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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 no

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.
    - jandrese 6y ago
      Even back in '94 the Usenet could get ugly. The Usenet is where Godwin observed his famous law in practice. As a community grows the probability that it includes disruptive assholes approaches 1. Unmoderated communities do not scale.
  - qdog 6y ago
    Biggest difference I have seen is a change from random trolls (often who were easy to identify and proud of who what/they were) to larger, organized campaigns. Even if the campaign isn't running on your forum, people are reading Facebook or whatever and this causes many people to start spouting similar stuff they have seen. And even here, the comments often get close to looking like astro-turfing. I barely read the comments anymore, usually only a quick glance to see if there are more links relevant to the topic.
  - afiori 6y ago
    From this point of view I would almost prefer sites to adopt just overall stricter rules, strictly moderating both tone and "off-topic" content tuned to each individual forum. I think that a lot of communities had a passion for cultivating a freedom of expression, but actually had a lot of unspoken/unrealized rules in mind. In my opinion a lot of communities would gain a lot by a flashing banner "We decide what content we want on our platform and we will take arbitrary action to protect our choices". In practice is what social media companies are doing now even if they cannot state it as such (in part for legal reasons and in part for marketing reasons)
- draw_down 6y ago
  You call what fascism?
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  But the current rules Reddit are still an invitation to "I'm not touching you Fascism". Fascists haven't gone away. They still are around and they still think fascist things, they've just metastasized into a subtler form of cancer. The only difference now is that we can't confront fascism with the truth any more. Ironically, by using the tools of the fascist against them we've implicitly admitted that the fascist is right. When we censor, we're saying that our ideas should be determined by who has the power to enforce censorship, not by compassion and truth.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    You can't confront fascism with the truth, because they've no interest in playing that game and will laugh in your face. There is no statement you can present that will trigger a Damascene conversion.
    - kerkeslager 6y ago
      You can confront fascism with truth, because the goal of that is to inform those reading the conversation, not to persuade the fascist. You're literally saying that because they're not playing our game, we should let fascists control what game is played.
      - bhawks 6y ago
        The meme that you can't have a conversation with a person that changes their perspective and ideologies is a false and harmful one. Look at Daryl Davis's amazing work getting over 200 klansmembers to turn away from the klan through honest conversation. Is it easy? Of course not. But it's not impossible to reach people - it happens every day. https://twitter.com/RealDarylDavis https://twitter.com/RealDarylDavis https://youtu.be/oGTQ0Wj6yIg https://youtu.be/oGTQ0Wj6yIg
        kerkeslager 6y ago
        Wow, that's really interesting. Thanks for posting that.
fourstar 6y ago
AKA: Please come over to our platform and contribute content so we can profit. Once we have profited, we will make sure to virtue signal on the highest level. I created /r/lifeprotips and got shadowbanned for promoting a website I built around it after fostering the community for YEARS/spending my own money to give "gold" to reward community members. reddit is a scam.
- FriendlyNormie 6y ago
  It’s not too late to make them pay for it. I’m sure you can find their home addresses.
minimaxir 6y ago
The internet (and Reddit itself) was rather different in 2012.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  The whole US was definitely different, Mitt Romney to Donald Trump is quite an extreme transition.
  - apta 6y ago
    It went into both extremes unfortunately (the other extreme being the rise of militant SJWs).
    - mitchdoogle 6y ago
      There's no militant SJWs in the highest political office in the country. There's not even any in Congress.
      - damagednoob 6y ago
        I think those on the other side of your argument would consider Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be a militant SJW.
        bobthepanda 6y ago
        People don't understand the meaning of the word "militant" then, because AOC has never participated in arming herself during a protest. As opposed to say, WA State rep Matt Shea, who was found to be conspiring with militias to start a civil war that would end in a theocracy: https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790192972/washington-legislator-matt-shea-accused-of-domestic-terrorism-report-finds https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790192972/washington-legislat...
        apta 6y ago
        > People don't understand the meaning of the word "militant" then https://www.thefreedictionary.com/militant https://www.thefreedictionary.com/militant 1. Fighting or warring. 2. Having a combative character; aggressive, especially in the service of a cause: a militant political activist. It seems to apply quite well to some of those SJW types who caused people to quit or get fired, and physically threatened them at the same time (e.g. see Bret Weinstein).
BoorishBears 6y ago
