8 ms·

When your content is too cancerous for Reddit ...maybe the issue isn't Reddit.

by viro 6y ago

RL_Quine 6y ago
Yes, if the only defense of your content is that it isn't literally illegal to produce and distribute, maybe choose something better to do with your time.
- 95_JL_OK 6y ago
  In the context of a lot of Reddit alternatives, the argument of 'not literally illegal' isn't always what is being made. Sometimes it's more along the lines of 'stop interfering with our law breaking' or 'let us openly promote real workd violence'. Sometimes people have migrated to sites where the administration is either legally insulated by strong local laws (ie: Voat in Switzerland), or otherwise ambivalent attitudes towards actually following regulations (Chan sites, self-hosted forms). The incel communities, and many other violent communities come to mind right away.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- omginternets 6y ago
  By that logic we should outlaw all things are neither illegal nor valued. I can think of no faster way to stifle innovation, research, and the human spirit.
core-questions 6y ago
Reddit is plenty cancerous, depending on how you define that. Certainly in the sense that people aren't arguing in good faith, aren't actively engaging, but are just firing talking points or insults at one another... the sort of thing good moderation used to help limit so that the quality of discussion remained high. I'd way rather read a good-faith, well written exploration into a controversial topic, than someone who toes the mainstream line of acceptable opinions entirely while being rude and belligerent.
nyczomg 6y ago
If you think reddit only censors cancerous content ...maybe the issue isn't Reddit. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9a33ep/orlando-shooting-response-shows-reddit-cant-be-the-front-page-of-the-internet https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9a33ep/orlando-shooting-r...
crocodiletears 6y ago
A good rule of thumb, but it's worth noting that content banned from reddit isn't necessarily 'too cancerous', it can also be 'the wrong kind of cancerous'.
vorpalhex 6y ago
Reddit recently dramatically revised their moderation policy and has generally been banning a lot of subs. Reddit very much wants to be a profitable business, and has no problem elimiting non-profitable subreddits. "When your content is too cancerous for church, maybe the issue isn't the church". Feel free to replace church with whatever is appropriate to your situation, but there have always been censors and there will always be people who resist the censors. The censors have acted against homosexuals, trans folk, hippies, anti-war demonstrators and many others who we no longer see fit to censor today and I will continue to be in the camp of people who work to thwart the censors.
- agentdrtran 6y ago
  This site listes Parler and Voat which have rampant, unchecked antisemitism and racism. I would love to see a non-censorious site that takes hate speech seriously but they don't seem to exist for some reason...
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    The thing is, any service that offers a "censorship-free" alternative will instantly attract mostly by those whose content is garbage for everyone else: usually it's pedophiles until the operators get a couple not-so-nice letters or a police raid and then at least introduce modest moderation, and then come Nazis, antisemites and conspiracy myth peddlers. And said hate peddlers then complain that they don't have the reach they enjoyed on Twitter, Youtube and Facebook... well d'oh. Turns out one who is not a Nazi, a journalist reporting about them, or an antifa activist collecting information wants to spend their free time on a platform dominated by Nazis.
    - josephcsible 6y ago
      > usually it's pedophiles until the operators get a couple not-so-nice letters or a police raid and then at least introduce modest moderation You're describing illegal content. Nobody is objecting to taking that down. Everyone else is talking about censoring legal content.
gambler 6y ago
This sort of sloganistic un-logic that constantly gets up-voted here is a great reminder that most tech people aren't mature enough to make decisions about how the rest of the society communicates.
john_moscow 6y ago
Well, I can tell you what's bugging me personally about this. There's a growing divide in our society between the "equal opportunity" and "equal outcome" camps. And while the "equal opportunity" people mostly have the "just let me grill" attitude, "equal outcomers" are pushing increasingly harder, while doing their best to silence any opposing voices. It's now getting to a point where raising one's kids to be proud of their achievements, seek self-improvement, and pick friends based on shared values, is considered sinful and is being pushed back against. As a person who was born in a country that tried implementing equal outcomes for 70 years, and ended up with extreme corruption, poverty and social distrust, I don't want to see another round of this happen here. So I am hoping that if enough reasonable people acknowledge the problem, the society will reach some sort of a compromise before the lives of several generations are completely wasted, like they were in the USSR. And having platforms where this sort of discussion is not considered "cancerous" is a very important step IMHO.
