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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 dec

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.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    I'd probably agree with that, but someone upthread is saying Reddit is anti-censorship, which doesn't quite match with "better they['re] off reddit"?
- easterncalculus 6y ago
  >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. True but then it's not Reddit's problem. Reddit can't solve every ill, but it can cover its own ass.
- dilandau 6y ago
  I'm not sure why you're getting downvotes, because this is spot-on. Anonymous paper-folding image boards and other places like that are already celebrating the arrival of newcomers. It's like sending a petty offender to prison, and instead of getting reformed, they just get a lot more hardcore. I get it that Reddit doesn't want extremism on its site, and I don't have an opinion either way on the bans. But I think it's naive to assume that people won't just hop to another, possibly more extreme, platform.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    You are missing the point. Organizing, coordinating, recruiting, all these activities have costs associated with them. Costs like time spent on them, time spent finding tools to use for the job, etc. Make a racist subreddit go away and the N people who were a part of it won’t stop being racist. But it will be harder for them to find another platform to recruit and to some degree harder to find ways to coordinate. Now time that could have been spent indoctrinating new recruits can is being spent on less productive tasks, slowing the whole community down. Will it stop racism or even the racist group from doing what they do? Of course not. Will it slow them down, yes absolutely. If a bunch of assholes showed up to your front lawn and started doing asshole things, do you kick them out knowing that they might go to your neighbor’s lawn? Or do you keep them on yours to protect your neighbor? I guarantee you that you’ll kick them out and then likely help your neighbor kick them out too, not shelter them and help them do the asshole things by providing your lawn as a platform. How is this different?
seibelj 6y ago
My perusal of Chapo Trap House was a lot of people un-ironically wishing that gulags came back and certain people were thrown into them. Just because communists did them, doesn’t mean you aren’t advocating for concentration camps, left-wing or not.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  That was most definitely ironic, for the most part. Any irony on the internet attracts those that believe it un-ironically, however.
  - unethical_ban 6y ago
    Yep. Consistent irony and in-jokes become real over time.
    - VectorLock 6y ago
      "Ha ha only serious."
  - himlion 6y ago
    Way back when r/the_donald just started when his campaign began, many people including me thought it was an ironic subreddit and treated it as such. Then suddenly Trump gained momentum and the subreddit turned out to be for real.
    - travmatt 6y ago
      Irony has always been a tool of the far right, from the nazis to the Christchurch shooter. How 4chan and t_d use it is not especially different.
      - himlion 6y ago
        I agree on that, but I think this case was a bit different. A lot of the early posts were making fun of Trump pretty thinly veiled.
dang 6y ago
OK, I've updated the title above to have both sides now.
wnevets 6y ago
a number of subreddits like r/ConsumeProduct were taken over by the hate mongers from the_donald. You would have post brigaded to the front page that had absolutely nothing to do with consumerism or product promotion
- freehunter 6y ago
  I should be the prime target for a community sarcastically titled “consume product” as I hate spending money wastefully and enjoy getting good mileage out of anything I buy. Instead I learned how to block subreddits on my Reddit app of choice because the content had absolutely nothing to do with criticizing wastefulness. I could never quite put my finger on what the subreddit was designed for (I never subscribed, I only interacted with it when it hit /r/all) but I knew it wasn’t a criticism of wasteful consumerism. Social media has a trolling/brigading/hive mind problem in general across all platforms and I would add solving this problem to Paul Graham’s list of “frighteningly ambitious” ideas.
  - wnevets 6y ago
    > but I knew it wasn’t a criticism of wasteful consumerism. I'm fairly certain it started off that way. Unfortunately it doesn't actually take much coordination to brigade and take over a subreddit.
- SmokeyHamster 6y ago
  Can you link to an example? Oh right...it's all deleted, so we'll have to take your word...and your definition of whatever you consider "hate"...which has no definition...
  - wnevets 6y ago
