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Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse

• softwaredoug 6y ago
  Both Reddit's and /r/The_Donald speech protected from the outcome. From the article is that that the moderators/participants already have a new place to discuss whatever they want on a reddit clone. Reddit as a platform/company doesn't have to choose to be associated with this hate speech. Both sides have free speech rights and both have outcomes that support that speech...
  • arcticbull 6y ago
    > Both sides have free speech rights and both have outcomes that support that speech... "Free speech rights" don't apply between two private entities, only between the government and a private entity.
    • bt4u3 6y ago
      Which is a nice loophole when we know the battle for votes is primarily fought on social media
      • arcticbull 6y ago
        Doesn't the concept of freedom of speech necessitate the freedom from speech, ie. the right to remain silent? To force a company to say something they don't want to is in my opinion worse than allowing them to say nothing. I don't expect Breitbart to voice my opinions, for instance, and I don't expect Twitter to voice theirs if they don't want to.
        • bt4u3 6y ago
          Companies are not people. We impose tons of restrictions on companies that would be unreasonable to impose on individuals. Besides they are legally platforms and thus they're not saying anything although their users might. If my friend said something it does not mean I said it or even agreed with it
    • koheripbal 6y ago
      You are conflating The First Amendment (a law) with Freedom of Speech (a principle). FoS is something we should support in any context because the only speech worth hearing is the stuff you don't like hearing.
      • criddell 6y ago
        > the only speech worth hearing is the stuff you don't like hearing What's an example that supports this? I can only think of examples that indicate the opposite.
      • fzeroracer 6y ago
        This seems rather ironic, since TD was banning people that went against the majority opinion. If TD is repeatedly violating freedom of speech principles what exactly is your recourse to ensure they comply and adhere to freedom of speech? If we accept that TD has the right to ban users it doesn't like, then we accept that Reddit has the right to ban subreddits it doesn't like.
    • afiori 6y ago
      To repeat a trite argument, that is the case for the free speech that is guaranteed under the US constitution. Free speech advocates usually claim that either reddit does indeed violate that constitutional right (similarly to how it applies to federally funded private companies) or that the human right of free speech is violated. This second version is assumed to exist a priori from any state/law similarly to how international human right conventions Recognize human rights rather than Create them.
  • kylebenzle 6y ago
    Is there a "real" definition of hate speech? It seems like a hard to define rule. I also hate Trump but am allowed to say any horrible thing I want to about him, but if I were to same the same things about Hilary (I also hated her as a politician) it would be hate speech.
    • qeternity 6y ago
      No, which is why it’s such a slippery slope and why places like the US have such broad laws protecting speech. As the old adage goes, it’s not good speech that needs protecting.
      • T-hawk 6y ago
        The problem with banning "bad" speech is that it allows you to ban any speech by defining it as "bad".
    • ceedan 6y ago
      Unless you're saying horrible things about her by attacking her gender, then it wouldn't be hate speech. If you have a difficult time saying horrible things about Hillary Clinton without attacking her gender, you might actually be sexist. Think about it. How do you really feel about women?
      • 50ckpuppet 6y ago
        Do you mean like attacking members of her own gender when she persecuted her husband's rape victims to protect her own political aspirations? I imagine Juanita Broddrick would have something to say about this?
        • ceedan 6y ago
          I think your reply is irrelevant to what I've written. I'm not defending Hillary. My point is that if you can't attack Hillary Clinton (a politician) without gender slandering, you're probably be sexist.
      • 6y ago
  • nordsieck 6y ago
    > Both sides have free speech rights and both have outcomes that support that speech... Free speech has 2 distinct meanings: 1. The legal right to be free from government interference to most speech. 2. The cultural norm to tolerate speech you disagree with in order to foster political inclusion. You're correct under meaning 1; you're not correct under meaning 2.
    • T-hawk 6y ago
      This is correct, those two ideas are often mistaken for each other. Reddit is not a governmental entity, and as a private platform, has every right to decide what speech it will or will not publish. But we can wish that Reddit as a speech platform would embrace the principles of the First Amendment rather than suppressing all the speech it doesn't like.
      • afiori 6y ago
        > Reddit [..] has every right to decide what speech it will or will not publish. For legal reason that publish should be host.
        • afiori 6y ago
          Edit: host or promote
      • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
        > But we can wish that Reddit as a speech platform would embrace the principles of the First Amendment rather than suppressing all the speech it doesn't like. That's easy to say when you aren't liable for any damages caused by said speech.
• catsarebetter 6y ago
  Never checked it out. Don't regret it
  • doopy-loopy2 6y ago
    lol, the left in a nutshell.
  • MINIMAN10000 6y ago
    I did and I was left satisfied. I wanted to see their viewpoint on at the time "the hot topic" and confirm my suspicions that I truly don't consider their viewpoint rational or valid. It's like they start from a conclusion and work backwards to excuse it.
    • arcticbull 6y ago
      That was my experience as well. It's a fascinating parallel universe, but it's not for me. It's kind of the same reason I watch a lot of Fox News.
      • catsarebetter 6y ago
        I really value information and learning how different people think and what's important to them, but it's really hard to do that on forums so I prefer just talking to ppl. Preferably in a non-campaign year to get a less emotional account. Plus it helps me have a more balanced perspective b/c I can put face(s) to different sides and that prevents me from saying things that I can't take back
      • D13Fd 6y ago
        I love reading foxnews.com and some of my deeply conservative relatives' Facebook feeds, because they give a perspective I'd never see otherwise (even if I generally disagree). I'm on there daily, and I'd say I get just as much news from those sources as from others, like washingtonpost.com. I also sometimes go to some old school conservative blogs like nationalreview.com/corner/, as well as sites like Drudge and Breitbart to see what they think. But /r/the_donald was just toxic. Even when I was in the mood to see more of that kind of content, I couldn't stand more than about 5 minutes of browsing that subreddit before closing the tab in frustration and disgust.
• 50ckpuppet 6y ago
  That's one way to correct the record...
• zozbot234 6y ago
  Press F to Pay Respects. BTW, the unofficial successor (as listed on the subreddit itself before the ban) is alive and well at thedonald.win
  • toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Appears to be fronted by Cloudflare (as of 1593450845). Curious to see how long that lasts in the current tumultuous environment.
    • ve55 6y ago
      Cloudflare isn't in the business of deplatforming and moderating the way that social media companies are. We all know about that one case, but it was not only an extreme outlier, but also had some other reasoning behind it. I will predict CF does not deplatform them any time soon.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • toomuchtodo 6y ago
        As I mentioned, I'm just (genuinely) curious. Not making judgement either way. Exceptional times and all that jazz. It is very rare such natural experiments come along.
      • commandlinefan 6y ago
        > isn't in the business of deplatforming and moderating Yet. It seems like the next logical place for cancel culture to move.
      • parliament32 6y ago
        Cloudflare has publicly stated they're happy to deplatform sites due to political pressure: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191220/23475043616/cloudflare-removes-warrant-canary-thoughtful-post-says-it-can-no-longer-say-it-hasnt-removed-site-due-to-political-pressure.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191220/23475043616/cloud...
• ve55 6y ago
  Worth taking note that in today's climate, you really cannot win when you are in a position to moderate important things that a lot of people use. There is constantly tremendous pressure on you to perform opposing actions, and even making no decision at all will cause you significant mental stress and harassment, regardles of what the issue is. You have to pick who you want to cave to, and to what extent, and no matter how good of a job you try to do, a lot of people will really really hate you. This is even more apparent when you see that Reddit has been taking action against a lot more subreddits recently, some of which are listed in the article, and many of which clearly have little to do with the president. The attitude of some of these communities may be abhorrent, but they are still communities, and people do not react well to their communities being deleted, whether a company had the legal authority to, or was justified in doing so, or not. It's very tough and I wish that we didn't have to go through these things to begin with, and could have more federated and decentralized platforms, or at least more client-side filtering inside of centralization curation. I can always dream.
  • duxup 6y ago
    Would something decentralized help? I don't think people want that. The_Donald involved a lot of spreading their message / fake news sites / spamming across other subs and etc. Do people want to be on a platform where other folks on the same platform are targeting their community with dishonest and often bigoted content? I'm also not sure how much The_Donald was as a community. The sheer volume of users at its height seemed to involve a huge amount of brand new accounts you never saw again / never posted again (except when they show up as a group again), and etc. Or those without brand new accounts show up and post strange dishonest lead in type posts that sort of try to lead folks down a bigoted path ... that you can blatantly see in their post history. So you'd be in your other community and one day they all show up and down votes and the vitriol begins... it was no mystery that this happened, it was spoken of openly in The_Donald for a time. Who wants to deal with that?
    • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      > So you'd be in your other community and one day I don't think so? So if TD was a mastodon community, many others would blacklist their content, but unless members of TD go and make accounts elsewhere that'd be the extent of it, no?
