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Reddit bans anti-vaccine subreddit r/NoNewNormal after site-wide protest

85 points by nickysielicki 5y ago

thepasswordis 5y ago
Ah yes, and now they'll move to an even more permissive platform which cares even less what they think. Oh, and wouldn't you know: those more permissive platforms are also where actual white nationalists, racists, and violent extremists hang out. Just an absolutely pathetic, counterproductive, downright stupid decision on behalf of reddit.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  Reddit hardly cares about improving the world as much as it's own bottom line. The boycotts by several popular subreddits were hurting them, and that is all. — r/legaladvice is a known hotbed of misinformation of potentially drastic consequences that is allowed to stay, as that misinformation does not run enough across political tribalist lines to make people care.
  - LordHelpUsAll 5y ago
    Anti-vax subreddits are removed due to the protests of pedo friendly subreddits such as r/NonoffendingMAP ???
    - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
      Hmmyes, everyone who disagrees with me is a pædophile too; I find that the world is so much easier to bare with that idea in mind.
  - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
    > The boycotts by several popular subreddits were hurting them, and that is all. you mean boycotts by a bunch of petulant power mods. I sincerely doubt that rank and file reddit users really cared that much. Whether you agree with the outcome or not this is not the situation reddit admins should want to be in. They've just shown those mods that if they're loud enough that reddit will roll right over. Seems like a bold move to put yourself in that position on the eve of their IPO (if rumors are to be believed).
    - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
      Reddit wants to be somewhat decentralized and offload many of it's labor to users who provided it with free content. — This is the other side of it, I suppose. And yes, I mean that the boycots were organized by those in control of those subreddits.
      - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
        That might be what reddit wants not but if they decide to go public they'll have to convince shareholders why it's a good idea to leave the keys to the kingdom in the hands of a bunch of anonymous non-employees.
        Blikkentrekker 5y ago
        “Free labor” makes the nether regions of many a businessman turn tropical.
    - jim-jim-jim 5y ago
      > you mean boycotts by a bunch of petulant power mods. I sincerely doubt that rank and file reddit users really cared that much. I think you're right. It's important to realize that the normy web is cable news, not the agora. There is nothing organic about the apparent consensus expressed there. The top 500 communities being moderated by the same few people is a well-known statistic. The Elgin Air Force Base connection is another fun thing to look into. Every couple of weeks there's another story about some fringe community getting burned by big platforms, Glen Greenwald fills in some template to write an article about it, somebody links to the XKCD comic about censorship, and the dance continues. However sympathetic I am to free expression, I'm a bit tired of the discourse at this point. Nobody expects major broadcasters or newspapers to present unorthodox viewpoints, given how thoroughly compromised they are by intelligence agencies and corporate interests. I don't see why major web publishers should be viewed differently. Engaging with these platforms is not a winning battle. The only solution is to set up alternative institutions, but I haven't been impressed by what's popped up so far. Most decentralized Mastodon etc stuff is in practice even more ideologically rigid, and full of truly psychotic nerds. I like to imagine that there's still some active PHPbb board out there full of dudes just chilling. I'd like to find it one day.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  Surely fringe groups (other platforms) have a smaller impact on society than groups that are part of the mainstream (Reddit)?
  - postalrat 5y ago
    Until enough people move from a large platform (digg) to a new one (reddit).
- whymauri 5y ago
  So... how are Gab and Parler doing? Not sure those platforms are much of a threat. I'm actually more concerned about Facebook.
  - ipspam 5y ago
    Gab is actually useful. It only take on or two banned persons to make it worth joining Gab. I post about meat, get spammed bible verses (some better than others), and follow Milo and vox day. GAB is a sleeper community, only missing an App.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  > Just an absolutely pathetic, counterproductive, downright stupid decision on behalf of reddit You may be right, but your choice of words make me wonder why some people feel so sure of being right as to claim somebody else incapable of getting something right when it's so obvious what to do. But is it? Perhaps the decision is sad as it would be better for the world that they stand their ground. But perhaps it was the only rational choice that reddit could do (game theory and all that). Or perhaps they did intentionally choose what they thought was the better option for everybody, and letting people radicalize in their ghettos (and stand out as radicalized groups) instead of normalizing the radical positions. In any case, I wouldn't be so sure we're dealing with downright stupidity.
- mint2 5y ago
  How is it so clearly a bad thing to quarantine extremism and misinformation to dark corners rather than allow them to be in a more easily stumbled upon location by non-extremists or not yet extremists that are somewhat susceptible to falling down that rabbit hole if exposed?
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    Misinformation is everywhere including on Reddit, even quite dangerous misinformation but no one cares, but when misinformation runes across tribalist political lines is suddenly when people start to care. Rarely do people care about improving the world, but feeling part of a team has always galvanized men into iron warriors. — Achieving victory is of course not the concern of these warriors, but the joy of fighting shoulder to shoulder with another is it's own reward. Of course, that it runs across tribalist political lines is the only reason the misinformation again exists in this particular case, but that also makes it less useful to shut the subreddit down. The misinformation that is commonly spread, by, say, r/legaladvice, is easier to remedy by simple conversation or alternatively shutting it down and for Reddit to ban lay legal advice, as people believe that simply because they are misinformed, not because they enjoy feeling part of a team believing whatever the rest of the team does.
