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There is an alternative to the group think/hive mind called https://gab.com/ https://gab.com/ but it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas

There is an alternative to the group think/hive mind called https://gab.com/ https://gab.com/ but it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. Not sure what makes sense.

psychometry 6y ago
This is exactly what reddit would become if they weren't taking steps to deal with racism and other forms of hate speech.
s3r3nity 6y ago
> it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. I tend to follow Voltaire's ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' I agree with your assessment of the quality of ideas thrown around there, but I'd prefer a world where the internet allowed sites like that to exist, rather than one that's increasingly owned & distributed by giant corporate conglomerates with significant oversight into the discussion of its members, lest you get assigned to "re-education camps" or some BS like that. And let's not pretend that Reddit doesn't want to be one of those giant conglomerates...
- cthalupa 6y ago
  There's nothing wrong with Reddit not wanting to facilitate and provide a platform for that sort of content, though. It's a massively popular site with mainstream appeal. They don't want to let that popularity and audience be taken advantage of to spread ideas that are hateful and likely to incite violence. Quarantined subreddits are dumb, but it's a sign that their afraid of the backlash of outright banning them - they are already getting accused of heavy handed censorship. If people want to talk about that stuff, then yeah, go to gab and voat and ruqqus or 8chan or other sites that allow for it. There's no shortage of places on the internet to talk about anything you want. Reddit doesn't have to be one of them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    To the extent that a site like Reddit tries to police content and decide what's "hateful" content versus just mildly offensive, etc, the platform becomes less valuable to me. These policy changes have driven me off of Reddit. Not because I was part of any quarantined "communities" but just because I see where things are going. Reddit used to actually believe in the ideal of free speech, full stop. That stopped being true quite some time ago. > 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. I suspect that most agree with your statement, but to speak for myself, I am very skeptical of labelling something as hate speech. It starts out with banning "legitimate" hate speech ("ethnic group X is secretly controlling everything and must be purged") and quickly morphs into something like "you said all lives matter which is associated with opposition to black lives matter which over the long-run is part of a system of oppression and therefore we're going to ban you". If it's not clear, these are arbitrary examples that I just made up but I think the way Reddit is going it's quite clear that we're moving towards that.
    - fwip 6y ago
      They didn't believe in the ideals of free speech, they just didn't want to pay employees to kick users off their site. All ad clicks are good clicks.
    - cthalupa 6y ago
      So, I might be anthropomorphizing a website and drawing too many parallels to my own experience, but having shifted my own stances here over the past 7-8 years, I can't say I blame Reddit. I used to be completely against de-platforming people. And I still think sometimes it goes too far - people should be exposed to diverse ideas, and disagreeing with someone doesn't instantly make you a nazi. I won't mention names here, but there are a lot of people that I've vehemently disagreed with on major issues, but still followed along with 'sunlight is the best disinfectant.' I thought that they were ultimately exposing themselves as bigots and hatemongers when going on TV shows, writing op eds, showing up at college campuses. That they would end up taking care of themselves. But then I realized that I was seeing more and more people quote them, quote their rhetoric. And I'm not even talking about stuff along the lines of 'Black Lives Matter' vs 'Blue/All Lives Matter' type stuff - people being blatantly anti-semetic, people glorifying pedophilia because "it happened to them and they turned out OK", all sorts of very cut and dry "bad things." When we give these large public platforms to people peddling this, we're directly increasing the spread of the rhetoric. Reddit doesn't want to be involved in spreading this sort of rhetoric, even in it's milder forms, because people get radicalized slowly - you start with the softer sound bites, the ones where they have a lot more wiggle room to claim you don't mean this other thing. And as people start to agree with that idea, you move in with one that pushes the boundaries a bit farther. Keep repeating this process, and someone ends up embedded in the extreme forms of hate. Reddit wants to cut that off at the start and not play a part in spreading these ideologies and helping radicalize people into them. They've realized that sunlight isn't enough to disinfect things that are fundamentally rotten, especially when these subreddits are largely