The Donald would have been deleted under the old leadership too... They got in hot water not for supporting Trump (there are plenty of pro-Trump subreddits) but actively breaking the most basic rules of Reddit, maybe you should actually look at their history. Spamming the same images to the subreddit, interfering with other subreddits, trying to out whistleblowers in federal cases, gaming the content discovery system with sticky posts. I'm tired of this narrative that The Donald was banned for censorship reasons, they were banned for being a virus that was infecting Reddit. They could have been supporting the Dalai Lama and their behavior would have been against the basic expectations of Reddit, and that's exactly why they were quarantined/banned - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#History In true fashion of people trying to push a made up point, every reply is nitpicking over which one of their many incredible misbehaviors was the deal breaker, from doxxing people to brigading other subreddits, instead of actually providing a rebuttal It doesn't matter which one broke the camels back, anyone who can read their history of behavior and pretend Reddit didn't have a reason to take action, even by those 2012 rules, is in denial.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  Your history is quite wrong. They were initially quarantined for “anti police” comments. Which looking through the current state of Reddit is a bit hypocritical. Edit: https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-26-at-3.03.56-PM.png?w=1200&h=630&crop=1 https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Scree...
  - BoorishBears 6y ago
    Are going to pretend everything in that history section is wrong and they were only quarantined for anti-police comments? There are literally dozens of crises that the subreddit spawned, literally any of which would have been explained it. The fact we can actually go back on forth on which one of the many many many straws broke the camels back says it all. You also seem to want to go so far as to imply the only reason other subreddit get away with anti-police sentiment is some kind of hypocritical favortism?
- 6y ago
theLastVoice 6y ago
Thoughtcrime and crimethink is 'illegal' now. /s -> or is it...
NelsonMinar 6y ago
Makes sense to me; the Reddit folks have learned from their experience. Maximalist free speech policies have failed all over the Internet, the only places that adhere to them are Nazi cesspools like Gab.
- donatj 6y ago
  Define failed?
komali2 6y ago
And then the site exploded, and it had to learn how to handle things like actual nazis calling for the deaths of jewish people. I'm not sure I see where the joke is - this was inevitable.
- TheGrim-888 6y ago
  I spent years on that subreddit and never once saw somebody that identified as a Nazi calling for the deaths of Jewish people. I bet you can't find any such examples. Your viewpoints of the world are based on hearsay and propaganda, not facts and logic.
  - mouldysammich 6y ago
    Perhaps not literally, however the subreddits namesake literally retweeted a video of someone exclaiming 'white power'. Most people who are not facists and are not nazis wouldnt exclaim something like this and would not support someone who retweets such things.
  - foogazi 6y ago
    > I spent years on that subreddit But why ?
    - iron0013 6y ago
      There’s a clue in his username...
  - fragmede 6y ago
    Searching /r/AgainstHateSubreddits easily finds examples of Holocaust denial and other Anti-Semitic behavior.
  - komali2 6y ago
    Which subreddit? /r/the_donald? I was talking about the site in general, which did have explicit hate subreddits, which Reddit started struggling to grapple with back in 2015. I do find it kinda funny though that you saw an accusation of antisemitism and immediately started defending /r/the_donald. It is worth noting that I did see explicit and implicit (((antisemitism) on /r/the_donald, but also, no examples are possible anymore, as the subreddit is gone /shrug
dkdk8283 6y ago
That’s the Reddit and Youtube we need again.
- notJim 6y ago
  IDK, the internet of that era was a pretty toxic place. Sexism and racism were rampant, such that many people I know IRL simply refused to participate in most internet spaces (including HN). This gave the impression that those viewpoints were mainstream, but that was never the case. I don't think losing out on so many voices of people who don't want to be around that stuff is worth it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dkdk8283 6y ago
    I can’t support this idea. These thoughts and people exist. Silencing them or pretending they don’t exist is not something I subscribe to. I would rather see it, be educated that it exists, and choose to think the way I want to. Thought policing is a slippery slope.
  - f1refly 6y ago
    so who should get to device which people are blatantly censored and silenced on what is basically public space?
ironman1478 6y ago
I don't really expect people's opinions/beliefs to stay constant when presented with new facts. People are horrible on the internet and there needs to be moderation. It's evidenced time and time again. The consequences of not doing this weren't obvious then (maybe, I wasn't really on reddit then), but they are obvious now.
kmfrk 6y ago
Perhaps they are consistent in only acting based on convenience, and they might finally have reached the inflection point where doing all this was the easiest, laziest thing they could do.
chaostheory 6y ago
Living under this rule would enable reddit to survive and adapt far longer in a democratic republic. This philosophy and the sub-reddits were reddit's strength. If anyone didn't like what reddit currently had, anyone could form their own sub-reddit. That's over. I can't put all the blame on reddit leadership when SESTA and FOSTA exist as laws. The bad content isn't going to go away. It's just going somewhere else. imo this is the start of a diaspora The only question is where will everyone go?
foogazi 6y ago
> and no interfering the site's functions Spamming the r/all homepage due to eliminating downvotes certainly interferes with the sites functions
- Karunamon 6y ago
  That's not what happened. T_D was hardly the only subreddit that disabled upvotes with CSS (which prevents you from clicking the button on the old.reddit desktop version.. nothing else). Furthermore, most of Reddit's traffic is mobile, where CSS has no functionality.
- dmix 6y ago
  Why not just remove them from r/all?
mzs 6y ago
the announcement itself: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...
slantaclaus 6y ago
Reddit was a smaller community back then, and just like the article implies, smaller communities are easier to manage and of generally higher quality overall

