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People tend to think of online communities as democracies where the freedoms they're accustomed to from their normal lives apply. So when a post gets deleted b

People tend to think of online communities as democracies where the freedoms they're accustomed to from their normal lives apply. So when a post gets deleted by a moderator, people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue. There's a whole constitution out there specifically defending anybody's right to create a pro-Nazi subreddit, and to otherwise post anything they please on the site so long as it's not illegal, right? Not really. Not at all, in fact. Reddit is not the United States. It's Reddit. Online communities are not democracies any more than your back garden is a democracy. You pull weeds, plant seeds, and otherwise encourage the plants in your garden to comport themselves in a manner that ends up with a pleasing result. It's your garden, so you have the absolute right to pull weeds. The weeds get no say. Reddit seems to have forgotten this for a while, and as a result they started sliding until they became, well, Reddit. The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan.

sophacles 15y ago
* And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan.* I am honestly not sure we can say that at all. I thoroughly enjoy both hn and reddit, for completely different reasons. Sure, from a strictly legal standpoint, it isn't censorship or a constitutional issue, but at the same time, the "anything goes" attitude in places like 4chan and reddit allow for a lot of creative gems and interesting discussion. People instinctively recognize that while you may have to schlep thought he muck to find those gems, it is still important to have an "anything goes place". People will feel betrayed when they put time and effort into making the community what it is, and suddenly the rules are changed on them -- all their effort has been co-opted or may be co-opted, for something they don't want. It feels slimy. (yes we are all aware there is no contract or law or whatever, blah blah legalistic point missing, but the decency of it is still in question). All that being said, I also like the curated, well organized topical community of HN, because sometimes I just don't want to wade through the crap, but that occasional preference switch doesn't diminish either form of community building.
- ugh 15y ago
  For fucks sake. Is that really so hard to understand? Pedos can’t trade their images anymore (whether legal or not). That’s the extent of the limitation. How the fuck is that supposed to turn Reddit into something radically different? It’s this one tiny thing. It’s not some big change that changes Reddit. It’s not so hard. Some people just want to be deliberately obtuse. The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!
  - mfjordvald 15y ago
    Except the subreddits banned were some with pictures of older teenage girls (15-17) in non nude situations, the most edgy being bikini pictures. Something that belongs on reddit? That's for you to decide. Paedophilia material? No, not even fucking close. Besides, pedos wouldn't trade images on reddit, I really refuse to believe people would be stupid enough to trade such pictures through a US website which offers no anonymity.
  - fein 15y ago
    "Pedos can’t trade their images anymore (whether legal or not)." The only thing that this move ended up doing was ensuring the use of private subreddits for this act. People aren't going to change simply because someone told them that what they already knew was wrong is now more wrong. The content will still be traded on reddit (even though I highly doubt that cheese pizza pm's actually happened very often), just not with a public pool to gather from. Plus, all of this shit is still up on imgur.
    - ugh 15y ago
      I’m worried about private subreddits. Admins, however, can see what’s going on inside them so I don’t see that as much of a problem.
      - TikiTDO 15y ago
        From Wikipedia: "There are over 67,000 subreddits to peruse, with the default set being (as of October 18, 2011[4])." I could not find a specific number for the admin staff, but given the fact that wiki lists 11 staff members for reddit that number can not be particularly high; in fact the reddit admins steam group has 6 members. I sincerely doubt that anyone is capable of filtering 10,000 subreddits every day in search of offensive material. Finally, even if somehow reddit manages to completely and utterly block all things they deem to be CP related, these people will just move to another, probably harder to track venue. All in all, this entire move is rather pointless action in response to people that want the feelgood sensation of "Protecting the Children."
