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It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just

It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored. And you might still consider this to be a satisfiable definition for "it worked". Out of sight, out of mind. Except that, these people are now relegated to an echo chamber far from public discourse where they will only reinforce their views without challenge. An echo chamber that is now suddenly more appealing, because it's forbidden. Recently, in an episode of the Joe Rogan Podcast with Tim Pool, Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde, Jack admitted that a woman that was part of the Westboro Baptist Church changed her mind only becasue she was allowed to be on Twitter and be exposed to other points of view. So, from the point of society, I don't think it ever works to pushi extremists to the underground. Sure, Reddit does not have any obligation to give them a place to gather. But still, maybe it should anyway? EDIT: Reading other comments here, I also got reminded of the fact that, before Hitler got to power, Germany had hate speech laws that explecitly forbid nazi propaganda. Many were sent to jail for that, which only contributed to their determination and their spreading. So, if you are concerned that being allowed in the public allows them to spread their views, do not be so sure that pushing them away is going to stop them. You might just do them a favor.

sagichmal 7y ago
> It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored. What about all of the new people who would have more easily stumbled into those cesspools, but now have to take quite a bit more effort, and go out of their way, to go to other sites? Sunlight isn't always the best disinfectant. Sometimes the disease requires treating things at a lower level, stopping the roots of the trauma, and not only treating the symptoms. De-platforming is an important and necessary component of fighting hate online.
- deleted 7y ago
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- sethammons 7y ago
  > the disease requires treating them things at a lower level I feel that the anti-vaccine movement had such a large resurgence because they had very public platforms. So, yeah, I agree with you.
  - posterboy 7y ago
    Or they had very large plattforms, because it had a great resurgence? Both is true, if there's a feedback loop. GP notes that there are root causes that one should care about in favour of those already aching.
  - colordrops 7y ago
    So you are suggesting any discussion about the merits of vaccination should be forcefully stifled. That's a pretty low bar and opens up the shaping of public discourse on countless topics because they are "dangerous".
    - dondawest 7y ago
      If the anti vaxx bullshit were LITERALLY NOT ALLOWED, i for one would be SO MUCH MORE INTERESTED IN IT and about 200000x more likely to become a crazy anti vaxxer. Banning “fat people hate” makes hating fat people seem totally radical, fringe, and thus badass.
- posterboy 7y ago
  For a steady state analysis such first order black and white approach may hold. The metaphor is brilliant at that. But punishment is a multifaceted thing. It serves for protection, but also virtue signaling and creating incentive. There's eye for an eye, too, the taliation principle, and that's what the grand parent comment lamments, I guess. There are different theories of punishment. Satisfaction from reciprocating pain shouldn't be the goal, at any rate. Getting nevertheless to letting somebody have a taste of their own medicine as a way of irony, is much more difficult, but much more effective than selectively accepting the legitimacy of the method and forcing the taste.
nkozyra 7y ago
> And you might still consider this to be a satisfiable definition for "it worked". Out of sight, out of mind. I think expecting the behavior to disappear is an unrealistic goal. Marginalizing it certainly makes it less appealing because it's clear it's not widely socially acceptable. > Except that, these people are now relegated to an echo chamber far from public discourse where they will only reinforce their views without challenge. An echo chamber that is now suddenly more appealing, because it's forbidden. Again, this has always existed in society and always will. The less chance of people being exposed to it via a big public outlet, the less chance new people will be intrigued. The aim isn't to end extremism, it's to make it clear it's not acceptable via the platform.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > Marginalizing it certainly makes it less appealing because it's clear it's not widely socially acceptable. So, how did the 18th Amendment in the United States, i.e. Prohibition, work out? Surely, the broad public support and commitment to marginalizing alcohol, enough to get a constitutional amendment passed (no small feat), has been successful in making the US a booze-free country today? No? Marginalization only works if it's something people aren't deeply committed to and tribalism, the root of many of these toxic behaviors, is far too deeply ingrained in human nature for marginalization to work.
  - nkozyra 7y ago
    Alcohol is a physically addictive product that was already engrained in acceptable culture. This isn't really a fair comparison. Even so, cigarette smoking was similarly marginalized (though not outlawed, making it a better analog) to great effect.
scarface74 7y ago
How is that any different than the stricter commenting culture here on HN? Haven’t we pushed a lot of discussion to Reddit? Yes, that’s a good thing IMHO.
Veen 7y ago
The influence works in both directions. If "bad people" are able to publish content that is easy to find on a platform used by millions, it's likely to be seen by people who would never have been exposed to or influenced by it otherwise. Personally, I'd be happy if easily-influenced people weren't exposed daily to Islamist propaganda and pedophillic imagery. If the price of that is those communities going underground, then good. It's for the police and security services to deal with them, not casual web users.
- zarkov99 7y ago
