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It is coordinated. Remember when Alex Jones got banned from literally everything on the same day? The reddit bans wave was leaked in advance. The more actors i

It is coordinated. Remember when Alex Jones got banned from literally everything on the same day? The reddit bans wave was leaked in advance. The more actors involved in a coordinated action the harder it is to keep a secret. Original leak: https://old.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/reddits_largest_ever_banwave_is_coming_monday/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/redd...

dmix 6y ago
> Apparently they're going to ban a large number of subs on Monday and frame it as an anti-racism initiative Has this been announced or was this just speculation?
- Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
  https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...
- freehunter 6y ago
  It actually happened today. Check Reddit‘s /r/announcements for the official thread.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  "Apparently they're going to ban a large number of subs on Monday and frame it as an anti-racism initiative" Frame it? It is an anti-racism initiative. It may have side effects as well but that is the main driver.
  - Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
    They did not ban racist subreddits like /r/blackpeopletwitter and /r/fragilewhiteredditor. If you don't know, to post on /r/blackpeopletwitter you have to send a photo of your skin color to the moderators. They are literally racially segregating users.
    - anticonformist 6y ago
      Exactly. Just because someone claims something is anti-racist doesn't make it so. Almost all organized evil is done in the name of something good. Look at how laws like the The Patriot Act are named. The people behind these bans are leftist extremists going after their rightist extremist enemies. Their "good intentions" are paving our path towards hell.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      “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.” 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...
      - vageli 6y ago
        > “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 where? I can't find any specifics on what the majority qualifier is applied to (ex: the community in which the speech occurs, the geographic community of the user, etc).
        zozbot234 6y ago
        It's even worse than that. People can honestly disagree about whether the term "racism" accurately describes something or whatever, but that's a far cry from actively condoning ("..this rule does not protect...") the whipping up of hate towards a majority of the population. The internet is full of nihilists and misanthropes who genuinely hate everyone and everything - I'm sure they can't wait to abuse this weakness in every way they can possibly think of. All for teh lulz, of course.
        amanaplanacanal 6y ago
        I’m guessing the whole thing is very USA centric, and they haven’t really thought through the implications of having users from across the world.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jchw 6y ago
    Honest to goodness, it’s a marketing and advertising initiative. I do think some of the subreddits that are being banned deserve it for violating Reddit site wide rules and refusing to stop, among other things. However, Reddit took on the identity of being free speech oriented early on and gradually eroded it over time, and every time they ban a few bad big subs that are indefensible, they usually coincide bans to a large number of other smaller subreddits that are almost ostensibly somehow adjacent but are not really violating any rules in the same fashion. I think this is intentional, because most of the people who would be annoyed by the collateral damage are celebrating because of the headlining bans. This creates quite a conundrum. Maybe this ban wave is truly different, but it would take me by surprise if so. (I didn’t look into exactly what subs were banned yet.) At this point it feels like Reddit saves the big important bans specifically so they can be announced in ban waves, because by the time they happen the response is always, “how in the world did this take over a year to be done?” edit: to my point it looks like they banned over 2000 subs this time. I doubt that list hadn’t been growing over time. I checked out one that was apparently for a podcast and the little bit I could view on Wayback Machine looked pretty damn ordinary, with only mildly edgy jokes. Not immediately casting doubt that there is good reason but it sure feels like every other ban wave I’ve seen from Reddit.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Socialist subreddits being banned for glorifying John Brown (who caused an insurrection against slavery in the South) was not an anti-racism initiative. It was probably a PR move calculated to look good to the mainstream media and co., while being able to "both-sides" conservative media.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Yes they also released a new policy update: 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...
roenxi 6y ago
This sort of multiple-headlines-in-one-day undermines the argument for bans. In the Alex Jones case in particular it appeared he was being selected for a broader community image rather than actions on specific platforms. Private companies can't (mechanically, not legally) determine who has a moral right to speak. If we had a magic method for figuring that out it'd have been a feature of politics since at least the Roman Empire. Instead we ended up with things like Robert's Rules of Order where the process is controlled as best as possible to let wildly contradictory opinions get aired.
- neylonbill 6y ago
  I love Robert's Rules of Order! I'd love to see someone build video meeting software that implemented it somehow. Or does that exist? A brief search was fruitless.
  - humaniania 6y ago
    That's a great idea.
  - a9h74j 6y ago
    The last copy I owned had a great introductory essay, describing the principles a rule of order could help realize: e.g. 1) to focus on potential concrete actions rather than some interminable search for agreement on beliefs; 2) to allow even minority/fringe opinions to get some hearing
- dwaltrip 6y ago