    You seem upset that the_donald and others have been banned.
  - lowtolerance 6y ago
    “Hate” has no definition? That’s a new one. Maybe consider consulting a dictionary.
jbob2000 6y ago
/r/ConsumeProduct was antisemtic? I never saw that in the posts of theirs that made the front page. It was always memes about over-consumption, they might make fun of disposable make-up wipes for example ("And when you're done, just throw it away!" cue gallery yelling in a robotic voice: CONSUME PRODUCT). Genuinely curious what the link to antisemitism is. Is the thought that consumerism = big business, and big business = "the jews"? Edit: I made this comment early in the thread, before others started to weigh in on why this subreddit was banned. I'm willing to engage in a discussion if you reply instead of downvote.
- nepeckman 6y ago
  It doesnt surprise me that the antisemitic stuff didnt make it to the front page, but for the record there was a LOT of it in the top posts of the subreddits. Caricatures in the posts, conspiracies in the comments. They also really focused on vasectomies, which strangely has become a strong signal for alt right presence in a community.
  - jbob2000 6y ago
    That's unfortunate, because I really liked the cynicism around consumerism, it made me question a lot of the purchases I was making.
    - bingerman 6y ago
      You know, life is pretty good when you never 100% agree with everything random people are saying in any subreddit.
- irvwash 6y ago
  I don't know how common it was, but I found this in the first comment section I looked: > Could it be the Chosenbergs? Although a small group, they seem to control the majority of US record labels, as well as the news outlets, the pharmaceutical companies, the bank institutions, the pornography industry, the entertainment industry, ect. (9 points, replying to "I wonder who runs these record labels?" which was setting up that reply) https://web.archive.org/web/20200620202415/https://old.reddit.com/r/ConsumeProduct/comments/hcm310/buts_its_ok_were_only_destroying_the_nazis/#thing_t1_fvg9aca https://web.archive.org/web/20200620202415/https://old.reddi...
throwaway0xb 6y ago
/r/cumtown was Chapo adjacent and also got the axe. Part of the dirtbag left or whatever they go by now.
- el_cujo 6y ago
  Cumtown the podcast is chapo adjacent, /r/cumtown the subreddit was much closer to the The_Donald than chapo with its content.
  - sjm 6y ago
    Were you on the subreddit?
    - el_cujo 6y ago
      Yes, it got significantly edgier after going private.
- scruple 6y ago
  Yet r/stupidpol has (so far) managed to survive, which was the original Chapo Trap House podcast subreddit. edit/ There are quite a few actually disgusting subs that have managed to evade this ban, in addition to a few which I kind of expected to see banned that survived. There are also quite a few which are basically worse versions of a subreddit that was in the banwave which leads me to conclude that the Reddit admins simply don't know that they exist.
  - SauciestGNU 6y ago
    /r/stupidpol should absolutely be banned if they're banning subreddits. It's everything bad that people thought the Chapo subreddit was, plus a ton of bigotry and genocide apologia.
wyoh 6y ago
I liked /r/ConsumeProduct, it was funny to see them critics Reddit blattant consumerism and pornography.
oska 6y ago
> /r/GenderCritical (anti-Trans) This is not a fair portrayal of that sub. Reddit can do what it likes about banning political subs but the banning of r/gendercritical is quite concerning, in my opinion.
- whateveracct 6y ago
  Sadly current discourse does equate those two things. Being gender critical ("gender is fake and a tool of patriarchal oppression") is equated with erasing & attacking trans people - politically these two parties do seem to be at odds.
  - dimensi0nal 6y ago
    "gender critical":"transphobic"::"race realist":"racist"
  - kabacha 6y ago
    Is discourse regarding trans-gender really necessary though? It seems something a bunch of spoiled elitist bigots would discuss as their way to express distaste for plebs and pretends it's some sort of philosophical debate. Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves. You can discuss it over at /r/philosophy if your intentions are truly analytical.
    - oska 6y ago
      > Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves. I don't feel you've really followed the debate. Some trans rights activists are demanding that they be legally defined as the sex they 'identify' with. This equates to biological men being housed in female prisons, biological men competing in women's sporting events, etc etc. It's an attack on women's spaces and the very meaning of what it is to be a woman and what women's experiences entail. This is just a short summary but the idea that they are affecting 'no one but themselves' is way off base.
    - novia 6y ago