monocultures without outside influence coming in. If they don't want to be a party to the radicalization of people into buying in on extremist hateful ideologies, they have to do this, and they can't stand by doing nothing in the name of "free speech" On most of the internet, you don't win arguments by being right. You don't convince people by providing a well research, well sourced, informative argument. You win by beating people into submission. You win by having the better sound bites, the pithier quotes, the most upvotes and most people agreeing with you. And since these subreddits are so self selecting, when you wander in as an outsider, you only see the "winners" - the dissenting voices got downvoted, the bad arguments that appeal to the population of the reddit get upvoted. Is this a lot of responsibility to put in the hands of people? Yes. Can it lead to the same sort of problem I'm describing here? Yes. Is there any other choice? Not that I can see. You can stand by and let something that you know is harmful and dangerous to human lives happen on your watch because you're afraid you might someday end up doing the same thing, and know that there will be bad results. Or you can risk it, try to take steps to prevent yourself from falling into the same trap, and move forward with something that is necessary with knowledge that if you are not careful you can become part of the problem.
- yardie 6y ago
  > I'd prefer a world where the internet allowed sites like that to exist So these alt sites spring up all the time (8chan, 4chan, ruqqus, voat). No one has taken those sites off the night. And the public is free to vote with their time, clicks, and money on whether they support these sites.
notkaiho 6y ago
So it's a hive mind and group think but with terrible people instead?
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  > terrible people instead Just different terrible people from the terrible people who dominate reddit is all.
- typon 6y ago
  Yes that's right. They won't ban you for having non-terrible opinions, but they'll downvote you into non-existence. I tried participating in voat for a couple of days before leaving forever.
- haunter 6y ago
  So not so different from /r/politics then? "Orange man bad" 320k upvotes, front page
cthalupa 6y ago
>but it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas This is not coincidental. The same thing happened with Voat, the same thing is happening with Ruqqus. I'm sure some not-awful stuff will end up as collateral damage here, but Reddit is attempting to target the communities of people that are promoting and engaging in some pretty heinous activities and lines of thought. When those are the people leaving to make a new platform where they won't be censored, that's the content that takes up the mindshare on those websites.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > same thing is happening with Ruqqus Can confirm. Checked out Ruqqus out of curiosity. Racist content right there on the homepage.
- muyuu 6y ago
  The presence of content that is extremely inadmissible for Big Tech is a good sign in my book. It's very easy to select the type of content you actually want to see.
freeone3000 6y ago
This is what happens. Banned content by reddit policies is hate speech, far-right politics, and targeted hate. People who leave reddit for somewhere else do so because... they want to do those things, and can't. It's no wonder that any forum they then choose would become dominated by those ideas, that's the entire point.
- SauciestGNU 6y ago
  Lots of left wing politics receive these inbox scolds too, it seems to affect hate speech, harassment, and also political ideologies outside of the advertiser comfort zone.
stevebmark 6y ago
It continuously baffles me that some people don't learn from unmoderated online communities. They become dens of bigotry, doxing, attack mobs, racism, misogyny. Saying your site is driven only by "free speech" is the cowardly reply that refuses to stand up to these things.
- s9w 6y ago
  It's not mandatory to be against the things that you listed. Many people enjoy reading and talking about things they're legally allowed to.
  - fwip 6y ago
    "Many people enjoy being racist" is a weird hill to die on.
    - s9w 6y ago
      That's a difficult discussion. These sites offer so much more than what they're always reduced to. I would even argue that they're sometimes nicer places than Reddit or hn. And even with those icky subjects they're not always as black or white as they're portrayed. Even if you don't believe that they're right about them, they're evidently more open to their debate.
      - rabuse 6y ago
        Exactly. I honestly enjoy 4chan for a multitude of reasons, and have had many quality discussions on the site over the past many years. There's always garbage to sift through, but I like the "free" nature of those types of platforms.
- kofejnik 6y ago
  > bigotry, doxing, attack mobs Reddit is currently full of these, and it's apparently Ok when it comes from correct side of political spectrum
rabuse 6y ago
I like the ability to see the discourse from all sides of the spectrum (reddit, voat, worldstar, etc.) I'd rather not have the platform dictate what they "think" is going to offend me.