  > Private companies can't (mechanically, not legally) determine who has a moral right to speak. Of course not, no one is claiming they are the ultimate arbiters of morality. But they do have the right to decide who can use their platform (as long as they don’t discriminate against protected groups). The broader public can then judge them positively or negatively for these decisions.
  - stx 6y ago
    The thing is are these companies platforms like a phone company or are they publishers? Social media companies have argued that they cant be held liable for things posted to their platforms in the past and have tried to position themselves at neutral platforms. When they start to become the arbitrators of what is and is not to be posted they are no longer neutral platforms like the phone company. I do not recall a time when a phone company would cut your service because they found it to be distasteful or controversial. That said I don't really know what these users were actually banned for saying. It could have been pretty bad and although I might not agree with what they said I hope that people are free to express their thoughts and ideas even though I might find them personally offensive.
slg 6y ago
>It is coordinated. Is there any evidence of this besides the announcements just happening on the same day? It could be companies waiting to announce these moves on Monday morning after days of seeing Facebook embroiled in controversy for not doing this. Or maybe one company decided to make this move and other companies fast tracked anything they had planned on this so they wouldn't be viewed as ignoring this issue. We have no indication one way or another whether this is coordinated. We shouldn't just assume it is coordinated because it is happening on the same day.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Coordination doesn’t mean collusion, there are plenty of reasons why to coordinate such as to avoid platform hopping and not having to deal with a bunch of angry people flocking to your platform and to share the news cycle. The likelihood of high profile bans like these not being coordinated is slim.
  - slg 6y ago
    Collusion has an obvious negative connotation, but any coordination that happens in secret is inherently collusion. Either way, my request still stands. Is there any evidence to suggest these companies are working together instead of us all just assuming that is the case?
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      Define evidence, companies share information all the time including their legal departments. We have had multiple simultaneous ban waves this is not a new occurrence, at this point one would ask for evidence to show its not the case since the fact that this happening is self evident.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure social media platforms all have the same problematic groups set up for one click deletion. If one pulls the trigger it's trivial for the rest to do it too. It's the same coordination you see in penguins jumping off an ice flow. They'll all bunch up looking for sea lions they know are lurking. Eventually one jumps in or gets pushed and they all jump in right after.
tptacek 6y ago
Alex Jones lent a camera crew to Wolfgang Halbig when he travelled to Newtown, CT to harass the parents of the first graders murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting. Years and years from now those sites you're referring to will still bear the shame of not having banned him earlier.
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  In my opinion, while a low point even for a high-functioning schizophrenic with a talk show, that is still small potatoes compared to the journalists who repeated the 'WMD's line. And no one is calling for them to be deplatformed.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    FWIW, I think that Bush II, Obama and Trump should all be tried for war crimes. Probably Clinton and Bush I, and all the veeps, but I'm not as informed about them.
    - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
      I'm sure we don't know the half of it.
  - Faark 6y ago
    Figuring out a widely held opinion is wrong is actually not that easy. As such I have a lot more acceptance for those being wrong while promoting the status quo than those intentionally pushing the overton window. The latter is what should require commitment/conviction, to weed out the bad. And seems to be what is getting axed right now. Investing into shitty companies will make you loose your investment. Why should this be different with ideas?
    - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
      Funny, I take the opposite conclusion - figuring out a widely held opinion is wrong is not easy, therefore I think we should be slower to condemn people who get contrarian bets wrong. To extend your metaphor, if I invest in a bad company, sure, my finances will suffer. But if it were that easy to tell which companies were bad there'd be no reason to invest at all. People who bet against the crowd and are right are generally considered heroes. I agree there should be a cost to trying to be a hero, but I don't think we currently have enough of them and I'm leery of making it harder to be one.
lowmemcpu 6y ago
For someone who has mostly sat on the sidelines of these debates, the coordination is really disturbing. Who is pulling the strings here?
- hailwren 6y ago
  I'm sure it was done in coordination with the advertisers that pulled their ads. Probably a group coordination between the companies and groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense that spearheaded the original advertising blackout.
- one2know 6y ago
  https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/
- bobmaxup 6y ago
  The boogie man, no doubt
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I was on ChapoTrapHouse a day before the ban. It was indeed leaked, and the ban happened exactly at the same time that it was leaked. This probably wouldn't have been the case unless it was coordinated.
psychometry 6y ago
"WatchRedditDie"? Hilarious. Everything reddit's done today makes me want to use the site more.
CyberDildonics 6y ago
I don't think it is a matter of keeping it a secret, my guess is that they don't want bleed over to wherever they haven't been banned yet.

dmix 6y ago

> Apparently they're going to ban a large number of subs on Monday and frame it as an anti-racism initiative Has this been announced or was this just speculation?

Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...
freehunter 6y ago
It actually happened today. Check Reddit‘s /r/announcements for the official thread.
jacquesm 6y ago
"Apparently they're going to ban a large number of subs on Monday and frame it as an anti-racism initiative" Frame it? It is an anti-racism initiative. It may have side effects as well but that is the main driver.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
  They did not ban racist subreddits like /r/blackpeopletwitter and /r/fragilewhiteredditor. If you don't know, to post on /r/blackpeopletwitter you have to send a photo of your skin color to the moderators. They are literally racially segregating users.
  - anticonformist 6y ago
    Exactly. Just because someone claims something is anti-racist doesn't make it so. Almost all organized evil is done in the name of something good. Look at how laws like the The Patriot Act are named. The people behind these bans are leftist extremists going after their rightist extremist enemies. Their "good intentions" are paving our path towards hell.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    “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.” 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...
    - vageli 6y ago
      > “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 where? I can't find any specifics on what the majority qualifier is applied to (ex: the community in which the speech occurs, the geographic community of the user, etc).
      - zozbot234 6y ago
        It's even worse than that. People can honestly disagree about whether the term "racism" accurately describes something or whatever, but that's a far cry from actively condoning ("..this rule does not protect...") the whipping up of hate towards a majority of the population. The internet is full of nihilists and misanthropes who genuinely hate everyone and everything - I'm sure they can't wait to abuse this weakness in every way they can possibly think of. All for teh lulz, of course.
      - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
        I’m guessing the whole thing is very USA centric, and they haven’t really thought through the implications of having users from across the world.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jchw 6y ago
  Honest to goodness, it’s a marketing and advertising initiative. I do think some of the subreddits that are being banned deserve it for violating Reddit site wide rules and refusing to stop, among other things. However, Reddit took on the identity of being free speech oriented early on and gradually eroded it over time, and every time they ban a few bad big subs that are indefensible, they usually coincide bans to a large number of other smaller subreddits that are almost ostensibly somehow adjacent but are not really violating any rules in the same fashion. I think this is intentional, because most of the people who would be annoyed by the collateral damage are celebrating because of the headlining bans. This creates quite a conundrum. Maybe this ban wave is truly different, but it would take me by surprise if so. (I didn’t look into exactly what subs were banned yet.) At this point it feels like Reddit saves the big important bans specifically so they can be announced in ban waves, because by the time they happen the response is always, “how in the world did this take over a year to be done?” edit: to my point it looks like they banned over 2000 subs this time. I doubt that list hadn’t been growing over time. I checked out one that was apparently for a podcast and the little bit I could view on Wayback Machine looked pretty damn ordinary, with only mildly edgy jokes. Not immediately casting doubt that there is good reason but it sure feels like every other ban wave I’ve seen from Reddit.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Socialist subreddits being banned for glorifying John Brown (who caused an insurrection against slavery in the South) was not an anti-racism initiative. It was probably a PR move calculated to look good to the mainstream media and co., while being able to "both-sides" conservative media.
dogma1138 6y ago
Yes they also released a new policy update: 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...

roenxi 6y ago

This sort of multiple-headlines-in-one-day undermines the argument for bans. In the Alex Jones case in particular it appeared he was being selected for a broader community image rather than actions on specific platforms. Private companies can't (mechanically, not legally) determine who has a moral right to speak. If we had a magic method for figuring that out it'd have been a feature of politics since at least the Roman Empire. Instead we ended up with things like Robert's Rules of Order where the process is controlled as best as possible to let wildly contradictory opinions get aired.

