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So you can sit around in your new subreddit with enough subscribers that you can count them on your fingers, posting freely, while /r/politics (or wherever) has

So you can sit around in your new subreddit with enough subscribers that you can count them on your fingers, posting freely, while /r/politics (or wherever) has a subscriber base measured in millions. Reminds me a bit of the "free speech zones". It's a poor facsimile of true freedom of speech. Seeing as the new public squares are, by and large, digital spaces controlled by megacorps, we need to expand the first amendment to apply to private enterprise.

Godel_unicode 5y ago
Freedom of speech is not the same thing as requirement that others listen. If someone has no audience, with all the platforms that are available, it's not because they're being censored. It's because nobody cares what they have to say.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  It's not that nobody wants to listen. There are plenty of people who want to listen, but the megacorps refuse to let the talkers and listeners connect.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  This is not what is happening on these platforms. r/thedonald had millions of subscribers and not a single one was forced to listen. Then it was banned by reddit for thoughtcrime.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    You could have brought up hard left subreddits getting banned too. Like Chapo. So it doesn’t seem like only the right is persecuted/appearing to continue the trope of how the right are such victims.
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      Same thing
      - skinnymuch 5y ago
        How is it the same thing? Hard left doesn’t victimize themselves while calling others snowflakes all the time like /r/Donald people or sympathizers.
Eelongate 5y ago
> So you can sit around in your new subreddit with enough subscribers that you can count them on your fingers, posting freely, while /r/politics (or wherever) has a subscriber base measured in millions. And if by some chance your subreddit manages to become popular, the admins and power mods will conspire to take it from you. Reddit sucks.
- Covzire 5y ago
  There's something akin to a law of nature at work on Reddit that goes something like this: Any sub-reddit (or it's topic-at-hand) that garners any national attention in the political sphere will become an echo chamber full of corporate shills unless there is constant and public vigilance to guard against it, and even then the sub's chances for surviving to fulfill its original mission is grim. I f'ing hate what Reddit has become.
vkou 5y ago
Freedom of speech is exactly how you get r/politics, private propaganda syndicates, and qanonsense screaming loud enough that it drowns out everything else. "More" of it isn't going to make any of those things go away. "Freedom of speech" isn't a guarantee that your prefered brand of rational discourse is going to have an audience of millions. If anything, it's a guarantee that it won't, because someone with a self-serving profit motive is far more incentivized to shout over you. Freedom of speech does not entitle you to broadcast to anyone else's audience.
the_why_of_y 5y ago
The first amendment of the US constitution does apply to private enterprise. This is why Congress cannot make a law that limits private enterprises' editing of third party content on the platforms they own. What you are arguing for requires either an amendment to the constitution or nationalization of those private enterprises.

Godel_unicode 5y ago

Freedom of speech is not the same thing as requirement that others listen. If someone has no audience, with all the platforms that are available, it's not because they're being censored. It's because nobody cares what they have to say.

josephcsible 5y ago
It's not that nobody wants to listen. There are plenty of people who want to listen, but the megacorps refuse to let the talkers and listeners connect.
fallingknife 5y ago
This is not what is happening on these platforms. r/thedonald had millions of subscribers and not a single one was forced to listen. Then it was banned by reddit for thoughtcrime.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  You could have brought up hard left subreddits getting banned too. Like Chapo. So it doesn’t seem like only the right is persecuted/appearing to continue the trope of how the right are such victims.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    Same thing
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      How is it the same thing? Hard left doesn’t victimize themselves while calling others snowflakes all the time like /r/Donald people or sympathizers.

Eelongate 5y ago

> So you can sit around in your new subreddit with enough subscribers that you can count them on your fingers, posting freely, while /r/politics (or wherever) has a subscriber base measured in millions. And if by some chance your subreddit manages to become popular, the admins and power mods will conspire to take it from you. Reddit sucks.

Covzire 5y ago
There's something akin to a law of nature at work on Reddit that goes something like this: Any sub-reddit (or it's topic-at-hand) that garners any national attention in the political sphere will become an echo chamber full of corporate shills unless there is constant and public vigilance to guard against it, and even then the sub's chances for surviving to fulfill its original mission is grim. I f'ing hate what Reddit has become.

vkou 5y ago

Freedom of speech is exactly how you get r/politics, private propaganda syndicates, and qanonsense screaming loud enough that it drowns out everything else. "More" of it isn't going to make any of those things go away. "Freedom of speech" isn't a guarantee that your prefered brand of rational discourse is going to have an audience of millions. If anything, it's a guarantee that it won't, because someone with a self-serving profit motive is far more incentivized to shout over you. Freedom of speech does not entitle you to broadcast to anyone else's audience.

the_why_of_y 5y ago

The first amendment of the US constitution does apply to private enterprise. This is why Congress cannot make a law that limits private enterprises' editing of third party content on the platforms they own. What you are arguing for requires either an amendment to the constitution or nationalization of those private enterprises.