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Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's bee

Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The Reddit situation reminds me of the post about failing to build a billion dollar company a few days ago. Reddit is trying to make VCs happy and continue to grow the business, but a platform like Reddit is best as a less reliant on growth, but stable platform. That allows the most ideas to be shared and the most natural interaction between users. I really think there is space for a competitor, but the switching costs will be high.

newsbinator 8y ago
Can you imagine the reaction if a user's post on HN were edited by YC? I guess it'd be the instant death of the network. That this action a) happened on Reddit + b) was mostly/quickly forgotten says a lot about the different demographics. Audiences who largely come for cat pictures and political snark don't have to worry about CEOs breaking the 4th wall. I've been a Redditor for 9+ years and I still am one. But today's Reddit isn't the one I signed up for.
- adventured 8y ago
  I casually browsed Reddit as a non-account user for five or six years, then used it frequently for roughly two years with an account. Then the practice of aggressive censorship and banning began, as they started to try to transform it into another giant social media business. I stopped visiting entirely as it turned into an unhinged disaster leading up to the 2016 election. I doubt I'll ever bother to return. I abandoned Imgur for a similar reason, a flood of political trash. I was happy to see Imgur now strips the vast majority of political content out of most viral, so I occasionally visit their homepage again.
  - frogpelt 8y ago
    Wait. Do you like the corporate censorship or not?
- zozbot123 8y ago
  > Can you imagine the reaction if a user's post on HN were edited by YC? If the user's post was about the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and included baseless, highly offensive libel of the YC folks? Yeah, I don't think many people here would care. Especially since most users here understand that a website's comment database can be edited arbitrarily, it's not nearly as unthinkable as you assume. Don't like it, get your own website.
  - simonh 8y ago
    I would care. Deleting a post is one thing and that's fine because it's clear what was done and why, but editing a post surreptitiously is a deliberate attempt to deceive and that's not acceptable.
    - zozbot123 8y ago
      It was not an attempt to deceive, it was a way of visibly trolling back people who were dumb enough to libel the Reddit CEO on his own website, in extremely offensive ways. And he owned up to it very quickly after it happened.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
        "Fuck /u/spez" is not libel, and is not even particularly offensive. And yes, he "owned up", but without apologizing. EDIT: So actually on https://www.reddit.com/comments/5frg1n https://www.reddit.com/comments/5frg1n he did actually say that he was sorry and he wouldn't do it again. That's interesting, because I have a very strong memory of that not being the case. Weird. Either there was an initial acknowledgement that didn't have any sort of apology, or I missed something. I still stand by my minimization of the thing to which he reacted.
        JoeSmithson 8y ago
        The entire subreddit was calling him a paedophile, this is actually mentioned in the post this thread is about, so I'm not sure how you could have missed it -https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admins_are_suffering_from_low_energy_have/dad5sf1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admi... It seems a bit like your feelings on this issue are stronger than your recollection.
- rat9988 8y ago
  You are overstimating the community's reaction. There would be some backslash but nothing over the long term.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  I highly doubt HN would see a drop in activity if a single post was edited. Especially if it’s edited to remove offensive or obviously false content.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    What if it was a user insulting a member of ycombinator, and it was edited to leave everything the same except changing the target to a mod? Principles matter, and that level of dishonesty is not acceptable.
    - b_tterc_p 8y ago
      personally I would say don’t do that again, and then get over it.
- ppseafield 8y ago
  Indeed. I think the comment editing (and immediate capitulation afterwards) was horrible, but the fact that they allowed the_donald to continue to break their own rules was way worse. They constantly would dox, harass, downvote brigade (in posts stickied by mods), and in general act entirely in bad faith. Other subreddits were banned for much, much less. Either they wanted their advertising money or were simply supportive of their platform/actions, but eventually it was enough for me to leave Reddit entirely.
  - danlugo92 8y ago