a_redditor 15y ago
I think you're missing the point of the users who see this new rule as a negative mark against reddit. The admins have always been supportive of allowing any content that is legal, even up to a very specific definition, which is why these now removed subreddits were allowed to exist for so long. Lots of people are making the slippery slope argument, saying things along the lines of "how long before they ban /r/trees?", which is a marijuana-based subreddit. In response, the community organizer, hueypriest, said this: >They'll ban /r/trees when they pry it out of our cold dead hands. You can imagine why it might be frustrating to people who would expect them to approach all content with as much vigor as they do in the defense of /r/trees. The way I understand it, and the way it has been explained by the admins, is that policing the kind of content that is now not allowed had taken up a significant amount of their resources, and it was becoming unsustainable. However, a lot of users clearly see this as a sign that the admins are backing down as a result of legal pressure and also for the purpose of preserving the image of the community. For users of old, this is a rather new phenomenon, and it is somewhat offputting. If it was solely a question of sustainability (how much time are they wasting policing the content?), that would probably be acceptable, but it's difficult to believe that it is the sole reason for the rule.
- Steko 15y ago
  "I think you're missing the point of the users who see this new rule as a negative mark against reddit" We see the point, we're saying it doesn't matter. It's been pretty obvious over the last year that this train has been coming down the tracks and there's ultimately only one way it could play out. The spam rule was already there and it's not rocket surgery to realize that any content more objectionable then spam is also eventually going to be excluded.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    How was it obvious? r/jailbait was banned, yes, but that was only after there was a semi-revolution (a mod removed and banned all the other mods, then proceeded to give an ex-mod* his powers back, who then essentially tried to fuck it up (I heard actual preteen porn was posted)). Assuming that that event necessarily means the removal of the other subreddits seems contrived. * VA, the guy who also created & mods r/picsofdeadkids, r/PicsOfDeadJailbait, r/incest, etc.
tomjen3 15y ago
You are right, in a legal sense, which is why there is no lawsuit over this issue. But reddit specifically said create your own subreddit and post what you want (as long as it is not spam). That is why this is such a big issue.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
  > But reddit specifically said create your own subreddit and post what you want (as long as it is not spam). That is why this is such a big issue. A big issue? They updated the minimal set of rules the site runs by. If users don't like it, they can go elsewhere. There's no issue here, just Redditors doing what they do best: creating a tempest in a teapot.
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    There's no issue here, just HNers doing what they do best, epitomizing the actions of a few or single person to enable them to look down their nose at the inferior "reddit". The reaction at reddit has been OVERWHELMINGLY in favor of this ban, the last four days has been top post after top post asking for it to be banned. Every tiny thing a single redditor does is grounds for dismissal and condemnation of the entire site by many here and it really just baffles me.
    - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
      FWIW, HN isn't all that great either. I used to really like Reddit. But I loathed the fact that each subreddit sank into a lowest common denominator appeal as it grew: memes, linkbait-y headlines, groupthink. To be fair, these are problems with groups of people in general: they get dumber and dumber as they get bigger. But the total hands-off nature of Reddit meant that this sort of intellectual race to the bottom was not only inevitable, it was expected and allowed to happen, even if a vocal minority made their points coherently. They were drowned out by populist voices who are quick to decree that the voice of Everyone is worthwhile because, well, damn it, it's Everyone. And that's bullshit. I prefer a site where people at least pretend to discuss things instead of rushing to post "tl;dr" anytime someone writes a paragraph of text.
geoffhill 15y ago
