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Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
- j0n5ilver 6y agoLike Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, reddit has gone to hell. The only downside to this is the wave of nutjobs that will attempt to flock over to here. I'm crossing my fingers in hope that that they won't discover this place.
- unethical_ban 6y agoYour position on the article is unclear. Has the admin pool gone to hell for hiring a likely passive accomplice in pedophilia? Has the site gone to hell for organizing blackouts when issues come to light (SOPA, this, etc.), or for reasons unrelated to the article?
- kyrieeschaton 6y agoDo we need scare quotes around "censorship" when reddit is telling them particular names are unmentionable in any context?
- sp332 6y agoQuotes in headlines are not scare quotes. They're just quotes. It's a quotation.
- hartator 6y agoYes, a “quotation”. Doesn’t carry any meaning making the word less impactful. /s
- dvhh 6y agoSome people would argue that "censorship" would not apply to a private company owned platform. That only governments and their agents are qualified to perform act of censorship.
- shaftoe 6y agoAre you sure you're not thinking of arguments about first amendment protections instead of censorship?
- omginternets 6y agoThose people are (intentionally?) confusing censorship with the legal right to censor. What Reddit is doing unambiguously qualifies as censorship. It is also perfectly legal, but that's not the point.
- chevill 6y ago>Some people would argue that "censorship" would not apply to a private company owned platform. You're mistaking the argument here. The argument is that a private company exercising censorship isn't violating a US person's constitutional right to free speech because the two things are different. It doesn't mean its not censorship and it doesn't mean it can't be unethical. It just means that the company has the legal right to censor whatever they want.
- zouhair 6y agoI think you are mixing US constitution first amendment with common censorship. Censorship can happen anywhere.
- unloco 6y agoThis is a little more nuanced than you imply. In the end, it seems they fixed the automod rule, but sub's are still actively blacking out as we speak. We'll see how far it goes, I guess!
- viklove 6y agoSo now we've reached the point where we're arguing over the semantic meaning of the word "censorship." While we're here, can you please inform us which word we are allowed to use to describe what reddit is doing?
- dvhh 6y ago"moderation", "anti-harassment protection" ( I think that one was used for justifying action against a specific subreddit ), of course reddit would not use a term as bad as "censorship" knowing how much it would cost them. However, I really feel to clarify that I feel that reddit is in the wrong in endorsing the action of an admin that was clearly censoring mention of their name from the news.
- diogenesjunior 6y agoThe problem (from the very start) was censorship. Reddit has always had the ability to censor.
- the_snooze 6y agoIt seems like online companies go through all sorts of contortions to avoid saying what they need to say with respect to content moderation: > We will try to moderate our platform fairly, but we reserve the absolute right to do so arbitrarily and capriciously. Users are not entitled to any explanation or recourse. That should be the extent of any social media platform's content policy. I think we'd all be better off setting expectations properly and honestly.
- diogenesjunior 6y agoI agree. As long as they own the website, they will own the ability to censor. In the beginning, there wasn't a need to censor. In fact, anti-censorship views were held by both the admins and the users [0]. [0]: https://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web https://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-th... >Cries to censor it would sound out, to be almost inevitably beaten back by cries of "free speech!" The idea of free speech is sacred to many Reddit users, a product of the free-wheeling online message board culture from which Reddit springs.
- Sebb767 6y agoIn this case, yes. For one, the original title has them. Secondly, as stated in the article, Reddit denies the allegations: > [...] admin u/landoflobsters explains that it was not the company’s intention to remove any mention of Knight’s name, but that there had been “overzealous automaton” when it came to preventing doxxing and harassment. The admin explained that an internal error had led to the suspension of a moderator who had posted Knight’s name, and that the company had “communicated clearly” with the affected party as they resolved the situation. A now fixed error would not count as censorship. He might be lying, but there's enough reasonable doubt to allow for quotes IMO. On a side note, though, it's funny that the article choose to put quotes around “communicated clearly” as well.
