9 ms·

Reddit rejects moderators' call for harsh measures against Covid misinformation

39 points by el_duderino 5y ago

lolsal 5y ago
At some point personal responsibility has to come into play, right? I certainly don't want everything curated for me by someone else before it hits my senses.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  I believe this is a shift in mentality that has occurred ever since smartphones and social media became ubiquitous. before that, in the early-to-mid 00s and earlier, it was assumed that the Web would contain tons of disinformation—possibly moreso than actual information—because anyone could make a website and put whatever they wanted on it, and this was well-understood and acknowledged by basically everyone who used the Web at this time. then smartphones happened and suddenly everyone was on the Web, and social media happened, shunting all these new Web users into walled-garden information silos. thus, it makes sense that these people who mostly began using the Web in earnest in this social media age would expect, nay demand ultra-locked-down content-controlled ideological safe spaces. of course, then, these massive social media corporations are more than happy to acquiesce to these implicit demands, because they can then tout their ultra-locked-down ideological echo-chambers as being a feature of their service compared to the others—don't worry, you won't see anything untoward here, on our service! this cultural shift in attitude toward the Web was probably inevitable and we probably won't ever go back to the way things were before, which is unfortunate, but here we are.
  - xyzzy21 5y ago
    Maturation to adulthood of Millennials and GenZ. Generations who were helicoptered and snowplowed out of knowledge of "how the real world works" especially in terms of how messy and uncontrolled it is. If you are used to authority figures micromanaging your life, you will come to expect that as an adult. You will also be deemed insufferable to everyone else who understands reality.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Scale matters. The early Internet was elitist and small. It had a fairly strong influence on those it reached but that was a small group. Influential, to a degree. And even in the very earliest days there was both resistance and propaganda online. One of the earliest books I have addressing this is John S. Waterman's The Matrix, published in 1990, about the then-extant "conferencing systems" worldwide. Its forward mentions what was a then-breaking develoopment: the 4 June 1989 Tienanmen Square protests and massacre, and the consequent flood of messages via fax and telephone by the student protesters. What happened over the course of the aughts and teens is that the Internet achieved mass global reach. The Facebook, YouTube, and Whatsap logos are probably the most-widely reproduced symbols on the planet, each having 2 billion or more active users. Mobile internet means that this contact is continuous throughout the day and limited to highly-emotive content. And now the misinformation and disinformation is mainstream. State-level actors --- Russia and China, yes, but also India, Israel, the US, and others --- are engaged in propaganda of various forms. Commercial interests do so through advertising and influencers. Politics are now online not merely in California and the US, but globally. The bottleneck isn't the network, it's the public's ability to perceive and sort through the bullshit and manipulation, much of which is exceedingly adept. Media changes societies. It always has, going back to speech. And the changes we're living through now will have profound and long-lived consequences.
- grapist420 5y ago
  Yeah. But Reddit already censors the shit out of its communities, both with thousands unnecessary subreddit bans and a comically incompetent “Anti-Evil Operations” site wide censorship team staffed by barely literate Zambians or something that randomly removes benign comments and suspends people for ridiculous reasons.
- rat87 5y ago
  Yes when will Reddit admit take responsibility and ban antivax subreddits?
  - lolsal 5y ago
    Why does reddit have that responsibility?
h2odragon 5y ago
> On an entirely unrelated note, I'm starting a subreddit dedicated to telling people seatbelts and speed limits are a violation of their civil liberties, because apparently I can. Yes, that's a point of view. Considering the sarcasm; I assume that the author will actually be advocating for society wide, extra legal penalties for known speeders; perhaps insisting on a public registry of those known to have had traffic citations, so those people can be denied services at restaurants etc... These people aren't even really calling for censorship; they just want there to be no one that disagrees with them. Whatever their position is today.
- tw04 5y ago
  >perhaps insisting on a public registry of those known to have had traffic citations, so those people can be denied services at restaurants etc... Speeding isn't infectious. If you get a traffic ticket I don't magically start getting them if we sit next to each other at a restaurant. "These people" are tired of "my opinion is just as valid as your science", and I don't blame them.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - xyzzy21 5y ago
    More people die (and have major medical/quality of life impacts) from car driving than do die from COVID by an order of magnitude. If we want to solve problems most efficiency, it must be by selecting causes in Pareto ranked order thus cars should come before COVID regardless.
    - adamrezich 5y ago
      completely agree! right now there's news headlines about how terrible the 2021 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally (locally relevant to me) was as a "superspreader" event, because people are getting positive PCR tests after the fact. however, there's been 0 covid deaths resulting from the 2021 Rally, while there was the usual single-digit (4 this time) traffic deaths. (when you take into account the sheer number of attendees and the sheer amount of drugs and alcohol consumed during the event, this is actually a shockingly low number!)
throwntoday 5y ago
The far left had in short order become more insufferable than the far right. The lack of self-awareness is astounding. Truly a totalitarian movement.
- ecf 5y ago
  > The pack of self awareness is astounding Could start with yourself but you’re using a throw away account so you obviously aren’t very confident in your opinions.
pajamanaut 5y ago