neylonbill 6y ago
I love Robert's Rules of Order! I'd love to see someone build video meeting software that implemented it somehow. Or does that exist? A brief search was fruitless.
- humaniania 6y ago
  That's a great idea.
- a9h74j 6y ago
  The last copy I owned had a great introductory essay, describing the principles a rule of order could help realize: e.g. 1) to focus on potential concrete actions rather than some interminable search for agreement on beliefs; 2) to allow even minority/fringe opinions to get some hearing
dwaltrip 6y ago
> Private companies can't (mechanically, not legally) determine who has a moral right to speak. Of course not, no one is claiming they are the ultimate arbiters of morality. But they do have the right to decide who can use their platform (as long as they don’t discriminate against protected groups). The broader public can then judge them positively or negatively for these decisions.
- stx 6y ago
  The thing is are these companies platforms like a phone company or are they publishers? Social media companies have argued that they cant be held liable for things posted to their platforms in the past and have tried to position themselves at neutral platforms. When they start to become the arbitrators of what is and is not to be posted they are no longer neutral platforms like the phone company. I do not recall a time when a phone company would cut your service because they found it to be distasteful or controversial. That said I don't really know what these users were actually banned for saying. It could have been pretty bad and although I might not agree with what they said I hope that people are free to express their thoughts and ideas even though I might find them personally offensive.

slg 6y ago

>It is coordinated. Is there any evidence of this besides the announcements just happening on the same day? It could be companies waiting to announce these moves on Monday morning after days of seeing Facebook embroiled in controversy for not doing this. Or maybe one company decided to make this move and other companies fast tracked anything they had planned on this so they wouldn't be viewed as ignoring this issue. We have no indication one way or another whether this is coordinated. We shouldn't just assume it is coordinated because it is happening on the same day.

dogma1138 6y ago
Coordination doesn’t mean collusion, there are plenty of reasons why to coordinate such as to avoid platform hopping and not having to deal with a bunch of angry people flocking to your platform and to share the news cycle. The likelihood of high profile bans like these not being coordinated is slim.
- slg 6y ago
  Collusion has an obvious negative connotation, but any coordination that happens in secret is inherently collusion. Either way, my request still stands. Is there any evidence to suggest these companies are working together instead of us all just assuming that is the case?
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Define evidence, companies share information all the time including their legal departments. We have had multiple simultaneous ban waves this is not a new occurrence, at this point one would ask for evidence to show its not the case since the fact that this happening is self evident.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure social media platforms all have the same problematic groups set up for one click deletion. If one pulls the trigger it's trivial for the rest to do it too. It's the same coordination you see in penguins jumping off an ice flow. They'll all bunch up looking for sea lions they know are lurking. Eventually one jumps in or gets pushed and they all jump in right after.

tptacek 6y ago

Alex Jones lent a camera crew to Wolfgang Halbig when he travelled to Newtown, CT to harass the parents of the first graders murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting. Years and years from now those sites you're referring to will still bear the shame of not having banned him earlier.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago
In my opinion, while a low point even for a high-functioning schizophrenic with a talk show, that is still small potatoes compared to the journalists who repeated the 'WMD's line. And no one is calling for them to be deplatformed.
- klyrs 6y ago
  FWIW, I think that Bush II, Obama and Trump should all be tried for war crimes. Probably Clinton and Bush I, and all the veeps, but I'm not as informed about them.
  - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
    I'm sure we don't know the half of it.
- Faark 6y ago
  Figuring out a widely held opinion is wrong is actually not that easy. As such I have a lot more acceptance for those being wrong while promoting the status quo than those intentionally pushing the overton window. The latter is what should require commitment/conviction, to weed out the bad. And seems to be what is getting axed right now. Investing into shitty companies will make you loose your investment. Why should this be different with ideas?
  - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
    Funny, I take the opposite conclusion - figuring out a widely held opinion is wrong is not easy, therefore I think we should be slower to condemn people who get contrarian bets wrong. To extend your metaphor, if I invest in a bad company, sure, my finances will suffer. But if it were that easy to tell which companies were bad there'd be no reason to invest at all. People who bet against the crowd and are right are generally considered heroes. I agree there should be a cost to trying to be a hero, but I don't think we currently have enough of them and I'm leery of making it harder to be one.

lowmemcpu 6y ago

For someone who has mostly sat on the sidelines of these debates, the coordination is really disturbing. Who is pulling the strings here?

hailwren 6y ago
I'm sure it was done in coordination with the advertisers that pulled their ads. Probably a group coordination between the companies and groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense that spearheaded the original advertising blackout.
one2know 6y ago
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/
bobmaxup 6y ago
The boogie man, no doubt
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  I was on ChapoTrapHouse a day before the ban. It was indeed leaked, and the ban happened exactly at the same time that it was leaked. This probably wouldn't have been the case unless it was coordinated.

psychometry 6y ago

"WatchRedditDie"? Hilarious. Everything reddit's done today makes me want to use the site more.

CyberDildonics 6y ago

I don't think it is a matter of keeping it a secret, my guess is that they don't want bleed over to wherever they haven't been banned yet.