- hinkley 6y ago> the affected party That's mismanagement that doesn't even see it's mismanagement. A policy problem that affects a person in leadership affects everyone in the group. They should have communicated with the affected parties and it sounds like they left it to the moderator to sort everybody else out. They chose... poorly.
- zelon88 6y agoOf course they did. That's the reddit business model. A handful of people who mostly delegate work to slave labor (volunteer moderators) and only take action themselves to monitor and maintain the slaves. Reddit employees have no purpose other than to crack the whip at moderators.
- dragonwriter 6y agoVolunteer moderators aren't slave labor. The essential evil of slavery is “involuntary” not “unpaid”.
- legitster 6y ago> the company had “communicated clearly” with the affected party as they resolved the situation https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/mbbm2c/welcome_back_subreddit_statement/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/mbbm2c/welcome_... It sounds like things are still very much opaque.
- tootie 6y agoProbably because it's all alleged at this point and reddit has a propensity for flipping out over complete misapprehensions.
- kumarvvr 6y agoWait, doesnt reddit have control over it servers? It surely can revoke such rules. Looks like all this drama is to give an illusion of control and free speech. Am I missing some other dynamic at play?
- posterboy 6y agoself-censoring is still censoring so reddit inc gets best ofboth worlds, data from the subs and a clean outwardfacing facade.
- VectorLock 6y agoIt can. Reddit can simply remove all the mods from the subreddits and make them public again. Nobody should be under any illusion that they "own" their subreddits.
- fnordfnordfnord 6y agoEh. Reddit is very unlikely to do that. The subreddits would be overrun with trash pretty quickly.
- VectorLock 6y agoThere are legions of people who would be frothing at the mouth for the opportunity to be given mod on a popular subreddit.
- fnordfnordfnord 6y agoYeah and quite a large fraction of those should probably never be granted mod powers over even something as insignificant as a subreddit.
- VectorLock 6y agoI don't disagree with you but the point is that is entirely within Reddit's discretion, not ours.
- sixothree 6y agoReddit as a whole is less useful since comment sections were demoted from first class citizens to something barely usable. I think they saw imgur as a threat and wanted to better replicate that experience.
- cecilpl2 6y agoCan you expand on this? I haven't noticed any change in comment section usability and I've been on reddit for 10+ years.
- Sebb767 6y agoThe new design collapses all responses below the second level (and then every two levels) while adding extreme amounts of visual distractions to gilded/awarded/... comments (personal opinion). This annoys me to no end and I presume the grandparent is referencing that.
- leetcrew 6y ago> The new design collapses all responses below the second level (and then every two levels) this wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that you often have to follow a link to expand the tree, that you then have to back out of to get back to the main thread. I have 16GB of RAM and a 27" screen. I can handle expanding a tree of text inline.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ncallaway 6y agoThey also require you to login to expand comments on the new site which seems insane to me.
- notJim 6y ago> The new design collapses all responses below the second level I don't follow. I just opened a random comment thread, and counted comments being shown up to seven levels deep (which was the deepest comment.) Is the behavior you describe only if you're logged out or something?
- Nacdor 6y agoThis is the Reddit "Out of the Loop" thread that sort of explains what's happening: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/mbeycw/whats_the_deal_with_rukpolitics_going_private_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/mbeycw/whats_... It's still somewhat difficult to find a clear explanation because the admins were banning people who mentioned her by name (despite the fact that she is a public/political figure in the UK). That had an extremely chilling effect on the discussions, but now the Streisand Effect is kicking in.
- wing-_-nuts 6y agoThis all feels very witch hunt like to me. If there's any evidence that she's a danger to children, I feel like people should put up or shut up. All I've seen is people slandering her for the actions of her father (proven) and some comments that might have been made by her partner about his own interests (completely unprovable). It's kind of disgusting what conservatives are trying to turn this into without a shred of proof.