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    Glad to know we finally found the final arbiter of what exactly is "extremism and misinformation"! This will make governing the people so much easier now!
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      contrary to what you might believe truth and lies do in fact exist and while the line can be blurry at times, anti-vax misinformation happens to be firmly on one side of that equation, and taking it down prevents real physical harm.
    - mint2 5y ago
      Please refrain from sarcasm that doesn’t add anything. If you want to add to the discussion please elaborate on why you think it is impossible to know if something is extremism in a reasonably objective manner, and explain the examples most people would think of like neonazi propaganda and vaccine disinformation that causes people to prefer unstudied horse dewormer over studied vaccines.
beebmam 5y ago
It is not legal (and should not be legal) for people to force privately owned companies to publish speech that those companies don't want to publish. Hacker News itself does this all the time; there's plenty of topics and conversations that aren't allowed to be posted here. And people get banned/silenced all the time. And that's good! That's what healthy moderation looks like.
- mycodesucks 5y ago
  Reddit is the opposite of what good moderation looks like.
  - glonq 5y ago
    Wish I could gift you a platinum award for this plus 3 months of ycombinator gold /s
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    What are some examples of communities that employ good moderation, in your opinion?
- mandeepj 5y ago
  > It is not legal (and should not be legal) for people to force privately owned companies to publish speech that those companies don't want to publish. The platforms are public and used by millions.
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Irrelevant legally, and the legal right to choose which speech a private entity publishes has been upheld in US courts since forever
- petermcneeley 5y ago
  I dont think this article questions if this is legal. Many companies do things that are Legal but are perhaps unethical or just not aligned with consumer interests. Your focus on legality to me is completely irrelevant at this stage. People want to discuss if this decision was a good idea or bad idea.
abstractbarista 5y ago
It is time: I've deleted my account after clearing all posts and comments. Don't want to leave anything of value behind.
- ipspam 5y ago
  I commend you on your small but heroic action
- Asraelite 5y ago
  I can't count the number of times that I've come across a would-be useful comment that would solve exactly the issue I'm having, only for it to have been deleted. Hating the site is fair, but honestly what you're doing is really shitty. Thank god Pushshift exists.
  - abstractbarista 5y ago
    I respect what you're saying and honestly it is shitty. It is true, I deleted the many technical posts I made because I did not want to leave that value on the site to support what is has become. I feel bad about it. I hope people are able to find my posts in archived formats somewhere. But I just didn't feel comfortable on there any more. Reading around there is just gross now. I think I will concentrate on posting on my own website now.
  - effingwewt 5y ago
    That's the point though. Reddit wants some posts and not others, best way to stop them getting what they want is deleting all comments exactly so less people will go to the site. Reddit called itself a bastion for free speech then walked it back for Chinese investors, and were surprised at the backlash. The original ban wave was the exact reason the delete scripts were conceived.
- hn-jw 5y ago
  I did the same for my 15 year old account and added reddit to my DNS blacklist. It's as close to voting with my dollar (data?) as I can muster at this point.
- 5y ago
xqcgrek2 5y ago
It seems most of the NNN folks are moving to communities.win
- pope_meat 5y ago
  spent 3 minutes in the comments section Big yikes. That is not a good place.
  - Bishizel 5y ago
    I think the main problem of all these “alternative” sites is that there really are just a fuckton of shitty people waiting to go in at the very beginning. So even if people have legitimate concerns and the desire to build fresh, they are quickly pushed out by real cesspool denizens.
    - jude- 5y ago
      Gee, it's almost as if moderation is necessary for communities to thrive! Imagine that.
      - pope_meat 5y ago
        I'm wondering what it says about us humans that the only way to maintain even a modicum of civility is heavy censorship. Also, don't these folks realize that Jesus was Jewish... like, what kind of brain worms crawling in their heads that they can in one breath proclaim faith to an Abrahamic religion, hate for people from that part of the world, and how morality comes from a society following their preferred religion. Feels pretty hopeless.
        seattle_spring 5y ago
        Moderation isn't censorship, and moderating out 5% of a userbase that makes 95% of the noise doesn't really say anything about society. I don't expect this comment to get much love in a thread linking to patriots.win, a clone of one of the most heavily moderated and hateful subs in Reddit history.
kinghajj 5y ago
"Witnesses report hearing noises emanating from the grave of one Aaron Swartz." I know this conversation has happened numerous times on HN by now, but at times like this I can't help but speak up. Although I have matured over the past decade, no longer the "Ron Paul" libertarian of my college days, and I understand the nuances w.r.t large public platforms facilitating misinformation; there still exists a part in me that pines for the "old Reddit," and laments that all attempts to remake platforms with liberal free-speech policies have come from far-right extremists.
- powerslacker 5y ago
  Right there with you. Aaron was basically a martyr for the cause of bringing free access of information to the common person. To see a huge part of his life's work trampled under the feet of an internet mob in the name of corporate interest is a disgrace.
softwaredoug 5y ago
It is odd to ban /r/TheDonald but not ban /r/NoNewNormal. Whatever you think of the bans, once you go down the path... you'll be asked why one community gets a pass while another gets banned
guilhas 5y ago