There is truth to the assertion that sites that run on user contributions must be pruned. Reddit has strived hard to make the community self-policing. The Reddit methodology has always been that users have to be the gardeners. It's more scalable that way. Smaller users garden with upvotes and downvotes. Moderators can use shears. It's hard when an issue comes up where the game-theoretical approach produces a bad result. The current Reddit structure works well when it assumes that good content is the paramount rule, but now we have a new paramount rule: obey the law. The site structure and the ranking algorithms don't meet the new requirements, and as a result, manual pruning is required.
cbs 15y ago
people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue First-amendment speech is only a subset of free speech. Unfortunately people seem to hear "freedom of speech" and think that the ONLY place that freedom exists is under the scope of the 1st. Its not. The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their rights to do so) it is a free speech issue. The difference is the argument is not a you can't or you shouldn't be able to, its just a you can but shouldn't. What people are railing against is not that that reddit, or whoever, has decided not to adhere to the restrictions placed upon congress, but that they've fundamentally changing what it means to be reddit. This is the article's "Very Serious Discussion About What Sort of Community We Are". It's your garden, so you have the absolute right to pull weeds. The weeds get no say. Yeah, reddit has complete control. But unless they're happy exercising that control by disabling all user submissions and posts, or actively banning anyone who they don't like discussing the nature of reddits rules, they have given their flowers a voice about the weeds. Perhaps, when you say that people should STFU and take it, you might be interesting in hearing the thesis of (reddit co-founder) Ohanian's TED talk on social media: "You No Longer Control the Message, and That’s Okay"
- icebraining 15y ago
  The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their rights to do so) it is a free speech issue. The difference is the argument is not a you can't or you shouldn't be able to, its just a you can but shouldn't. Well, it is a free speech issue, but whether one should or not is debatable. I'd prefer they didn't, but I don't know if it's fair to ask that from them.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
cbsmith 15y ago
> The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. I think this is more a function of the community's size than anything else. Once you get a broad enough appeal, you need some pretty fancy clustering algorithms to avoid everyone's experiences shifting to the norm.
betterth 15y ago
"The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan." This site is akin to a Reddit subreddit. The community here is great, clearly amongst the best of the Reddit subreddit communities. Is this community better than the Reddit community? Honeslty -- no. This is a place for tech news, and that's it. The Reddit community has done a lot of wonderful things, for each other, for others, and for society in general. This community can make almost none of those claims. Many people who frequent both look at Hacker News as if it were the real /r/technology. But I didn't think people compared communities in general -- this place is tiny compared to even many of the subreddits!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
kiba 15y ago
Agreed. Gardens die by extreme pacifism.
- pjscott 15y ago
  A phrase coined in this insightful article: http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/
drivebyacct2 15y ago
You start out by saying that reddit is not bound by US law, but then turn around and fault reddit for respecting and trying to stick with "full freedom of speech" for as long as they have? Come on, that's not fair at all. You win either way, you just have to mention and criticize their position by saying "haha, just look at it", there's hardly any real argument there at all. Reddit's "slide" is a result of their respect for freedom of speech? Where's the connection there? The "spill over" of pedophiles (or non-CP closet pedophiles, whatever) from jailbait subreddits has caused the deterioration of /r/programming? ha.
ubernostrum 15y ago
In writing this article I tried to stay away from drawing comparisons between sites, because that would've distracted discussion away from the actual topic. Also, to be perfectly honest, there's a lot I could say about HN that would not be particularly flattering, not least of which is its superiority complex when comparing itself to other sites.
Wartz 15y ago
Reddit seems to have forgotten this for a while, and as a result they started sliding until they became, well, Reddit. The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan. 5-6 years ago, Reddit was exactly the same as HN is now.