- numbers_guy 6y agoRight she didn't nothing more than reside in a house with a 10 year old girl who was being tortured by her father for 11 days, and the went on to marry another pedophile. What a coincidence!
- croes 6y agoStranger things happened. Additionally she is autistic.
- PH01 6y agoThe accused internet accounts are all linked via Keybase. The usernames and content go back as far as 2004. Lots of this information is already common knowledge in the UK because of previous scandals. At what point do you acknowledge that her partner has been doxxed as a self-confessed paedophile? The alternative would involve an incredibly elaborate plot targetting a random US citizen years before he happened to meet the person involved.
- undefined1 6y agoI find it interesting that Reddit still manages to find themselves invoking the Streisand effect in full force.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI think the decision makers at Reddit are fully aware of the Streisand Effect but they don't care because they know the userbase has a short memory and things will go back to normal within a week or two.
- wccrawford 6y agoI think it's even worse than that. They'll remember, but still keep coming back. You can't even blame short memory for it. They literally don't care more than the inconvenience they'd face in going elsewhere for forums. And as long as that's true, the things they dislike will keep happening.
- asdff 6y agoThe beatings will continue until morale improves
- luc4sdreyer 6y agoUsers will switch if there is a viable alternative.
- MiddleEndian 6y agoI think it's impossible to run a big site like reddit without having disasters, and as sites grow, more users will inevitably be more irritated by decisions one way or another. I'd rather not see one viable alternative, but instead many dozens of hackernews sized sites. Even outside of this issue, homogenization of the internet is a bit boring. Why do /r/vexillology, /r/vexillologycirclejerk, /r/mapporn, /r/shittymapporn and /r/mapporncirclejerk (boards about flags and maps and then boards where the same users make fun of themselves), need to be on the same website with the same admins as /r/mma and /r/boxing (boards about watching people fight each other)?
- adzzzz 6y agoI'm still shocked Reddit is allowed into the wider ecosystem of tech infrastructure. Between hosting explicit gore content and very extreme pornography with borderline legality at best (Including under Alexis's and Steve's leadership allowing a jailbait subreddit to continue for years) I would have thought they'd be booted from AWS etc.
- tornato7 6y agoReddit must be spending 10s of millions of dollars a year with AWS. They're not about to boot them off without a court order.
- unethical_ban 6y agoWell, that would be improper, so I'm glad they haven't been. Booting people off core infrastructure (IaaS, colo, DNS) for reasons outside violation of law is a very slippery slope.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- adzzzz 6y agoThe cartoon depiction of sex with minors is almost certainly illegal in many districts and countries.
- kragen 6y agoPhotos of the Tiananmen Square protest, arguments that Mohammed was not really a prophet of God, arguments that God doesn't exist, and maps that claim that the actual boundary between two countries are on one or the other side of disputed territory, are also illegal in many districts and countries. Probably it would be bad if the only speech allowed on popular web sites were speech that wasn't illegal anywhere, or illegal in only a few places.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- blibble 6y agothis is all over the UK press now too: https://metro.co.uk/2021/03/24/chaos-at-reddit-as-dozens-of-subreddits-made-private-in-protest-at-site-2-14297612/ https://metro.co.uk/2021/03/24/chaos-at-reddit-as-dozens-of-... https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-reddit-censoring-the-spectator- https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-reddit-censoring-the-... they couldn't have handled this worse
- alexandr1us 6y agoThis is great. Reddit has been leftist shithole for a while now
- millzlane 6y agoThis is one of the most popular opinions on Reddit.
- unethical_ban 6y agoreddit admins responded and specifically said their automod got aggressive, remediated it, and that talking about the admin is alright as long as it isn't a dox attempt or threatening behavior. Keep this in mind as you see other people claiming falsely that anything is still being censored.
- maxk42 6y agoReddit's automoderator is not a wild animal that gets "aggressive." It's a simple regex: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/automoderator/full-documentation https://www.reddit.com/wiki/automoderator/full-documentation Someone edited the rules to deliberately block any mention of the name in question site-wide.