- augustt 6y ago
  Any evidence at all that self-improvement is under attack, or are these all euphemisms for something else? Maybe "pick friends based on shared values" means "I wouldn't let my kids play with kids from the other side of the tracks", which should indeed get some pushback.
  - john_moscow 6y ago
    Here's one for you [0]. That's an infographic from the Smithsonian museum that attributed Enlightenment-age values, like individualism, family structure, and work ethic to "whiteness" and implied that it should be opposed. They removed it after pushback (search archive.org for more). That's the tip of the iceberg though. There's a whole industry of wrapping this narrative into struggle session-like training while charging 7 figures to various-level budgets. You can find many examples like [1] if you search for Chris Rufo. Except adults sort of understand that it's a kickback-driven nonsense and don't take it seriously. So now they are taking the Critical Race Theory with very similar postulates into schools. It's not about helping minorities learn from the more successful, and reach for the stars. That's purely about making kids hate what their parents did for them, rather than building on top of that. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_caption/public/images/captioned/whiteculture_info_1.png https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc... [1] https://christopherrufo.com/cult-programming-in-seattle/ https://christopherrufo.com/cult-programming-in-seattle/
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
Reddit bans wrongthinkers and hoards cancer.
limteary 6y ago
I liked /r/watchpeopledie in a morbid curiosity way.
- mike00632 6y ago
  I know you're just expressing a common curiosity. A friendly reminder that snuff film production is a thing and if a community creates a big audience/market for this stuff then the consequences are horrific.
  - verylittlemeat 6y ago
    Isn't this the justification for every kind of moral panic? If we let kids watch sex scenes they'll become prostitutes. If we let kids play grand theft auto they'll shoot up their school. Everything has the potential for negative externalities. I don't expect anyone to "think of the poor morbidly curious people" because it's strongly taboo in our culture but suggesting that - cause and effect: gore equals more murder for snuff - is a stretch.
    - tpxl 6y ago
      You got it the wrong way around. If a lot of people consume a type of content, there are going to be people wanting to produce it for <money, fame, kicks, ...>. To push the analogy to the extreme, consuming illegal pornography doesn't actually harm anyone, the production does, however the consumption drivers production, therefore the consumption does harm.
      - verylittlemeat 6y ago
        Yeah but we're not talking about "the knockout challenge" or destroying milk jugs in the supermarket. Most people don't murder for the lulz and they also enjoy not being in prison for decades. Despite the FUD pushed by popular media there aren't going to be that many people producing it for money/fame/kicks. The vast majority of gore on the internet is a product of security cameras or otherwise hidden cameras.
dencodev 6y ago
They recently banned every popular Marxism/Leninist subreddit. They claim it was for advocating violence but I know for a fact it didn't happen with any more regularity than any other political subreddit, including /r/politics.
cblconfederate 6y ago
believing that reddit covers the entire spectrum of ideas is also an issue.
verylittlemeat 6y ago
There are some non cancerous communities that aren't welcome on reddit. Lots of legal gray area ones that revolve around data hoarding / archiving are constantly threatened and sometimes taken down for piracy. The subreddits try to police the most blatant piracy but due to the nature of why people archive/hoard data it can be difficult.
- ptd 6y ago
  Can you give an example of such a community?
  - verylittlemeat 6y ago
    The highest profile one is /r/piracy. The illegal sharing part of the subreddit spawned a forum for good general piracy discussion. It was at serious risk of being deleted and had to go to extreme lengths to preserve the community that formed around the actual illegal sharing part. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvygwq/reddits-piracy-subreddit-is-purging-a-decade-of-posts https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvygwq/reddits-piracy-sub... /r/datahoarders and /r/opendirectories are a couple other I personally have seen similar things happen. In my opinion they're a couple of the greatest subreddits out there so the fact that they could be banned out of nowhere on a technicality is a little concerning.
    - ptd 6y ago
      Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I suppose these are the results of the gap between technology and legislation.
      - verylittlemeat 6y ago
        There are similar adjacent problems with discord and violation of the terms of service. Luckily most of these groups are tech savvy enough to run their own IRC servers.
  - ethanwillis 6y ago
drummer 6y ago
Reddit itself became cancer a while back.