  The danger here is this distinction between the wise protectors of "easily influenced people" and the dumb asses that need protection. Who decides who is who? I do not think this is always clear cut. People who seek the role of censor are almost always the wrong people to be entrusted with that power. And historically we have many examples of ideas that were thought to be ridiculous, dangerous, etc, that turned to be valuable, even accepted. Maybe its best to leave the nastiness in the sun, just mark it as such.
  - Veen 7y ago
    Nothing is ever clear cut, but a lack of perfect knowledge and the possibility of unintended consequences are poor reasons to refrain from acting when the consequences of not acting are dire.
    - zarkov99 7y ago
      On the contrary, those are perfectly good reasons to refrain from acting.
    - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
      > Nothing is ever clear cut, but a lack of perfect knowledge and the possibility of unintended consequences are poor reasons to refrain from acting when the consequences of not acting are dire. Sounds like a thinly veiled version of the Politician's Syllogism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism
tlarkworthy 7y ago
I think having extremists in the open improves their recruitment rates and leads to greater number of extremists. Ideas, good and bad, need a medium to spread.
- posterboy 7y ago
  It's not the idea that is dangerous. I can hold multiple incongruent ideas in mind to compare them. It's the experience that get's me at an emotional level, that may change my opinion. Well, ideas may inform the intdrpretation of an experience, and holding an incongruent set of ideas, the reaction may be arbitrary. Arguably if one idea can take hold, then because the tendency was already there, latently. An extremist is, by definition, someone going to extreme ends to reach a goal. I don't think that holding an extremist's opinion is directly extreme. Having extremist ideals just makes for a latent extremist. That's radical, not extremist. That's still tendentially bad, anyhow. But so is ignorance, and so someone knowing only one side of an argument is merely ignorant, not necessarily latently radical. Ignorance doesn't need a medium to spread. Quite the opposite, it needs barriers. YMMV though, as bias is such an important topic in learning. It might count as barrier as well, if figuratively speaking.
DanBC 7y ago
By pushing it to the underground you by definition make it harder to access, and as you've said it becomes more extreme and thus less appealing - even repellant - to a mainstream audience who stumbles across it. This is what we want.
- posterboy 7y ago
  So instead of creating a bias with counter arguments at the same level, you make an abstract argument biasing the bias at a lower (or higher?) level, for lack of a better word. That's kind of the irony I was looking for in my previous comments, though not quite as I had put it. Very well.
toss1 7y ago
You seem to be overlooking at least two key findings. When the users moved to other Reddit groups, they did NOT exhibit the same level of hateful behavior. some of this was due to better moderation. This contradicts your view that they simply go away to deeper holes away from moderating influences, and supports your point that moderating influences do provide positive influence. The other key finding is that "bigotry is easy and those who cherish it are lazy". So, merely removing the cesspool removes a place for them to swim, and they often simply don't bother to go find or create another cesspool. So, overall activity is reduced.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > When the users moved to other Reddit groups, they did NOT exhibit the same level of hateful behavior. As the article suggests: it's likely they found an off-reddit outlet for the stuff they no longer were able to do on reddit and continued to use reddit for their other interests (well, they left reddit at higher rates, too). That is, if you want to make sure that Twitter's hate speech rules work and make "the world a better place", you also need to look at gab.ai & co at the same time to see whether and how much of the hate speech "moved" and how much simply stopped. This study confirms that pushing criminals out of one neighborhood "works" - for that one neighborhood. Reddit is such a neighborhood, Twitter is another.
  - toss1 7y ago
    Actually, it specifically neither confirmed nor contradicted that assertion, as it was out of scope to track to other venues, or address the larger problem of the entire society. But it DID show that providing cesspools does increase the behavior of swimming in cesspools, AND show that moderation has an effect. Providing mainstream venues for anti-social behavior increases that behavior and harms society. Sure, it may still exist at the fringes, but the further it is pushed off into the fringes, the greater the effort needs to be made to engage in the behavior. The dedicated haters will still make the effort, but the vast majority of lazy bigots will just drift along elsewhere, without enhancing & aggravating their bigotry. Similar to smoking in the US, it hasn't been banned, just strongly discouraged in public, and it is now a fringe behavior.
Buldak 7y ago
>It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". There are plenty of people who thought that it wouldn't work to that extent, either. They claimed that allowing a subreddit for toxic topic X at least had the benefit of segregating proponents of X; and that if such subreddits were banned their inhabitants would infect the rest of Reddit. But that didn't happen. I remember when posts from r/FatPeopleHate would regularly make the front page. Then FPH was banned, and you know what, we didn't see it metastasize elsewhere, we just saw many fewer FPH-style posts, which I'd say is a good thing.
- 0815test 7y ago
  Well, FPH-style posts were banned across-the-board because they were held to be leaks of privacy-sensitive material, and harrassment. But somehow, /r/fatpeoplestories suddenly got a lot more popular. Also somehow, /r/peopleofwalmart is still up... (inb4: "found the Walmart shopper"!)
- glenstein 7y ago
