4 ms·

It's a little sad, because there was definitely a sense, a few years ago, that Reddit was pretty much user-centered and therefore fully unrestricted, content-wi

by phillco 15y ago

It's a little sad, because there was definitely a sense, a few years ago, that Reddit was pretty much user-centered and therefore fully unrestricted, content-wise. You can choose what subreddits you belong to, or make new ones for whatever subject you want. The admins simply created the platform and set the defaults. Freedom! But at the same time, everyone still felt like redditors, even if you were on /r/investing or /r/TwoXChromosomes or /r/trees or /r/nudecycling. In fact, you could unsubscribe from all the default subreddits, and join a bunch of weird unusual ones, and so you'd probably never even see a redditor who belongs to the "mainstream" community, but you'd still call yourself a redditor. Unfortunately, we now see the downside of that group identity, because it didn't stop the reputation of the "bad" subreddits from bleeding over and tarnishing the group's. The subreddit boundaries failed, in the end.

flomo 15y ago
That to me is exactly the core issue. It's not as if these people were staying in their obscure subreddit, they were leaking out into advice forums and posting IAMA pedo threads and so on, scoring upvotes due to typical young male contrarianism. It was all creating the general impression that this was acceptable behavior which was commonly discussed by Redditors. (I saw a post from a sixteen year old boy describing himself as a "ephebophile" because he liked girls from school. It's just bizarre that kids are learning this sort of inside jargon and using it describe completely normal behavior.) From a broader community perspective, there's no reason to hang out a sign saying "creeps welcome here". They'll show up on their own, and its not as if Reddit needs their traffic.
- Helianthus 15y ago
  This is definitely an oversimplification of the history. Censorship is an active topic of furious debate. r/SRS, which is for all intents and purposes Reddit's White Guilt, self-censors extremely rigorously even as it invades other subreddits (not officially, but essentially). r/lgbt splintered to r/ainbow due to heavy-handed mod censorship (with allegations of connections to r/SRS and its heavy-handed trolling). You might say that this is all inconsequential board drama, and it is; but the arc of it ends with admin involvement. Until now, the admins have explicitly let mods handle their own subreddits.

by phillco 15y ago

flomo 15y ago

That to me is exactly the core issue. It's not as if these people were staying in their obscure subreddit, they were leaking out into advice forums and posting IAMA pedo threads and so on, scoring upvotes due to typical young male contrarianism. It was all creating the general impression that this was acceptable behavior which was commonly discussed by Redditors. (I saw a post from a sixteen year old boy describing himself as a "ephebophile" because he liked girls from school. It's just bizarre that kids are learning this sort of inside jargon and using it describe completely normal behavior.) From a broader community perspective, there's no reason to hang out a sign saying "creeps welcome here". They'll show up on their own, and its not as if Reddit needs their traffic.

Helianthus 15y ago
This is definitely an oversimplification of the history. Censorship is an active topic of furious debate. r/SRS, which is for all intents and purposes Reddit's White Guilt, self-censors extremely rigorously even as it invades other subreddits (not officially, but essentially). r/lgbt splintered to r/ainbow due to heavy-handed mod censorship (with allegations of connections to r/SRS and its heavy-handed trolling). You might say that this is all inconsequential board drama, and it is; but the arc of it ends with admin involvement. Until now, the admins have explicitly let mods handle their own subreddits.