- arbitrage 6y agoand whoops it took a reallllllllly long time to identify and fix. totally understandable, right? /s
- notahacker 6y agoTbf admin real names seem like quite a reasonable thing to include in such a regex (unless they're so common it's likely to be an accidental collision or publicly known) which is consistent with Reddit's explanation The allegation is that the name was only mentioned in the body of a linked (paywalled) article though...
- filoleg 6y ago> admin real names seem like quite a reasonable thing to include in such a regex (unless they're so common it's likely to be an accidental collision or publicly known) which is consistent with Reddit's explanation The "publicly known" part is the key here. She is a public figure who held prominent political positions. She has her own wikipedia page. There were plenty of news articles featuring her name since forever ago. >The allegation is that the name was only mentioned in the body of a linked (paywalled) article though This is imo just a cherry on top.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoReddit feels very Soviet lately. Everything is heavily manipulated and it seems like users are aware of that fact but are powerless to change anything.
- ryandrake 6y agoThey can always just stop using Reddit. Digg went this way, too, and it ended badly for them.
- andrewzah 6y agoWas digg as big as reddit is now? The issue for me is I don't know of other good places for long-form discussion and good link aggregation in general. Most of the time in smaller subreddits there aren't really any issues. What alternative is there to /r/AskHistorians? Etc.
- postalrat 6y agoBig as in #1? Yea.
- ncallaway 6y agoSure, but there's #1 in a market with 4% control of the market, vs #1 in a market with 85% control of the market. The absolute rank doesn't really tell you where the next closest competitor is.
- postalrat 6y agoIs facebook and twitter in the same market as reddit? Digg was pretty big for the time. The competitor I used the most back then was slashdot and I'd say digg was considerably bigger.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoI think history has shown us that “too big to fail“ isn’t a real thing. That “big enough to get a bailout” is real, but I’m not sure if this would apply to Reddit’s future. I have an idea that the future will not be in content silos and volunteer moderation by power hungry people... but I certainly don’t know how to get there so I’ll wait. I suspect the future will be “subscription lists” you join that block things people you generally agree with flagged, but this may bubble issue like we have now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bvm 6y agowhy do these posts keep being removed from the HN front page? eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26567842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26567842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26557175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26557175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556187
- TameAntelope 6y agoI don't know the specifics of the HN submission filter, but if you spend any time on /new you'll see how often the same content gets submitted over and over again, which often results in flags. Additionally, new accounts and low-reputation accounts also tend to have their submissions flagged by default, and require a "vouch" to be unflagged. In other words, HN's submission filter is fairly aggressive, I doubt anything nefarious is taking place.
- rincebrain 6y agodang commented here[1] that "Users are flagging them. The only thing moderators have done is decline to turn off the flags." I doubt there's a conspiracy of users flagging them, either, so you're most likely correct. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561855
- Karawebnetwork 6y agoThey were all links to active threads. This is the first link to an article on the topic.
- threatofrain 6y agoNot only is this a very interesting story, but it's still developing and there isn't much to discuss until we hear the next development. In other words, is Reddit telling the truth when they stated it was autoban mistake?
- badpassword123 6y agoWell, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26557175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26557175 was also flagged when the post was getting popular. HN has really been going on a censorship spree lately as well. What's even worse with HN is that sometimes your comments appears to have been posted, but if you log out or go in private browsing, your comment cannot be found at all!