  >Then FPH was banned, and you know what, we didn't see it metastasize elsewhere, we just saw many fewer FPH-style posts, which I'd say is a good thing. But what we DID see, for a while at least, was a lot of people sympathetic to that subreddit arguing in any way they could think of that the ban was either inconsistent, not needed, unfair or wouldn't work. But what do you know, by and large that content kind of just went away.
  - yesco 7y ago
    I'd argue that FPH was by and large a reaction to that whole "Fat Acceptance" fad that also happened to fade away for the most part. Everytime a member of that "movement" got a lot of attention you would see a lot more FPH related posts, likely from people venting their disapproval. So it wasn't necessarily the ban that got rid of FPH but rather the "Fat Acceptance Movement" losing steam.
    - glenstein 7y ago
      FPH is gone because it was banned, and it was banned at a time when it was very active, provoked a massive backlash in the immediate term, and the ban appears in the long run to have had the effect of stopping the activity. I guess your argument for the decline in activity not coming from the ban, but scaling up and down in relation with the prominence of fat acceptance, would have to be that the ban coincided with fat acceptance losing steam around the same time, which I don't think to be the case. (It's also a way of talking that seems to equivocate on whether the behavior was acceptable, since it can be explained as a response to something else, and I think its unacceptability is important enough that it needs to remain clear in any conversation about it.) I don't have an obvious way of measuring the relationship one way or other. But the face value version of events, which is just that the ban worked, full stop, requires fewer coincidences.
moron4hire 7y ago
There are two issues that make "out of sight, out of mind" in this case not the absolute worst. First, it makes it much harder for them to radicalize and recruit new people. There is a lot of circumstantial proof that mere exposure to fringe ideas can convert a lot of people, even folks we wouldn't necessarily consider "borderline". Look at YouTube's autoplay algorithm and various conspiracy theories like Flat Eartherism, or stories we've heard of Facebook moderators needing to get rotated out to avoid radicalization. Second, in moving to less popular platforms, less dedicated, existing members are lost as they stay on the old platform for other content. Voat is a good example of how these alternative platforms aren't always self-sustainable. If more of the popular platforms took a hardline stance, it scatters the miscreants to the wind, where their numbers dwindle and they hopefully, eventually evaporate. It's not a complete solution and requires too much cooperation between adversarial corporations, but it's a start.
ausbah 7y ago
>Except that, these people are now relegated to an echo chamber far from public discourse where they will only reinforce their views without challenge. Reddit already provided these groups with an echo chamber that was public facing, and a platform that exposed them to other points of view. That didn't do anything though, people largely don't have their views changed just because they are around others with different view points. >An echo chamber that is now suddenly more appealing, because it's forbidden. If it's out of the public eye, people are less likely to know it exists right? Yes maybe people who do hear about such "secret places of discussion" are likely to be drawn to them, but the number of newcomers who are even exposed to such groups are significantly cut down by simply not being accessible.
spamizbad 7y ago
> I also got reminded of the fact that, before Hitler got to power, Germany had hate speech laws that explecitly forbid nazi propaganda. That's actually the law today in Germany. The Weimar Republic itself focused its censorship on limiting the distribution on what today we'd consider middlebrow pop-fiction and pornography, but generally excluded matters of politics and religion. It did have laws against anti-semitic speech, but anti-semitism itself as already extremely widespread so it was like a fan blowing against a hurricane.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  Is the parent actually being highly incorrect? Anti-semitism was highly popular at those times (e.g. Poland, Russian Empire, US). Nazi party were also popular in Britain (at that time) and other countries. Why would Weimar Republic specifically outlaw their nazi propaganda? Am I missing something, or is that specific paragraph related to only a short period of time?
deleted 7y ago
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posterboy 7y ago
Having a separate subreddit whdre other views are not welcome, at the whim of the subreddit moderators is not exactly the open discourse that would be needed. The people weren't bannrd and if careful can still debate their opinion. Reddit just removed the explicit protection. And the pooling. The protection of the pool.
fatbird 7y ago
The study followed users internally as well and monitored their continued behaviour on Reddit. A significant number didn't simply leave, they remained in other subreddits and exercised much less of the objectionable behaviour, even if the new subreddit was comparable in viewpoint but stricter in moderation. Part of "it worked" includes the people actually improving their behaviour, rather than just finding a smaller echo chamber.
Razengan 7y ago
Indeed. Simply removing the medium does not fix the cause. Many of the problems in human society stem from people not being able to talk about those problems. Most of the popular subreddits have become sterile echo chambers with homogenization of opinion. HN is just as vulnerable to that.
untog 7y ago
The issue isn't where radicalised people go. It's how people get radicalised in the first place. Both Reddit and YouTube are general purpose sites. Very, very few people go on there to discuss the e.g. racist beliefs they already have. But the algorithms on these sites ends up exposing people to extreme views - there are many, many examples out there of people watching an innocuous video on YouTube only to immediately suggested a 9/11 conspiracy video or a barely concealed white supremacist tirade. If that content were removed from YouTube and Reddit people wouldn't be going underground for it, because they wouldn't be looking for it. (and as a more general thought, invoking Nazis here isn't all that useful. Just because X had Y effect once in history doesn't mean it will every time. Germany has outlawed Nazis since the end of WW2 and guess what... they haven't taken over again.)