sophacles 15y ago

* And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan.* I am honestly not sure we can say that at all. I thoroughly enjoy both hn and reddit, for completely different reasons. Sure, from a strictly legal standpoint, it isn't censorship or a constitutional issue, but at the same time, the "anything goes" attitude in places like 4chan and reddit allow for a lot of creative gems and interesting discussion. People instinctively recognize that while you may have to schlep thought he muck to find those gems, it is still important to have an "anything goes place". People will feel betrayed when they put time and effort into making the community what it is, and suddenly the rules are changed on them -- all their effort has been co-opted or may be co-opted, for something they don't want. It feels slimy. (yes we are all aware there is no contract or law or whatever, blah blah legalistic point missing, but the decency of it is still in question). All that being said, I also like the curated, well organized topical community of HN, because sometimes I just don't want to wade through the crap, but that occasional preference switch doesn't diminish either form of community building.

ugh 15y ago
For fucks sake. Is that really so hard to understand? Pedos can’t trade their images anymore (whether legal or not). That’s the extent of the limitation. How the fuck is that supposed to turn Reddit into something radically different? It’s this one tiny thing. It’s not some big change that changes Reddit. It’s not so hard. Some people just want to be deliberately obtuse. The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!
- mfjordvald 15y ago
  Except the subreddits banned were some with pictures of older teenage girls (15-17) in non nude situations, the most edgy being bikini pictures. Something that belongs on reddit? That's for you to decide. Paedophilia material? No, not even fucking close. Besides, pedos wouldn't trade images on reddit, I really refuse to believe people would be stupid enough to trade such pictures through a US website which offers no anonymity.
- fein 15y ago
  "Pedos can’t trade their images anymore (whether legal or not)." The only thing that this move ended up doing was ensuring the use of private subreddits for this act. People aren't going to change simply because someone told them that what they already knew was wrong is now more wrong. The content will still be traded on reddit (even though I highly doubt that cheese pizza pm's actually happened very often), just not with a public pool to gather from. Plus, all of this shit is still up on imgur.
  - ugh 15y ago
    I’m worried about private subreddits. Admins, however, can see what’s going on inside them so I don’t see that as much of a problem.
    - TikiTDO 15y ago
      From Wikipedia: "There are over 67,000 subreddits to peruse, with the default set being (as of October 18, 2011[4])." I could not find a specific number for the admin staff, but given the fact that wiki lists 11 staff members for reddit that number can not be particularly high; in fact the reddit admins steam group has 6 members. I sincerely doubt that anyone is capable of filtering 10,000 subreddits every day in search of offensive material. Finally, even if somehow reddit manages to completely and utterly block all things they deem to be CP related, these people will just move to another, probably harder to track venue. All in all, this entire move is rather pointless action in response to people that want the feelgood sensation of "Protecting the Children."

a_redditor 15y ago

I think you're missing the point of the users who see this new rule as a negative mark against reddit. The admins have always been supportive of allowing any content that is legal, even up to a very specific definition, which is why these now removed subreddits were allowed to exist for so long. Lots of people are making the slippery slope argument, saying things along the lines of "how long before they ban /r/trees?", which is a marijuana-based subreddit. In response, the community organizer, hueypriest, said this: >They'll ban /r/trees when they pry it out of our cold dead hands. You can imagine why it might be frustrating to people who would expect them to approach all content with as much vigor as they do in the defense of /r/trees. The way I understand it, and the way it has been explained by the admins, is that policing the kind of content that is now not allowed had taken up a significant amount of their resources, and it was becoming unsustainable. However, a lot of users clearly see this as a sign that the admins are backing down as a result of legal pressure and also for the purpose of preserving the image of the community. For users of old, this is a rather new phenomenon, and it is somewhat offputting. If it was solely a question of sustainability (how much time are they wasting policing the content?), that would probably be acceptable, but it's difficult to believe that it is the sole reason for the rule.

Steko 15y ago
"I think you're missing the point of the users who see this new rule as a negative mark against reddit" We see the point, we're saying it doesn't matter. It's been pretty obvious over the last year that this train has been coming down the tracks and there's ultimately only one way it could play out. The spam rule was already there and it's not rocket surgery to realize that any content more objectionable then spam is also eventually going to be excluded.
- icebraining 15y ago
  How was it obvious? r/jailbait was banned, yes, but that was only after there was a semi-revolution (a mod removed and banned all the other mods, then proceeded to give an ex-mod* his powers back, who then essentially tried to fuck it up (I heard actual preteen porn was posted)). Assuming that that event necessarily means the removal of the other subreddits seems contrived. * VA, the guy who also created & mods r/picsofdeadkids, r/PicsOfDeadJailbait, r/incest, etc.

tomjen3 15y ago

You are right, in a legal sense, which is why there is no lawsuit over this issue. But reddit specifically said create your own subreddit and post what you want (as long as it is not spam). That is why this is such a big issue.

mattgreenrocks 15y ago
> But reddit specifically said create your own subreddit and post what you want (as long as it is not spam). That is why this is such a big issue. A big issue? They updated the minimal set of rules the site runs by. If users don't like it, they can go elsewhere. There's no issue here, just Redditors doing what they do best: creating a tempest in a teapot.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  There's no issue here, just HNers doing what they do best, epitomizing the actions of a few or single person to enable them to look down their nose at the inferior "reddit". The reaction at reddit has been OVERWHELMINGLY in favor of this ban, the last four days has been top post after top post asking for it to be banned. Every tiny thing a single redditor does is grounds for dismissal and condemnation of the entire site by many here and it really just baffles me.
  - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
    FWIW, HN isn't all that great either. I used to really like Reddit. But I loathed the fact that each subreddit sank into a lowest common denominator appeal as it grew: memes, linkbait-y headlines, groupthink. To be fair, these are problems with groups of people in general: they get dumber and dumber as they get bigger. But the total hands-off nature of Reddit meant that this sort of intellectual race to the bottom was not only inevitable, it was expected and allowed to happen, even if a vocal minority made their points coherently. They were drowned out by populist voices who are quick to decree that the voice of Everyone is worthwhile because, well, damn it, it's Everyone. And that's bullshit. I prefer a site where people at least pretend to discuss things instead of rushing to post "tl;dr" anytime someone writes a paragraph of text.

