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So, if people don't vote the way the Reddit admins want, the Reddit admins will replace the voters. That is definitely a way to get only the things the Reddit

by zeveb 6y ago

So, if people don't vote the way the Reddit admins want, the Reddit admins will replace the voters. That is definitely a way to get only the things the Reddit admins want upvoted, upvoted. But it seems to me to be the opposite of free discourse. I can sympathise with the admins, because a) there are a lot of terrible, toxic people b) there are a lot of bot armies. The latter is probably easiest to combat, but it is still a tough nut to crack. The former is even worse: I imagine that the most engaged users are quite often the users one wishes were least engaged. It's a tough problem, but Orwellian punishment of wrongthink seems the wrong direction.

btmiller 6y ago
Eh but there's a couple reasons in my mind why this might be reasonable. First, Reddit isn't a 1st Amendment platform; they make the site, they make the rules. Like it or not, that's how it is today. Second, you have to stop toxicity somewhere; there are a few universal goods we can generally agree upon, things like abuse of animals, underage content, etc. and as long as the slope isn't too slippery beyond that, I think this is an acceptable form of moderation.
tw04 6y ago
How so? Calling for someone to be murdered is understandably against their policy. As is doxxing someone. The user accounts that upvote the call for murder or upvote the doxxing details KNOW that the post is against their policy and decided to participate anyway. I hate how these conversations always devolve to "well they're just trying to control what everyone says!" as if it's black and white and not shades of gray. No, they're trying to prevent assholes from spilling over into people's real lives, because the alternative is becoming 4chan. Where all that "upvoted" content results in ACTUAL PEOPLE BEING KILLED. I hope most people on HN don't agree with the train of thought that websites have no duty to their fellow man to not normalize hate speech. "Where does it stop" - it stops at not doxxing people and not calling for people to be murdered, per their TOS.
- chippy 6y ago
  Yes, it's shades of gray. For example, lets compare a similar service. Twitter is currently censoring some of the President of the US's tweets. They were not doing that a few months ago. So it's not black and white where twitter and acceptability is, and, like with society, it changes over time. Thus, people are concerned that merely interacting with something is enough to be labelled anathema, because of the shades of gray.
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    They're not censoring them at all - they're adding more context below them that some of the content is misleading. You can still read every insane word in its original context.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy Calling for murder and doxxing isn't the only thing against the content policy. Lots of those policies will have a very subjective line in the sand.
- deft 6y ago
  Theres no upvoting on 4chan and bumping a thread (or on reddit upvoting) does not kill and cannot kill anyone. The people making the threads end up killing people (very rarely) not the randoms that reply (or upvote). You don't even know what the account upvoted, and upvoting isn't hate speech (or calling for someone to be murdered). Do you have a bunch of unknown information on this or are you just defending reddit's continued slide to dystopian horror for no reason?
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    "Slide to dystopian horror"? For banning a bunch of garbage subs and the people that upvote the garbage? Hyperbolic much?
    - cheschire 6y ago
bitwize 6y ago
> But it seems to me to be the opposite of free discourse. Freedom of speech during an era of rampant 4chan-troll white supremacism is like freedom of association during COVID. When the exercise of a freedom puts others in danger, it is fitting and proper to take that freedom away.
- zaroth 6y ago
  > during an era of rampant 4chan-troll white supremacism I find the narrative on this one not merely dubious, but Orwellian. Not only is free speech under extraordinary attack, as we have seen, freedom of association is "in the public health interest" but only for the "right" causes. "White supremacism" -- just like "Russian trolls" -- is a canard used to justify actions which are themselves fascist.
superflit 6y ago
Your discourse seems a bit like "hate speech" and you implying that: "That is definitely a way to get only the things the Reddit admins want upvoted," Feels like a bigoted conspiracy theory. Reddit admins are not a cohesive group of people and this blanket statement hurts. Your are suspended to comment here. Please think of the children. /s
- basch 6y ago
  "Reddit admins are not a cohesive group of people." What does that mean? They are all paid employees of the same company, they have leadership, common goals, and accountability up the chain. Is that part of the /s or commentary within the post?
cheschire 6y ago
And people downvote you as a disagreement button on this site instead of qualifying their opinion in words. But you’re not wrong in your opinion and allowing downvotes without requiring a response encourages groupthink as well. But where’s the line? Do we as society mandate freedom of speech on all private platforms? Are downvotes on HN protected speech? You’re right that it’s a tough problem. We are at an inflection point right now. The boundaries of speech freedoms for the next century are being defined right now.
- ryankemper 6y ago
  Even more concerning than using downvote as a disagree button is flagging as a disagree button. It's happened to me many times where my good-faith comments have been flagged due to advocating a minority position (specifically, that the COVID-19 lockdown is harmful, just to give context) and I have/had to e-mail Dang to get a human to look at the flagged comments and determine if they were actually violating a guideline.
- rplst8 6y ago
  Freedom of speech is only about whether what you say can be used against you for government persecution (other than admitting to a crime to an officer of the law). Therefore, I don't think we can say that posts and replies on the websites hosted by private companies can be considered protected speech. That said, treating upvotes and downvotes in the same way as the text in a post or reply is a pretty bad idea IMHO.
- kps 6y ago
  VC News is basically a Reddit clone to show off pg's then-up-and-coming toy language. • Discourages long-running discussions by burying (and ultimately locking) older content • Discourages coversation in favour of fire-and-forget comments by making it impractical to continue where you left off • Gamification of content • Numerically larger groups can bury content they would prefer others not see — but slightly worse — • No notification of replies, making actual discussion impractical • Extra privileges for conformity (downvoting, vouching) It doesn't match what pg wrote in http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html but actions speak louder than words.

