretty low in the search for dollars before integrity.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - zaksoup 9y ago
    To be fair, Conde Nast also owns Ars Technica, which, in my experience, has a fairly exemplary reputation as far as avoiding clickbait and running good articles. That said, it certainly seems to me like if not as an explicit business decision, Conde Nast certainly has no problem with their properties sensationalizing their media for views/clicks/etc
- nradov 9y ago
  I'm not a Reddit user but there are plenty of stories out there about how the corporate managers have permanently closed some offensive forums. To be clear, I'm not claiming that Reddit management did anything wrong; they're under no obligation to spend money spreading toxic content. But obviously they don't value non-censorship as a corporate value.
jorleif 9y ago
Increased pageviews, yet many users also hate constant outrage and leave the platform entirely. It is not obvious that a platform with civil, high-quality discussion would lose in the marketplace (not obvious it would win either, though).

smsm42 9y ago

> But, I think unrestricted speech may be an insufficient value It looks like you are imagining that every speech has objective "value" which can be determined (maybe it's hard to do, but if we throw enough "big data" magic dust onto it we can get at least close) and then somehow speech can be sorted by value. I think it's completely wrong from the premise up. The value of the speech is a subjective measure. Some people value invitation of candidate X, some people value rants of Ms Y. In fact, if salaries of talk radio hosts and late night comedians tell us something, way more people value rants than measured, polite discussion. Thus I think "value" exists only in the eye of beholder, and trying to objectify it would only mean dismissing the values of part of the audience and emphasizing values of some other part of the audience. I can see why a site may want to do it and why one may want it to happen, if he or she happens to belong to the latter part, but I see no real justification for it.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
> Thus I think "value" exists only in the eye of beholder, and trying to objectify it would only mean dismissing the values of part of the audience and emphasizing values of some other part of the audience. And yet we need to do it. As you observed, "way more people value rants than measured, polite discussion", and I'd claim that this is a problem. The "value" may be subjective, but the consequences of both "kinds of speech" are real, and so it would be great to incentivize the kind that leads to a more stable, more just society, and disincentivize the one that causes thoughtless destruction. Yes, I'm aware that "disincentivize" is getting dangerously close to "ban", but I feel we need to try and walk that fine line, if we want to have a society that's better than just random.
- hnuser1234 9y ago
  What if I don't believe in trying to control people at such a low level? What if I think people should be allowed to be as ranty as they want without having to worry about being "disincentivized"?
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago

hnuser1234 9y ago

>Reddit... does it know it's job is to prevent outraged reaction? Says who? Let's get a little more objective first. Its job is to make money, presumably, if not encourage participation by any means necessary. Its job isn't to moderate. Its job is to allow the creation of sub-communities that can be moderated in any conceivable way. Most moderators aren't interested in reducing reactionism, they're just interested in reducing whatever they or their community doesn't like.

ekianjo 9y ago

> Free speech is also problematic, when taken as 'all speech is equal.' Free speech is not problematic, as long as everyone has the right to speak and falsehoods can be debunked - there should be no "safe place" for the exchange of ideas, whether they are good or not. Starting by saying that 'free speech' has a problem is a very, very dangerous place to go to.

aninhumer 9y ago
> there should be no "safe place" for the exchange of ideas What do you think a "safe space" is? If you are arguing that there should be platforms where people can speak without being shouted down when the audience strongly disagrees with what they're saying, that is a safe space. In order to construct that space, you have to deny some rights of the audience to speak in that context. And this is the whole problem with naive free speech advocacy. Unrestricted free speech is not possible anymore than unrestricted freedom in general is possible. People cannot possibly hear every single person's viewpoint, so some people will always be denied a platform to speak to some other people. The question is how best to structure our societal discourse. What values are important, and how do we protect them? And the question needs an answer more complicated and nuanced than "free speech". Because when we don't acknowledge the complexity of this question, we become blind to the de-facto decisions that we're making about which speech to prioritise.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > If you are arguing that there should be platforms where people can speak without being shouted down when the audience strongly disagrees with what they're saying, that is a safe space. In order to construct that space, you have to deny some rights of the audience to speak in that context. No, I am not asking for that kind of platforms. I am saying to let people express what they want to say, and the only restriction to Free Speech should be "direct incitation to violence" (such as asking to lynch someone publicly) as mentioned in the US Constitution. Everything else should be able to be said and be heard, and debated between people as long as they want to debate. And of course you will be responsible for what you say, as an individual, and you will have to face the consequences of your words. But it goes both ways. Restricting Free Speech puts power among the ones in control of Speech. Allowing Free Speech is the only thing you can do to allow even the marginal points of view, even unpopular ones, to be heard.

Intermernet 9y ago

>unrestricted speech may be an insufficient value, like nondiscrimination or atheism. It's not enough to build on. You need positive values too. I agree with this statement, except for the inclusion of atheism in the list. Atheism is literally the lack of a belief. You may as well say "The lack of belief in astrology isn't enough to build on. You need positive values too." Unrestricted speech and nondiscrimination argue for something. Atheism literally argues for nothing.