The "protest", most of those subreddits have the same mods which are removing thousands of submissions every day. And in those "protest" posts they removed hundreds of comments of people disagreeing 92 of top 500 subreddits controlled by same 5 people https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 Also theverge.com disabled comments on this article in particular. Wonder why... So much for open debate, reddit by now is conversation conditioning machine for any topic that gets attention, banning anything that disagrees, and leaving bots and banal discussion Let's just hope they have alienated enough people to get more traction on other platforms
sinecure 5y ago
Reddit's procedure for communities that go against any mainstream progressive narrative is to quarantine them and then ban them under the accusation of "brigading". They have essentially trimmed all alternative thought or discussion from the website and turned places like /r/news, which used to be a moderate and balanced place of discussion, into a completely one-sided echo chamber of modern progressive politics. The part I find most humorous is I only discovered /r/NoNewNormal this morning and found the posts there to be genuinely kind hearted, open to rational discussion, welcoming and positive. Yet they were obliterated hours later and are now being described by media outlets as evil anti-vaccine bullies. It must be nice to wield the power to delete your ideological enemies in one stroke and then get to describe them however you want across 10 media outlets without chance for rebuttal, debate, or explanation.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >They have essentially trimmed all alternative thought or discussion from the website and turned places like /r/news, which used to be a moderate and balanced place of discussion, into a completely one-sided echo chamber of modern progressive politics. This has been going on for years. After the Orlando nightclub massacre in 2016, /r/news and /r/worldnews completely shut down postings about it because a Muslim was the killer. /r/askreddit and, yes, /r/the_donald opened up discussion threads because there was no alternative on Reddit.
  - sinecure 5y ago
    Absolutely. It's been incredible watching it happen in slow motion over the last decade. What was once a bastion of free thought and discussion online (after the fall of Digg) has turned into another trimmed and controlled mainstream playground for only the "right" opinions.
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    For those who don't believe me: https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4ny59k/lets_talk_about_orlando/ https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4ny59k/lets_t... https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4nsiw1/state_of_the_subreddit_and_the_orlando_shooting/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4nsiw1/state_of_the_su... https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4nw8nc/washington_post_redditors_checked_rnews_for/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4nw8nc/washington_post...
halfjoking 5y ago
If you have a controversial, non-mainstream opinion you need to be extremely rigorous with verifying your information. That’s something NNN users didn’t do enough of. They got banned for a fake pedo sub being created by someone (maybe a member, maybe a brigadier) that was then used to say “look at the people supporting vaccine mandates… pedos.” That claim got upvoted on NNN so it made them look like they’d upvote anything. Should be a lesson to everyone to check the claims of the poster from multiple sources so you can call it out before it goes viral. NNN needed more posts about the science supporting their views against vaccine mandates, and less BS about left-wing globalist conspiracies. For example prior infection offers way better immunity than the vaccine… https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... Actually the difference is so large that if we were to restrict people it should be based on who had the virus. Those who caught it or not are a bigger difference in having a chance to spread it than those who are vaccinated or not. So maybe we should have an antibody mandate - not a vaccine mandate?
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  Opposing a mandate doesn’t need science.
ipspam 5y ago
I thought this post by a former mod of another forum that went through this was interesting. https://patriots.win/p/12kFPq7oFY/recap-on-how-rnonewnormal-got-ba/ https://patriots.win/p/12kFPq7oFY/recap-on-how-rnonewnormal-...
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  How do you feel about some of the other posts and comments from that same community? For example: https://imgur.com/a/wIFDa8G https://imgur.com/a/wIFDa8G
  - ipspam 5y ago
    I don't see a problem. They seem more like trolls and people with mental health issues like conspiratorial thinking on a spectrum that ends in schitzo. Don't get me wrong, I think it's reprehensible. I just don't take these people seriously. They exist, they have a right to exist, and they are going to spew their bullshit everywhere. What I'm really not willing to accept is a game of cat and mouse where normal everyday activists pose as these kinds of people and say the worst things they can in order to shut down discussion. I'm not for giving a small handful of people the power to shut down discussions they don't like by pretending to be alt right anti-Semites.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > In early August, we first heard about the plans by “powermods” (moderators of very large and influential subreddits) to hold “blackouts” (where they take their subreddits private, disallowing posting) in an effort to force Reddit, Inc (a $10 billion company) to change its policies. I'm surprised that works, and that the Reddit admins let it work. If I were Reddit, I'd probably cave, but then make a code change so that "very large and influential subreddits" cannot implement those settings changes without admin approval. I wouldn't want to cede so much power to a few users. If done at the right time (e.g. when there's no big meta controversy), it might not even cause that much weeping and gnashing of teeth. I doubt most Reddit users care that much about mod powers.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Reddit continues to insist that its sitewide administrative policies are based on behaviour rather than content, though it appears that this is a somewhat narrow distinction, and that behaviours which draw attention … tend to be associated with questionable content. I’m not criticising the action. I support it. (The reasons are complex and difficult to articulate, though what I had to say ... on Reddit ... about limitations on speech some six years ago seems strongly appropriate. