7 ms·
I've been permanently banned from almost all of the top COVID related subs for daring to discuss disallowed topics, like the Wuhan lab, as well as expressing an
by pageandrew 5y ago
I've been permanently banned from almost all of the top COVID related subs for daring to discuss disallowed topics, like the Wuhan lab, as well as expressing anti-lockdown sentiments. My appeals have been instantly denied as well.
I understand the idea that subreddits are user-run communities and should be able to self-moderate, but there are a couple problems with this:
1. Reddit claims to be the "front page of the internet" and promotes many of these top subreddits with front-page rankings, user suggestions, and push notifications. Therefore, reddit mods have immense power in controlling the flow of information to those who believe they're interacting with a reputable source, and Reddit corporate has washed their hands of any responsibility to have a say in this, despite the profit they receive from it.
2. Reddit corporate certainly is willing to get involved with subreddits, by banning or quarantining certain subs for spreading "misinformation", but this seems selectively applied to one particular side of these issues. Anti-lockdown subreddits are banned for downplaying Covid, but major Covid subreddits openly feature fear-mongering posts that overplay, say, the risk of the virus to kids. Both are misinformation, but one is allowed and and the other is banned.
- zpeti 5y agoThis seems more like a Silicon Valley issue than a Reddit one. And Silicon Valley generally doesn’t have much motivation to get people doing actual stuff, people sitting at home is where the cash is.
- iammisc 5y agoThe nice thing is as alternative tech platforms rise up (communities.win, ovarit.com, ruqqus, rumble, etc) we will see a more decentralized web and these tech giants will soon be forgotten. Hopefully, they'll take their toxic VCs with them, but I think that may be a pipe dream.
- lovich 5y agoWas the front page of anything ever not curated?
- pageandrew 5y agoTheres a difference between curating the best recipes or cutest cat pics, and censoring certain ideas about pressing global health crises because they don't fit a certain narrative.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lovich 5y agoI mean things like newspapers or respected journals. I don't know of anything touted as a "front page" that's been entirely organically generated.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bserge 5y agoI wrote my suicide note on my own subreddit and got banned (site wide) for threatening violence. Err, OK, gotta find a safer place for that. Sadly, as you might be able to tell, I wasn't able to do it. It's terrifying. Also why should I die while worse people live? Gotta do something about them before going myself, d'uh.
- tpush 5y agoAre you announcing a murder-suicide here? @dang
- dang 5y agoI understand how alarming it is when people post on such an extremely painful topic, but probably this is a place to recall the site guideline that says "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." I can think of other things bserge might have meant. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. @dang is a no-op, so if you want to alert me/us to something, please email hn@ycombinator.com. I just happened to run across your comment.
- tpush 5y agoGot ya, sorry!
- bserge 5y agoIt would be stupid of me to do that. Besides, death is easy, living in suffering is where the real hell is. And it's much easier to achieve, would you look at that.
- dang 5y agoI'm glad you're here. If there's any chance that connecting would be helpful, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and I'll send you my personal email.
- underwater 5y agoGiving fringe viewpoints a megaphone and that kind of validation is a terrible idea. We have seen it be abused and fail us consistently over the last decade in both mainstream and social media.
- pageandrew 5y agoI don't trust large corporations to decide what is fringe and what is not, because not only is it a slippery slope, it has been abused consistently especially over the last few years. Look no further than Facebook's handling of COVID "misinformation". From the start of the pandemic, they have enshrined the current statements of the CDC as "information" and everything else as "misinformation". For example, when the supposed "scientific consensus" was that COVID-19 100% came from nature, anyone who suggested it could have been manmade was called a conspiracy theorist and banned from the platform. Now, a year later, those scientists are backtracking, and some are even admitting that they took the natural-origin stance simply to not be associated with Trump, who was taking the other side. That's not science. It was never a crazy idea. Anyone who could think for themselves knew that. But Facebook declared themselves the arbiter of truth, and decided that anything that wasn't said by the CDC needed to be censored. When reasonable, logical ideas about important global health challenges are considered "fringe" simply because the authorities have declared them to be fringe, we have a serious problem.
- mike_d 5y agoBecause the "man made" conspiracy was not based on any evidence or research. They were promoted by media personalities with no scientific backgrounds spreading a false narrative deeply rooted in white nationalism and helped to promote anti-Chinese hate crimes. Obviously real scientists and social media platforms didn't want to be associated with or help to promote that at the time.
- xfitm3 5y agoReddit was a bastion of free speech but it's suffered a steep decline in quality and content. It's a toxic place with heavy handed dark UI patterns: they've lost their minds over there.
- josephcsible 5y ago> Reddit was a bastion of free speech Big emphasis on "was".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ryandrake 5y agoI was going to say, there are plenty of subs for pedaling that kind of content, but looks like the major one, r/NoNewNormal was just quarantined (ironic) today, which is often the first step towards a total ban. Reddit's a private company, and if they don't want that kind of content on their site, shouldn't that be their choice?
- pageandrew 5y agoThe problem with the "private company" line that, yes, they're a private company, but censorship is definitely still bad! Free speech is a fundamentally protected right in the US. From the Founder's perspective, the greatest threat to that right was clearly and obviously government, because what other entity could possibly have that much reach into one's life? Up until the internet age, no one could imagine a private company or a private individual having the capacity to infringe upon free speech at scale. So, we have a Constitutional right to free speech, protected against infringement by the government, which is great, but there is another threat to the free flow of information and ideas, and that is private corporations who can now infringe upon this right at scale. And we don't have the tools or framework to defend it, because private companies can do what they want? Thats not good enough for me. The situation is dire when private companies appoint themselves to be the arbiters of truth, because even with the best intentions, there are bound to be mistakes, as we've already seen. And they don't all have the best intentions.
- le-mark 5y agoYou post about free speech but appear to be quite ignorant about the topic. Example why is it considered a crime to yell “fire” in a crowded theater? Educate yourself and stop posting annoying banal rhetoric.
- pageandrew 5y agoThat’s all you have to say? The fire in a theater example (and you call me banal)? You really can’t think of any other form of speech that has been unfairly censored by social media sites? Are you just not paying attention?