This is going to be a controversial opinion, but I agree with the mods who wrote the petition. The 'fire in a crowded theater' analogy is overused, but it seems applicable here. Additionally, those who moderate these subs (nnn especially) have repeatedly, and seemingly intentionally, failed to enforce site wide content policies. One needs look no further than r/covidvaccinated for proof of vote brigading. I have no problem with reasonable discussion, but Reddit is not where it happens anymore. Not with the gish-gallop it has become inundated with.
- grapist420 5y ago
  Fire in a crowded theater is a poor first amendment analogy. https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/264449/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/264449/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-metaphor/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-s... It’s a bit late to delete these subs anyway it’s been two years of Covid almost.
  - pajamanaut 5y ago
    1: Regardless of its original context, the analogy does seem reasonable to me. "Shouting fire," assuming there is no fire, is disinformation. "A crowded theater" represents a scenario in which disinformation presents a clear and present threat to others. 2: Better late than never. ICUs are reaching capacity again, especially in areas with low vaccination rates. There is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, but we are still in the tunnel. Edit: de-amped versions of the above links https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim... https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-metaphor/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-s...
    - grapist420 5y ago
      In short, from PopeHat - Nearly 100 years ago Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., voting to uphold the Espionage Act conviction of a man who wrote and circulated anti-draft pamphlets during World War I, said “[t]he most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” That flourish — now usually shortened to “shout fire in a crowded theater” — is the media’s go-to trope to support the proposition that some speech is illegal. But it’s empty rhetoric. I previously explained at length how Holmes said it in the context of the Supreme Court’s strong wartime pro-censorship push and subsequently retreated from it. That history illustrates its insidious nature. Holmes cynically used the phrase as a rhetorical device to justify jailing people for anti-war advocacy, an activity that is now (and was soon thereafter) unquestionably protected by the First Amendment. https://www.thefire.org/popehat-on-the-medias-most-common-pro-censorship-tropes/ https://www.thefire.org/popehat-on-the-medias-most-common-pr... In practice I don’t think banning NoNewNormal now matters much. I prefer unbanned because I don’t like censorship, but this isn’t a slippery slope problem, Reddit has long been free falling into the latrine pit. I’ve had to go offsite with my old Reddit community. Efforts can be made, but I think the entire process here is useless.
md2020 5y ago
Props to Reddit for not caving to this. I really do not understand anyone that calls for this kind of heavy-handed moderation. I certainly understand the impulse to want it, but upon thinking for like, 30 seconds about the precedent it sets and what the long term effects might be I realize it’s a pretty bad idea. Next time around, it might be the speech that they DO agree with that other people are wanting to clamp down on, and I don’t think they’ll just roll over and take it. That tells me a shocking number of people are not doing the basic due diligence of thinking through an idea even a little bit before jumping to support it.
- baja_blast 5y ago
  I 100% agree, while it drives me nuts seeing vaccine disinformation, I think banning people only solidifies their views. It's best to keep the debate open so people can point out why they're incorrect. Personally I just want this Pandemic to be over as soon as possible, thus I want vaccination rates to go as high as possible, but I don't think banning disinformation will achieve that, it will only put fuel to the fire. Plus I remember when discussing the possibility of a lab leak was considered misinformation. Banning people who don't support the narrative or excepted wisdom could be abused to suppress people blowing the whistle on actual conspiracies.
  - treesrule 5y ago
    My hot take about this is that banning this stuff before it spread would have tamped down on all the stupidity going around, but once people know about it doesn't really make a difference to ban it.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      Banning what though? What is "misinformation"? Today's misinformation might be tomorrows facts. This whole thing is really a group of people trying to jam their opinion down everybody else's mouth holes. It is truly frightening to me how many people are so eager to shut down any kind of debate. The science around covid and it's mitigations are far from settled.
ecf 5y ago
Working on a little script that determines who the moderators are for the top X subreddits and auto bans all of them because /r/all is ruined for a couple days every single time these mods get uppity. I’m vaccinated, btw.
- grapist420 5y ago
  The default sub mods are capricious and irritable. Check out r/undelete for an updated stream of mod removed posts that top r/all, or r/longtail for less popular removed posts. To say nothing about the literal 100s of thousands of comments they remove to make the site wholesome and nice, or just for abstruse personal vendettas. It’s terrible.
jokoon 5y ago
Noam Chomsky advocated for conspiracists to be allowed to talk freely. Who really cares? I bet plenty of people who believe in those conspiracies vaccinated anyway. Conspiracy is mostly a illness of belief. It doesn't really matter, it's just kids expressing pointless things, but I'm the end those kids will obey and do the good thing. There is nothing that is fixable about this.
Nasreddin_Hodja 5y ago
> call for harsh measures against Covid misinformation Such a hypocricy... Vaccine fan communities contain disinformation too. Even their first sentence contains lie: "Everyone on this planet has been affected by the SARS-Cov-2" ( https://old.reddit.com/r/vaxxhappened/comments/pbe8nj/we_call_upon_reddit_to_take_action_against_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/vaxxhappened/comments/pbe8nj/we_cal... ) Actually not everyone, at least I was affected by covid hystericals only but not by covid.