    the_donald was censored too.
  - dpau 8y ago
    I wonder if the presence of a controversial subreddit like the_donald is good for business, increasing discussion, site traffic and thus revenue? Perhaps Reddit has a financial incentive to encourage (or at least not punish) subreddit drama.
    - CM30 8y ago
      Most probably. It's about the current US president after all, and it's the closest thing to an official forum/social network his fanbase/supporters have. If Reddit banned it, then they'd likely drive said users to a competitor (like Voat) and divert all that media attention from Reddit to said competitor in the process.
      - YUMad 8y ago
        IMO, reddit banning t_d would create much more serious issues for them. The last thing they want is to get attention as a possible campaign financer. Even tho political choice is not a protected category and it's not illegal for reddit to ban t_d, since t_d clearly defines itself as rally sub for president, t_d mods follow rules and ban offending accounts quickly, and, most importantly, President Trump filed his campaign for 2020. with FEC almost immediately after becoming president. Banning t_d could be construed as political speech, and a form of political donation. And reddit most definitely doesn't want legal inquiries of that kind, I bet they have a lot of dirty laundry there - did you guys forget how "cleanly" /r/politics switched overnight (literally) from bernie central to hillary propaganda? They most definitely want to ban it, as demonstrated in leaked logs from private admin chat some time ago, but they do not dare.
- DanBC 8y ago
  I think it has already happened - a user doxxed someone and that info was edited out. A note was left about the edit. Maybe I'm wrong though, and it didn't happen here but somewhere else.
- jancsika 8y ago
  > I guess it'd be the instant death of the network. You think a critical mass of HN users would band together to bring down a social media site because the company participates in censorship?
- hopler 8y ago
  Forgotten? It's constantly talked about, like now
- lmm 8y ago
  > I guess it'd be the instant death of the network. Nonsense. HN moderators already act with zero accountability. This is possibly the only major site that shadowbans users as a matter of course.
  - ddingus 8y ago
    That is not an edit. And of course! It is their house. Play nice, or see the impact. And they do have accountability. Users are here because it makes sense. Should that change, so will users do something else. Nothing out of the ordinary there.
  - mnglkhn2 8y ago
    the practice of shadow banning shows how low their education level is (I'm looking at you dang)
- ggm 8y ago
  Can you imagine the reaction if a user's post on HN were edited by YC? I guess it'd be the instant death of the network. No. It's moderated and we love it that way. I might even have been shadowbanned and I still love it. Moderation rocks! (Not being sarcastic btw. I really do like HN moderation)
judge2020 8y ago
The "editing comments" drama: https://redd.it/5frg1n https://redd.it/5frg1n
- darkhorn 8y ago
  They have edited one of my comments after that post.
supercanuck 8y ago
I wish Reddit could be run as a non-profit. Its benefit to society is immense.
- _up 8y ago
  If this hypothesis where true couldn't you just build a niche Reddit clone that is run as a non-profit. People certainly would switch if it is so much better.
  - xfitm3 8y ago
    Reddit’s value is in the user base, not the software or style of the site.
    - _up 8y ago
      Sure, but the argument was about what would be different if it was run or even started as a non-profit? Tencent, for example, could still become a "sponsor" and board member and try to influence everything.
  - IvyMike 8y ago
    This is the premise behind https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes Sadly invite only for now.
    - _up 8y ago
      But this still needs money for development and growth. I don't see how a non-profit, magically needs less money for that.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  It only has that benefit because of investment, and that investment would have never come had it been a non-profit.
  - 8y ago
throwaway415415 8y ago
More information: The CEO edited post(s) from r/theDonald which was a horrible subreddit. They ended up creating a new feature (r/popular) to get rid of that sub. I think I'm OK with that.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Editing comments to make it seem like people are saying things they didn't is basically never OK, no matter where the post was made.
  - xfitm3 8y ago
    s/basically//g, it might also expose them to liability. safe harbor is already in question for sites that are moderated. I imagine editing user content crosses another legal line.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Excellent. In accordance with your beliefs, let's edit your comment to replace theDonald with some subreddit that I dislike. I'm sure this is totally fine, because after all I'm confident that they're "horrible". We won't need to mark your comment as edited. This is, of course, "OK".