There is an alternative to the group think/hive mind called https://gab.com/ https://gab.com/ but it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. Not sure what makes sense.

psychometry 6y ago

This is exactly what reddit would become if they weren't taking steps to deal with racism and other forms of hate speech.

s3r3nity 6y ago

> it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. I tend to follow Voltaire's ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' I agree with your assessment of the quality of ideas thrown around there, but I'd prefer a world where the internet allowed sites like that to exist, rather than one that's increasingly owned & distributed by giant corporate conglomerates with significant oversight into the discussion of its members, lest you get assigned to "re-education camps" or some BS like that. And let's not pretend that Reddit doesn't want to be one of those giant conglomerates...

cthalupa 6y ago
There's nothing wrong with Reddit not wanting to facilitate and provide a platform for that sort of content, though. It's a massively popular site with mainstream appeal. They don't want to let that popularity and audience be taken advantage of to spread ideas that are hateful and likely to incite violence. Quarantined subreddits are dumb, but it's a sign that their afraid of the backlash of outright banning them - they are already getting accused of heavy handed censorship. If people want to talk about that stuff, then yeah, go to gab and voat and ruqqus or 8chan or other sites that allow for it. There's no shortage of places on the internet to talk about anything you want. Reddit doesn't have to be one of them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ryankemper 6y ago
  To the extent that a site like Reddit tries to police content and decide what's "hateful" content versus just mildly offensive, etc, the platform becomes less valuable to me. These policy changes have driven me off of Reddit. Not because I was part of any quarantined "communities" but just because I see where things are going. Reddit used to actually believe in the ideal of free speech, full stop. That stopped being true quite some time ago. > 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. I suspect that most agree with your statement, but to speak for myself, I am very skeptical of labelling something as hate speech. It starts out with banning "legitimate" hate speech ("ethnic group X is secretly controlling everything and must be purged") and quickly morphs into something like "you said all lives matter which is associated with opposition to black lives matter which over the long-run is part of a system of oppression and therefore we're going to ban you". If it's not clear, these are arbitrary examples that I just made up but I think the way Reddit is going it's quite clear that we're moving towards that.
  - fwip 6y ago
    They didn't believe in the ideals of free speech, they just didn't want to pay employees to kick users off their site. All ad clicks are good clicks.
  - cthalupa 6y ago
    So, I might be anthropomorphizing a website and drawing too many parallels to my own experience, but having shifted my own stances here over the past 7-8 years, I can't say I blame Reddit. I used to be completely against de-platforming people. And I still think sometimes it goes too far - people should be exposed to diverse ideas, and disagreeing with someone doesn't instantly make you a nazi. I won't mention names here, but there are a lot of people that I've vehemently disagreed with on major issues, but still followed along with 'sunlight is the best disinfectant.' I thought that they were ultimately exposing themselves as bigots and hatemongers when going on TV shows, writing op eds, showing up at college campuses. That they would end up taking care of themselves. But then I realized that I was seeing more and more people quote them, quote their rhetoric. And I'm not even talking about stuff along the lines of 'Black Lives Matter' vs 'Blue/All Lives Matter' type stuff - people being blatantly anti-semetic, people glorifying pedophilia because "it happened to them and they turned out OK", all sorts of very cut and dry "bad things." When we give these large public platforms to people peddling this, we're directly increasing the spread of the rhetoric. Reddit doesn't want to be involved in spreading this sort of rhetoric, even in it's milder forms, because people get radicalized slowly - you start with the softer sound bites, the ones where they have a lot more wiggle room to claim you don't mean this other thing. And as people start to agree with that idea, you move in with one that pushes the boundaries a bit farther. Keep repeating this process, and someone ends up embedded in the extreme forms of hate. Reddit wants to cut that off at the start and not play a part in spreading these ideologies and helping radicalize people into them. They've realized that sunlight isn't enough to disinfect things that are fundamentally rotten, especially when these subreddits are largely monocultures without outside influence coming in. If they don't want to be a party to the radicalization of people into buying in on extremist hateful ideologies, they have to do this, and they can't stand by doing nothing in the name of "free speech" On most of the internet, you don't win arguments by being right. You don't convince people by providing a well research, well sourced, informative argument. You win by beating people into submission. You win by having the better sound bites, the pithier quotes, the most upvotes and most people agreeing with you. And since these subreddits are so self selecting, when you wander in as an outsider, you only see the "winners" - the dissenting voices got downvoted, the bad arguments that appeal to the population of the reddit get upvoted. Is this a lot of responsibility to put in the hands of people? Yes. Can it lead to the same sort of problem I'm describing here? Yes. Is there any other choice? Not that I can see. You can stand by and let something that you know is harmful and dangerous to human lives happen on your watch because you're afraid you might someday end up doing the same thing, and know that there will be bad results. Or you can risk it, try to take steps to prevent yourself from falling into the same trap, and move forward with something that is necessary with knowledge that if you are not careful you can become part of the problem.
yardie 6y ago
> I'd prefer a world where the internet allowed sites like that to exist So these alt sites spring up all the time (8chan, 4chan, ruqqus, voat). No one has taken those sites off the night. And the public is free to vote with their time, clicks, and money on whether they support these sites.