When your content is too cancerous for Reddit ...maybe the issue isn't Reddit.

by viro 6y ago

When your content is too cancerous for Reddit ...maybe the issue isn't Reddit.

Yes, if the only defense of your content is that it isn't literally illegal to produce and distribute, maybe choose something better to do with your time.

95_JL_OK 6y ago
In the context of a lot of Reddit alternatives, the argument of 'not literally illegal' isn't always what is being made. Sometimes it's more along the lines of 'stop interfering with our law breaking' or 'let us openly promote real workd violence'. Sometimes people have migrated to sites where the administration is either legally insulated by strong local laws (ie: Voat in Switzerland), or otherwise ambivalent attitudes towards actually following regulations (Chan sites, self-hosted forms). The incel communities, and many other violent communities come to mind right away.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
omginternets 6y ago
By that logic we should outlaw all things are neither illegal nor valued. I can think of no faster way to stifle innovation, research, and the human spirit.

core-questions 6y ago

Reddit is plenty cancerous, depending on how you define that. Certainly in the sense that people aren't arguing in good faith, aren't actively engaging, but are just firing talking points or insults at one another... the sort of thing good moderation used to help limit so that the quality of discussion remained high. I'd way rather read a good-faith, well written exploration into a controversial topic, than someone who toes the mainstream line of acceptable opinions entirely while being rude and belligerent.

nyczomg 6y ago

If you think reddit only censors cancerous content ...maybe the issue isn't Reddit. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9a33ep/orlando-shooting-response-shows-reddit-cant-be-the-front-page-of-the-internet https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9a33ep/orlando-shooting-r...

crocodiletears 6y ago

A good rule of thumb, but it's worth noting that content banned from reddit isn't necessarily 'too cancerous', it can also be 'the wrong kind of cancerous'.

vorpalhex 6y ago

Reddit recently dramatically revised their moderation policy and has generally been banning a lot of subs. Reddit very much wants to be a profitable business, and has no problem elimiting non-profitable subreddits. "When your content is too cancerous for church, maybe the issue isn't the church". Feel free to replace church with whatever is appropriate to your situation, but there have always been censors and there will always be people who resist the censors. The censors have acted against homosexuals, trans folk, hippies, anti-war demonstrators and many others who we no longer see fit to censor today and I will continue to be in the camp of people who work to thwart the censors.

agentdrtran 6y ago
This site listes Parler and Voat which have rampant, unchecked antisemitism and racism. I would love to see a non-censorious site that takes hate speech seriously but they don't seem to exist for some reason...
- mschuster91 6y ago
  The thing is, any service that offers a "censorship-free" alternative will instantly attract mostly by those whose content is garbage for everyone else: usually it's pedophiles until the operators get a couple not-so-nice letters or a police raid and then at least introduce modest moderation, and then come Nazis, antisemites and conspiracy myth peddlers. And said hate peddlers then complain that they don't have the reach they enjoyed on Twitter, Youtube and Facebook... well d'oh. Turns out one who is not a Nazi, a journalist reporting about them, or an antifa activist collecting information wants to spend their free time on a platform dominated by Nazis.
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    > usually it's pedophiles until the operators get a couple not-so-nice letters or a police raid and then at least introduce modest moderation You're describing illegal content. Nobody is objecting to taking that down. Everyone else is talking about censoring legal content.

gambler 6y ago

This sort of sloganistic un-logic that constantly gets up-voted here is a great reminder that most tech people aren't mature enough to make decisions about how the rest of the society communicates.

john_moscow 6y ago

Well, I can tell you what's bugging me personally about this. There's a growing divide in our society between the "equal opportunity" and "equal outcome" camps. And while the "equal opportunity" people mostly have the "just let me grill" attitude, "equal outcomers" are pushing increasingly harder, while doing their best to silence any opposing voices. It's now getting to a point where raising one's kids to be proud of their achievements, seek self-improvement, and pick friends based on shared values, is considered sinful and is being pushed back against. As a person who was born in a country that tried implementing equal outcomes for 70 years, and ended up with extreme corruption, poverty and social distrust, I don't want to see another round of this happen here. So I am hoping that if enough reasonable people acknowledge the problem, the society will reach some sort of a compromise before the lives of several generations are completely wasted, like they were in the USSR. And having platforms where this sort of discussion is not considered "cancerous" is a very important step IMHO.