sodosopa 8y ago
Editing one post is bad, but also consider that they've become a massive safe harbor for the alt-right. Reddit admins routinely dismiss threats, quick to hide accounts from people like Elliott Rodgers, etc. They edited a the_donald post all while allowing bigotry and hate speech flourish on Reddit.
- humanrebar 8y ago
  But there are also TwoXChromosomes, LateStageCapitalism, and all the niche sexual orientation subs. A lot of Reddit is pretty woke, so it's a safe harbor for quite a bit, right?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- sergiotapia 8y ago
  > consider that they've become a massive safe harbor for the alt-right. I would say 95% of the website is firmly liberal. Try saying anything conservative anywhere on the platform and you'll be either: - Banned - Downvoted - Shadowbanned
  - jcwpwi2d 8y ago
    I'll never understand these people who say that Reddit is a safe harbour for nazis and bla bla bla. I'm a fascist and I've been in tons of subs that were banned, to the point where there's no place left to go, and I've known many people who were banned as well. In the meantime, communists get to enjoy their subs and nothing ever happens to them. (Which is not to say that I think they should be banned, mind you. I wish we all got to keep our subs and accounts...) Also I don't believe Elliot Rodger ever had a Reddit account.
    - learc83 8y ago
      >Which is not to say that I think they should be banned, mind you. I wish we all got to keep our subs and accounts... So you're a facist who supports free speech?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jancsika 8y ago
> Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. That hasn't been forgotten. Also, it has the wrong number of occurrences to be a persuasive data point toward the characterization "plague."
tehwebguy 8y ago
People that won’t let that prank go have no business in any discussion about the platform. It’s a completely disingenuous argument.
- arminiusreturns 8y ago
  I would say by misrepresenting the arguments of your opponents and simplifying them to the point of removing them, it is you who is making the disingenuous argument.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  The issue was that the "prank" demonstrated the amount of power the Reddit admins had over the site, and created discussion as to whether it could be abused.
  - tehwebguy 8y ago
    Of course someone has access to the actual database, no one needed a demonstration to understand that. It was a prank, a troll on the trollingest people on the platform. That’s all.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    > and created discussion as to whether it could be abused. But the conversation was kicked off by it being abused. The conclusion is already there.
Pxtl 8y ago
Well, can you blame them for developing a habit of censorship when the laissez-faire approach gave them a huge problem with kiddie-porn trading, extreme racism, destructive conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, misogyny, pro-rape communities, etc? They tried the hands-off approach and it failed spectacularly. The site spent its boom years with basically negligible community-management while it spent its efforts doing damage-control on its overwhelmed servers.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  If the hands-off approach coincides with the site's "boom years", then an alternative view is that it was, in fact, a huge benefit.
  - hopler 8y ago
    The more work I do, the more trash I generate. That doesn't make the trash the reason for my success, and doesn't earn the trash an honored central place at my table.
    - a1369209993 8y ago
      But it does mean that banning people for generating trash is a fucking terrible idea. If you aren't willing to bear the drawbacks of free speech then you aren't going to get the benefits of it either. Unfortunately, civil rights, like more concrete infrastructure, are a investment you can pillage in the short term and not see the consequences until later.
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        I think it's typical that the majority of a given public nuisance is created by a small segment of the people who contribute to the problem overall. So it seems logical to target that subset. Everybody generates trash, but not everybody contributes equally to illegal dumping and littering.
- humanrebar 8y ago
intopieces 8y ago
>The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The CEO changed a single post from "fuck <his username>" to "fuck <username of the moderators of the specific sub-board>" for an hour. While certainly this action was not received well, the drama it caused is way overblown and isn't evidence of being 'plagued with censorship.' If anything it's plagued with shills from governments and corporations.
- deadalus 8y ago