39 points by el_duderino 5y ago

At some point personal responsibility has to come into play, right? I certainly don't want everything curated for me by someone else before it hits my senses.

adamrezich 5y ago
I believe this is a shift in mentality that has occurred ever since smartphones and social media became ubiquitous. before that, in the early-to-mid 00s and earlier, it was assumed that the Web would contain tons of disinformation—possibly moreso than actual information—because anyone could make a website and put whatever they wanted on it, and this was well-understood and acknowledged by basically everyone who used the Web at this time. then smartphones happened and suddenly everyone was on the Web, and social media happened, shunting all these new Web users into walled-garden information silos. thus, it makes sense that these people who mostly began using the Web in earnest in this social media age would expect, nay demand ultra-locked-down content-controlled ideological safe spaces. of course, then, these massive social media corporations are more than happy to acquiesce to these implicit demands, because they can then tout their ultra-locked-down ideological echo-chambers as being a feature of their service compared to the others—don't worry, you won't see anything untoward here, on our service! this cultural shift in attitude toward the Web was probably inevitable and we probably won't ever go back to the way things were before, which is unfortunate, but here we are.
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  Maturation to adulthood of Millennials and GenZ. Generations who were helicoptered and snowplowed out of knowledge of "how the real world works" especially in terms of how messy and uncontrolled it is. If you are used to authority figures micromanaging your life, you will come to expect that as an adult. You will also be deemed insufferable to everyone else who understands reality.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Scale matters. The early Internet was elitist and small. It had a fairly strong influence on those it reached but that was a small group. Influential, to a degree. And even in the very earliest days there was both resistance and propaganda online. One of the earliest books I have addressing this is John S. Waterman's The Matrix, published in 1990, about the then-extant "conferencing systems" worldwide. Its forward mentions what was a then-breaking develoopment: the 4 June 1989 Tienanmen Square protests and massacre, and the consequent flood of messages via fax and telephone by the student protesters. What happened over the course of the aughts and teens is that the Internet achieved mass global reach. The Facebook, YouTube, and Whatsap logos are probably the most-widely reproduced symbols on the planet, each having 2 billion or more active users. Mobile internet means that this contact is continuous throughout the day and limited to highly-emotive content. And now the misinformation and disinformation is mainstream. State-level actors --- Russia and China, yes, but also India, Israel, the US, and others --- are engaged in propaganda of various forms. Commercial interests do so through advertising and influencers. Politics are now online not merely in California and the US, but globally. The bottleneck isn't the network, it's the public's ability to perceive and sort through the bullshit and manipulation, much of which is exceedingly adept. Media changes societies. It always has, going back to speech. And the changes we're living through now will have profound and long-lived consequences.
grapist420 5y ago
Yeah. But Reddit already censors the shit out of its communities, both with thousands unnecessary subreddit bans and a comically incompetent “Anti-Evil Operations” site wide censorship team staffed by barely literate Zambians or something that randomly removes benign comments and suspends people for ridiculous reasons.
rat87 5y ago
Yes when will Reddit admit take responsibility and ban antivax subreddits?
- lolsal 5y ago
  Why does reddit have that responsibility?