- jandrese 6y agoMore discussion on this topic from two hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26567842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26567842
- nojito 6y agoReddit protests are always so humorous to me. For every mod that "leaves", dozens more will gladly step up to take over. Reddit Admins will also not think twice to remove mods that do things like this to "hurt reddit"
- Rebelgecko 6y agoReddit has addressed the situation here, in a mealy mouthed sort of way: https://www.reddit.com/r/modsupport/comments/mbqgx2 https://www.reddit.com/r/modsupport/comments/mbqgx2 However they seem to be denying the accusations that admins (possibly including the individual in question) were manually editing contents containing her name. This whole situation is incredibly bizarre to me. In the first place, why would reddit hire a 23 year old admin whose greatest accomplishment is being forced out of politics due to her connections to multiple pedophiles? Why did they taking such extreme steps to hide the admin's name, when they don't offer the same protections to mods or other users of the site? Does reddit have any audit trail or safeguards when admins edit comments? It would be interesting if they did a postmortem on the situation, but so far they seem reluctant to say that anything went wrong on their end.
- unloco 6y agoI pretty sure that response was as close to a post mortem as we are going to get.
- brabel 6y ago> due to her connections to multiple pedophiles? You mean, her own father? The article says her fiancee also had been accused of saying he feels attracted to children but they claim his account was hacked, which may be true as no one in their right mind would tweet something like that.
- s1artibartfast 6y agoI hate to be the guy that point this out, but no one should be Shamed for admitting they have a problem. Context matters whether they Were admitting attraction or endorsing the molestation of children
- i_haz_rabies 6y agoI hope you don't get downvoted for this. If you care about childrens welfare, you should be 100% in support of pedophiles coming forward and seeking help.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- znpy 6y agoReddit is getting shittier and shittier as the years go on...
- znpy 6y agoI just want to comment again because something else came up in my mind. I've learnt through the years that "about us", "company policies" and "our values" pages are mostly marketing bullshit. Who we hire, fire and promote show the actual values of a company. What does this mean regarding reddit, considering this situation? Everybody should draw their own conclusion.
- phreack 6y agoWhy did they even hire such a controversial person in the first place? It's baffling how they're doubling down on defending her after her previous actions. I wonder if this'll all cool down in a couple of days with everyone forgetting about this or if there'll be a new established rhetoric in inflammatory communities like 'reddit admins are confirmed pedophiles'.
- ALittleLight 6y agoFrom wikipedia Aimee's accomplishments seem to be resigning in disgrace from a couple of minor political positions and convincing a transportation department to stop using the phrase "ladies and gentlemen". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Challenor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Challenor
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ganzuul 6y agoThey seem to be the product of a very dysfunctional home, so don't judge them too harshly.
- GauntletWizard 6y agoEven as the product of a dysfunctional home, Aimee's actions and political positions are unacceptable, and should be swatted down - if only to teach her that they are not okay. Who really needs to be taken to task for this: Anyone who participated in the hiring and then covering for this creep. Hiring Aimee Challenor in a well-supervised manual labor position would be commendable. Hiring Aimee Challenor as an moderator of an online forum, based on her history of moderating an online forum aimed at children, knowing her political positions (and there's no argument to be made that they didn't, as the whole thing came about because they had instituted special protections based on those) should result in jail time.
- Dma54rhs 6y agoGood PR, trans activist etc.
- Number157 6y ago'Censorship', or censorship?
- javajosh 6y agoUgh, what a ball of mud. Well, I think there are two problems here: first, that Reddit has a bug in its anti-abuse software, and second the mob decided to abuse Reddit for hiring this woman who's history is, at worst, questionable. This is "cancel culture" in a very dangerous form, one that if taken to its conclusion, could prevent someone from ever being employed again. That is a very harsh punishment, handed out without a trial or defense, it is NOT justice. Furthermore, it puts a potentially chilling effect on employers, and harm employees. The first reaction of employers will be to keep their employee identities entirely secret, and to enforce that secrecy in the work contract. This will harm workers who want to move to a different job, and talk about the work they did. My firm hope is that this protest is more an emphatic bug report than a mob looking to murder someone's career after spending about 30 seconds thinking about it from all sides.
- smbullet 6y ago> at worst, questionable Don't you mean at best?
- javajosh 6y agoNo, I mean at worst. It doesn't sound like she was involved in anything illegal. She was never charged, let alone convicted. The allegations are all innuendo without proof, so yes, I meant "at worst".