  > the drama it caused is way overblown People have been arrested because of Reddit posts they made. If the admins can edit comments without any indication to the users... They can falsely accuse you of a crime. They can also identify you and ban you specially if you do or say things not in alignment with the founders of Reddit(criticizing Serina Williams got a subreddit banned recently).
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    Admins are always 100% going to be capable of editing posts on a website, after all they can just edit the database. This "proof" they have the ability to do that somehow signaling danger is nothing short of ridiculous.
    - ddingus 8y ago
      No it is not. Users need to know the conversation is coherent. Real. Reddit is not always casual chat. There is hide, delete and edit with a clear history for all involved. Touching the database changes the record of reality without leaving history of it happening. The database edit is what drove the spez controversy.
      - throwaway2048 8y ago
        Again, this is always possible, its possible on HN, its possible on gmail, its possible on every single site on the internet, that is how the technology works. This isn't some kind of dark secret backdoor spez built into the reddit codebase. Immature and stupid action maybe, but some kind of scary sentinel of how admin power can be uniquely abused at reddit, it isn't.
ajross 8y ago
> Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. All forums are "plagued" in that way, though. This one too. Everyone who wants to run such a service has a personal idea of what expression is appropriate within the vision of the site and which ones aren't welcome. And everyone has personal sensitivities and makes moderation mistakes, too. Honestly if reddit has failed, it's been in the opposite direction. They've been too lax with moderation and had to make rapid and disruptive course corrections when people point out the garbage they've been tolerating. You have a first amendment right to express your opinions to anyone you want, but you don't have a right to do it on someone else's moderated forum.
- humanrebar 8y ago
  Disagree. Google isn't responsible for the content of emails, WhatsApp is not responsible for the groups using it to organize, and the monuments in D.C. aren't responsible when some folks decide to yell bigoted language. There needs to be room for public spaces to just be venues. Service providers should be able to just be service providers. There should be limits, but they should mostly align with legal limits and they should be enforce by law enforcement officers accountable to the public primarily by observing public posts or through warrants and subpoenas. There should additionally be norms about, broadly, what counts as disruptive behavior, but it needs to be agnostic about content. I don't really care if it is hard to make 100 billion dollars because there are too many trolls or because the content doesn't align with "corporate values".
  - ajross 8y ago
    Again, though, that's what you say you want, but it's not what you want. You want moderation, you want focused discussion, you want to be free of objectionable garbage, you want high signal to noise ratio, and the proof of that is that you're having this argument on a heavily moderated discussion forum as we speak. There's no lack of "true" free speech opportunity on the internet. Sites like stormfront and 4chan remain a thing. Don't pretend like that's what we all want from Reddit, is all I'm saying.
    - 8y ago
darkmarmot 8y ago
My 8 year-old account was shadow-banned site-wide for criticizing AMC's video player on a sponsored link (they've since disabled comments on advertising posts).
kadendogthing 8y ago
>The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. No the user was/is apart of a radical political group that was harassing the admins and other users on a private website, essentially abusing the platform. Spare me the claims of censorship. We can't even get rid of subreddits that sexualize minors or even safe havens for beastiality. Free speech has become a thought terminating cliche.
bdcravens 8y ago
Most censorship comes from subreddit mods, not Reddit the company.
screye 8y ago
Honestly, idk if the cofounder episode was big enough to warrant the attention it had gotten. Reddit has traditionally allowed for users to criticize the admins/founders to their hearts fill. This was one isolated incident, among a 1000 similar comments. Now, the sudden disappearance of some highly voted posts is something I find more interesting. That, and tolerating subreddits that routinely break the site's rules.
YUMad 8y ago
They changed the rules by vall8ng it harassment, so if you do the same now (write "fuck /u/modname") you get muted and then banned on reoffending.
- YUMad 8y ago
  *calling
- AgentME 8y ago
  I'd expect to get banned on any site if I went around saying "fuck <people who run this place>". Especially if I was doing it in solidarity with people making baseless pedophilia accusations. Even on 4chan, assuming they noticed me. Doesn't really feel like a cause for alarm.