h2odragon 5y ago

> On an entirely unrelated note, I'm starting a subreddit dedicated to telling people seatbelts and speed limits are a violation of their civil liberties, because apparently I can. Yes, that's a point of view. Considering the sarcasm; I assume that the author will actually be advocating for society wide, extra legal penalties for known speeders; perhaps insisting on a public registry of those known to have had traffic citations, so those people can be denied services at restaurants etc... These people aren't even really calling for censorship; they just want there to be no one that disagrees with them. Whatever their position is today.

tw04 5y ago
>perhaps insisting on a public registry of those known to have had traffic citations, so those people can be denied services at restaurants etc... Speeding isn't infectious. If you get a traffic ticket I don't magically start getting them if we sit next to each other at a restaurant. "These people" are tired of "my opinion is just as valid as your science", and I don't blame them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  More people die (and have major medical/quality of life impacts) from car driving than do die from COVID by an order of magnitude. If we want to solve problems most efficiency, it must be by selecting causes in Pareto ranked order thus cars should come before COVID regardless.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    completely agree! right now there's news headlines about how terrible the 2021 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally (locally relevant to me) was as a "superspreader" event, because people are getting positive PCR tests after the fact. however, there's been 0 covid deaths resulting from the 2021 Rally, while there was the usual single-digit (4 this time) traffic deaths. (when you take into account the sheer number of attendees and the sheer amount of drugs and alcohol consumed during the event, this is actually a shockingly low number!)

throwntoday 5y ago

The far left had in short order become more insufferable than the far right. The lack of self-awareness is astounding. Truly a totalitarian movement.

ecf 5y ago
> The pack of self awareness is astounding Could start with yourself but you’re using a throw away account so you obviously aren’t very confident in your opinions.

pajamanaut 5y ago

This is going to be a controversial opinion, but I agree with the mods who wrote the petition. The 'fire in a crowded theater' analogy is overused, but it seems applicable here. Additionally, those who moderate these subs (nnn especially) have repeatedly, and seemingly intentionally, failed to enforce site wide content policies. One needs look no further than r/covidvaccinated for proof of vote brigading. I have no problem with reasonable discussion, but Reddit is not where it happens anymore. Not with the gish-gallop it has become inundated with.