• champagneben 6y ago
  If black people (or perhaps more specifically, subreddits focused on issues pertinent to black communities) were banned on reddit, but they had a much smaller website where they could discuss issues, would it be an outcome that supported their free speech?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • cultus 6y ago
    You are drawing an equivalence of discrimination against those with dark skin to discrimination against the profoundly immoral and hateful. You are a racist, and are not engaging in good faith arguments.
    • bt4u3 6y ago
      Zzz
    • champagneben 6y ago
      How was anything I said racist? I'm genuinely curious. And what are the guidelines on HN for this kind of language?
  • Jweb_Guru 6y ago
    Trump is the president of the United States, Republicans have both the Senate and the Supreme Court, and I can barely go two seconds without hearing the perspective of people who voted for Trump. There is an entire news network that acts in an almost official capacity as the Republican party press arm. What on earth makes you think Reddit is the only major place that people could discuss "issues"?
    • FeepingCreature 6y ago
      So, discrimination is okay as long as you have alternatives?
• parliament32 6y ago
  Whether you agree with the move or not, it's funny how Reddit's stance has changed over time. Under the old ownership, 2012: "At reddit we care deeply about not imposing ours or anyone elses’ opinions on how people use the reddit platform. We are adamant about not limiting the ability to use the reddit platform even when we do not ourselves agree with or condone a specific use. We have very few rules here on reddit; no spamming, no cheating, no personal info, nothing illegal, and no interfering the site's functions."
  • pjc50 6y ago
    That was effectively a challenge: how bad can you be without explicitly violating the rules? (I call this "I'm not touching you Fascism", after the popular children's pastime. The goal is to enrage people without ever crossing anything that might be considered a clear line. Most systems evolve a meta-rule somewhere that "pushing the boundaries of the rules is itself against the rules". At the very least "ban evasion" is itself bannable.)
    • striking 6y ago
      As someone who's moderated a community, this is exactly what things feel like. Especially given that our community has an explicit focus on freedom of expression (and what a thorn in our side that's ended up being) We've adopted pretty vague rules as a result, with a lot of room for interpretation, and rather than changing the rules often we've just updated our interpretations and communicated them with the community. It's been a slow boil. But things are different now than they were years ago. Not just because the community has grown but (at least from my perspective) because the tone of the internet seems to have shifted slightly. We at least are fortunate to have the capability to build tools to identify behavior that might be an issue even without taking automated action. But "I'm not touching you" behavior is sometimes hard to catch when people avoid certain key words, at least until confronted. It's a pain, really.
      • noir_lord 6y ago
        > because the tone of the internet seems to have shifted slightly. Over the time I've used it (94 to 2020) it's shifted radically, it used to be kooky, niche, fun or just weird (and it is still that on the edges) but by and large rarely mean/cruel, the main sites are just a torrent of bile spouted by morons venting their spleen at the universe. Comment sections on any news article, youtube videos - pretty much everywhere outside of heavily moderated forums and the like are vile. It's one of the reasons I visit a few heavily moderated subject specific sub-reddits, this place and IRC and ignore literally everything else (I have comment sections nuked in ublock origin). I respect anyone who voluntarily wades through that crap honestly. I do moderate https://old.reddit.com/r/realminimalism/ https://old.reddit.com/r/realminimalism/ but no-one has ever gotten the joke.
• hartator 6y ago
  To be fair, The_Donald was already shutdown for a while. Between quarantine that makes it not show up in feeds and the moderation team being replaced by Reddit’s, it wasn’t up and running anymore.
  • minimaxir 6y ago
    A de facto shutdown is not the same as an actual shutdown.
    • hartator 6y ago
      At least, they are being transparent about it.
• kace91 6y ago
  About time! As I commented in a previous discussion of reddit's policies (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23601595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23601595), the "quarantined subreddits" half measures were clearly too tame as a middle point, where reddit decided to both moderate which communities are wrong and at the same time not ban them (worst of both worlds). I wonder if the discussion there was read by people at reddit, though it's probably not relevant opinions to them.
• nullc 6y ago
  I'm confused by the article. My understanding was that reddit replaced the moderators of /r/The_Donald months ago after initially making in quarantined. The Wikipedia article seems to agree with my understanding: > In February 26, 2020, Reddit administrators removed a number of r/The_Donald moderators "that were approving, stickying, and generally supporting content in this subreddit that breaks [Reddit's] content policy" and called the remaining moderators to choose new ones from a list of Reddit-approved individuals.[77] About the same time, Reddit placed r/The_Donald in "Restricted mode", removing the ability to create new posts from most of its users. Since then, the subreddit's community has moved to thedonald.win, an independently hosted site based on Reddit's old user interface. Which all sounds fine to me, but the article's quote "We’re not the ones who shut down the community. The moderators are the ones who shut down that community." seems disingenuous to me. What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules?
  • john-shaffer 6y ago
    > What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules? 1) They don't want to alienate people who care about free speech. 2) A lot of people liked reddit because it was user-driven, and don't like it when the content they see is selected by admins and mods. They want to keep the illusion of being user-driven as long as they can.
    • jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
      Let's give them user driven reddit then. Open the floodgates, remove all filters and moderators and bans and locks. Turn off the firewall. Let them see reality. They'll be back.
    • filoleg 6y ago
      Fully agreed. I think people get up in arms over "but they have the rights to do it", making it look like those opposing decisions of admins believe that admins don't have those rights. Admins own the platform and they totally have the right to set whatever rules they want. No one is debating that. The thing that people point out is that despite admins having those rights, they might be exercising those rights in a way that people disagree with (for whatever reasons), which might ultimately lead to the demise of that platform. I, personally, find your reasons against the ham-fisted approach they have been taking to be very compelling. While r/The_Donald ban was probably warranted, and I have nothing against that ban, the overall vibe of reddit definitely feels like it has changed over the past 10 years. It feels like it went from "user-driven content under the umbrella of basic global reddit rules" to "heavily-directed content that admins seem to approve of or content that they cannot justify getting rid of just yet (but probably will soon enough)".
• txcwpalpha 6y ago
  About time. However, this move was mostly symbolic. r/the_donald has been inactive for months without a single new post on it. AFAIK the community had already moved on to another site off reddit. Much more significant IMO is that the ban also includes r/ChapoTrapHouse, which is a "left"-leaning subreddit accused of much of the same stuff r/the_donald was.
  • pozdnyshev 6y ago
    r/Chapotraphouse was literally the largest online aggregate and forum for leftists, nothing else came close.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • robotron 6y ago
    I haven't seen this mentioned in any stories but r/antifa is also banned. It could have come about as something else but I took a peak in it Thursday and it was there.
  • GoodJokes 6y ago
    what was chapo accused of? The original quarantine was due to the sub posting about John Brown (killer of slave holders). Reddit didn't like that. Slave holders are people too.
• jeremiahhs 6y ago
  The article is incorrect. "racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, glorification of violence and conspiracy theories that flourished there." That can be seen in all political subreddits - even the favored /r/politics. Those forms of hate were not condoned in T_D. But if washpo wants to rewrite history, they can try. T_D was banned because reddit hates the policies Trump was elected to enact.
  • psychometry 6y ago
    There's a difference between hate speech occasionally being found in a subreddit and a subreddit existing principally as a platform for hate speech. the_donald was unambiguously the latter.
    • 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
      By definition there's tons of hate speech against white males on reddit but Americans have invented these insane theories x can't be racist because you need power etc. It's just made up words to justify your own prejudice and feel yourself better about it.
    • pyronik19 6y ago
      When you define any speech that doesn't parrot left wing talking points as "hate speech" I can see how you could come to that conclusion.
    • throwmehaweh 6y ago
      This is not true at all. I see comments like this and wonder if the person even ventured to TD, interacted in the comments, or just simply contrived such a story. I don't doubt that there were bad actors in TD, as there are in r/politics and every other political community, but having intermittently visited the sub since inception, I almost never saw anything remotely close to "hate speech" (whatever that is). Most of the comments were from regular people that support the President, and rightfully were tired of the hypocrisy coming from the other side. Don't forget that TD was a target from day one, and even exposed the CEO Steve Huffman manipulating comments on it. What message did that send?
• abnry 6y ago
  If the rationale for banning is policy violations (doxxing, racism, vulgarity, calls for violence, etc), as long as the standards are consistently enforced I'm okay with it. Although my caveat is that racism is defined differently for different people. I E., racism has to be directed towards a marginalized group vs derogatory statements based on racial characteristics. This is my main problem with Twitter. The standards aren't consistently enforced. I've seen so many leftist blue checkmarks justifying violence that get a pass. And on the racism front, Sarah Jeong comes to mind.
  • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    > racism has to be directed towards a marginalized group vs derogatory statements based on racial characteristics. Here I am old school just thinking the color of a mans skin should have no more significance than the color of his eyes... I don’t believe in the oppression olympics and that hate is ok because group A has it worse than B. Edit: HN 2020, ideals of Haile Selassie are rejected in the name of “tolerance” I guess? What a wild ride!