newsbinator 8y ago

Can you imagine the reaction if a user's post on HN were edited by YC? I guess it'd be the instant death of the network. That this action a) happened on Reddit + b) was mostly/quickly forgotten says a lot about the different demographics. Audiences who largely come for cat pictures and political snark don't have to worry about CEOs breaking the 4th wall. I've been a Redditor for 9+ years and I still am one. But today's Reddit isn't the one I signed up for.

adventured 8y ago
I casually browsed Reddit as a non-account user for five or six years, then used it frequently for roughly two years with an account. Then the practice of aggressive censorship and banning began, as they started to try to transform it into another giant social media business. I stopped visiting entirely as it turned into an unhinged disaster leading up to the 2016 election. I doubt I'll ever bother to return. I abandoned Imgur for a similar reason, a flood of political trash. I was happy to see Imgur now strips the vast majority of political content out of most viral, so I occasionally visit their homepage again.
- frogpelt 8y ago
  Wait. Do you like the corporate censorship or not?
zozbot123 8y ago
> Can you imagine the reaction if a user's post on HN were edited by YC? If the user's post was about the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and included baseless, highly offensive libel of the YC folks? Yeah, I don't think many people here would care. Especially since most users here understand that a website's comment database can be edited arbitrarily, it's not nearly as unthinkable as you assume. Don't like it, get your own website.
- simonh 8y ago
  I would care. Deleting a post is one thing and that's fine because it's clear what was done and why, but editing a post surreptitiously is a deliberate attempt to deceive and that's not acceptable.
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    It was not an attempt to deceive, it was a way of visibly trolling back people who were dumb enough to libel the Reddit CEO on his own website, in extremely offensive ways. And he owned up to it very quickly after it happened.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
      "Fuck /u/spez" is not libel, and is not even particularly offensive. And yes, he "owned up", but without apologizing. EDIT: So actually on https://www.reddit.com/comments/5frg1n https://www.reddit.com/comments/5frg1n he did actually say that he was sorry and he wouldn't do it again. That's interesting, because I have a very strong memory of that not being the case. Weird. Either there was an initial acknowledgement that didn't have any sort of apology, or I missed something. I still stand by my minimization of the thing to which he reacted.
      - JoeSmithson 8y ago
        The entire subreddit was calling him a paedophile, this is actually mentioned in the post this thread is about, so I'm not sure how you could have missed it -https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admins_are_suffering_from_low_energy_have/dad5sf1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admi... It seems a bit like your feelings on this issue are stronger than your recollection.
rat9988 8y ago
You are overstimating the community's reaction. There would be some backslash but nothing over the long term.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
I highly doubt HN would see a drop in activity if a single post was edited. Especially if it’s edited to remove offensive or obviously false content.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  What if it was a user insulting a member of ycombinator, and it was edited to leave everything the same except changing the target to a mod? Principles matter, and that level of dishonesty is not acceptable.
  - b_tterc_p 8y ago
    personally I would say don’t do that again, and then get over it.
ppseafield 8y ago
Indeed. I think the comment editing (and immediate capitulation afterwards) was horrible, but the fact that they allowed the_donald to continue to break their own rules was way worse. They constantly would dox, harass, downvote brigade (in posts stickied by mods), and in general act entirely in bad faith. Other subreddits were banned for much, much less. Either they wanted their advertising money or were simply supportive of their platform/actions, but eventually it was enough for me to leave Reddit entirely.
- danlugo92 8y ago
  the_donald was censored too.
- dpau 8y ago
  I wonder if the presence of a controversial subreddit like the_donald is good for business, increasing discussion, site traffic and thus revenue? Perhaps Reddit has a financial incentive to encourage (or at least not punish) subreddit drama.
  - CM30 8y ago
    Most probably. It's about the current US president after all, and it's the closest thing to an official forum/social network his fanbase/supporters have. If Reddit banned it, then they'd likely drive said users to a competitor (like Voat) and divert all that media attention from Reddit to said competitor in the process.
    - YUMad 8y ago
      IMO, reddit banning t_d would create much more serious issues for them. The last thing they want is to get attention as a possible campaign financer. Even tho political choice is not a protected category and it's not illegal for reddit to ban t_d, since t_d clearly defines itself as rally sub for president, t_d mods follow rules and ban offending accounts quickly, and, most importantly, President Trump filed his campaign for 2020. with FEC almost immediately after becoming president. Banning t_d could be construed as political speech, and a form of political donation. And reddit most definitely doesn't want legal inquiries of that kind, I bet they have a lot of dirty laundry there - did you guys forget how "cleanly" /r/politics switched overnight (literally) from bernie central to hillary propaganda? They most definitely want to ban it, as demonstrated in leaked logs from private admin chat some time ago, but they do not dare.
DanBC 8y ago
I think it has already happened - a user doxxed someone and that info was edited out. A note was left about the edit. Maybe I'm wrong though, and it didn't happen here but somewhere else.
jancsika 8y ago
> I guess it'd be the instant death of the network. You think a critical mass of HN users would band together to bring down a social media site because the company participates in censorship?
hopler 8y ago
Forgotten? It's constantly talked about, like now
lmm 8y ago
> I guess it'd be the instant death of the network. Nonsense. HN moderators already act with zero accountability. This is possibly the only major site that shadowbans users as a matter of course.
- ddingus 8y ago
  That is not an edit. And of course! It is their house. Play nice, or see the impact. And they do have accountability. Users are here because it makes sense. Should that change, so will users do something else. Nothing out of the ordinary there.
- mnglkhn2 8y ago
  the practice of shadow banning shows how low their education level is (I'm looking at you dang)
ggm 8y ago
Can you imagine the reaction if a user's post on HN were edited by YC? I guess it'd be the instant death of the network. No. It's moderated and we love it that way. I might even have been shadowbanned and I still love it. Moderation rocks! (Not being sarcastic btw. I really do like HN moderation)