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2g8e8c/shouting_no_fire_in_a_warming_world_as_a_clear/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2g8e8c/shoutin...) It's the rationalisation which seems thin. The more so as what I’d based that argument on at the time --- falsely claiming no harm where a harm clearly existed is precisely at the centre of current discussions of the topic. This also seems to be a major, though under-discussed mode, of deceptive speech, and more pointedly a mode in which the downplaying of risk accrues benefits and gains to the parties promoting that message. That said, Reddit’s lack of principled leadership and very-late-to-the-party redress continues to erode trust in the platform among those who live in a reality-based world and support strong epistemic systems. Which is one of the key challenges the firm faces: neither of the two principle sides in this matter are or will be happy with how it aquits itself. I’ll note as well that the principles of “free speech” are not synonymous with the US first amendment (which concerns only government limitations), that speech on a privately-operate platform is both not the same as government censorship, but also not dissimilar in many regards, and that in any regard, free speech itself is not an absolute principle but one existing in balance with other considerations. I’ve been thinking in terms of a set of related, though often conflicting principles as Autonomous Communication (or variously: "informational autonomy" or "communications autonomy" --- naming things is hard --- discussed in “Which has primacy?”). The rights to privacy, free-assocation (both positive and negative), against self-incrimination, of obligated disclosure, and to accurate information, all collide, though there are some common principles which might help in adjudicating amongst them. I’m not aware of others offering any similar construction. See: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/622677903778013902fd002590d8e506 https://joindiaspora.com/posts/622677903778013902fd002590d8e...
- nescioquid 5y ago
  > ...the principles of “free speech” are not synonymous with the US first amendment (which concerns only government limitations)... I think this is the nub of the problem. There are common carriers like the phone company, and there are publishers. A publisher will be responsible for what they publish, whereas a carrier really just gives access to their infrastructure. We have a situation now that seems like social media companies want it both ways (none of obligations and all of the prerogatives), so we get something like a phone service that censors your calls when convenient to the phone company. I really think this requires a political solution, though one often sees technological solutions suggested (peer-to-peer, federation). > ...free speech itself is not an absolute principle but one existing in balance with other considerations... Yes, political speech is the most protected variety. Curiously, money can be considered political speech. So while I think the only kind of real solution here is a political one, I don't expect that to ever happen.
betwixthewires 5y ago
Remember when it was a slippery slope fallacy to suggest that this sort of thing would go beyond banning fatpeoplehate? I haven't used reddit in 2 years. I'm not a vaccine denier or anything like that, but why would I want to use a public discussion tool that disallows public discussion? I think though this points to an architectural problem with the multi community link aggregator/forum concept. Fact is, when you have a site that allows multiple communities to coexist and bleed into one another some won't get along, some will harass each other, it probably always results in things like this, then you get echo chambers. I think forums and single community sites (possibly even federated) make a lot more sense to prevent interaction from devolving into this. The model reddit based their business on has obviously failed the user at this point. It was a Utopian (and profitable!) dream to be the site for this sort of thing and it was short sighted in hindsight.
- rex-mundi 5y ago
  Did you find a replacement for reddit you like?
  - postalrat 5y ago
    HN?
    - croutonwagon 5y ago
      HN is nice but historically the topics had to be very specific to tech, startups, etc. Recently it seems to have been a little easier on the political and social commentary stuff which i think is pretty nice and refreshing. Though I understand why some aren’t as much of a fan. It does attract more drama and flame baiting.
      - esturk 5y ago
        I agree with the historical part because recently there has been more meme posts, one liner edgy comments, giant political rants, etc. And since people can't delete your post after 2 hours, you can see a lot of fluff nowadays even in a relatively old thread.
h0p3 5y ago
I would like to take a moment and pray with you fine folks about the possibility of https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/ (it is non-trivially in the right direction). We don't have to outright silence people in mere political games. Until at least the users get to moderate who (or what, and given which conditions?) will be their moderators on a platform owned and computed by the people who use it, [[power|https://philosopher.life/#Power https://philosopher.life/#Power]] will centralize, and we'll see the same problems again and again. We must distribute governance of The Great Human Conversation, and even my worst enemies deserve to have voices and a vote. Decentralize until it hurts, then federate until it works.
throwawaysea 5y ago
It is well past time for Reddit to die, with its authoritarian policies that amount to propagandist control of information and ideology. There are many alternatives out there (https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/...) but how do any of them overcome network effects and become viable and mainstream?
6510 5y ago
The anti-vax folk seems to have moved to the comment section here hiding behind their credentials. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/949048 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/949048 Fascinating read.
fho 5y ago
I am late to the party ... but is that reddit casually analyzing millions of private messages/chats?
unvaxxxed 5y ago
It's crazy. The most sane group on Reddit is banned. I've been collecting some alternatives to NNN https://unvaxxxed.com/alternatives-to-reddits-nonewnormal/ https://unvaxxxed.com/alternatives-to-reddits-nonewnormal/