- klez 7y ago
  > Germany has outlawed Nazis since the end of WW2 and guess what... they haven't taken over again Counter to that, Italy has a provision in its Constitution that forbids the reconstitution of the fascist party and now we have at least two that declare themselves as such (and have a few seats in the parliament), and one that, despite not being explicitly fascist, has more or less similar ideals and methods, has the relative majority of consensus in the country and is governing right now. EDIT: did I write something false, inflammatory or off topic?
  - untog 7y ago
    Right. My point was that the OP implied a correlation between censorship and the rise of politics bring censored, my answer was that there isn't really any correlation, there are plenty of examples that go both ways.
  - 8note 7y ago
    so, when you claim to deplatform something, then let let them on anyways, you're not doing well? is that a counter point, or just an example of Italy's government being impotent? if it were china, the members of those parties would all be dead already
- 7y ago
JohnStrangeII 7y ago
Unless you think people should be punished for thought crimes, that seems like exactly the right kind of "it worked" to me. You don't want to give these toxic communities a broad recruitment platform and you don't want them to destroy your forum culture. That's your right as the provider of a privately owned social network. Of course, they can go elsewhere. They can make their own website and host it in another country, if they really want to. These kind of bans are not about doing favors or not, they are about maintaining a site that you can live with as a company or private forum owner. It has been like that online on every public forum since the dialup BBS system days. If on the other they plan to commit crimes, then that's a matter for police and the public prosecutor's office, not for private companies, no matter where those groups go or meet.
shadowtree 7y ago
you’re posting in a heavily moderated forum. HN too works, because a heavy hand forces good behavior.
lightedman 7y ago
"As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored." The irony of HN having this article on their front page while they engage in the same bullshit behavior is just delicious. Maybe HN should learn from the site that's over 1,000x bigger than themselves. Oh, wait, dang and stcb aren't that smart.
deleted 7y ago
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birksherty 7y ago
Reddit's aim was not to change peoples' minds. They simply don't want to host those kinds of content on their platform and and they did that. Toxic content reduced and so it worked. Period. On the other hand, having those communities on popular platforms makes them more easily accessible. As the market grows, it makes new audience susceptible to have similar view.
kadendogthing 7y ago
>They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated Citation needed.
slothtrop 7y ago
I agree and I find it dismaying that so many of the users here are holding cowardice in confidence as a means to erode racism.
blueboo 7y ago
> where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored. or demotivated, because they are fewer in number (most stayed on reddit) and have been censured and the ones who stayed -- now their radicalizing pals are out-of-sight, out-of-mind
marmada 7y ago
I feel like these types of "free speech solves hate" arguments should be automatically rejected until the author gives evidence that rational argumentation works. I see this type of comment all the time, but there's never any evidence except for historical examples that aren't directly relevant. It's quite tiresome and inflammatory. There's proof that Reddit is now a happier place. The commenter must prove, using evidence not fear mongering, that the negative effects of deplatforming outweigh the positives. I think deplatforming is especially good on Reddit. Take subreddits like The_Donald. People who go there are constantly barged with blatantly false information. If The_Donald was banned they would be forced to integrate with the rest of Reddit (exposing them to more true information) OR a smaller portion of them would go to voat, but that smaller portion couldn't be saved anyway.
- m0zg 7y ago
  What I don't get is why r/politics is not banned yet. To call it "toxic" would be severe understatement.
Starknaked 7y ago
This "cult like" division of people and ideas is rife throughout reddit. Subreddits where reasonable objections get downvoted out of sight and preaching to the choir gets upvoted to the top reinforcing those beliefs. It ruins the whole point of reddit. The mods are very biased on some subreddits that aren't even based on extreme ideas and they have so many unnecessary rules they can lock any thread they want for any reason just because they don't like it. Reddit has become a cesspool for discourse. There are a couple of good subreddits but that's because they are based on discussion (e.g /r/casualconversation)not the subject of discussion. Many subreddit don't want reasonable discourse. They want a safe space full of "yes men" that fall in line with and reinforce their beliefs.
narrator 7y ago
They aren't really echo chambers. I routinely harass these people for their racist views and they don't ban me. Their Hitler worshipping is really ludicrous. It's a lot of fun to flame someone on the Internet without worrying about getting banned for hurting people's feelings. I think the false belief that the mainstream has gotten everyone into is "racism=nationalism". The stupid people on the right bought into that and took the other side even though that's the narrative of their ideological enemies. I am trying to deprogram from the idea that nationalism and racism are synonymous.
- steveeq1 7y ago
  Where the hell is this "hitler worshipping" going on in reddit?
8note 7y ago
"It worked" likely refers to them being more profitable without having the undesirable communities on their platform