    • maceurt 6y ago
      > Here I am old school just thinking the color of a mans skin should have no more significance than the color of his eyes... I almost certain neither group on either side agrees with that. The people on the left will argue that color is important and is deeply connected to culture and through subconscious/ institutional racism. To pretend to be blind to race or think of it like any other physical characteristic would be to just put your head in the sand and pretend the world is all lollipops and gumballs. The right will argue that race plays a factor in physical and mental characteristics through culture and possibly genetics. And that too ignore race entirely would be to go against the stats on things like average SAT, ACT, IQ, Crime Rate, etc. I personally think that there is truth in a lot of what they both say, and ignoring race will not solve tension or conflict in the US. Its very naive to assume that race is skin deep and can be solved by simply pretending it doesn't exist. If it was that easy we would have solved it by now.
      • 6y ago
• bibinou 6y ago
  source: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...
• duxup 6y ago
  It was largely empty after the quarantine. I always wondered what the actual population of that sub was, I felt like I saw some strange patterns where whole hordes of users would appear, disappear, mob another sub and so on. It felt like a very non organic community in many ways. The issues surroundings that sub weren't just some folks who had a sub to talk to each other, they were very busy mobbing / taking over other subs and etc. Like most of those subs that leaned right it seemed like a front for sort of a rabbit hole of fear, hate, open bigotry, and blatent calls for violence / division and etc.
  • zionic 6y ago
    Well they broke off and made their own website after the quarantine and it's on it's way to the top-1000 US sites (alexa rank).
    • duxup 6y ago
      "they" I'm not quite sure how to define that outside what was somewhat easy to see on reddit. It was hard enough to get a feel for what was going on just on reddit, outside who knows...
    • SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      What site is that? And is that actual organic users, or a ton of bot traffic?
      • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
        I won’t link it directly for obvious reasons but theDonald dot win. I just went clicked through and the comment traffic seems real to me. Doesn’t look like bots that i can tell. Then I clicked an article about 19 child welfare workers arrested for sex trafficking children... and closed it. That’s enough for me for today.
    • skrowl 6y ago
      https:// https:// thedonald . win will probably get more new users after this, because many of the news articles talking about the ban are linking to them (either directly or indirectly)
• lollerka 6y ago
  Thank god we have the unbiased true source of all information /r/politics left untouched otherwise I'd be worried to get my daily dose of propaganda
• superkuh 6y ago
  I have no love for the political ideology or behavior of this group but they weren't breaking any laws or even any more rules than other groups on reddit that still operate. They were just politically unviable. Centralized corporate means to communicate (like, say, this one we're using) always go bad eventually. It's the natural lifecycle of online forums. Once money involved it's only a matter of time before the profit and drama-avoidance incentives of the corporation win over the wishes of the users. Reddit hasn't been usable since 2013.
  • root_axis 6y ago
    > They were just politically unviable. We all know reddit leans a bit left, but the ban also included /r/chapotraphouse which is a leftist subreddit that was also notorious for rule breaking. Frankly, it seems reddit went out of its way to accommodate the_donald for a while now.
    • cryptoz 6y ago
      > We all know reddit leans a bit left Do we? I think reddit 'leans a bit right' if anything. Especially in the city-level subreddits or country-level, or communities like that, there is (in my experience) a heavy-handed right-leaning attitude. I noticed this about 10 years ago and it has gotten much much more pronounced. The subreddit r/canada turned extreme-far-right about 10 years ago. Most of the cities I live in downvote left-leaning posts instantly. I don't think reddit was ever left-leaning in the past and I don't think it is now, either. Sure, left-wing views are posted, sometimes upvoted and tolerated, but I do not think they are the majority. I consider myself left-wing but feel unwelcome in most subreddits due to my opinions. I'll post anyway, but, it's not a left-leaning site at all IMO.
      • amadeuspagel 6y ago
        > Do we? I think reddit 'leans a bit right' if anything. Especially in the city-level subreddits or country-level, or communities like that, there is (in my experience) a heavy-handed right-leaning attitude. Who subscribes to such subreddits? People who are invested in their city or their country, which is itself a right-wing attitude. Apart from that, people are more right-wing at the city-level. Many who would roll their eyes at someone talking about "national identity" or wearing a flag pin, talk about "neighborhood character" and wear "I ️ $city" t-shirts.
• GenerocUsername 6y ago
  This is not news. Reddit killed the_donald months ago...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• praveen9920 6y ago
  I'm sorry but I feel that the posts with paywalls should be separated out from top page.
  • floatingatoll 6y ago
    You'll need to email the site moderators using the footer Contact link if you wish to have any influence on their views in this matter. Posting about it here will have no effect at all.
  • wjohnsto 6y ago
    Here is a non-paywall version: https://www.washingtonpost.com./technology/2020/06/29/reddit-closes-long-running-forum-supporting-president-trump-after-years-policy-violations/ https://www.washingtonpost.com./technology/2020/06/29/reddit...
• electrotype 6y ago
  I remember how was Reddit 10 years ago... It was a very open and permissive place. Only very bad things were prohibited at that time (pedophilia, rape, murder, etc.). It is now ran by people/corporations with a political agenda.
  • sschueller 6y ago
    Yep, r/videos is so locked down you don't get anything relevant other than some old cat video repost.
    • chippy 6y ago
      /r/movies had posters who literally and out in the open said they were employed by netflix to post netflix videos they said their manager thought reddit would like. I avoided the place ever since then. That was about 4 years ago.
      • electrotype 6y ago
        I pick my subreddits and I never look at the default/popular ones. There are some topics/interests for which Reddit is still the place to be, sadly.
  • electrotype 6y ago
    Let's see how https://ruqqus.com https://ruqqus.com will do as a Reddit alternative. I give it a chance! The algorithms are open-source so there is no manipulation.
• reaperducer 6y ago
  I was mostly OK with the previous restrictions on Mr. Trump, because they were directed at a person acting irresponsibily. This, however, may cross a line for me. I'm not a Reddit user, but it's my understanding that this is a discussion group about a person. I'm less OK with restricting the discussions of topics. It reminds me of something I heard in a forensics class years ago: Attack the problem, not the person. I need to think about this one for a bit.
  • dunnevens 6y ago
    There are pro-Trump, pro-Conservative subreddits which haven't broken the rules and haven't been particularly hateful. Those subs are still active.
• bradlys 6y ago
  Chapo was just banned too. No warning AFAIK.
  • Miner49er 6y ago
    Really this is what it's all about. T_D has been dead for months and its ban is mostly symbolic. Chapo has still been active.
    • kazagistar 6y ago
      Chapo had actually grown since quarentine afaik.
      • bradlys 6y ago
        It seemed really popular to me. The daily threads alone regularly had 4000+ comments when I was viewing the sub more frequently.
  • TheGrim-888 6y ago
    There's already multiple clones of that subreddit, and there will be many more created, and they'll all be allowed to thrive.
  • peruvian 6y ago
    I think after getting quarantined we all knew it was coming, and this ban was known ahead of time. We just didn't know for sure.
• otterley 6y ago
  "...and nothing of value was lost."
  • bastardoperator 6y ago
    trash in / trash out
• submeta 6y ago
  I wonder how someone like Hitler would have been treated. I guess free speech advocates would have helped him to spread his sick ideas and rise to power? Free speech needs to have limits somewhere. If others are insulted, smeared, de-humanized, if hate is spreaded, if under the protection of free speech people rise to power who poison the political climate, then the whole system is in danger of falling apart, with all the good elements, even the right for free speech.
  • 50ckpuppet 6y ago
    The protection of the whole system is a sound education that teaches people how to think not what to think. you should try it sometime.
  • NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
    So you think people who are fierce advocates of everyone's fundamental rights and liberties would--on net--enable the Nazis? The idea that we still have rabid censorship advocates in 2020 is dumbfounding. How many "heretics" have to burn before people realize that policing ideas is deeply illiberal?
    • submeta 6y ago
      Free speech is not a god given right to spread hate, misinformation, antisemitism, misogyny, etc - And yes: Not confronting people who threaten the very basics of our democracy (respecting human rights and the dignity of our fellow citizens) will help those dark forces rise to the power. The nazis have been elected to power in the Weimar Republic.
      • NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
        The medieval Catholic Church: "Free speech is not a God given right to spread heresy! Not burning heretics threatens the eternal souls of our flock and helps the dark forces of Satan rise to the power."
      • disposekinetics 6y ago
• nilkn 6y ago
  This is a purely symbolic move at this point. It was effectively shut down and has been completely inactive for something like four months, and by all accounts the competing site has been thriving.