85 points by nickysielicki 5y ago

Ah yes, and now they'll move to an even more permissive platform which cares even less what they think. Oh, and wouldn't you know: those more permissive platforms are also where actual white nationalists, racists, and violent extremists hang out. Just an absolutely pathetic, counterproductive, downright stupid decision on behalf of reddit.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
Reddit hardly cares about improving the world as much as it's own bottom line. The boycotts by several popular subreddits were hurting them, and that is all. — r/legaladvice is a known hotbed of misinformation of potentially drastic consequences that is allowed to stay, as that misinformation does not run enough across political tribalist lines to make people care.
- LordHelpUsAll 5y ago
  Anti-vax subreddits are removed due to the protests of pedo friendly subreddits such as r/NonoffendingMAP ???
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    Hmmyes, everyone who disagrees with me is a pædophile too; I find that the world is so much easier to bare with that idea in mind.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  > The boycotts by several popular subreddits were hurting them, and that is all. you mean boycotts by a bunch of petulant power mods. I sincerely doubt that rank and file reddit users really cared that much. Whether you agree with the outcome or not this is not the situation reddit admins should want to be in. They've just shown those mods that if they're loud enough that reddit will roll right over. Seems like a bold move to put yourself in that position on the eve of their IPO (if rumors are to be believed).
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    Reddit wants to be somewhat decentralized and offload many of it's labor to users who provided it with free content. — This is the other side of it, I suppose. And yes, I mean that the boycots were organized by those in control of those subreddits.
    - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
      That might be what reddit wants not but if they decide to go public they'll have to convince shareholders why it's a good idea to leave the keys to the kingdom in the hands of a bunch of anonymous non-employees.
      - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
        “Free labor” makes the nether regions of many a businessman turn tropical.
  - jim-jim-jim 5y ago
    > you mean boycotts by a bunch of petulant power mods. I sincerely doubt that rank and file reddit users really cared that much. I think you're right. It's important to realize that the normy web is cable news, not the agora. There is nothing organic about the apparent consensus expressed there. The top 500 communities being moderated by the same few people is a well-known statistic. The Elgin Air Force Base connection is another fun thing to look into. Every couple of weeks there's another story about some fringe community getting burned by big platforms, Glen Greenwald fills in some template to write an article about it, somebody links to the XKCD comic about censorship, and the dance continues. However sympathetic I am to free expression, I'm a bit tired of the discourse at this point. Nobody expects major broadcasters or newspapers to present unorthodox viewpoints, given how thoroughly compromised they are by intelligence agencies and corporate interests. I don't see why major web publishers should be viewed differently. Engaging with these platforms is not a winning battle. The only solution is to set up alternative institutions, but I haven't been impressed by what's popped up so far. Most decentralized Mastodon etc stuff is in practice even more ideologically rigid, and full of truly psychotic nerds. I like to imagine that there's still some active PHPbb board out there full of dudes just chilling. I'd like to find it one day.
cinntaile 5y ago
Surely fringe groups (other platforms) have a smaller impact on society than groups that are part of the mainstream (Reddit)?
- postalrat 5y ago
  Until enough people move from a large platform (digg) to a new one (reddit).
whymauri 5y ago
So... how are Gab and Parler doing? Not sure those platforms are much of a threat. I'm actually more concerned about Facebook.
- ipspam 5y ago
  Gab is actually useful. It only take on or two banned persons to make it worth joining Gab. I post about meat, get spammed bible verses (some better than others), and follow Milo and vox day. GAB is a sleeper community, only missing an App.
ithkuil 5y ago
> Just an absolutely pathetic, counterproductive, downright stupid decision on behalf of reddit You may be right, but your choice of words make me wonder why some people feel so sure of being right as to claim somebody else incapable of getting something right when it's so obvious what to do. But is it? Perhaps the decision is sad as it would be better for the world that they stand their ground. But perhaps it was the only rational choice that reddit could do (game theory and all that). Or perhaps they did intentionally choose what they thought was the better option for everybody, and letting people radicalize in their ghettos (and stand out as radicalized groups) instead of normalizing the radical positions. In any case, I wouldn't be so sure we're dealing with downright stupidity.
mint2 5y ago
How is it so clearly a bad thing to quarantine extremism and misinformation to dark corners rather than allow them to be in a more easily stumbled upon location by non-extremists or not yet extremists that are somewhat susceptible to falling down that rabbit hole if exposed?
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  Misinformation is everywhere including on Reddit, even quite dangerous misinformation but no one cares, but when misinformation runes across tribalist political lines is suddenly when people start to care. Rarely do people care about improving the world, but feeling part of a team has always galvanized men into iron warriors. — Achieving victory is of course not the concern of these warriors, but the joy of fighting shoulder to shoulder with another is it's own reward. Of course, that it runs across tribalist political lines is the only reason the misinformation again exists in this particular case, but that also makes it less useful to shut the subreddit down. The misinformation that is commonly spread, by, say, r/legaladvice, is easier to remedy by simple conversation or alternatively shutting it down and for Reddit to ban lay legal advice, as people believe that simply because they are misinformed, not because they enjoy feeling part of a team believing whatever the rest of the team does.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  Glad to know we finally found the final arbiter of what exactly is "extremism and misinformation"! This will make governing the people so much easier now!
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    contrary to what you might believe truth and lies do in fact exist and while the line can be blurry at times, anti-vax misinformation happens to be firmly on one side of that equation, and taking it down prevents real physical harm.
  - mint2 5y ago
    Please refrain from sarcasm that doesn’t add anything. If you want to add to the discussion please elaborate on why you think it is impossible to know if something is extremism in a reasonably objective manner, and explain the examples most people would think of like neonazi propaganda and vaccine disinformation that causes people to prefer unstudied horse dewormer over studied vaccines.