judge2020 8y ago

The "editing comments" drama: https://redd.it/5frg1n https://redd.it/5frg1n

darkhorn 8y ago
They have edited one of my comments after that post.

supercanuck 8y ago

I wish Reddit could be run as a non-profit. Its benefit to society is immense.

_up 8y ago
If this hypothesis where true couldn't you just build a niche Reddit clone that is run as a non-profit. People certainly would switch if it is so much better.
- xfitm3 8y ago
  Reddit’s value is in the user base, not the software or style of the site.
  - _up 8y ago
    Sure, but the argument was about what would be different if it was run or even started as a non-profit? Tencent, for example, could still become a "sponsor" and board member and try to influence everything.
- IvyMike 8y ago
  This is the premise behind https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes Sadly invite only for now.
  - _up 8y ago
    But this still needs money for development and growth. I don't see how a non-profit, magically needs less money for that.
bdcravens 8y ago
It only has that benefit because of investment, and that investment would have never come had it been a non-profit.
- 8y ago

throwaway415415 8y ago

More information: The CEO edited post(s) from r/theDonald which was a horrible subreddit. They ended up creating a new feature (r/popular) to get rid of that sub. I think I'm OK with that.

saagarjha 8y ago
Editing comments to make it seem like people are saying things they didn't is basically never OK, no matter where the post was made.
- xfitm3 8y ago
  s/basically//g, it might also expose them to liability. safe harbor is already in question for sites that are moderated. I imagine editing user content crosses another legal line.
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
Excellent. In accordance with your beliefs, let's edit your comment to replace theDonald with some subreddit that I dislike. I'm sure this is totally fine, because after all I'm confident that they're "horrible". We won't need to mark your comment as edited. This is, of course, "OK".