sagichmal 7y ago

> It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored. What about all of the new people who would have more easily stumbled into those cesspools, but now have to take quite a bit more effort, and go out of their way, to go to other sites? Sunlight isn't always the best disinfectant. Sometimes the disease requires treating things at a lower level, stopping the roots of the trauma, and not only treating the symptoms. De-platforming is an important and necessary component of fighting hate online.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sethammons 7y ago
> the disease requires treating them things at a lower level I feel that the anti-vaccine movement had such a large resurgence because they had very public platforms. So, yeah, I agree with you.
- posterboy 7y ago
  Or they had very large plattforms, because it had a great resurgence? Both is true, if there's a feedback loop. GP notes that there are root causes that one should care about in favour of those already aching.
- colordrops 7y ago
  So you are suggesting any discussion about the merits of vaccination should be forcefully stifled. That's a pretty low bar and opens up the shaping of public discourse on countless topics because they are "dangerous".
  - dondawest 7y ago
    If the anti vaxx bullshit were LITERALLY NOT ALLOWED, i for one would be SO MUCH MORE INTERESTED IN IT and about 200000x more likely to become a crazy anti vaxxer. Banning “fat people hate” makes hating fat people seem totally radical, fringe, and thus badass.
posterboy 7y ago
For a steady state analysis such first order black and white approach may hold. The metaphor is brilliant at that. But punishment is a multifaceted thing. It serves for protection, but also virtue signaling and creating incentive. There's eye for an eye, too, the taliation principle, and that's what the grand parent comment lamments, I guess. There are different theories of punishment. Satisfaction from reciprocating pain shouldn't be the goal, at any rate. Getting nevertheless to letting somebody have a taste of their own medicine as a way of irony, is much more difficult, but much more effective than selectively accepting the legitimacy of the method and forcing the taste.

nkozyra 7y ago

> And you might still consider this to be a satisfiable definition for "it worked". Out of sight, out of mind. I think expecting the behavior to disappear is an unrealistic goal. Marginalizing it certainly makes it less appealing because it's clear it's not widely socially acceptable. > Except that, these people are now relegated to an echo chamber far from public discourse where they will only reinforce their views without challenge. An echo chamber that is now suddenly more appealing, because it's forbidden. Again, this has always existed in society and always will. The less chance of people being exposed to it via a big public outlet, the less chance new people will be intrigued. The aim isn't to end extremism, it's to make it clear it's not acceptable via the platform.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> Marginalizing it certainly makes it less appealing because it's clear it's not widely socially acceptable. So, how did the 18th Amendment in the United States, i.e. Prohibition, work out? Surely, the broad public support and commitment to marginalizing alcohol, enough to get a constitutional amendment passed (no small feat), has been successful in making the US a booze-free country today? No? Marginalization only works if it's something people aren't deeply committed to and tribalism, the root of many of these toxic behaviors, is far too deeply ingrained in human nature for marginalization to work.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  Alcohol is a physically addictive product that was already engrained in acceptable culture. This isn't really a fair comparison. Even so, cigarette smoking was similarly marginalized (though not outlawed, making it a better analog) to great effect.

scarface74 7y ago

How is that any different than the stricter commenting culture here on HN? Haven’t we pushed a lot of discussion to Reddit? Yes, that’s a good thing IMHO.

Veen 7y ago

The influence works in both directions. If "bad people" are able to publish content that is easy to find on a platform used by millions, it's likely to be seen by people who would never have been exposed to or influenced by it otherwise. Personally, I'd be happy if easily-influenced people weren't exposed daily to Islamist propaganda and pedophillic imagery. If the price of that is those communities going underground, then good. It's for the police and security services to deal with them, not casual web users.

zarkov99 7y ago
The danger here is this distinction between the wise protectors of "easily influenced people" and the dumb asses that need protection. Who decides who is who? I do not think this is always clear cut. People who seek the role of censor are almost always the wrong people to be entrusted with that power. And historically we have many examples of ideas that were thought to be ridiculous, dangerous, etc, that turned to be valuable, even accepted. Maybe its best to leave the nastiness in the sun, just mark it as such.
- Veen 7y ago
  Nothing is ever clear cut, but a lack of perfect knowledge and the possibility of unintended consequences are poor reasons to refrain from acting when the consequences of not acting are dire.
  - zarkov99 7y ago
    On the contrary, those are perfectly good reasons to refrain from acting.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > Nothing is ever clear cut, but a lack of perfect knowledge and the possibility of unintended consequences are poor reasons to refrain from acting when the consequences of not acting are dire. Sounds like a thinly veiled version of the Politician's Syllogism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism

tlarkworthy 7y ago

I think having extremists in the open improves their recruitment rates and leads to greater number of extremists. Ideas, good and bad, need a medium to spread.