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.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Even back in '94 the Usenet could get ugly. The Usenet is where Godwin observed his famous law in practice. As a community grows the probability that it includes disruptive assholes approaches 1. Unmoderated communities do not scale.
- qdog 6y ago
  Biggest difference I have seen is a change from random trolls (often who were easy to identify and proud of who what/they were) to larger, organized campaigns. Even if the campaign isn't running on your forum, people are reading Facebook or whatever and this causes many people to start spouting similar stuff they have seen. And even here, the comments often get close to looking like astro-turfing. I barely read the comments anymore, usually only a quick glance to see if there are more links relevant to the topic.
- afiori 6y ago
  From this point of view I would almost prefer sites to adopt just overall stricter rules, strictly moderating both tone and "off-topic" content tuned to each individual forum. I think that a lot of communities had a passion for cultivating a freedom of expression, but actually had a lot of unspoken/unrealized rules in mind. In my opinion a lot of communities would gain a lot by a flashing banner "We decide what content we want on our platform and we will take arbitrary action to protect our choices". In practice is what social media companies are doing now even if they cannot state it as such (in part for legal reasons and in part for marketing reasons)
draw_down 6y ago
You call what fascism?
kerkeslager 6y ago
But the current rules Reddit are still an invitation to "I'm not touching you Fascism". Fascists haven't gone away. They still are around and they still think fascist things, they've just metastasized into a subtler form of cancer. The only difference now is that we can't confront fascism with the truth any more. Ironically, by using the tools of the fascist against them we've implicitly admitted that the fascist is right. When we censor, we're saying that our ideas should be determined by who has the power to enforce censorship, not by compassion and truth.
- pjc50 6y ago
  You can't confront fascism with the truth, because they've no interest in playing that game and will laugh in your face. There is no statement you can present that will trigger a Damascene conversion.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    You can confront fascism with truth, because the goal of that is to inform those reading the conversation, not to persuade the fascist. You're literally saying that because they're not playing our game, we should let fascists control what game is played.
    - bhawks 6y ago
      The meme that you can't have a conversation with a person that changes their perspective and ideologies is a false and harmful one. Look at Daryl Davis's amazing work getting over 200 klansmembers to turn away from the klan through honest conversation. Is it easy? Of course not. But it's not impossible to reach people - it happens every day. https://twitter.com/RealDarylDavis https://twitter.com/RealDarylDavis https://youtu.be/oGTQ0Wj6yIg https://youtu.be/oGTQ0Wj6yIg
      - kerkeslager 6y ago
        Wow, that's really interesting. Thanks for posting that.