• andrewla 6y ago
  Why is the article so cagey about mentioning what the successor is, while mentioning two other sites, Gab and Parler, that are equally controversial? It seems like a basic failure of factual journalism to say "[r/The_Donald's] volunteer moderators and much of the community had left in recent months, moving to a website that mimics Reddit’s system of conversation and user voting on content but appears to have fewer rules." If they're trying to preemptively de-platform thedonald.win, then why mention Gab and Parler?
  • floatingatoll 6y ago
    They take perverse glee in being named, because it attracts more bad actors to their cause and strengthens their ability to harm others. By naming their site openly here, you too are now helping them market to HN readers. Why would you do so voluntarily here?
• MintelIE 6y ago
  They figured out this would happen a while ago and already made a bolt-hole, thedonald.win. You'd think a big tech operation would prefer to keep overlordship of a community they hate and despise. They can fuck with the users, edit articles, and generally cause a big hassle. Now with all the users moving, they lose that power and the ability to closely monitor and profile for their partnered organizations, like the Atlantic Group, the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, and the rest.
• untog 6y ago
  IMO this headline is too selective. They banned a whole group of subs, including /r/trapochaphouse, which is a left-wing subreddit. Only highlighting this one is needlessly simplistic and will mislead anyone reading it.
• ur-whale 6y ago
  http://archive.is/DIKFA http://archive.is/DIKFA
• drocer88 6y ago
  20th Century Dystopian novels are now operations manuals.
  • skrowl 6y ago
    It's very sad how many leftist are cheering on the censorship. Forcible silencing of opposing views is a central tenant of actual fascism (not the kind of "fascism" that kids on social media accuse people of just for disagreeing with them). History repeats itself, it would seem. This is a modern day book burning.
    • ipnon 6y ago
      Americans have a constitutional guarantee to free speech. They do not have a constitutional guarantee to use Reddit. Does that difference matter here?
      • floatingatoll 6y ago
        Reddit is not a US government entity, so the US constitutional right to free speech is generally not applicable to discussions of Reddit. The exception is the case where a US government entity controls an account that is a mod of a subreddit, in which case they would be subject to the First Amendment when performing mod duties such as deleting user comments or banning users. This specific case would burden only that user and would not place any additional burden upon the non-government mods or upon Reddit itself or its admins.
      • amadeuspagel 6y ago
        No it does not matter, and I struggle to understand why anyone would think it does. There's no other context where every criticism of a private company gets countered with the argument that that private company isn't violating the constitution.
      • maceurt 6y ago
        It matters in that we should not lobby congress to make reddit unban certain subreddits. However, that does not mean we should not criticize reddit for not standing up for freedom of speech. You can't make your whole website based around "open and honest discussion" then ban subreddits where open and honest discussion was happening, but in ways you didn't like.
• madars 6y ago
  Full list of subreddits banned today: https://www.redditstatic.com/banned-subreddits-june-2020.txt https://www.redditstatic.com/banned-subreddits-june-2020.txt (with "blurring" after top 10)
  • donatj 6y ago
    Why the blurring?
    • floatingatoll 6y ago
      Naming them grants them glory as martyrs, especially when the subreddit's name is a google-unique term that they can use to regroup and to attract supporters to their cause. It's already too late for the top 10, but that's no reason to give the rest a free boost.
      • donatj 6y ago
        I mean it would be nice to know if anything I was subscribed to was banned. Denying us that is irritating at best.
        • floatingatoll 6y ago
          Theoretically, I can see why that would be distressing as an end-user, but wearing my platform operator hat^, I can't think of any way to implement that doesn't result in either driving traffic to competing platforms, assisting rulebreakers in their inevitable quest to rouse a pitchfork mob against their own platform, and/or is interpreted to be saying that users are bad for having subscribed to banned content. ^ I do not operate any public platforms.
        • 0x00000000 6y ago
          Here’s a partial crowdsourced list https://www.reddit.com/r/reclassified/comments/hi41t2/the_banwave_so_far/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reclassified/comments/hi41t2/the_ba...
• hkt 6y ago
  If this drives away lots of users of that subreddit, it may well be the case that Reddit becomes less representative (of drastically unpleasant people) and more cohesive. So, good to see it go.
• shiado 6y ago
  Reddit really had a good run as an interesting site, but it's really angling for a FB style consumer ad experience now. I think the final blow will be when they go after porn like tumblr did, then it will die forever. Too bad the alternatives are pretty extremist. I think Dread is really the best one because people who want to buy drugs on the internet aren't there completely for the politics.
  • fortran77 6y ago
    I tried some of the alternatives. I figured if the people I don't like stay in their subgroups, I'm fine. But they don't. They invade every group. I don't want to see extremely racist posts in my "anti-bicyclist" group (for example). They'll take every post and make it about race.
    • linuxftw 6y ago
      > They'll take every post and make it about race. It's called trolling. As long as you're feeding the trolls, they keep trolling. Do other language forums have these race problems? Are English speaking sites being targeted by nefarious actors or botnets with racist remarks for some ulterior purpose? It seems to me that posting racist things on the internet may have been weaponized.
      • deleted 6y ago
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      • jbob2000 6y ago
        English has a context problem, in that you need to know a little bit about the person to truly understand their communications. Mix this with the Anglosphere's culture of humor and sarcasm, and I see how someone communicating anonymously can have their comments read in differing ways.
  • WorkingDead 6y ago
    Hobby specific communities were a big attraction point to reddit, but even those have devolved into heavy censorship. There isnt really a good draw to the site anymore.
• runawaybottle 6y ago
  Without getting into the weeds, I just don’t see why we accepted that the internet should be one giant message board. We seem to do this over and over with stuff like Reddit and Facebook, but once upon a time communities would be their own site with their own message board.
  • buboard 6y ago
    Because it is and always has been , from the start. Without this liberation of having a public , anonymous board, we 'd be so much poorer culturally. Reddit banning some stuff is a good thing - new venues will arise because people arent just going to stop talking.
• ianleeclark 6y ago
  I'm actually curious how conspiracy subs continually skate through these ban-waves. Even if you discount all of the dog whistles, you can find normal whistles scattered throughout the place: echoes and charts showing who in the media is Jewish are the two most common. Yet they always stay around.
• beloch 6y ago
  >“It’s one of the founding principles of Reddit to foster [political] discussion,” Huffman said in the call with reporters. Ironically, /r/The_Donald highlighted a key flaw in reddit's system: moderators. Moderators in reddit's sub vary from being totally absent to all-controlling. /r/The_Donald's mods were at the very far end of the controlling spectrum. For example, back in the early days of the sub, before Trump was even elected, one of their posts showed up on /r/all (Anything highly voted on any subreddit can show up there). Somebody was gushing about "The Art of the Deal". I replied to them that they should check out some of Tony Schwartz's other books and was immediately banned from /r/The_Donald for life. The post in which I said this was removed. People went on gushing about the brilliance of Trump. Moderators on reddit are not selected or paid. They "volunteer". They have absolute control over who posts and what is posted in their sub. There is zero transparency. Users can't see what moderators are doing. The end result is that a sub is as biased as it's moderators. The thing is, reddit subs are like communities. People who post in a sub regularly get upvotes for conforming to the sub's biases, downvotes for struggling against them, and see only what the moderators let them see. Pretty soon their views conform to those of the moderators. /r/The_Donald allowed some pretty crazy people to polarize a lot of other people who were probably a lot more balanced in their political views before Reddit came along. For this reason, I no longer post in or read Reddit's political subs. Most subs seem better than /r/The_Donald, but you simply don't know what the mods are doing to shape your views. Personal experience has led me to believe /r/Canada also has some really bad moderators right now, and you can see the tone of that sub gradually changing over time. It's simply unacceptable to place this much trust in people who are totally anonymous. So, where do I get my political news from? Newspapers. I read several sources distributed from left-centre to right-centre on mediabiasfactcheck.com's ratings. Dead tree media may have corporate biases and a host of other problems but, at least, you can begin to get a handle on who they are and what their biases are. Also, by removing the upvote system from the mix, you don't have meaningless internet points serving as both carrot and stick to make you subconsciously conform. Bottom line, Reddit is for cat gifs and people smacking each other in the nuts. It is not a safe place to get your politics from.
• non-entity 6y ago
  Note T_D is only one such sub being banned. CTH and thousands of others as well are being removed. https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21304947/reddit-ban-subreddits-the-donald-chapo-trap-house-new-content-policy-rules https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21304947/reddit-ban-subre...
• conradfr 6y ago
  As horrible or stupid as that subreddit was it at least exposed Steve Huffman stealthily editing posts, so some positive came from it. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_...
• haunter 6y ago
  I wonder how they will fight against the other kind of systematic propaganda now but guess nothing will happen. Subs like /r/bestof became absolute shit See the current top post there which is absolutely crazy but hey it fits the agenda.
  • tenpies 6y ago
    Reddit is basically a Left-wing propaganda outlet at this point. The amount of clearly targeted sub-Reddits with the aim of radicalising their target group is staggering and would make even the most nefarious of insurgents blush at how open and obvious it is.