beebmam 5y ago

It is not legal (and should not be legal) for people to force privately owned companies to publish speech that those companies don't want to publish. Hacker News itself does this all the time; there's plenty of topics and conversations that aren't allowed to be posted here. And people get banned/silenced all the time. And that's good! That's what healthy moderation looks like.

mycodesucks 5y ago
Reddit is the opposite of what good moderation looks like.
- glonq 5y ago
  Wish I could gift you a platinum award for this plus 3 months of ycombinator gold /s
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  What are some examples of communities that employ good moderation, in your opinion?
mandeepj 5y ago
> It is not legal (and should not be legal) for people to force privately owned companies to publish speech that those companies don't want to publish. The platforms are public and used by millions.
- beebmam 5y ago
  Irrelevant legally, and the legal right to choose which speech a private entity publishes has been upheld in US courts since forever
petermcneeley 5y ago
I dont think this article questions if this is legal. Many companies do things that are Legal but are perhaps unethical or just not aligned with consumer interests. Your focus on legality to me is completely irrelevant at this stage. People want to discuss if this decision was a good idea or bad idea.

abstractbarista 5y ago

It is time: I've deleted my account after clearing all posts and comments. Don't want to leave anything of value behind.

ipspam 5y ago
I commend you on your small but heroic action
Asraelite 5y ago
I can't count the number of times that I've come across a would-be useful comment that would solve exactly the issue I'm having, only for it to have been deleted. Hating the site is fair, but honestly what you're doing is really shitty. Thank god Pushshift exists.
- abstractbarista 5y ago
  I respect what you're saying and honestly it is shitty. It is true, I deleted the many technical posts I made because I did not want to leave that value on the site to support what is has become. I feel bad about it. I hope people are able to find my posts in archived formats somewhere. But I just didn't feel comfortable on there any more. Reading around there is just gross now. I think I will concentrate on posting on my own website now.
- effingwewt 5y ago
  That's the point though. Reddit wants some posts and not others, best way to stop them getting what they want is deleting all comments exactly so less people will go to the site. Reddit called itself a bastion for free speech then walked it back for Chinese investors, and were surprised at the backlash. The original ban wave was the exact reason the delete scripts were conceived.
hn-jw 5y ago
I did the same for my 15 year old account and added reddit to my DNS blacklist. It's as close to voting with my dollar (data?) as I can muster at this point.
5y ago

xqcgrek2 5y ago

It seems most of the NNN folks are moving to communities.win

pope_meat 5y ago
spent 3 minutes in the comments section Big yikes. That is not a good place.
- Bishizel 5y ago
  I think the main problem of all these “alternative” sites is that there really are just a fuckton of shitty people waiting to go in at the very beginning. So even if people have legitimate concerns and the desire to build fresh, they are quickly pushed out by real cesspool denizens.
  - jude- 5y ago
    Gee, it's almost as if moderation is necessary for communities to thrive! Imagine that.
    - pope_meat 5y ago
      I'm wondering what it says about us humans that the only way to maintain even a modicum of civility is heavy censorship. Also, don't these folks realize that Jesus was Jewish... like, what kind of brain worms crawling in their heads that they can in one breath proclaim faith to an Abrahamic religion, hate for people from that part of the world, and how morality comes from a society following their preferred religion. Feels pretty hopeless.
      - seattle_spring 5y ago
        Moderation isn't censorship, and moderating out 5% of a userbase that makes 95% of the noise doesn't really say anything about society. I don't expect this comment to get much love in a thread linking to patriots.win, a clone of one of the most heavily moderated and hateful subs in Reddit history.

kinghajj 5y ago

"Witnesses report hearing noises emanating from the grave of one Aaron Swartz." I know this conversation has happened numerous times on HN by now, but at times like this I can't help but speak up. Although I have matured over the past decade, no longer the "Ron Paul" libertarian of my college days, and I understand the nuances w.r.t large public platforms facilitating misinformation; there still exists a part in me that pines for the "old Reddit," and laments that all attempts to remake platforms with liberal free-speech policies have come from far-right extremists.

powerslacker 5y ago
Right there with you. Aaron was basically a martyr for the cause of bringing free access of information to the common person. To see a huge part of his life's work trampled under the feet of an internet mob in the name of corporate interest is a disgrace.