posterboy 7y ago
It's not the idea that is dangerous. I can hold multiple incongruent ideas in mind to compare them. It's the experience that get's me at an emotional level, that may change my opinion. Well, ideas may inform the intdrpretation of an experience, and holding an incongruent set of ideas, the reaction may be arbitrary. Arguably if one idea can take hold, then because the tendency was already there, latently. An extremist is, by definition, someone going to extreme ends to reach a goal. I don't think that holding an extremist's opinion is directly extreme. Having extremist ideals just makes for a latent extremist. That's radical, not extremist. That's still tendentially bad, anyhow. But so is ignorance, and so someone knowing only one side of an argument is merely ignorant, not necessarily latently radical. Ignorance doesn't need a medium to spread. Quite the opposite, it needs barriers. YMMV though, as bias is such an important topic in learning. It might count as barrier as well, if figuratively speaking.

DanBC 7y ago

By pushing it to the underground you by definition make it harder to access, and as you've said it becomes more extreme and thus less appealing - even repellant - to a mainstream audience who stumbles across it. This is what we want.

posterboy 7y ago
So instead of creating a bias with counter arguments at the same level, you make an abstract argument biasing the bias at a lower (or higher?) level, for lack of a better word. That's kind of the irony I was looking for in my previous comments, though not quite as I had put it. Very well.

toss1 7y ago

You seem to be overlooking at least two key findings. When the users moved to other Reddit groups, they did NOT exhibit the same level of hateful behavior. some of this was due to better moderation. This contradicts your view that they simply go away to deeper holes away from moderating influences, and supports your point that moderating influences do provide positive influence. The other key finding is that "bigotry is easy and those who cherish it are lazy". So, merely removing the cesspool removes a place for them to swim, and they often simply don't bother to go find or create another cesspool. So, overall activity is reduced.

luckylion 7y ago
> When the users moved to other Reddit groups, they did NOT exhibit the same level of hateful behavior. As the article suggests: it's likely they found an off-reddit outlet for the stuff they no longer were able to do on reddit and continued to use reddit for their other interests (well, they left reddit at higher rates, too). That is, if you want to make sure that Twitter's hate speech rules work and make "the world a better place", you also need to look at gab.ai & co at the same time to see whether and how much of the hate speech "moved" and how much simply stopped. This study confirms that pushing criminals out of one neighborhood "works" - for that one neighborhood. Reddit is such a neighborhood, Twitter is another.
- toss1 7y ago
  Actually, it specifically neither confirmed nor contradicted that assertion, as it was out of scope to track to other venues, or address the larger problem of the entire society. But it DID show that providing cesspools does increase the behavior of swimming in cesspools, AND show that moderation has an effect. Providing mainstream venues for anti-social behavior increases that behavior and harms society. Sure, it may still exist at the fringes, but the further it is pushed off into the fringes, the greater the effort needs to be made to engage in the behavior. The dedicated haters will still make the effort, but the vast majority of lazy bigots will just drift along elsewhere, without enhancing & aggravating their bigotry. Similar to smoking in the US, it hasn't been banned, just strongly discouraged in public, and it is now a fringe behavior.

Buldak 7y ago

>It "worked" only if the definition is "it removed it from Reddit". There are plenty of people who thought that it wouldn't work to that extent, either. They claimed that allowing a subreddit for toxic topic X at least had the benefit of segregating proponents of X; and that if such subreddits were banned their inhabitants would infect the rest of Reddit. But that didn't happen. I remember when posts from r/FatPeopleHate would regularly make the front page. Then FPH was banned, and you know what, we didn't see it metastasize elsewhere, we just saw many fewer FPH-style posts, which I'd say is a good thing.

