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The missing component of your thought process is who, exactly, deems subreddits not worthy of existence. Many people view pornography as an extremely damaging p

The missing component of your thought process is who, exactly, deems subreddits not worthy of existence. Many people view pornography as an extremely damaging problem and addiction, would you want all 18+ subreddits removes because somebody “can’t think of a single honest reason for them existing”?

kace91 6y ago
> The missing component of your thought process is who, exactly, deems subreddits not worthy of existence. The same people that deems them worth quarantining, presumably. We could have a debate of the benefits and drawbacks of moderation, but by the time you have quarantines in place, the ship of not considering yourself a moderator has long sailed, which is why it doesn't make sense for me as a measure.
rtsil 6y ago
> who, exactly, deems subreddits not worthy of existence. That would be the company which owns reddit, through the admins. Is it fair? No, it isn't, but reddit has no requirement to be fair (although it would be nice if it was).
JohnBooty 6y ago
Ten years ago I would have said, "No censorship. Turn on the firehose of information, and let me choose what's 'acceptable' and what's not." No more. That presumes some sort of equal playing field and a meritocracy of ideas. That's clearly not the case. The reality is that good-faith content takes more effort than bad-faith content. The 2016 US Election in particular showed us what happens when a platform takes a "hands off" approach - platforms become absolutely saturated with false, hateful information... much of it produced by large and even state-level organizations. It's not just evident when it comes to political content. Craigslist. Amazon. Etc. None of these platforms work with a completely laissez-faire approach on behalf of the platform owners. To think otherwise is utterly naive. Platforms need to curate. There's no other way. Yes, this means we will need to place trust in those platforms and monitor their curation. Platforms will, in turn, have an obligation to be transparent w.r.t. how they curate.
- cgiles 6y ago
  > The 2016 US Election in particular showed us what happens when a platform takes a "hands off" approach - the platform is absolutely saturated with false, hateful information... And yet, presumably you were able to employ critical thinking, see past all this, and vote the "right" way despite an alleged deluge of hateful misinformation, as were 48%, a majority, of your fellow voters. Where is the evidence that the level of misinformation is any higher now than in the past, or that censorship (whether by public or private entities) is suddenly a desirable thing? History has shown that we didn't need to censor and oppress Communist thought in the US during the Cold War because of its alleged threat, and even because Communist thought was being supported by foreign actors. In the upshot, communism discredited itself just fine, and in the meantime, our censorship made us intellectually and morally poorer. Why should things be any different with the new far right?
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    This conversation will definitely be easier to follow if you get up to speed first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20... Where is the evidence that the level of misinformation is any higher now than in the past, See the above overview for a start. History has shown that we didn't need to censor and oppress Communist thought in the US during the Cold War because of its alleged threat, and even because Communist thought was being supported by foreign actors The simalarities to today's situation are easy to see, but they are dwarfed by the differences. 1. "Communists" had no way to create and disseminate information on such a massive scale, in a manner that is nearly indistinguishable from good-faith actors. There's no analog for that in the Cold War's "Red Scare". 2. During the Red Scare, the possibility of Russia infiltrating and influencing the US to any real degree was laughable. It's not laughable now. It demonstrably happened and is happening. 3. "Censorship" is when a person is not allowed to express their views. That is not what is being proposed here. This is about refusing to hand a megaphone to bad actors. Reality does not conform to your ideals of an egalitarian marketplace of ideas. Content farms with modest funding and modest staffs can outproduce and out-influence millions of regular voices. Relying upon the populace to suddenly become savvy is not realistic. Either we need to turn this into a full-scale information war of competing content farms and state-scale misinformation campaigns, or platform providers need to combat things at that level. And yet, presumably you were able to employ critical thinking, see past all this, and vote the "right" way despite an alleged deluge of hateful misinformation, as were 48%, a majority, of your fellow voters. Sure, yeah. I also have an IQ in the 90-99th percentile range, a degree in computer science and have been immersed in online culture since before web browsers existed. The vast majority of the human race does not have those sorts of advantages. Realize that the HN demographic is not representative of the entire human race.