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.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  I'd probably agree with that, but someone upthread is saying Reddit is anti-censorship, which doesn't quite match with "better they['re] off reddit"?
easterncalculus 6y ago
>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. True but then it's not Reddit's problem. Reddit can't solve every ill, but it can cover its own ass.
dilandau 6y ago
I'm not sure why you're getting downvotes, because this is spot-on. Anonymous paper-folding image boards and other places like that are already celebrating the arrival of newcomers. It's like sending a petty offender to prison, and instead of getting reformed, they just get a lot more hardcore. I get it that Reddit doesn't want extremism on its site, and I don't have an opinion either way on the bans. But I think it's naive to assume that people won't just hop to another, possibly more extreme, platform.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  You are missing the point. Organizing, coordinating, recruiting, all these activities have costs associated with them. Costs like time spent on them, time spent finding tools to use for the job, etc. Make a racist subreddit go away and the N people who were a part of it won’t stop being racist. But it will be harder for them to find another platform to recruit and to some degree harder to find ways to coordinate. Now time that could have been spent indoctrinating new recruits can is being spent on less productive tasks, slowing the whole community down. Will it stop racism or even the racist group from doing what they do? Of course not. Will it slow them down, yes absolutely. If a bunch of assholes showed up to your front lawn and started doing asshole things, do you kick them out knowing that they might go to your neighbor’s lawn? Or do you keep them on yours to protect your neighbor? I guarantee you that you’ll kick them out and then likely help your neighbor kick them out too, not shelter them and help them do the asshole things by providing your lawn as a platform. How is this different?

seibelj 6y ago

My perusal of Chapo Trap House was a lot of people un-ironically wishing that gulags came back and certain people were thrown into them. Just because communists did them, doesn’t mean you aren’t advocating for concentration camps, left-wing or not.

Miner49er 6y ago
That was most definitely ironic, for the most part. Any irony on the internet attracts those that believe it un-ironically, however.
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  Yep. Consistent irony and in-jokes become real over time.
  - VectorLock 6y ago
    "Ha ha only serious."
- himlion 6y ago
  Way back when r/the_donald just started when his campaign began, many people including me thought it was an ironic subreddit and treated it as such. Then suddenly Trump gained momentum and the subreddit turned out to be for real.
  - travmatt 6y ago
    Irony has always been a tool of the far right, from the nazis to the Christchurch shooter. How 4chan and t_d use it is not especially different.
    - himlion 6y ago
      I agree on that, but I think this case was a bit different. A lot of the early posts were making fun of Trump pretty thinly veiled.

dang 6y ago

OK, I've updated the title above to have both sides now.

wnevets 6y ago

a number of subreddits like r/ConsumeProduct were taken over by the hate mongers from the_donald. You would have post brigaded to the front page that had absolutely nothing to do with consumerism or product promotion

freehunter 6y ago
I should be the prime target for a community sarcastically titled “consume product” as I hate spending money wastefully and enjoy getting good mileage out of anything I buy. Instead I learned how to block subreddits on my Reddit app of choice because the content had absolutely nothing to do with criticizing wastefulness. I could never quite put my finger on what the subreddit was designed for (I never subscribed, I only interacted with it when it hit /r/all) but I knew it wasn’t a criticism of wasteful consumerism. Social media has a trolling/brigading/hive mind problem in general across all platforms and I would add solving this problem to Paul Graham’s list of “frighteningly ambitious” ideas.
- wnevets 6y ago
  > but I knew it wasn’t a criticism of wasteful consumerism. I'm fairly certain it started off that way. Unfortunately it doesn't actually take much coordination to brigade and take over a subreddit.
SmokeyHamster 6y ago
Can you link to an example? Oh right...it's all deleted, so we'll have to take your word...and your definition of whatever you consider "hate"...which has no definition...
- wnevets 6y ago
  You seem upset that the_donald and others have been banned.
- lowtolerance 6y ago
  “Hate” has no definition? That’s a new one. Maybe consider consulting a dictionary.

