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This is so frustrating to me. First of all who is to say what constitutes toxic? For instance, a drug related subreddit I know of was banned. There, people dis
by deertick1 7y ago
This is so frustrating to me.
First of all who is to say what constitutes toxic? For instance, a drug related subreddit I know of was banned. There, people discussed harm reduction and chemistry of novel compounds. It was amazing and very useful for people. But that got banned.
Second- no of course this isnt effective. Its effective at removing people from the platform. But it is not decreasing "hate speech" (which is nonsense newspeak anyway) its just pushing it out of the mainstream. And for those of you making the argument that it is reducing peoples exposure to hate speech which stops its proliferation... Nonsense. In a free society everyone gets to dicide what they do and don't believe. You cannot control peoples thoughts by reducing their exposure to the bad thoughts.
Good people will not be convinced by bad arguments. Bad people will be bad either way.
I hate this so much and reddit is not NEARLY theplace it used to be. Now it is a liberal echo chamber which is all too happy to collectively shout down any divergent thinking. It was alwaysthat way to an extent, but it's so bad now that I finally had to delete my 6 year old account.
- user17843 7y agoYes, I agree. Within 1-2 years Reddit will be a collectivist utopia where controversial topics are banned outright and everyone who does not conform to the majority opinion is being made invisible through downvoting. This is already the case in the big subreddits but there are still islands of freedom here and there.
- esoterica 7y agoReddit has always been an echo chamber. Remember RON PAUL 2008? You’re just mad that it’s a different kind of echo chamber now.
- deertick1 7y agoI actually don't remember that. What was the deal with that?
- pygy_ 7y ago> You cannot control peoples thoughts by reducing their exposure to the bad thoughts. Actually, yes, you can, quite literally. Falsehoods repeated ad nauseam are convincing in the long run (do you remember the second Irak war and the WMD hoax propagated by the government? Half the US still believes that one). In a meeting, a single person making the same argument three times is almost as convincing as three people making it once. Etc... We're not as free as you imagine.
- deertick1 7y agolet me rephrase. Yes, you can. But you absolutely shouldn't, because once you start controlling peoples exposure to ideas, things go off the rails.