fourstar 6y ago

AKA: Please come over to our platform and contribute content so we can profit. Once we have profited, we will make sure to virtue signal on the highest level. I created /r/lifeprotips and got shadowbanned for promoting a website I built around it after fostering the community for YEARS/spending my own money to give "gold" to reward community members. reddit is a scam.

FriendlyNormie 6y ago
It’s not too late to make them pay for it. I’m sure you can find their home addresses.

minimaxir 6y ago

The internet (and Reddit itself) was rather different in 2012.

cactus2093 6y ago
The whole US was definitely different, Mitt Romney to Donald Trump is quite an extreme transition.
- apta 6y ago
  It went into both extremes unfortunately (the other extreme being the rise of militant SJWs).
  - mitchdoogle 6y ago
    There's no militant SJWs in the highest political office in the country. There's not even any in Congress.
    - damagednoob 6y ago
      I think those on the other side of your argument would consider Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be a militant SJW.
      - bobthepanda 6y ago
        People don't understand the meaning of the word "militant" then, because AOC has never participated in arming herself during a protest. As opposed to say, WA State rep Matt Shea, who was found to be conspiring with militias to start a civil war that would end in a theocracy: https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790192972/washington-legislator-matt-shea-accused-of-domestic-terrorism-report-finds https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790192972/washington-legislat...
        apta 6y ago
        > People don't understand the meaning of the word "militant" then https://www.thefreedictionary.com/militant https://www.thefreedictionary.com/militant 1. Fighting or warring. 2. Having a combative character; aggressive, especially in the service of a cause: a militant political activist. It seems to apply quite well to some of those SJW types who caused people to quit or get fired, and physically threatened them at the same time (e.g. see Bret Weinstein).

BoorishBears 6y ago

The Donald would have been deleted under the old leadership too... They got in hot water not for supporting Trump (there are plenty of pro-Trump subreddits) but actively breaking the most basic rules of Reddit, maybe you should actually look at their history. Spamming the same images to the subreddit, interfering with other subreddits, trying to out whistleblowers in federal cases, gaming the content discovery system with sticky posts. I'm tired of this narrative that The Donald was banned for censorship reasons, they were banned for being a virus that was infecting Reddit. They could have been supporting the Dalai Lama and their behavior would have been against the basic expectations of Reddit, and that's exactly why they were quarantined/banned - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#History In true fashion of people trying to push a made up point, every reply is nitpicking over which one of their many incredible misbehaviors was the deal breaker, from doxxing people to brigading other subreddits, instead of actually providing a rebuttal It doesn't matter which one broke the camels back, anyone who can read their history of behavior and pretend Reddit didn't have a reason to take action, even by those 2012 rules, is in denial.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
Your history is quite wrong. They were initially quarantined for “anti police” comments. Which looking through the current state of Reddit is a bit hypocritical. Edit: https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-26-at-3.03.56-PM.png?w=1200&h=630&crop=1 https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Scree...
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  Are going to pretend everything in that history section is wrong and they were only quarantined for anti-police comments? There are literally dozens of crises that the subreddit spawned, literally any of which would have been explained it. The fact we can actually go back on forth on which one of the many many many straws broke the camels back says it all. You also seem to want to go so far as to imply the only reason other subreddit get away with anti-police sentiment is some kind of hypocritical favortism?
6y ago

theLastVoice 6y ago

Thoughtcrime and crimethink is 'illegal' now. /s -> or is it...