    • cryptoz 6y ago
      Worth noting that from my perspective, reddit is basically a right-wing propaganda outlet and always has been (at least the last 10+ years). Weird how that goes.
      • lipstone 6y ago
        Have you used reddit at all within the past 10 years? Yeah, there's some smaller subreddits that have right-wing views, but every frontpage sub leans heavily left. For example, the most common political debate right now isn't Biden vs. Trump, it's whether or not Biden is left-wing enough to deserve a vote.
        • sgift 6y ago
          From the perspective of someone from Europe this is a very valid question, cause Biden is right of the center, so not really what somehow who describes themselves as "leftist" usually votes for. Even Bernie Sanders, often seen as the start of socialism in America, is only a bit left of the center in typical political quadrants. The problem is that US politics are very skewed to the right, so many there think clear right wing positions are on the left. (https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020)
• TheGrim-888 6y ago
  Everyone was calling out, even years ago, that this was going to happen. You have a demonstrably left leaning group that turned evil long ago, it was so obvious that they would try to shut down any dissenting opinions (wrong think) before the election. If you're a leftist, you're on the side of censorship, deplatforming, and book burning. You may argue that it's GOOD censorship, that it's worth it, but you're still a book burner. You can argue that it's legal, but it's still book burning. You can talk about how evil the book you're burning is, but you're still a book burner. You can burn any book you want by just saying it's racist and then just memory hole it. The really ironic part is that one of the major justifications used to quarantine the forum a few months ago was alleged "threats against the police". Funny how the tables have turned isn't it? I guess when you're corrupt it really shows .. how rules only apply to other people, but you play by your own set of rules.
• jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  This may be the first ban of a sitting U.S. president. Reddit is making history over here and I get to see it. Cool.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • c3534l 6y ago
    They didn't ban Trump, nor did they ban all subreddits about Trump. They banned a single subreddit which repeatedly violates reddit rules and refuses to moderate according the rules.
    • BitwiseFool 6y ago
      I guarantee you any new pro-Trump subreddits will be banned quickly due to "Ban Evasion".
      • c3534l 6y ago
        Not likely. All the conservatives have move to /r/conservative, which actually bans people for threatening to kill people and things like that, and Reddit appears to have no problem with them.
• samfriedman 6y ago
  The title should be updated, as T_D was just one of a large number of subs banned today; even then, it has been largely irrelevant since the admins' earlier decision to quarantine it and impose other restrictions. Other larger banned subs include /r/GenderCritical (anti-Trans) and /r/ConsumeProduct which was ostensibly for criticism of consumerism and product promotion, but hid a large strain of antisemitism below the surface in a similar though less-direct fashion to previously banned /r/clownworld (barely-veiled antisemitic and racist cartoons/commentary). Also banned is /r/chapotraphouse, notably the biggest (only?) left-leaning sub on the list. Its users were known to be relatively cantankerous and tended to kick off a lot of brigading on Twitter and such; though some will say its banning was a "both sides" maneuver from the management. In my own opinion this was a long time coming, and Reddit has long since shown that the original hands-off model is woefully inadequate in the face of communities that are willing to expend the effort to argue continuously in bad faith, organize to influence and control opinion in other communities, and attack the platform itself in their campaigns for hateful speech. Just ask /r/BlackLadies if you think these users "stay in their containment areas". Hopefully Reddit is turning the page to better empower its communities to protect their users and keep hate off the platform.
  • rjbwork 6y ago
    >In my own opinion this was a long time coming, and Reddit has long since shown that the original hands-off model is woefully inadequate in the face of communities that are willing to expend the effort to argue continuously in bad faith, organize to influence and control opinion in other communities, and attack the platform itself in their campaigns for hateful speech. Just ask /r/BlackLadies if you think these users "stay in their containment areas". Hopefully Reddit is turning the page to better empower its communities to protect their users and keep hate off the platform. All this will do is push these folks out to different platforms where they will organize brigading and bad faith participation in the dark. There are gobs of matrix/discord/irc rooms where people organize the manipulation of social media, and this move just removed visibility of it from reddit.
    • noir_lord 6y ago
      So if we assume you are right then those users are going to behave like arseholes in either case, better they behave like arseholes off reddit is likely reddit's point of view - not least for PR/legal issues.
• koolba 6y ago
  This final banning of /r/The_Donald is part of a concerted effort to eliminate any sense of normalcy for being pro-Trump. Even with no content for the past few months (after the mod removal), it stood out as a historical reference point to show thousands of people that supported Trump's 2016 campaign and presumably would continue to support him in 2020. They had a choice to leave it up and locked, but instead chose to erase it from the Internet and that's no accident.
  • dangus 6y ago
    As a counterpoint to that, there is really nothing “normal” about supporting Trump. He really is just as bad as his critics say. This is the guy that retweeted a video of someone yelling white power in support. This is the guy who called COVID-19 the “Kung flu.” This is the guy that said there were “fine people on both sides” where one side was neo-Nazis. This is the guy that encouraged both police and rally-goers to get violent with the “wrong“ type of people. Trump is deeply, unacceptably racist, and pro-violence, full stop. Trump is on the side of Christian white nationalism and there are plenty of people who voted for him who don’t even recognize it. The fact that your typical upper middle class white suburban family with generally moderate views might have voted for this guy isn’t normal. They just can’t hear the dog whistles and have been, amazingly, convinced that that the alternative is worse.
    • forgingahead 6y ago
      I'm still amazed at how effectively the media has brainwashed half of the voting public in the US that the other half are literal monsters. I say this with complete sympathy and sincerity - please seek professional help, from a declared non-political therapist. You need to break out of the daily "two-minutes of hate" conditioning, and just relearn to live in a society with different viewpoints.
      • deleted 6y ago
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      • deleted 6y ago
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• jl2718 6y ago
  There’s no winning this game. Soon they will be considered liable for anything they didn’t censor, especially from the extreme left, as they are making the appearance of support. I hope they’re paying Michael a massive amount of money to associate himself with this dumpster fire.
  • ggggtez 6y ago
    Bizarrely, the reason that there is even a discussion of making them liabile for user speech to begin with is because of prostitution, pedophiles, and terrorism. I would hardly call those issues "extreme left". This change is actually from the conservative view point a lot of the time, especially as it comes to speech about sex. See cases against Backpage or Craigslist and prostitution. Once a company is criminally liable for user speech, you're going to get this situation where it's easier to just ban speech that even approach the line. But I don't think anyone is going to say that a company should be willfully blind to pedophiles on their platform. So this is the world we get.
  • fzeroracer 6y ago
    Trump literally signed an executive order which was threatening social media companies to take on liability from anything their users posted. When that happens said companies will simply outright ban the subs that are causing problems, which are usually the far-right subs because they insist on making threats of violence and racism. The 'extreme left' has little to no political power compared to the president telling companies to either obey him or risk having their site go down in flames.
  • chippy 6y ago
    a strange game - the only winning move is not to play.
  • basch 6y ago
    Section 230 protects you from liability when you choose to censor.
    • tomjen3 6y ago
• extr 6y ago
  RIP /r/cumtown
  • sketchyj 6y ago
    o7
• throwaway010120 6y ago
  Good job galvanizing Trump supporters. I'm sure silencing them online will silence them at the voting booth.
  • CyberDildonics 6y ago
    bots can't vote
    • throwaway010120 6y ago
      Then you have nothing to worry about.
• ausbah 6y ago
  some other bannings r/Consume Product r/ClericalFascism r/Smuggies r/Debate Alright r/bruhfunny r/ShitNeoconsSay r/soyboys r/imgoingtohellforthis2 r/AltRightChristian r/TheHonkPill r/topnotchshitposting r/TheNewRight r/DarkHumorAndMemes r/Gender Critical r/ChapoTrapHouse r/rightwingLGBT r/whitebeauty r/The3rdPosition r/CumTown
• Press2forEN 6y ago
  Since the 2016 election the left has been consolidating their vast cultural power by exiling opposing views that don't pass their ever-shifting purity tests. It remains to be seen whether or not this will bury conservative thought or cause an underground resurgence.
  • Miner49er 6y ago
    The largest lefist subreddit was banned today. The T_D ban was purely symbolic, it was already dead. This isn't "the left" this is liberalism.
    • mszkoda 6y ago
      They banned /r/politics?
      • Miner49er 6y ago
        /r/politics is a liberal subreddit. It regularly censors leftists and people on right. Don't call something "left" when you mean liberal.
        • afiori 6y ago
          The modern conversation is about tribes not position/ideology. What people are calling left here is an amorphous blob of ever shifting positions. They are neither leftist nor liberal, it is essentially a distributed tribe linked together by shared a language and culture. Left and liberal are both two very useful words, sadly they do not really describe any of the vocal demographics on social media
  • ipnon 6y ago
    Social media companies and "the left" are not the same. Although they surely have some overlap (just as social media companies and "the right" surely have some overlap), conflating them entirely with each other is simply false. We cannot assign political conspiracies to entire industries.