augustt 6y ago
Any evidence at all that self-improvement is under attack, or are these all euphemisms for something else? Maybe "pick friends based on shared values" means "I wouldn't let my kids play with kids from the other side of the tracks", which should indeed get some pushback.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  Here's one for you [0]. That's an infographic from the Smithsonian museum that attributed Enlightenment-age values, like individualism, family structure, and work ethic to "whiteness" and implied that it should be opposed. They removed it after pushback (search archive.org for more). That's the tip of the iceberg though. There's a whole industry of wrapping this narrative into struggle session-like training while charging 7 figures to various-level budgets. You can find many examples like [1] if you search for Chris Rufo. Except adults sort of understand that it's a kickback-driven nonsense and don't take it seriously. So now they are taking the Critical Race Theory with very similar postulates into schools. It's not about helping minorities learn from the more successful, and reach for the stars. That's purely about making kids hate what their parents did for them, rather than building on top of that. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_caption/public/images/captioned/whiteculture_info_1.png https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc... [1] https://christopherrufo.com/cult-programming-in-seattle/ https://christopherrufo.com/cult-programming-in-seattle/

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

Reddit bans wrongthinkers and hoards cancer.

limteary 6y ago

I liked /r/watchpeopledie in a morbid curiosity way.

mike00632 6y ago
I know you're just expressing a common curiosity. A friendly reminder that snuff film production is a thing and if a community creates a big audience/market for this stuff then the consequences are horrific.
- verylittlemeat 6y ago
  Isn't this the justification for every kind of moral panic? If we let kids watch sex scenes they'll become prostitutes. If we let kids play grand theft auto they'll shoot up their school. Everything has the potential for negative externalities. I don't expect anyone to "think of the poor morbidly curious people" because it's strongly taboo in our culture but suggesting that - cause and effect: gore equals more murder for snuff - is a stretch.
  - tpxl 6y ago
    You got it the wrong way around. If a lot of people consume a type of content, there are going to be people wanting to produce it for <money, fame, kicks, ...>. To push the analogy to the extreme, consuming illegal pornography doesn't actually harm anyone, the production does, however the consumption drivers production, therefore the consumption does harm.
    - verylittlemeat 6y ago
      Yeah but we're not talking about "the knockout challenge" or destroying milk jugs in the supermarket. Most people don't murder for the lulz and they also enjoy not being in prison for decades. Despite the FUD pushed by popular media there aren't going to be that many people producing it for money/fame/kicks. The vast majority of gore on the internet is a product of security cameras or otherwise hidden cameras.

dencodev 6y ago

They recently banned every popular Marxism/Leninist subreddit. They claim it was for advocating violence but I know for a fact it didn't happen with any more regularity than any other political subreddit, including /r/politics.

cblconfederate 6y ago

believing that reddit covers the entire spectrum of ideas is also an issue.

verylittlemeat 6y ago

There are some non cancerous communities that aren't welcome on reddit. Lots of legal gray area ones that revolve around data hoarding / archiving are constantly threatened and sometimes taken down for piracy. The subreddits try to police the most blatant piracy but due to the nature of why people archive/hoard data it can be difficult.

ptd 6y ago
Can you give an example of such a community?
- verylittlemeat 6y ago
  The highest profile one is /r/piracy. The illegal sharing part of the subreddit spawned a forum for good general piracy discussion. It was at serious risk of being deleted and had to go to extreme lengths to preserve the community that formed around the actual illegal sharing part. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvygwq/reddits-piracy-subreddit-is-purging-a-decade-of-posts https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvygwq/reddits-piracy-sub... /r/datahoarders and /r/opendirectories are a couple other I personally have seen similar things happen. In my opinion they're a couple of the greatest subreddits out there so the fact that they could be banned out of nowhere on a technicality is a little concerning.
  - ptd 6y ago
    Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I suppose these are the results of the gap between technology and legislation.
    - verylittlemeat 6y ago
      There are similar adjacent problems with discord and violation of the terms of service. Luckily most of these groups are tech savvy enough to run their own IRC servers.
- ethanwillis 6y ago

drummer 6y ago

Reddit itself became cancer a while back.