NelsonMinar 6y ago

Makes sense to me; the Reddit folks have learned from their experience. Maximalist free speech policies have failed all over the Internet, the only places that adhere to them are Nazi cesspools like Gab.

donatj 6y ago
Define failed?

komali2 6y ago

And then the site exploded, and it had to learn how to handle things like actual nazis calling for the deaths of jewish people. I'm not sure I see where the joke is - this was inevitable.

TheGrim-888 6y ago
I spent years on that subreddit and never once saw somebody that identified as a Nazi calling for the deaths of Jewish people. I bet you can't find any such examples. Your viewpoints of the world are based on hearsay and propaganda, not facts and logic.
- mouldysammich 6y ago
  Perhaps not literally, however the subreddits namesake literally retweeted a video of someone exclaiming 'white power'. Most people who are not facists and are not nazis wouldnt exclaim something like this and would not support someone who retweets such things.
- foogazi 6y ago
  > I spent years on that subreddit But why ?
  - iron0013 6y ago
    There’s a clue in his username...
- fragmede 6y ago
  Searching /r/AgainstHateSubreddits easily finds examples of Holocaust denial and other Anti-Semitic behavior.
- komali2 6y ago
  Which subreddit? /r/the_donald? I was talking about the site in general, which did have explicit hate subreddits, which Reddit started struggling to grapple with back in 2015. I do find it kinda funny though that you saw an accusation of antisemitism and immediately started defending /r/the_donald. It is worth noting that I did see explicit and implicit (((antisemitism) on /r/the_donald, but also, no examples are possible anymore, as the subreddit is gone /shrug

dkdk8283 6y ago

That’s the Reddit and Youtube we need again.

notJim 6y ago
IDK, the internet of that era was a pretty toxic place. Sexism and racism were rampant, such that many people I know IRL simply refused to participate in most internet spaces (including HN). This gave the impression that those viewpoints were mainstream, but that was never the case. I don't think losing out on so many voices of people who don't want to be around that stuff is worth it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  I can’t support this idea. These thoughts and people exist. Silencing them or pretending they don’t exist is not something I subscribe to. I would rather see it, be educated that it exists, and choose to think the way I want to. Thought policing is a slippery slope.
- f1refly 6y ago
  so who should get to device which people are blatantly censored and silenced on what is basically public space?

ironman1478 6y ago

I don't really expect people's opinions/beliefs to stay constant when presented with new facts. People are horrible on the internet and there needs to be moderation. It's evidenced time and time again. The consequences of not doing this weren't obvious then (maybe, I wasn't really on reddit then), but they are obvious now.

kmfrk 6y ago

Perhaps they are consistent in only acting based on convenience, and they might finally have reached the inflection point where doing all this was the easiest, laziest thing they could do.

chaostheory 6y ago

Living under this rule would enable reddit to survive and adapt far longer in a democratic republic. This philosophy and the sub-reddits were reddit's strength. If anyone didn't like what reddit currently had, anyone could form their own sub-reddit. That's over. I can't put all the blame on reddit leadership when SESTA and FOSTA exist as laws. The bad content isn't going to go away. It's just going somewhere else. imo this is the start of a diaspora The only question is where will everyone go?

foogazi 6y ago

> and no interfering the site's functions Spamming the r/all homepage due to eliminating downvotes certainly interferes with the sites functions

Karunamon 6y ago
That's not what happened. T_D was hardly the only subreddit that disabled upvotes with CSS (which prevents you from clicking the button on the old.reddit desktop version.. nothing else). Furthermore, most of Reddit's traffic is mobile, where CSS has no functionality.
dmix 6y ago
Why not just remove them from r/all?

mzs 6y ago

the announcement itself: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...

slantaclaus 6y ago

Reddit was a smaller community back then, and just like the article implies, smaller communities are easier to manage and of generally higher quality overall