by zeveb 6y ago

btmiller 6y ago

Eh but there's a couple reasons in my mind why this might be reasonable. First, Reddit isn't a 1st Amendment platform; they make the site, they make the rules. Like it or not, that's how it is today. Second, you have to stop toxicity somewhere; there are a few universal goods we can generally agree upon, things like abuse of animals, underage content, etc. and as long as the slope isn't too slippery beyond that, I think this is an acceptable form of moderation.

tw04 6y ago

How so? Calling for someone to be murdered is understandably against their policy. As is doxxing someone. The user accounts that upvote the call for murder or upvote the doxxing details KNOW that the post is against their policy and decided to participate anyway. I hate how these conversations always devolve to "well they're just trying to control what everyone says!" as if it's black and white and not shades of gray. No, they're trying to prevent assholes from spilling over into people's real lives, because the alternative is becoming 4chan. Where all that "upvoted" content results in ACTUAL PEOPLE BEING KILLED. I hope most people on HN don't agree with the train of thought that websites have no duty to their fellow man to not normalize hate speech. "Where does it stop" - it stops at not doxxing people and not calling for people to be murdered, per their TOS.

chippy 6y ago
Yes, it's shades of gray. For example, lets compare a similar service. Twitter is currently censoring some of the President of the US's tweets. They were not doing that a few months ago. So it's not black and white where twitter and acceptability is, and, like with society, it changes over time. Thus, people are concerned that merely interacting with something is enough to be labelled anathema, because of the shades of gray.
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  They're not censoring them at all - they're adding more context below them that some of the content is misleading. You can still read every insane word in its original context.
bcrosby95 6y ago
https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy Calling for murder and doxxing isn't the only thing against the content policy. Lots of those policies will have a very subjective line in the sand.
deft 6y ago
Theres no upvoting on 4chan and bumping a thread (or on reddit upvoting) does not kill and cannot kill anyone. The people making the threads end up killing people (very rarely) not the randoms that reply (or upvote). You don't even know what the account upvoted, and upvoting isn't hate speech (or calling for someone to be murdered). Do you have a bunch of unknown information on this or are you just defending reddit's continued slide to dystopian horror for no reason?
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  "Slide to dystopian horror"? For banning a bunch of garbage subs and the people that upvote the garbage? Hyperbolic much?
  - cheschire 6y ago

bitwize 6y ago

> But it seems to me to be the opposite of free discourse. Freedom of speech during an era of rampant 4chan-troll white supremacism is like freedom of association during COVID. When the exercise of a freedom puts others in danger, it is fitting and proper to take that freedom away.

zaroth 6y ago
> during an era of rampant 4chan-troll white supremacism I find the narrative on this one not merely dubious, but Orwellian. Not only is free speech under extraordinary attack, as we have seen, freedom of association is "in the public health interest" but only for the "right" causes. "White supremacism" -- just like "Russian trolls" -- is a canard used to justify actions which are themselves fascist.

superflit 6y ago

Your discourse seems a bit like "hate speech" and you implying that: "That is definitely a way to get only the things the Reddit admins want upvoted," Feels like a bigoted conspiracy theory. Reddit admins are not a cohesive group of people and this blanket statement hurts. Your are suspended to comment here. Please think of the children. /s

basch 6y ago
"Reddit admins are not a cohesive group of people." What does that mean? They are all paid employees of the same company, they have leadership, common goals, and accountability up the chain. Is that part of the /s or commentary within the post?

cheschire 6y ago

And people downvote you as a disagreement button on this site instead of qualifying their opinion in words. But you’re not wrong in your opinion and allowing downvotes without requiring a response encourages groupthink as well. But where’s the line? Do we as society mandate freedom of speech on all private platforms? Are downvotes on HN protected speech? You’re right that it’s a tough problem. We are at an inflection point right now. The boundaries of speech freedoms for the next century are being defined right now.

ryankemper 6y ago
Even more concerning than using downvote as a disagree button is flagging as a disagree button. It's happened to me many times where my good-faith comments have been flagged due to advocating a minority position (specifically, that the COVID-19 lockdown is harmful, just to give context) and I have/had to e-mail Dang to get a human to look at the flagged comments and determine if they were actually violating a guideline.
rplst8 6y ago
Freedom of speech is only about whether what you say can be used against you for government persecution (other than admitting to a crime to an officer of the law). Therefore, I don't think we can say that posts and replies on the websites hosted by private companies can be considered protected speech. That said, treating upvotes and downvotes in the same way as the text in a post or reply is a pretty bad idea IMHO.
kps 6y ago
VC News is basically a Reddit clone to show off pg's then-up-and-coming toy language. • Discourages long-running discussions by burying (and ultimately locking) older content • Discourages coversation in favour of fire-and-forget comments by making it impractical to continue where you left off • Gamification of content • Numerically larger groups can bury content they would prefer others not see — but slightly worse — • No notification of replies, making actual discussion impractical • Extra privileges for conformity (downvoting, vouching) It doesn't match what pg wrote in http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html but actions speak louder than words.