kace91 6y ago

> The missing component of your thought process is who, exactly, deems subreddits not worthy of existence. The same people that deems them worth quarantining, presumably. We could have a debate of the benefits and drawbacks of moderation, but by the time you have quarantines in place, the ship of not considering yourself a moderator has long sailed, which is why it doesn't make sense for me as a measure.

rtsil 6y ago

> who, exactly, deems subreddits not worthy of existence. That would be the company which owns reddit, through the admins. Is it fair? No, it isn't, but reddit has no requirement to be fair (although it would be nice if it was).

JohnBooty 6y ago

Ten years ago I would have said, "No censorship. Turn on the firehose of information, and let me choose what's 'acceptable' and what's not." No more. That presumes some sort of equal playing field and a meritocracy of ideas. That's clearly not the case. The reality is that good-faith content takes more effort than bad-faith content. The 2016 US Election in particular showed us what happens when a platform takes a "hands off" approach - platforms become absolutely saturated with false, hateful information... much of it produced by large and even state-level organizations. It's not just evident when it comes to political content. Craigslist. Amazon. Etc. None of these platforms work with a completely laissez-faire approach on behalf of the platform owners. To think otherwise is utterly naive. Platforms need to curate. There's no other way. Yes, this means we will need to place trust in those platforms and monitor their curation. Platforms will, in turn, have an obligation to be transparent w.r.t. how they curate.

cgiles 6y ago
> The 2016 US Election in particular showed us what happens when a platform takes a "hands off" approach - the platform is absolutely saturated with false, hateful information... And yet, presumably you were able to employ critical thinking, see past all this, and vote the "right" way despite an alleged deluge of hateful misinformation, as were 48%, a majority, of your fellow voters. Where is the evidence that the level of misinformation is any higher now than in the past, or that censorship (whether by public or private entities) is suddenly a desirable thing? History has shown that we didn't need to censor and oppress Communist thought in the US during the Cold War because of its alleged threat, and even because Communist thought was being supported by foreign actors. In the upshot, communism discredited itself just fine, and in the meantime, our censorship made us intellectually and morally poorer. Why should things be any different with the new far right?
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  This conversation will definitely be easier to follow if you get up to speed first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20... Where is the evidence that the level of misinformation is any higher now than in the past, See the above overview for a start. History has shown that we didn't need to censor and oppress Communist thought in the US during the Cold War because of its alleged threat, and even because Communist thought was being supported by foreign actors The simalarities to today's situation are easy to see, but they are dwarfed by the differences. 1. "Communists" had no way to create and disseminate information on such a massive scale, in a manner that is nearly indistinguishable from good-faith actors. There's no analog for that in the Cold War's "Red Scare". 2. During the Red Scare, the possibility of Russia infiltrating and influencing the US to any real degree was laughable. It's not laughable now. It demonstrably happened and is happening. 3. "Censorship" is when a person is not allowed to express their views. That is not what is being proposed here. This is about refusing to hand a megaphone to bad actors. Reality does not conform to your ideals of an egalitarian marketplace of ideas. Content farms with modest funding and modest staffs can outproduce and out-influence millions of regular voices. Relying upon the populace to suddenly become savvy is not realistic. Either we need to turn this into a full-scale information war of competing content farms and state-scale misinformation campaigns, or platform providers need to combat things at that level. And yet, presumably you were able to employ critical thinking, see past all this, and vote the "right" way despite an alleged deluge of hateful misinformation, as were 48%, a majority, of your fellow voters. Sure, yeah. I also have an IQ in the 90-99th percentile range, a degree in computer science and have been immersed in online culture since before web browsers existed. The vast majority of the human race does not have those sorts of advantages. Realize that the HN demographic is not representative of the entire human race.