0815test 7y ago
Well, FPH-style posts were banned across-the-board because they were held to be leaks of privacy-sensitive material, and harrassment. But somehow, /r/fatpeoplestories suddenly got a lot more popular. Also somehow, /r/peopleofwalmart is still up... (inb4: "found the Walmart shopper"!)
glenstein 7y ago
>Then FPH was banned, and you know what, we didn't see it metastasize elsewhere, we just saw many fewer FPH-style posts, which I'd say is a good thing. But what we DID see, for a while at least, was a lot of people sympathetic to that subreddit arguing in any way they could think of that the ban was either inconsistent, not needed, unfair or wouldn't work. But what do you know, by and large that content kind of just went away.
- yesco 7y ago
  I'd argue that FPH was by and large a reaction to that whole "Fat Acceptance" fad that also happened to fade away for the most part. Everytime a member of that "movement" got a lot of attention you would see a lot more FPH related posts, likely from people venting their disapproval. So it wasn't necessarily the ban that got rid of FPH but rather the "Fat Acceptance Movement" losing steam.
  - glenstein 7y ago
    FPH is gone because it was banned, and it was banned at a time when it was very active, provoked a massive backlash in the immediate term, and the ban appears in the long run to have had the effect of stopping the activity. I guess your argument for the decline in activity not coming from the ban, but scaling up and down in relation with the prominence of fat acceptance, would have to be that the ban coincided with fat acceptance losing steam around the same time, which I don't think to be the case. (It's also a way of talking that seems to equivocate on whether the behavior was acceptable, since it can be explained as a response to something else, and I think its unacceptability is important enough that it needs to remain clear in any conversation about it.) I don't have an obvious way of measuring the relationship one way or other. But the face value version of events, which is just that the ban worked, full stop, requires fewer coincidences.

moron4hire 7y ago

There are two issues that make "out of sight, out of mind" in this case not the absolute worst. First, it makes it much harder for them to radicalize and recruit new people. There is a lot of circumstantial proof that mere exposure to fringe ideas can convert a lot of people, even folks we wouldn't necessarily consider "borderline". Look at YouTube's autoplay algorithm and various conspiracy theories like Flat Eartherism, or stories we've heard of Facebook moderators needing to get rotated out to avoid radicalization. Second, in moving to less popular platforms, less dedicated, existing members are lost as they stay on the old platform for other content. Voat is a good example of how these alternative platforms aren't always self-sustainable. If more of the popular platforms took a hardline stance, it scatters the miscreants to the wind, where their numbers dwindle and they hopefully, eventually evaporate. It's not a complete solution and requires too much cooperation between adversarial corporations, but it's a start.

ausbah 7y ago

>Except that, these people are now relegated to an echo chamber far from public discourse where they will only reinforce their views without challenge. Reddit already provided these groups with an echo chamber that was public facing, and a platform that exposed them to other points of view. That didn't do anything though, people largely don't have their views changed just because they are around others with different view points. >An echo chamber that is now suddenly more appealing, because it's forbidden. If it's out of the public eye, people are less likely to know it exists right? Yes maybe people who do hear about such "secret places of discussion" are likely to be drawn to them, but the number of newcomers who are even exposed to such groups are significantly cut down by simply not being accessible.

spamizbad 7y ago

> I also got reminded of the fact that, before Hitler got to power, Germany had hate speech laws that explecitly forbid nazi propaganda. That's actually the law today in Germany. The Weimar Republic itself focused its censorship on limiting the distribution on what today we'd consider middlebrow pop-fiction and pornography, but generally excluded matters of politics and religion. It did have laws against anti-semitic speech, but anti-semitism itself as already extremely widespread so it was like a fan blowing against a hurricane.

heavenlyblue 7y ago
Is the parent actually being highly incorrect? Anti-semitism was highly popular at those times (e.g. Poland, Russian Empire, US). Nazi party were also popular in Britain (at that time) and other countries. Why would Weimar Republic specifically outlaw their nazi propaganda? Am I missing something, or is that specific paragraph related to only a short period of time?

deleted 7y ago

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posterboy 7y ago

Having a separate subreddit whdre other views are not welcome, at the whim of the subreddit moderators is not exactly the open discourse that would be needed. The people weren't bannrd and if careful can still debate their opinion. Reddit just removed the explicit protection. And the pooling. The protection of the pool.

fatbird 7y ago

The study followed users internally as well and monitored their continued behaviour on Reddit. A significant number didn't simply leave, they remained in other subreddits and exercised much less of the objectionable behaviour, even if the new subreddit was comparable in viewpoint but stricter in moderation. Part of "it worked" includes the people actually improving their behaviour, rather than just finding a smaller echo chamber.

Razengan 7y ago

Indeed. Simply removing the medium does not fix the cause. Many of the problems in human society stem from people not being able to talk about those problems. Most of the popular subreddits have become sterile echo chambers with homogenization of opinion. HN is just as vulnerable to that.

untog 7y ago

The issue isn't where radicalised people go. It's how people get radicalised in the first place. Both Reddit and YouTube are general purpose sites. Very, very few people go on there to discuss the e.g. racist beliefs they already have. But the algorithms on these sites ends up exposing people to extreme views - there are many, many examples out there of people watching an innocuous video on YouTube only to immediately suggested a 9/11 conspiracy video or a barely concealed white supremacist tirade. If that content were removed from YouTube and Reddit people wouldn't be going underground for it, because they wouldn't be looking for it. (and as a more general thought, invoking Nazis here isn't all that useful. Just because X had Y effect once in history doesn't mean it will every time. Germany has outlawed Nazis since the end of WW2 and guess what... they haven't taken over again.)