• yur3i__ 6y ago
  Well yeah after they all migrated away. Bit of a token gesture to all the people who kept yammering at them really.
• deleted 6y ago
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• anonu 6y ago
  The internet remains a bastion of free speech. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, remain privately managed companies with a duty to police their platforms. If /r/The_Donald contributors are upset - they can go almost anywhere else. Vitriol, hate, disinformation, etc... just doesn't need to be on public display.
  • TheGrim-888 6y ago
    The problem is that what hate is, is in the eye of the beholder. People can say Trump wanting to enforce rule of law is hate, I don't think so. People can say Trump wanting to enforce our borders is hate, and I don't think so. You have politically motivated people who think that anything that disagrees with their political viewpoints is hate, and justification to be memoryholed from the internet. I don't agree.
    • rvz 6y ago
      That's right. Who defines hate speech? Where do you draw the line? I guess as soon as one incites violence no matter what side of the political spectrum it is from, that is out of order.
    • deleted 6y ago
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• deleted 6y ago
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• dandersh 6y ago
  This played out how many (myself included) speculated it would. 1. t_d would not be banned as long as it was moderately active (it's basically been dead for months) 2. If it goes, ChapoTrapHouse gets banned as well. The big thing here is that Chapo served as a clearinghouse for the "dirtbag left" and was incredibly active. The expectation that it would be banned was increasing even before the anonymous warning over the weekend. It was common for users to get warnings/3 day bans for "posting violations of content/upvoting violated content" without specifying the specific post or rule that was alleged to have been violated. It's clear that including Chapo was a weak, "both sides" move.
• alkibiades 6y ago
  I used to use reddit a lot but it got far too political. even generic subreddits like r/pics or /funny seem to often have a top post bashing trump. it’s really devolved.
• friedxenon 6y ago
  Right in time for the election.
• gergles 6y ago
  CTH made a parachute sub (MTC) that was widely promoted on CTH and that sub, of course, is free to continue as is because Reddit's admins are totally fine with left-wing hate. If it weren't for double standards, Reddit would have no standards at all. Also, /r/rightwingLGBT was banned for 'hate speech', because apparently being a non-leftist gay person isn't allowed by Reddit's commissars. Go ahead and rock this down to -4, it won't change the truth that leftwing hate and calling for murder of white people ("John Browning") is apparently totally OK, since a stickied post on CTH redirected people to MTC for almost three weeks prior to the ban and MTC currently has a stickied post advocating for "John Browning the slave owners."
• secondcoming 6y ago
  Great, I hope r/politics is next. And then they can start censoring anti-semitic far-leftists.
  • MrZongle2 6y ago
    Don't hold your breath, especially regarding any action taken against /r/politics or an effort to make it actually politically neutral.
    • tzs 6y ago
      How would one make a political discussion group be politically neutral?
      • MrZongle2 6y ago
        By encouraging discussions from both ends of the political spectrum, perhaps? The discussions themselves cannot be neutral, but the environment can be. That is not currently the case in /r/politics.
      • afiori 6y ago
        events of r/askreddit offer possible insight, some months ago someone posted a question similar to "Trump voters that will not vote for Trump again, what was the last drop?" and it became a huge post, soon after the same question was posted again by only changing Trump to Biden (in true r/askreddit fashion where popular questions are milked to death). Only one of them was removed by moderators. A political discussion forum can be neutral in allowing equal participation to different political position. People are not asking reddit userbase to be neutral in their voting, they are asking reddit moderators to be neutral in how they enforce policies/rules.
• s9w 6y ago
  So the rumors about today were right. But this should not be the headline - TD was shut down many many months ago, despite people clinging to technicalities that it was not the case.
• neonate 6y ago
  https://archive.vn/DIKFA https://archive.vn/DIKFA
• wnevets 6y ago
  Finally. Its been a festering hole of hate speech for years
• gtk40 6y ago
  /r/gendercritical was also banned, an active and well-moderated radical feminist sub. I am not a radical feminist, nor was I particularly welcomed there as a man, but I found the sub interesting to expand my perspective.
  • abellerose 6y ago
    What did that subreddit do besides hating on trans people? I never saw anything but countless posts targeting hate against trans people.
    • nullc 6y ago
      People see what catches their attention. Some people would go there and read articles about gay women being attacked for choosing whom they took on as sexual partners. (I found it quite surprising and extremely rapey that anyone would consider it appropriate to be critical of anyone for choosing their consenting sexual partners however they like-- but it happens sometimes.) Or read about people being displaced from scholarships because the top spots in track in their community were held by hormonally advantaged persons. Or learn about cases where tomboyish young women were told that they were actually men because they were interested in science or sports. Personally, I find it too easy to be extremely self righteous in ethical proclamations if I never even get exposed to the corner cases where there can be a truly difficult conflict of rights. Now-- taking fringe events like the above examples and exaggerating them as some kind of endemic phenomena absolutely can fuel hate. It isn't always an easy line to walk.
      • saltminer 6y ago
        Trans people were the subject of a great many, if not most of the posts on GC for the past few months I've paid attention to the sub. GC is a radical feminist hangout, as in SCUM Manifesto "men are the root of all evil and must be exterminated to liberate women"-flavor radical feminism, which lends itself to trans exclusion quite easily since you just have to view trans women as men for them to become evil fetishizers who want to become women for their own pleasure (this also allows them to pity trans men since they become women who were tricked into becoming a man for social reasons instead of acknowledging that gender dysphoria is real). Trans stuff was certainly not the only thing they talked about, but it was the most common, and trans posts tended to have the most discussion.
• thepangolino 6y ago
  How many places will Reddit drop in Alexa rankings after this?
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  Apart from politics, one thing I hope that comes from this is the people learn to own their online identity instead of leasing it from social media companies. For an individual, set up your email on your own domain. Even if you use some other service to host it for you, as long as you own the name, you can move it wherever you want. If you host a community, have it on your own domain. Maybe initially it just redirects to a reddit subreddit, but your users should get in the habit of going to MyCommunity.tld instead of reddit.com/r/my_community If you make videos for a living, have at a minimum a website that has a list of your videos and always tell your users that that is the canonical place to find your videos. Own your online identity. Don’t lease it from a social media company.
• akerro 6y ago
  I see reddit as a platform where everyone can shitpost whatever they want, and where every opinion will face criticisms. Banning right or left wing subreddits will make these people to leave to "safe harbour" where their extreme views won't be banned, but such portals will be pwoered by their extreme views and there will be no criticism or "quality control". Basically, extremists fuelling each other to do harm in real life, because there is no one to tell them "hey, this is too edgy" just like small terrorist groups start.
• zimac 6y ago
  New rule change is essentially no hate subs except if it’s hate against a majority aka white people. As a minority I’m tired of defending white people from other white people and being shouted at by white people for doing so. I’ve tried for 6 years to push for equality for all and had the most insane rebuttals against that.
  • SkyBelow 6y ago
    Oddest thing is that many groups deemed a majority are not if one looks at a global scale. It really seems the terms majority/minority are selectively defined as needed to target certain groups.
    • mantap 6y ago
      It's not even true on a per country level, for instance in Bahrain and UAE the majority of the population are south Asian people. It does not protect them from racism. It's not uncommon around the world for racism and discrimination to be perpetuated by a small but powerful aristocracy.
      • SkyBelow 6y ago
        All the more reason to drop any 'majority group' based logic and just ban targeted harassment and discrimination based on immutable characteristics in general.
  • maceurt 6y ago
    Yeah I feel you. The problem is that the majority of white people agree with you, and do not believe its okay to use hate against them. However, there is a minority of white people who think they can speak for their whole race and will attack anybody who doesn't fall in line. Maybe its because I don't live in a city like Portland or LA, but I have never talked to a white person in real life one on one who agreed with the typical narrative on places like reddit of, "you can't be racist against white people". The more time I spend on reddit, the more I realize is that the people who comment are getting less and less human. Back 5 years ago, reddit actually felt human. Now it feels like it is just filled with either bots or seriously mentally ill people. I think its about time for me to stop going on that site entirely.
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• gre 6y ago
  r/chapotraphouse was the only reason to still use reddit
• cwhiz 6y ago
  Oh thank the heavens. I was worried that my little bitty sensibilities would have to see something that I disagreed with. I only want the safest bubbles where alternative thought cannot penetrate. All these wrong thinkers need to be banned!
• throwawayX4242 6y ago
  Meanwhile LateStageCapitalism is up and running, whereas they as Marxists openly support genocide, they consider that it's needed in order to successfully deploy a dictatorship of the proletariat. But this is all intended, all institutions, places, and platforms that have been hijacked by Marxists will openly say to you that you have free speech: you're free to speak in support of Marxism, or you're free to not speak at all. Speaking against is a hate speech and you'll be labeled as bigot/racist/nazi/fascist. And everyone who dares to speak against risk their lives, risk their careers, risk being ostracized in universities, risk being banned, being shadowbanned, being flagged, being demonetized, and so on.