softwaredoug 5y ago

It is odd to ban /r/TheDonald but not ban /r/NoNewNormal. Whatever you think of the bans, once you go down the path... you'll be asked why one community gets a pass while another gets banned

guilhas 5y ago

The "protest", most of those subreddits have the same mods which are removing thousands of submissions every day. And in those "protest" posts they removed hundreds of comments of people disagreeing 92 of top 500 subreddits controlled by same 5 people https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 Also theverge.com disabled comments on this article in particular. Wonder why... So much for open debate, reddit by now is conversation conditioning machine for any topic that gets attention, banning anything that disagrees, and leaving bots and banal discussion Let's just hope they have alienated enough people to get more traction on other platforms

sinecure 5y ago

Reddit's procedure for communities that go against any mainstream progressive narrative is to quarantine them and then ban them under the accusation of "brigading". They have essentially trimmed all alternative thought or discussion from the website and turned places like /r/news, which used to be a moderate and balanced place of discussion, into a completely one-sided echo chamber of modern progressive politics. The part I find most humorous is I only discovered /r/NoNewNormal this morning and found the posts there to be genuinely kind hearted, open to rational discussion, welcoming and positive. Yet they were obliterated hours later and are now being described by media outlets as evil anti-vaccine bullies. It must be nice to wield the power to delete your ideological enemies in one stroke and then get to describe them however you want across 10 media outlets without chance for rebuttal, debate, or explanation.

TMWNN 5y ago
>They have essentially trimmed all alternative thought or discussion from the website and turned places like /r/news, which used to be a moderate and balanced place of discussion, into a completely one-sided echo chamber of modern progressive politics. This has been going on for years. After the Orlando nightclub massacre in 2016, /r/news and /r/worldnews completely shut down postings about it because a Muslim was the killer. /r/askreddit and, yes, /r/the_donald opened up discussion threads because there was no alternative on Reddit.
- sinecure 5y ago
  Absolutely. It's been incredible watching it happen in slow motion over the last decade. What was once a bastion of free thought and discussion online (after the fall of Digg) has turned into another trimmed and controlled mainstream playground for only the "right" opinions.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  For those who don't believe me: https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4ny59k/lets_talk_about_orlando/ https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4ny59k/lets_t... https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4nsiw1/state_of_the_subreddit_and_the_orlando_shooting/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4nsiw1/state_of_the_su... https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4nw8nc/washington_post_redditors_checked_rnews_for/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4nw8nc/washington_post...

halfjoking 5y ago

If you have a controversial, non-mainstream opinion you need to be extremely rigorous with verifying your information. That’s something NNN users didn’t do enough of. They got banned for a fake pedo sub being created by someone (maybe a member, maybe a brigadier) that was then used to say “look at the people supporting vaccine mandates… pedos.” That claim got upvoted on NNN so it made them look like they’d upvote anything. Should be a lesson to everyone to check the claims of the poster from multiple sources so you can call it out before it goes viral. NNN needed more posts about the science supporting their views against vaccine mandates, and less BS about left-wing globalist conspiracies. For example prior infection offers way better immunity than the vaccine… https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... Actually the difference is so large that if we were to restrict people it should be based on who had the virus. Those who caught it or not are a bigger difference in having a chance to spread it than those who are vaccinated or not. So maybe we should have an antibody mandate - not a vaccine mandate?

CheezeIt 5y ago
Opposing a mandate doesn’t need science.

ipspam 5y ago

I thought this post by a former mod of another forum that went through this was interesting. https://patriots.win/p/12kFPq7oFY/recap-on-how-rnonewnormal-got-ba/ https://patriots.win/p/12kFPq7oFY/recap-on-how-rnonewnormal-...