grapist420 5y ago
Fire in a crowded theater is a poor first amendment analogy. https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/264449/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/264449/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-metaphor/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-s... It’s a bit late to delete these subs anyway it’s been two years of Covid almost.
- pajamanaut 5y ago
  1: Regardless of its original context, the analogy does seem reasonable to me. "Shouting fire," assuming there is no fire, is disinformation. "A crowded theater" represents a scenario in which disinformation presents a clear and present threat to others. 2: Better late than never. ICUs are reaching capacity again, especially in areas with low vaccination rates. There is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, but we are still in the tunnel. Edit: de-amped versions of the above links https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim... https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-metaphor/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-s...
  - grapist420 5y ago
    In short, from PopeHat - Nearly 100 years ago Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., voting to uphold the Espionage Act conviction of a man who wrote and circulated anti-draft pamphlets during World War I, said “[t]he most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” That flourish — now usually shortened to “shout fire in a crowded theater” — is the media’s go-to trope to support the proposition that some speech is illegal. But it’s empty rhetoric. I previously explained at length how Holmes said it in the context of the Supreme Court’s strong wartime pro-censorship push and subsequently retreated from it. That history illustrates its insidious nature. Holmes cynically used the phrase as a rhetorical device to justify jailing people for anti-war advocacy, an activity that is now (and was soon thereafter) unquestionably protected by the First Amendment. https://www.thefire.org/popehat-on-the-medias-most-common-pro-censorship-tropes/ https://www.thefire.org/popehat-on-the-medias-most-common-pr... In practice I don’t think banning NoNewNormal now matters much. I prefer unbanned because I don’t like censorship, but this isn’t a slippery slope problem, Reddit has long been free falling into the latrine pit. I’ve had to go offsite with my old Reddit community. Efforts can be made, but I think the entire process here is useless.

md2020 5y ago

Props to Reddit for not caving to this. I really do not understand anyone that calls for this kind of heavy-handed moderation. I certainly understand the impulse to want it, but upon thinking for like, 30 seconds about the precedent it sets and what the long term effects might be I realize it’s a pretty bad idea. Next time around, it might be the speech that they DO agree with that other people are wanting to clamp down on, and I don’t think they’ll just roll over and take it. That tells me a shocking number of people are not doing the basic due diligence of thinking through an idea even a little bit before jumping to support it.

baja_blast 5y ago
I 100% agree, while it drives me nuts seeing vaccine disinformation, I think banning people only solidifies their views. It's best to keep the debate open so people can point out why they're incorrect. Personally I just want this Pandemic to be over as soon as possible, thus I want vaccination rates to go as high as possible, but I don't think banning disinformation will achieve that, it will only put fuel to the fire. Plus I remember when discussing the possibility of a lab leak was considered misinformation. Banning people who don't support the narrative or excepted wisdom could be abused to suppress people blowing the whistle on actual conspiracies.
- treesrule 5y ago
  My hot take about this is that banning this stuff before it spread would have tamped down on all the stupidity going around, but once people know about it doesn't really make a difference to ban it.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    Banning what though? What is "misinformation"? Today's misinformation might be tomorrows facts. This whole thing is really a group of people trying to jam their opinion down everybody else's mouth holes. It is truly frightening to me how many people are so eager to shut down any kind of debate. The science around covid and it's mitigations are far from settled.

ecf 5y ago

Working on a little script that determines who the moderators are for the top X subreddits and auto bans all of them because /r/all is ruined for a couple days every single time these mods get uppity. I’m vaccinated, btw.

grapist420 5y ago
The default sub mods are capricious and irritable. Check out r/undelete for an updated stream of mod removed posts that top r/all, or r/longtail for less popular removed posts. To say nothing about the literal 100s of thousands of comments they remove to make the site wholesome and nice, or just for abstruse personal vendettas. It’s terrible.

jokoon 5y ago

Noam Chomsky advocated for conspiracists to be allowed to talk freely. Who really cares? I bet plenty of people who believe in those conspiracies vaccinated anyway. Conspiracy is mostly a illness of belief. It doesn't really matter, it's just kids expressing pointless things, but I'm the end those kids will obey and do the good thing. There is nothing that is fixable about this.

Nasreddin_Hodja 5y ago

> call for harsh measures against Covid misinformation Such a hypocricy... Vaccine fan communities contain disinformation too. Even their first sentence contains lie: "Everyone on this planet has been affected by the SARS-Cov-2" ( https://old.reddit.com/r/vaxxhappened/comments/pbe8nj/we_call_upon_reddit_to_take_action_against_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/vaxxhappened/comments/pbe8nj/we_cal... ) Actually not everyone, at least I was affected by covid hystericals only but not by covid.