• 13415 6y ago
  It's high time Reddit and other social networks ban toxic users, and boy are those political zealots toxic. The problem with these people is that they don't realize that almost nobody cares about their fringe opinions. For all that I'm concerned, if Reddit shadowbanned every user with a history of mostly political comments and posts, nothing of value would be lost. Political discussions online do not have any positive effects on anybody, neither on the people doing it nor on the poor bystanders who have to endure all these "campaigns" and the constant attempts to manipulate public opinion. As a European, I'm particularly tired of the constant flow of politically-motivated garbage posts coming from the US. One reason why I'm mostly on HN is that political topics are usually flagged. Kudos to Reddit if they go the same path.
• nabla9 6y ago
  If you look at the posting history of people who post lots of politics or bigoted, many of them are really weird. One very clear class of weird is people who only post 1-2 sentence posts. If you scroll down, they may post 10-100 posts per day and they are always some short unoriginal emotionally loaded statement of the world situation. If they are not banned the posting history can go on for years, with just endless stream of short sentences. Discussing for them is just saying opinions. They take everything against them personally. If you try to engage them into discussion, they really can't.
• lumberingjack 6y ago
  I was still using the site but now my front page is empty I tell you empty not one sub I had is LEFT
  • duxup 6y ago
    That's a pretty weird thing to have happen. How many subs could you possibly been following? Not that many subs get banned...
• forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I know a little bit about a large apolitical r. The majority of the time people's arguments get heated enough that a mod has to step in and tell someone to cool it, the topic is politics. And the majority of the time the argument starts with obvious trolling/baiting, typically racist stuff. Straight up racism is quickly spotted and flagged down, so the new technique is to go on a roundabout monologue and imply racism. Reddit admins themselves sometimes step in to remove things as well, but it's rare. Mostly for illegal things they spot first, e.g. trying to buy/sell drugs. AMA if you want to know anything else.
• sunseb 6y ago
  The new fascists call themselves anti-fascists. Welcome to the new dystopian world. Get "woke" or be cancelled.
• opportune 6y ago
  Chapo was the only interesting subreddit remaining, or at least the only one that still brought me to the site, but I’d gladly take losing it so that reddit can use a “both sides” narrative to deplatform racists. TD was pretty much in zombie mode since they replaced all the mods and the users moved to other conservative subs. I also think many of the more extreme/active users graduated to 8ch. This is probably just reddit getting ahead of the election to be extra sure they can keep it advertiser friendly as it heats up
• admin1010 6y ago
  Do you all think Steve is ok? Like on a personal health level? The constant onslaught of "you're a nazi and racist" and being overwhelmingly hated by your user base must take a toll. How do CEOs in positions like this not burn out or avoid major stress-related health problems?
  • flyingfences 6y ago
    > How do CEOs in positions like this not burn out or avoid major stress-related health problems? Money.
  • asdf21 6y ago
    I met him years ago, he was never ok
• kajb 6y ago
  Are there any reddit alternatives with minimal political discussion that at the same time is not just for a narrow topic?
• GoodJokes 6y ago
  Its kinda like top down management of anything doesn't work and democratic and inclusive practices are better.
• christkv 6y ago
  A bigger threat to all the social platforms is that advertisers seem to be pausing the ad spend. I wonder how that impacts decisions like these bans.
• zmlakjdsf 6y ago
  Shame. Good job they have thedonald.win, which is proving to be a more than adequate replacement.
• zmlakjdsf 6y ago
  Good job they created thedonald.win.
• ggreer 6y ago
  One thing that seems to not be mentioned in Reddit's new policy: They're now auto-removing comments that contain certain phrases or words. Not even moderators can approve them: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/hhtwxi/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_june_29_2020/fwdyvqz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/hhtwxi/culture_wa... It looks like it is no longer possible to make a comment containing "thedonald.win" on Reddit. To be clear: Reddit isn't just censoring links to that site, it's censoring mentioning it. This appears to be a new change as it was retroactively applied to comments from a few days ago.
• blisseyGo 6y ago
  From Reddit: https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/promoting-hate-based-identity-or https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/acc... > Marginalized or vulnerable groups include, but are not limited to, groups based on their actual and perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or disability. These include victims of a major violent event and their families. > While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate. The majority based on what? An individual state? The US? The west? The world? Men are the minority in many countries but the majority world wide. White people are the majority in the west but a minority world wide. Does that mean people can attack white people with impunity, even though they're a global minority? Can I crap on women to my hearts content because they are a majority in the UK? Can people in California shit all over Hispanics because they're the majority in that State? Will they assess a users state/country/continent of origin before deciding whether or not they're being hateful towards a specific group? We are watching Reddit die. Aaron Swartz, the cofounder of Reddit warned about this a decade ago.
  • haunter 6y ago
    It means /r/sino won't be banned which is a CPC propaganda sub
    • blisseyGo 6y ago
      Even the CHAZ sub is still up which is literally doing illegal stuff with 5 shootings and 3 dead within 2 weeks. Also all the porn, rape, incest subs are allowed.
    • nexus2045 6y ago
      r/sino feels more like a circlejerk for mostly Asian Americans that somehow hate their country that has blessed them with all this liberty and freedom... it is so weird to see the posts there express themselves so well, in fluent English (then why haven't you moved to China?). I partially get what they're coming from because I also have been really impressed with the unhindered economic development in China, and without too much concern for politics, I would also find life in China, superficially speaking, a lot more stimulating than typical US suburbia, but I just don't get what drives their love and support for the CCP. For a long time I read r/hongkong and r/sino simultaneously to stay neutral.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Giorgi 6y ago
  Day before someone reported that on Monday Reddit was planning wave of censorship. Follow reddit self-destruction here: https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/
  • chippy 6y ago
    could you link the report?
  • maceurt 6y ago
    And the news traveled pretty quickly to so many different subreddits before the ban wave. All the subs that had a chance of getting banned were making posts warning about an upcoming ban, and I even saw a post in r/againsthatesubreddits like 6 hours before the banwave that was talking about the post on watchredditdie in a way that sounded like they knew it was true. I highly doubt that all these mods just saw one post from a medium sized subreddit and started preparing for a ban. Seems to me like all the mods within certain subreddits knew and it got leaked to other mods.
  • raldi 6y ago
    > a community for 4 years
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• m0zg 6y ago
  Did they ban r/politics hate subreddit? No? Then it's not "banning hate", sorry Spez.
• throwawaylolx 6y ago
  It appears to have been a cross-platform mass-banning which included actions from Google (YouTube) and Amazon (Twitch) as well.
• gblaickzou 6y ago
  The “progressives” have made their move in preparation for the election. Here’s hoping ol’Donny wins again so the leftists can start some self-reflection. Chaptraphouse is nothing compared to all the other “mainstream” subs like politics and news that are still under their control.
• phjesusthatguy3 6y ago
  Whatever else you want to want to say about our current president, "The People" did not vote him in. The fact that he's President really is going back to the founding fathers' intention, and why we have an Electoral College in the first place: So that underrepresented voters would have a say in who the President was. And they did, so he is. And now he's pretending that he's the voice of our country, when he so clearly is not. The People spoke, and they requested someone else. A reasonable person would look at his election results and create an agenda from there, but not Trump. I am hopeful that is his downfall. I'm not holding my breath about it, though.
  • afiori 6y ago
    But there is not "one true way" to coordinate a democratic election. Especially when considering the differences between presidential republics and parliamentary republics. Or even concepts like "one person one vote" force systems to converge towards a few stable establishment parties. It would still be democratic if voter could grade candidates and the winners were chosen by some appropriate statistical measure, or if voters could select arbitrary subsets of okeyish candidates and the winners were those with most votes, or any combination of many other systems. The real objective of most democratic electoral systems is governability and meaningful representation. Pretending that popular vote is the only meaningful way to elect representatives is naive.
• annexrichmond 6y ago
  r/RightWingLGBT was also banned because it supposedly promotes "hate" What is hate, anyways?
  • cjones26 6y ago
    When someone disagrees with you
  • mFixman 6y ago
    A big chunk of that sub was transphobic posts.