seattle_spring 5y ago
How do you feel about some of the other posts and comments from that same community? For example: https://imgur.com/a/wIFDa8G https://imgur.com/a/wIFDa8G
- ipspam 5y ago
  I don't see a problem. They seem more like trolls and people with mental health issues like conspiratorial thinking on a spectrum that ends in schitzo. Don't get me wrong, I think it's reprehensible. I just don't take these people seriously. They exist, they have a right to exist, and they are going to spew their bullshit everywhere. What I'm really not willing to accept is a game of cat and mouse where normal everyday activists pose as these kinds of people and say the worst things they can in order to shut down discussion. I'm not for giving a small handful of people the power to shut down discussions they don't like by pretending to be alt right anti-Semites.
tablespoon 5y ago
> In early August, we first heard about the plans by “powermods” (moderators of very large and influential subreddits) to hold “blackouts” (where they take their subreddits private, disallowing posting) in an effort to force Reddit, Inc (a $10 billion company) to change its policies. I'm surprised that works, and that the Reddit admins let it work. If I were Reddit, I'd probably cave, but then make a code change so that "very large and influential subreddits" cannot implement those settings changes without admin approval. I wouldn't want to cede so much power to a few users. If done at the right time (e.g. when there's no big meta controversy), it might not even cause that much weeping and gnashing of teeth. I doubt most Reddit users care that much about mod powers.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Reddit continues to insist that its sitewide administrative policies are based on behaviour rather than content, though it appears that this is a somewhat narrow distinction, and that behaviours which draw attention … tend to be associated with questionable content. I’m not criticising the action. I support it. (The reasons are complex and difficult to articulate, though what I had to say ... on Reddit ... about limitations on speech some six years ago seems strongly appropriate. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2g8e8c/shouting_no_fire_in_a_warming_world_as_a_clear/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2g8e8c/shoutin...) It's the rationalisation which seems thin. The more so as what I’d based that argument on at the time --- falsely claiming no harm where a harm clearly existed is precisely at the centre of current discussions of the topic. This also seems to be a major, though under-discussed mode, of deceptive speech, and more pointedly a mode in which the downplaying of risk accrues benefits and gains to the parties promoting that message. That said, Reddit’s lack of principled leadership and very-late-to-the-party redress continues to erode trust in the platform among those who live in a reality-based world and support strong epistemic systems. Which is one of the key challenges the firm faces: neither of the two principle sides in this matter are or will be happy with how it aquits itself. I’ll note as well that the principles of “free speech” are not synonymous with the US first amendment (which concerns only government limitations), that speech on a privately-operate platform is both not the same as government censorship, but also not dissimilar in many regards, and that in any regard, free speech itself is not an absolute principle but one existing in balance with other considerations. I’ve been thinking in terms of a set of related, though often conflicting principles as Autonomous Communication (or variously: "informational autonomy" or "communications autonomy" --- naming things is hard --- discussed in “Which has primacy?”). The rights to privacy, free-assocation (both positive and negative), against self-incrimination, of obligated disclosure, and to accurate information, all collide, though there are some common principles which might help in adjudicating amongst them. I’m not aware of others offering any similar construction. See: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/622677903778013902fd002590d8e506 https://joindiaspora.com/posts/622677903778013902fd002590d8e...

nescioquid 5y ago
> ...the principles of “free speech” are not synonymous with the US first amendment (which concerns only government limitations)... I think this is the nub of the problem. There are common carriers like the phone company, and there are publishers. A publisher will be responsible for what they publish, whereas a carrier really just gives access to their infrastructure. We have a situation now that seems like social media companies want it both ways (none of obligations and all of the prerogatives), so we get something like a phone service that censors your calls when convenient to the phone company. I really think this requires a political solution, though one often sees technological solutions suggested (peer-to-peer, federation). > ...free speech itself is not an absolute principle but one existing in balance with other considerations... Yes, political speech is the most protected variety. Curiously, money can be considered political speech. So while I think the only kind of real solution here is a political one, I don't expect that to ever happen.

betwixthewires 5y ago

Remember when it was a slippery slope fallacy to suggest that this sort of thing would go beyond banning fatpeoplehate? I haven't used reddit in 2 years. I'm not a vaccine denier or anything like that, but why would I want to use a public discussion tool that disallows public discussion? I think though this points to an architectural problem with the multi community link aggregator/forum concept. Fact is, when you have a site that allows multiple communities to coexist and bleed into one another some won't get along, some will harass each other, it probably always results in things like this, then you get echo chambers. I think forums and single community sites (possibly even federated) make a lot more sense to prevent interaction from devolving into this. The model reddit based their business on has obviously failed the user at this point. It was a Utopian (and profitable!) dream to be the site for this sort of thing and it was short sighted in hindsight.

rex-mundi 5y ago
Did you find a replacement for reddit you like?
- postalrat 5y ago
  HN?
  - croutonwagon 5y ago
    HN is nice but historically the topics had to be very specific to tech, startups, etc. Recently it seems to have been a little easier on the political and social commentary stuff which i think is pretty nice and refreshing. Though I understand why some aren’t as much of a fan. It does attract more drama and flame baiting.
    - esturk 5y ago
      I agree with the historical part because recently there has been more meme posts, one liner edgy comments, giant political rants, etc. And since people can't delete your post after 2 hours, you can see a lot of fluff nowadays even in a relatively old thread.

h0p3 5y ago

I would like to take a moment and pray with you fine folks about the possibility of https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/ (it is non-trivially in the right direction). We don't have to outright silence people in mere political games. Until at least the users get to moderate who (or what, and given which conditions?) will be their moderators on a platform owned and computed by the people who use it, [[power|https://philosopher.life/#Power https://philosopher.life/#Power]] will centralize, and we'll see the same problems again and again. We must distribute governance of The Great Human Conversation, and even my worst enemies deserve to have voices and a vote. Decentralize until it hurts, then federate until it works.

throwawaysea 5y ago

It is well past time for Reddit to die, with its authoritarian policies that amount to propagandist control of information and ideology. There are many alternatives out there (https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/...) but how do any of them overcome network effects and become viable and mainstream?

6510 5y ago

The anti-vax folk seems to have moved to the comment section here hiding behind their credentials. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/949048 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/949048 Fascinating read.

fho 5y ago

I am late to the party ... but is that reddit casually analyzing millions of private messages/chats?

unvaxxxed 5y ago

It's crazy. The most sane group on Reddit is banned. I've been collecting some alternatives to NNN https://unvaxxxed.com/alternatives-to-reddits-nonewnormal/ https://unvaxxxed.com/alternatives-to-reddits-nonewnormal/