sodosopa 8y ago

Editing one post is bad, but also consider that they've become a massive safe harbor for the alt-right. Reddit admins routinely dismiss threats, quick to hide accounts from people like Elliott Rodgers, etc. They edited a the_donald post all while allowing bigotry and hate speech flourish on Reddit.

humanrebar 8y ago
But there are also TwoXChromosomes, LateStageCapitalism, and all the niche sexual orientation subs. A lot of Reddit is pretty woke, so it's a safe harbor for quite a bit, right?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sergiotapia 8y ago
> consider that they've become a massive safe harbor for the alt-right. I would say 95% of the website is firmly liberal. Try saying anything conservative anywhere on the platform and you'll be either: - Banned - Downvoted - Shadowbanned
- jcwpwi2d 8y ago
  I'll never understand these people who say that Reddit is a safe harbour for nazis and bla bla bla. I'm a fascist and I've been in tons of subs that were banned, to the point where there's no place left to go, and I've known many people who were banned as well. In the meantime, communists get to enjoy their subs and nothing ever happens to them. (Which is not to say that I think they should be banned, mind you. I wish we all got to keep our subs and accounts...) Also I don't believe Elliot Rodger ever had a Reddit account.
  - learc83 8y ago
    >Which is not to say that I think they should be banned, mind you. I wish we all got to keep our subs and accounts... So you're a facist who supports free speech?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jancsika 8y ago

> Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. That hasn't been forgotten. Also, it has the wrong number of occurrences to be a persuasive data point toward the characterization "plague."

tehwebguy 8y ago

People that won’t let that prank go have no business in any discussion about the platform. It’s a completely disingenuous argument.

arminiusreturns 8y ago
I would say by misrepresenting the arguments of your opponents and simplifying them to the point of removing them, it is you who is making the disingenuous argument.
saagarjha 8y ago
The issue was that the "prank" demonstrated the amount of power the Reddit admins had over the site, and created discussion as to whether it could be abused.
- tehwebguy 8y ago
  Of course someone has access to the actual database, no one needed a demonstration to understand that. It was a prank, a troll on the trollingest people on the platform. That’s all.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  > and created discussion as to whether it could be abused. But the conversation was kicked off by it being abused. The conclusion is already there.

Pxtl 8y ago

Well, can you blame them for developing a habit of censorship when the laissez-faire approach gave them a huge problem with kiddie-porn trading, extreme racism, destructive conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, misogyny, pro-rape communities, etc? They tried the hands-off approach and it failed spectacularly. The site spent its boom years with basically negligible community-management while it spent its efforts doing damage-control on its overwhelmed servers.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
If the hands-off approach coincides with the site's "boom years", then an alternative view is that it was, in fact, a huge benefit.
- hopler 8y ago
  The more work I do, the more trash I generate. That doesn't make the trash the reason for my success, and doesn't earn the trash an honored central place at my table.
  - a1369209993 8y ago
    But it does mean that banning people for generating trash is a fucking terrible idea. If you aren't willing to bear the drawbacks of free speech then you aren't going to get the benefits of it either. Unfortunately, civil rights, like more concrete infrastructure, are a investment you can pillage in the short term and not see the consequences until later.
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      I think it's typical that the majority of a given public nuisance is created by a small segment of the people who contribute to the problem overall. So it seems logical to target that subset. Everybody generates trash, but not everybody contributes equally to illegal dumping and littering.
humanrebar 8y ago

intopieces 8y ago

>The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The CEO changed a single post from "fuck <his username>" to "fuck <username of the moderators of the specific sub-board>" for an hour. While certainly this action was not received well, the drama it caused is way overblown and isn't evidence of being 'plagued with censorship.' If anything it's plagued with shills from governments and corporations.