• blisseyGo 6y ago
  I used to spend a lot of money on Reddit gold until few years ago when Reddit blocked any discussion about the gay club shooting at Pulse nightclub. The_Donald was the only sub which allowed discussion of it and seemed to be the only ones who could sympathize with the gay community on Reddit at that time. Before that, I used to believe right wingers were a bunch of homophobes and what not but if that was the case, why would would they be the only one discussing and sympathizing with the families of the victims? Why was the supposed homophobic and violent sub The_Donald the only ones which were allowing stickies for blood donations towards the shooting victims while the /r/news sub deleting any comment which talked about blood donations to the victims? PEOPLE LITERALLY DIED and for all the virtue signaling Reddit and the front page subs did, they didn't care about the victims? https://web.archive.org/web/20160612232812/http://i.imgur.com/OGaPNij.png https://web.archive.org/web/20160612232812/http://i.imgur.co... https://web.archive.org/web/20160612215205/https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4nrnyk/fucking_despicablernews_mods_even_censoring/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160612215205/https://www.reddi... https://web.archive.org/web/20160612215019/http://reddit.com/r/the_Donald https://web.archive.org/web/20160612215019/http://reddit.com... https://web.archive.org/web/20160613172842/http://reddit.com/r/the_Donald https://web.archive.org/web/20160613172842/http://reddit.com... Here's people literally pleading mods of /r/news to not delete blood donation comments: https://web.archive.org/web/20160612212229/http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/06/2016-06-12_18h33_15.png https://web.archive.org/web/20160612212229/http://media.brei... When people called out the mods of /r/news to stop censoring, the mod told them to "kill yourself": https://web.archive.org/web/20160616024508/http://imgur.com/XDlWQNd https://web.archive.org/web/20160616024508/http://imgur.com/... Here's mods of /r/news deleting a comment about a missing friend: https://web.archive.org/web/20160920213229/https://i.imgur.com/OOiIRAT.png https://web.archive.org/web/20160920213229/https://i.imgur.c... This made me re-think about whether my side was the bad guys? Since I am a brown immigrant myself, I was always told right wingers hate me and other minorities. I had never looked deep enough. The Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting which killed 50 gays made me re-think. Why is the side which supposedly hates minorities the only one talking about blood donations to the victims? This also made me question why was "/r/rightwingLGBT" banned? Are gays not allowed to be conservative? Since then, I started browsing The_Donald more often and despite whatever media says, there can sometimes be tongue in cheek memes and comments on there but they are not evil people as media and Reddit makes them out to be. There's a huge community there with gays, hispanics, blacks and every minority group which media claims right wingers hate. When hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico 3 years ago, The_Donald was the only sub where people were sharing how a lot of the FEMA supplies were going missing. Everyone else was calling this a conspiracy theory but there were people literally sharing videos of garbage trucks and warehouses filled with perfectly well and brand new supplies. It was quite sinister. Then the truth finally came out earlier this year that they found 8 warehouses full of FEMA supplies which were rotting away and never given to the Puerto Rico people who were literally starving and dying. These are the types of incidents which have changed my mind since then that there's evil in media and many people who are actively willing to let people suffer and die if it makes right wingers look bad. I might get downvoted for this comment but I hope few people pay attention to what's happening and dig a bit deeper than what media and big tech are telling them. I used to be a liberal - I am still a liberal on most things but I can no longer identify with the current left. It breaks my heart on what people have become.
• ThA0x2 6y ago
  They literally greenlit racism against Whites: "Marginalized or vulnerable groups include, but are not limited to, groups based on their actual and perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or disability. These include victims of a major violent event and their families. While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate."
  • mitchdoogle 6y ago
    Can't find any reference to the line about majority on their website
    • ThA0x2 6y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hjdeo9/reddit_has_now_changed_the_wording_of_their_new/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hjdeo9/redd...
• cptnapalm 6y ago
  I don't know what the rest of you are reading, but reddit now explicitly allows hate speech against a majority. Seriously, it's right there on their site: https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/promoting-hate-based-identity-or https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/acc...
• cc-d 6y ago
  I feel obligated to once again plug https://ieddit.com/about/ https://ieddit.com/about/ -transparent mod/admin logs, anonymous posting, etcetcetc, but I honestly think it's been demonstrated that it's next to impossible to sustain any amount of serious interest in such alternatives (there is certainly no shortage of reddit-like sites). The direction reddit has taken is absolutely abhorrent, but at this point it's hard to avoid adopting a fatalistic outlook on things. What else can be done? Anybody in the upper echelons of reddit who is responsible for the direction the site has taken over the past few years should be absolutely disgusted with themselves. Was the hundreds of millions (billions?) in VC funding not enough? You were given an extremely important position of stewardship over the internet, and have utterly betrayed all of us.
• asdfk-12 6y ago
  I find it odd that there is no mention in parent article or in any comments that Reddit is a subsidiary of the Condé Nast media empire. Their ultimate profit goal doesn't align with users and relies on algos and top-down intervention to generate cash and clicks. Partisanship doesn't contribute to this aim, so, how is their killing a discussion board newsworthy or surprising to anyone?
• blisseyGo 6y ago
  3 of some of the biggest right wing YouTube channels, Trump's Twitch account, and 2000 other subreddits including The_Donald all being banned in the span of less than an hour is just a coincidence. More of a criminal conspiracy.
  • blisseyGo 6y ago
    Twitter also banned Sidney Powell, the lawyer of 3 star general Michael Flynn.
• frankzen 6y ago
  It's about time now to declare the "social media" experiment dead. We're basically learning that there is value in excluding. The all inclusive buffet only brings you down to a neutered lowest common denominator. You're not really going to get any real thought or discussion when you're conversation is monitored by outside moderators. It was doomed to fail anyway.
  • floatingatoll 6y ago
    Do you consider this failure to include this social media site, “Hacker News”?
    • asdf21 6y ago
      If you start posting substantive points arguing against socialism / big government you get warned. If you argue about the warning you get banned. YC is not really any better and the main mod is a self-admitted (although he took it down now) far leftist. One time I found all the UBI threads and every flagged / mod warned post was someone arguing against UBI (that’s apparent a flame war), but endless idealistic rambling about how great it would be was totally fine.
• Morizero 6y ago
  Here's where news about it was leaked over the weekend: https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/reddits_largest_ever_banwave_is_coming_monday/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/redd...
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  Good. I wouldn't want these communities on my website either. And it's not about censorship, it's about not wanting to give shitty hateful trolls a platform and let them run wild on your site ruining it for everyone who chooses to remain civil.
• HeroOfAges 6y ago
  "The rule does not protect people in the majority". Hmm... Aren't women in the majority here in the United States? According to Reddit, women are fair game.
• blisseyGo 6y ago
  Spez is lying because The_Donald had been inactive for 4 months when the Reddit admins banned their top mods and they all left and built their own website thedonald.win So Spez claiming TD has been continuing to post rule breaking content is literally a lie.
  • asdf21 6y ago
    If you follow spez at all that shouldn’t surprise you. Hell he directly edited the comment database on the_donald one time
• apta 6y ago
  Perhaps now that reddit is Chinese owned, they're trying to infiltrate to see how much they can get away with by medling around with external affairs in order to model them after their own internal policies.
• newguy1234 6y ago
  I don't know how many will see the comment but I was a member of the_donald sub and subsequently migrated to the new thedonald.win There is a significant shift going on that people aren't realizing. The days of the "platform" being a monopoly over users is coming to an end. The cost of running a website, even a bandwidth heavy website is going lower. As major social networks and platforms crack down on controversial content, these communities don't vanish. They simply move to some other place. In the conservative community this idea of "censorship" is increasing to the point where it is becoming a serious movement. Many alternatives to mainstream media are actually gaining a decent userbase. Here is what is going on that I can see: Twitter is replaced by parler Youtube is replaced by bitchute Reddit subs are replaced by thedonald.win (you can get your sub hosted by them now) Twitch is replaced by dlive Just to show you the growth of some of these platforms. Just look at the growth of thedonald.win. Apparently it is ranked at something like 1,250 for the USA by Alexa. That's staggering considering this website is only a few years old. If you are a web entrepreneur, take note because there is a growing market for "conservative" or "censorship-free" social media now.
  • joshschreuder 6y ago
    It's ranked 8,648 from what I can tell https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thedonald.win https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thedonald.win I have never heard of the other sites you mention, so I can't speak to their popularity. But as far as I can see this all seems very fringe for lack of a better word. There doesn't really seem to be a groundswell of movement towards alternate platforms because of censorship.
    • Eezee 6y ago
      Calling bitchute fringe seems to be very kind. I just took a look at their front page and they are promoting videos about Holocaust denial and 2 of the first 10 videos are blatantly antisemitic. Parker requires an account, which I'm not willing to make, but if it's similar to the last conservative Twitter alternative Gab, it's all just racist drivel with barely any 'normal' conversations. While alternatives to the big corporate social media are obviously needed, they very often attract the most toxic members of society, which most sane people won't be comfortable associating with.
• gadders 6y ago
  It's an election year. What do you expect?
• stevens32 6y ago
  This seems like a win for the trolls. I've cut Reddit out of my diet and I'm sure those communities were deserving of the ban, but targeting specific subreddits rather than properly enforcing whatever rule they were breaking to create a toxic atmosphere seems like the less good answer of the two.