- smbullet 6y ago> The allegations are all innuendo without proof Unless you have proof that the allegations are false then you cannot say the absolute worst case is she has a questionable history.
- buttholesurfer 6y agoIt's funny because they actively censored political opposition. Reddit is a joke. Steve Huffman should be removed.
- imwillofficial 6y agoWhy the scare quotes around censorship? People are clearly getting censored. People are mad about it. If that censorship is justified or not is another discussion.
- varispeed 6y agoIs Reddit now partially owned by China? If that's the case then I believe there will be more of that. It's just part of the agenda to create divide and chaos in the West.
- jtdev 6y agoNot sure on any ownership stake by the CCP, but it does seem that U.S. social media companies in general have zero loyalty to the U.S., its people, or the principles that the U.S. was founded on and stands for. I get the impression that U.S. social media companies have a very sympathetic mindset and relationship with the CCP driven by social media company's desire to use their technology to surveil and drive the economic, social, and political direction of humans on a mass scale.
- reducesuffering 6y agoTencent has a 5% ownership stake.[0] [0]https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/
- mancerayder 6y agoWhy is censorship regularly put in quotation marks by the press?
- LatteLazy 6y agoPeople immediately say "Censorship isn't censorship if...".
- mancerayder 6y agoThat's what the problem is. Censorship is defined as limiting or removing content. It doesn't mean it's always illegal or legal, or morally correct or immoral, but because it has a bad connotation, and there's a pro-censorship (let's be honest) Zeitgeist at the moment, the press (the same press that should be fighting against most forms of censorship) has this desire to numb the effect of the word with quotes. Like it's not really censorship, it's, oh, eye-roll, "censorship."
- swayvil 6y agoThis post just got removed from the front page. Reddit isn't the only place with a censorship problem.
- topspin 6y agoYep. 4 hours old with almost 500 comments and it's been disappeared. The best possible outcome is for Knight to take all of these highly selective champions of free speech to the cleaners in court for 'harassment.'
- moonbug 6y ago....and nothing of value was lost
- akhilpotla 6y agoAn interesting question I've been thinking about, though I haven't really gotten anywhere is: At what point does a private platform become a public utility, so that censorship is not permissible on the site? I agree that reddit shouldn't be censoring anyone or certain topics since it feel like a public utility. But if I were to have a blog, I think I should be allowed to block someone or delete certain comments based on how I think my blog should be, but my blog isn't a public utility. Or is it?
- astrange 6y agoYour platform hasn't been granted a monopoly on anything and has no moat, so why would it ever be a problem? daringfireball.net is a blog with no comments and at some point someone wrote a browser extension that just adds a comment section the owner of the site has no control over. Bit mean but that could always happen to you.
- jerrygoyal 6y agoPrediction: next reddit will be the decentralised one. Yes, those decentralised communities already exist but will become mainstream once those achieve good usability (UX) and accessibility (apps)).
- mam2 6y agoWtf https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/coventry-captive-girl-attic-torture-den-david-challenor-coventry-a8502991.html%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/c...
- LordAtlas 6y agoThe Reddit CEO has announced that the employee in question is no longer employed there. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/mcisdf/an_update_on_the_recent_issues_surrounding_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/mcisdf/an_up... But it's such a weaselly post. First, it admits they didn't vet her before hiring: "We did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her." Apparently, a basic google search is too difficult for HR. Second, it says this: "On March 9th, we added extra protections for this employee, including actioning content that mentioned the employee’s name or shared personal information on third-party sites, which we reserve for serious cases of harassment and doxxing." OK, and they _still_ didn't check why people were opposed to this person? Still no Internet search or, oh, reading the comments people were posting? Notice that this "protection" was two weeks ago, not recently.
- tim333 6y agoScrew ups happen I guess. Looks like they got to know her through earlier work and assumed she was ok.