klez 7y ago
> Germany has outlawed Nazis since the end of WW2 and guess what... they haven't taken over again Counter to that, Italy has a provision in its Constitution that forbids the reconstitution of the fascist party and now we have at least two that declare themselves as such (and have a few seats in the parliament), and one that, despite not being explicitly fascist, has more or less similar ideals and methods, has the relative majority of consensus in the country and is governing right now. EDIT: did I write something false, inflammatory or off topic?
- untog 7y ago
  Right. My point was that the OP implied a correlation between censorship and the rise of politics bring censored, my answer was that there isn't really any correlation, there are plenty of examples that go both ways.
- 8note 7y ago
  so, when you claim to deplatform something, then let let them on anyways, you're not doing well? is that a counter point, or just an example of Italy's government being impotent? if it were china, the members of those parties would all be dead already
7y ago

JohnStrangeII 7y ago

Unless you think people should be punished for thought crimes, that seems like exactly the right kind of "it worked" to me. You don't want to give these toxic communities a broad recruitment platform and you don't want them to destroy your forum culture. That's your right as the provider of a privately owned social network. Of course, they can go elsewhere. They can make their own website and host it in another country, if they really want to. These kind of bans are not about doing favors or not, they are about maintaining a site that you can live with as a company or private forum owner. It has been like that online on every public forum since the dialup BBS system days. If on the other they plan to commit crimes, then that's a matter for police and the public prosecutor's office, not for private companies, no matter where those groups go or meet.

shadowtree 7y ago

you’re posting in a heavily moderated forum. HN too works, because a heavy hand forces good behavior.

lightedman 7y ago

"As the article mentions, these people did not just disappear or change their mind. They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored." The irony of HN having this article on their front page while they engage in the same bullshit behavior is just delicious. Maybe HN should learn from the site that's over 1,000x bigger than themselves. Oh, wait, dang and stcb aren't that smart.

deleted 7y ago

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birksherty 7y ago

Reddit's aim was not to change peoples' minds. They simply don't want to host those kinds of content on their platform and and they did that. Toxic content reduced and so it worked. Period. On the other hand, having those communities on popular platforms makes them more easily accessible. As the market grows, it makes new audience susceptible to have similar view.

kadendogthing 7y ago

>They just moved to more obscure places, where they can continue and be evem more motivated Citation needed.

slothtrop 7y ago

I agree and I find it dismaying that so many of the users here are holding cowardice in confidence as a means to erode racism.

blueboo 7y ago

> where they can continue and be evem more motivated, because now they have been censored. or demotivated, because they are fewer in number (most stayed on reddit) and have been censured and the ones who stayed -- now their radicalizing pals are out-of-sight, out-of-mind

marmada 7y ago

I feel like these types of "free speech solves hate" arguments should be automatically rejected until the author gives evidence that rational argumentation works. I see this type of comment all the time, but there's never any evidence except for historical examples that aren't directly relevant. It's quite tiresome and inflammatory. There's proof that Reddit is now a happier place. The commenter must prove, using evidence not fear mongering, that the negative effects of deplatforming outweigh the positives. I think deplatforming is especially good on Reddit. Take subreddits like The_Donald. People who go there are constantly barged with blatantly false information. If The_Donald was banned they would be forced to integrate with the rest of Reddit (exposing them to more true information) OR a smaller portion of them would go to voat, but that smaller portion couldn't be saved anyway.

m0zg 7y ago
What I don't get is why r/politics is not banned yet. To call it "toxic" would be severe understatement.

Starknaked 7y ago

This "cult like" division of people and ideas is rife throughout reddit. Subreddits where reasonable objections get downvoted out of sight and preaching to the choir gets upvoted to the top reinforcing those beliefs. It ruins the whole point of reddit. The mods are very biased on some subreddits that aren't even based on extreme ideas and they have so many unnecessary rules they can lock any thread they want for any reason just because they don't like it. Reddit has become a cesspool for discourse. There are a couple of good subreddits but that's because they are based on discussion (e.g /r/casualconversation)not the subject of discussion. Many subreddit don't want reasonable discourse. They want a safe space full of "yes men" that fall in line with and reinforce their beliefs.

narrator 7y ago

They aren't really echo chambers. I routinely harass these people for their racist views and they don't ban me. Their Hitler worshipping is really ludicrous. It's a lot of fun to flame someone on the Internet without worrying about getting banned for hurting people's feelings. I think the false belief that the mainstream has gotten everyone into is "racism=nationalism". The stupid people on the right bought into that and took the other side even though that's the narrative of their ideological enemies. I am trying to deprogram from the idea that nationalism and racism are synonymous.

steveeq1 7y ago
Where the hell is this "hitler worshipping" going on in reddit?

8note 7y ago

"It worked" likely refers to them being more profitable without having the undesirable communities on their platform