jbob2000 6y ago

/r/ConsumeProduct was antisemtic? I never saw that in the posts of theirs that made the front page. It was always memes about over-consumption, they might make fun of disposable make-up wipes for example ("And when you're done, just throw it away!" cue gallery yelling in a robotic voice: CONSUME PRODUCT). Genuinely curious what the link to antisemitism is. Is the thought that consumerism = big business, and big business = "the jews"? Edit: I made this comment early in the thread, before others started to weigh in on why this subreddit was banned. I'm willing to engage in a discussion if you reply instead of downvote.

nepeckman 6y ago
It doesnt surprise me that the antisemitic stuff didnt make it to the front page, but for the record there was a LOT of it in the top posts of the subreddits. Caricatures in the posts, conspiracies in the comments. They also really focused on vasectomies, which strangely has become a strong signal for alt right presence in a community.
- jbob2000 6y ago
  That's unfortunate, because I really liked the cynicism around consumerism, it made me question a lot of the purchases I was making.
  - bingerman 6y ago
    You know, life is pretty good when you never 100% agree with everything random people are saying in any subreddit.
irvwash 6y ago
I don't know how common it was, but I found this in the first comment section I looked: > Could it be the Chosenbergs? Although a small group, they seem to control the majority of US record labels, as well as the news outlets, the pharmaceutical companies, the bank institutions, the pornography industry, the entertainment industry, ect. (9 points, replying to "I wonder who runs these record labels?" which was setting up that reply) https://web.archive.org/web/20200620202415/https://old.reddit.com/r/ConsumeProduct/comments/hcm310/buts_its_ok_were_only_destroying_the_nazis/#thing_t1_fvg9aca https://web.archive.org/web/20200620202415/https://old.reddi...

throwaway0xb 6y ago

/r/cumtown was Chapo adjacent and also got the axe. Part of the dirtbag left or whatever they go by now.

el_cujo 6y ago
Cumtown the podcast is chapo adjacent, /r/cumtown the subreddit was much closer to the The_Donald than chapo with its content.
- sjm 6y ago
  Were you on the subreddit?
  - el_cujo 6y ago
    Yes, it got significantly edgier after going private.
scruple 6y ago
Yet r/stupidpol has (so far) managed to survive, which was the original Chapo Trap House podcast subreddit. edit/ There are quite a few actually disgusting subs that have managed to evade this ban, in addition to a few which I kind of expected to see banned that survived. There are also quite a few which are basically worse versions of a subreddit that was in the banwave which leads me to conclude that the Reddit admins simply don't know that they exist.
- SauciestGNU 6y ago
  /r/stupidpol should absolutely be banned if they're banning subreddits. It's everything bad that people thought the Chapo subreddit was, plus a ton of bigotry and genocide apologia.

wyoh 6y ago

I liked /r/ConsumeProduct, it was funny to see them critics Reddit blattant consumerism and pornography.

oska 6y ago

> /r/GenderCritical (anti-Trans) This is not a fair portrayal of that sub. Reddit can do what it likes about banning political subs but the banning of r/gendercritical is quite concerning, in my opinion.

whateveracct 6y ago
Sadly current discourse does equate those two things. Being gender critical ("gender is fake and a tool of patriarchal oppression") is equated with erasing & attacking trans people - politically these two parties do seem to be at odds.
- dimensi0nal 6y ago
  "gender critical":"transphobic"::"race realist":"racist"
- kabacha 6y ago
  Is discourse regarding trans-gender really necessary though? It seems something a bunch of spoiled elitist bigots would discuss as their way to express distaste for plebs and pretends it's some sort of philosophical debate. Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves. You can discuss it over at /r/philosophy if your intentions are truly analytical.
  - oska 6y ago
    > Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves. I don't feel you've really followed the debate. Some trans rights activists are demanding that they be legally defined as the sex they 'identify' with. This equates to biological men being housed in female prisons, biological men competing in women's sporting events, etc etc. It's an attack on women's spaces and the very meaning of what it is to be a woman and what women's experiences entail. This is just a short summary but the idea that they are affecting 'no one but themselves' is way off base.
  - novia 6y ago