geoffhill 15y ago

There is truth to the assertion that sites that run on user contributions must be pruned. Reddit has strived hard to make the community self-policing. The Reddit methodology has always been that users have to be the gardeners. It's more scalable that way. Smaller users garden with upvotes and downvotes. Moderators can use shears. It's hard when an issue comes up where the game-theoretical approach produces a bad result. The current Reddit structure works well when it assumes that good content is the paramount rule, but now we have a new paramount rule: obey the law. The site structure and the ranking algorithms don't meet the new requirements, and as a result, manual pruning is required.

cbs 15y ago

people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue First-amendment speech is only a subset of free speech. Unfortunately people seem to hear "freedom of speech" and think that the ONLY place that freedom exists is under the scope of the 1st. Its not. The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their rights to do so) it is a free speech issue. The difference is the argument is not a you can't or you shouldn't be able to, its just a you can but shouldn't. What people are railing against is not that that reddit, or whoever, has decided not to adhere to the restrictions placed upon congress, but that they've fundamentally changing what it means to be reddit. This is the article's "Very Serious Discussion About What Sort of Community We Are". It's your garden, so you have the absolute right to pull weeds. The weeds get no say. Yeah, reddit has complete control. But unless they're happy exercising that control by disabling all user submissions and posts, or actively banning anyone who they don't like discussing the nature of reddits rules, they have given their flowers a voice about the weeds. Perhaps, when you say that people should STFU and take it, you might be interesting in hearing the thesis of (reddit co-founder) Ohanian's TED talk on social media: "You No Longer Control the Message, and That’s Okay"

icebraining 15y ago
The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their rights to do so) it is a free speech issue. The difference is the argument is not a you can't or you shouldn't be able to, its just a you can but shouldn't. Well, it is a free speech issue, but whether one should or not is debatable. I'd prefer they didn't, but I don't know if it's fair to ask that from them.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

cbsmith 15y ago

> The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. I think this is more a function of the community's size than anything else. Once you get a broad enough appeal, you need some pretty fancy clustering algorithms to avoid everyone's experiences shifting to the norm.

betterth 15y ago

"The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan." This site is akin to a Reddit subreddit. The community here is great, clearly amongst the best of the Reddit subreddit communities. Is this community better than the Reddit community? Honeslty -- no. This is a place for tech news, and that's it. The Reddit community has done a lot of wonderful things, for each other, for others, and for society in general. This community can make almost none of those claims. Many people who frequent both look at Hacker News as if it were the real /r/technology. But I didn't think people compared communities in general -- this place is tiny compared to even many of the subreddits!

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

kiba 15y ago

Agreed. Gardens die by extreme pacifism.

pjscott 15y ago
A phrase coined in this insightful article: http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/

drivebyacct2 15y ago

You start out by saying that reddit is not bound by US law, but then turn around and fault reddit for respecting and trying to stick with "full freedom of speech" for as long as they have? Come on, that's not fair at all. You win either way, you just have to mention and criticize their position by saying "haha, just look at it", there's hardly any real argument there at all. Reddit's "slide" is a result of their respect for freedom of speech? Where's the connection there? The "spill over" of pedophiles (or non-CP closet pedophiles, whatever) from jailbait subreddits has caused the deterioration of /r/programming? ha.

ubernostrum 15y ago

In writing this article I tried to stay away from drawing comparisons between sites, because that would've distracted discussion away from the actual topic. Also, to be perfectly honest, there's a lot I could say about HN that would not be particularly flattering, not least of which is its superiority complex when comparing itself to other sites.

Wartz 15y ago

Reddit seems to have forgotten this for a while, and as a result they started sliding until they became, well, Reddit. The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan. 5-6 years ago, Reddit was exactly the same as HN is now.