deadalus 8y ago
> the drama it caused is way overblown People have been arrested because of Reddit posts they made. If the admins can edit comments without any indication to the users... They can falsely accuse you of a crime. They can also identify you and ban you specially if you do or say things not in alignment with the founders of Reddit(criticizing Serina Williams got a subreddit banned recently).
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Admins are always 100% going to be capable of editing posts on a website, after all they can just edit the database. This "proof" they have the ability to do that somehow signaling danger is nothing short of ridiculous.
  - ddingus 8y ago
    No it is not. Users need to know the conversation is coherent. Real. Reddit is not always casual chat. There is hide, delete and edit with a clear history for all involved. Touching the database changes the record of reality without leaving history of it happening. The database edit is what drove the spez controversy.
    - throwaway2048 8y ago
      Again, this is always possible, its possible on HN, its possible on gmail, its possible on every single site on the internet, that is how the technology works. This isn't some kind of dark secret backdoor spez built into the reddit codebase. Immature and stupid action maybe, but some kind of scary sentinel of how admin power can be uniquely abused at reddit, it isn't.

ajross 8y ago

> Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. All forums are "plagued" in that way, though. This one too. Everyone who wants to run such a service has a personal idea of what expression is appropriate within the vision of the site and which ones aren't welcome. And everyone has personal sensitivities and makes moderation mistakes, too. Honestly if reddit has failed, it's been in the opposite direction. They've been too lax with moderation and had to make rapid and disruptive course corrections when people point out the garbage they've been tolerating. You have a first amendment right to express your opinions to anyone you want, but you don't have a right to do it on someone else's moderated forum.

humanrebar 8y ago
Disagree. Google isn't responsible for the content of emails, WhatsApp is not responsible for the groups using it to organize, and the monuments in D.C. aren't responsible when some folks decide to yell bigoted language. There needs to be room for public spaces to just be venues. Service providers should be able to just be service providers. There should be limits, but they should mostly align with legal limits and they should be enforce by law enforcement officers accountable to the public primarily by observing public posts or through warrants and subpoenas. There should additionally be norms about, broadly, what counts as disruptive behavior, but it needs to be agnostic about content. I don't really care if it is hard to make 100 billion dollars because there are too many trolls or because the content doesn't align with "corporate values".
- ajross 8y ago
  Again, though, that's what you say you want, but it's not what you want. You want moderation, you want focused discussion, you want to be free of objectionable garbage, you want high signal to noise ratio, and the proof of that is that you're having this argument on a heavily moderated discussion forum as we speak. There's no lack of "true" free speech opportunity on the internet. Sites like stormfront and 4chan remain a thing. Don't pretend like that's what we all want from Reddit, is all I'm saying.
  - 8y ago

darkmarmot 8y ago

My 8 year-old account was shadow-banned site-wide for criticizing AMC's video player on a sponsored link (they've since disabled comments on advertising posts).

kadendogthing 8y ago

>The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. No the user was/is apart of a radical political group that was harassing the admins and other users on a private website, essentially abusing the platform. Spare me the claims of censorship. We can't even get rid of subreddits that sexualize minors or even safe havens for beastiality. Free speech has become a thought terminating cliche.

bdcravens 8y ago

Most censorship comes from subreddit mods, not Reddit the company.

screye 8y ago

Honestly, idk if the cofounder episode was big enough to warrant the attention it had gotten. Reddit has traditionally allowed for users to criticize the admins/founders to their hearts fill. This was one isolated incident, among a 1000 similar comments. Now, the sudden disappearance of some highly voted posts is something I find more interesting. That, and tolerating subreddits that routinely break the site's rules.

YUMad 8y ago

They changed the rules by vall8ng it harassment, so if you do the same now (write "fuck /u/modname") you get muted and then banned on reoffending.

YUMad 8y ago
*calling
AgentME 8y ago
I'd expect to get banned on any site if I went around saying "fuck <people who run this place>". Especially if I was doing it in solidarity with people making baseless pedophilia accusations. Even on 4chan, assuming they noticed me. Doesn't really feel like a cause for alarm.