notkaiho 6y ago

So it's a hive mind and group think but with terrible people instead?

stronglikedan 6y ago
> terrible people instead Just different terrible people from the terrible people who dominate reddit is all.
typon 6y ago
Yes that's right. They won't ban you for having non-terrible opinions, but they'll downvote you into non-existence. I tried participating in voat for a couple of days before leaving forever.
haunter 6y ago
So not so different from /r/politics then? "Orange man bad" 320k upvotes, front page

cthalupa 6y ago

>but it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas This is not coincidental. The same thing happened with Voat, the same thing is happening with Ruqqus. I'm sure some not-awful stuff will end up as collateral damage here, but Reddit is attempting to target the communities of people that are promoting and engaging in some pretty heinous activities and lines of thought. When those are the people leaving to make a new platform where they won't be censored, that's the content that takes up the mindshare on those websites.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> same thing is happening with Ruqqus Can confirm. Checked out Ruqqus out of curiosity. Racist content right there on the homepage.
muyuu 6y ago
The presence of content that is extremely inadmissible for Big Tech is a good sign in my book. It's very easy to select the type of content you actually want to see.

freeone3000 6y ago

This is what happens. Banned content by reddit policies is hate speech, far-right politics, and targeted hate. People who leave reddit for somewhere else do so because... they want to do those things, and can't. It's no wonder that any forum they then choose would become dominated by those ideas, that's the entire point.

SauciestGNU 6y ago
Lots of left wing politics receive these inbox scolds too, it seems to affect hate speech, harassment, and also political ideologies outside of the advertiser comfort zone.

stevebmark 6y ago

It continuously baffles me that some people don't learn from unmoderated online communities. They become dens of bigotry, doxing, attack mobs, racism, misogyny. Saying your site is driven only by "free speech" is the cowardly reply that refuses to stand up to these things.

s9w 6y ago
It's not mandatory to be against the things that you listed. Many people enjoy reading and talking about things they're legally allowed to.
- fwip 6y ago
  "Many people enjoy being racist" is a weird hill to die on.
  - s9w 6y ago
    That's a difficult discussion. These sites offer so much more than what they're always reduced to. I would even argue that they're sometimes nicer places than Reddit or hn. And even with those icky subjects they're not always as black or white as they're portrayed. Even if you don't believe that they're right about them, they're evidently more open to their debate.
    - rabuse 6y ago
      Exactly. I honestly enjoy 4chan for a multitude of reasons, and have had many quality discussions on the site over the past many years. There's always garbage to sift through, but I like the "free" nature of those types of platforms.
kofejnik 6y ago
> bigotry, doxing, attack mobs Reddit is currently full of these, and it's apparently Ok when it comes from correct side of political spectrum

rabuse 6y ago

I like the ability to see the discourse from all sides of the spectrum (reddit, voat, worldstar, etc.) I'd rather not have the platform dictate what they "think" is going to offend me.