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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 v

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.
- jlawson 6y ago
  >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. Why does this happen in one direction but not the other? A radical sees something slightly less hardcore. Is influenced. Sees more non-hateful content. Slowly moves away from radicalism and towards the center. Why doesn't that happen equally as the other way around? Should be a balance there, right? Really, your whole point is essentially stating that these ideas that you hate are more convincing than the ideas you believe in. You don't think you can consistently win the war of ideas via argumentation so, since you obviously are right and your ideas are best, that justifies using power to simply suppress other people's thoughts and words. All of this rests on your 100% certainty of being correct. Once you admit any level of uncertainty, which you must, your whole approach collapses. Why do you get to do it to them, but they don't get to do it to you? It's because you think you're 100% right. Of course they think the same about themselves, though, so you're claiming you have some special moral position in the universe that they don't. you stand above them; you have the right to judgment on them but they don't have the right to judgment on you. Nothing justifies that. The only real differential is that you have the power to silence them and they don't have the power to silence you, and so you're going to use that power and screw equal rights. >something that you know is harmful and dangerous to human lives You keep saying these things as though they're absolute facts. They're not facts. That's your opinion. Others' opinion is the opposite - to them all of your beliefs are harmful and dangerous to human lives. And you're walled yourself in so you don't understand the reasoning, and end up thinking it's just inchoate meaningless 'hate' that you're opposed to. You're ignorant of ideas outside your filter bubble, and use the strawman images of opposition you've invented to justify enforcing that filter bubble on others using power.

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.

jlawson 6y ago
>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. Why does this happen in one direction but not the other? A radical sees something slightly less hardcore. Is influenced. Sees more non-hateful content. Slowly moves away from radicalism and towards the center. Why doesn't that happen equally as the other way around? Should be a balance there, right? Really, your whole point is essentially stating that these ideas that you hate are more convincing than the ideas you believe in. You don't think you can consistently win the war of ideas via argumentation so, since you obviously are right and your ideas are best, that justifies using power to simply suppress other people's thoughts and words. All of this rests on your 100% certainty of being correct. Once you admit any level of uncertainty, which you must, your whole approach collapses. Why do you get to do it to them, but they don't get to do it to you? It's because you think you're 100% right. Of course they think the same about themselves, though, so you're claiming you have some special moral position in the universe that they don't. you stand above them; you have the right to judgment on them but they don't have the right to judgment on you. Nothing justifies that. The only real differential is that you have the power to silence them and they don't have the power to silence you, and so you're going to use that power and screw equal rights. >something that you know is harmful and dangerous to human lives You keep saying these things as though they're absolute facts. They're not facts. That's your opinion. Others' opinion is the opposite - to them all of your beliefs are harmful and dangerous to human lives. And you're walled yourself in so you don't understand the reasoning, and end up thinking it's just inchoate meaningless 'hate' that you're opposed to. You're ignorant of ideas outside your filter bubble, and use the strawman images of opposition you've invented to justify enforcing that filter bubble on others using power.