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Reddit has a moderation problem, and it's a big one. They've now been asked to appear in front of Congress to address concerns about politically motivated viol

Reddit has a moderation problem, and it's a big one. They've now been asked to appear in front of Congress to address concerns about politically motivated violence being incited through their platform: https://oversight.house.gov/release/chairman-comer-invites-ceos-of-discord-steam-twitch-and-reddit-to-testify-on-radicalization-of-online-forum-users/ https://oversight.house.gov/release/chairman-comer-invites-c... Personally I believe I've seen more people in the past few years wish a politically motivated death on somebody else via Reddit, than I have anywhere else in my life. Now if it was "just" the incitements to violence, or if it was "just" the libeling of random businesses, that would be one thing. But the fact that BOTH types of illegal speech are becoming a problem at the same time suggests to me that Reddit's failure to moderate is systemic and total. It is becoming exhausting watching all of these tech companies commit crimes, or enable someone else to do so, and getting off with a slap on the wrist.

whatshisface 1y ago
That may be a politically motivated congressional hearing. :-)
- Meekro 1y ago
  You mean there's another kind?
pbhjpbhj 1y ago
What country are you from? To "wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there? Reddit set itself up as a speakeasy, people speak their minds openly because it appears in some areas to be free of thought policing. Do you think it is wrong to wish a dictator dead? Over the past decades USA has not only wished it, but made it happen, at the cost of many lives.
- throw-10-8 1y ago
  Many people in this forum mistakenly think that violence isn’t a historically efficient way to solve political problems.
  - gambiting 1y ago
    And many others think that violence is the only way to solve political problems.
  - beeflet 1y ago
    Well at least we can all agree violence is efficient way to create political problems
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - throw-10-8 1y ago
      Remind me again how the American slaves were freed?
      - beeflet 1y ago
        by creating new problems
      - watwut 1y ago
        Slavery was violence. It can't exist without considerable violence and involved violence. So, we can say that it was violence problem that got solved by violence. Not just political problem.
        krapp 1y ago
        If you want to go there, all governments and their laws (and thus politics) are predicated on their monopoly on violence, and civil society and the rule of law cannot exist without violence. Therefore all politics is violence and all political problems are also violence problems.
        watwut 1y ago
        I do not want to go there. I made comment about huge amount of violence slavery in Americas required daily back then. Slavery was violence in amounts completely incomparable to what you are trying to equate with it. Moreover, that sentiment was literally expressed by slavery opposition back then. Afaik, the sophistry about "any government is violence therefore, it is the same, que" was not all that much thing back then.
- Jensson 1y ago
  > What country are you from? To "wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there? It is illegal in most countries, no? Even in USA you aren't allowed to instigate murder.
  - mcny 1y ago
    I didn't think it should be illegal to say "I wish X were dead" unless you have the means to make it happen like a rabid audience with a track record of killing people you wish were dead. Even then, I think there needs to be coordination or a wink nod of some kind that needs to be proven to muzzle free speech. Freedom of speech we don't like is the true litmus test of free speech. It is trivial to say I support free speech when someone says nice things about me.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > Freedom of speech we don't like is the true litmus test of free speech. It is trivial to say I support free speech when someone says nice things about me. People are free to say mean things, they just aren't allowed to encourage violence. There is a difference between saying "I hate how Trump runs the country, he is an idiot" and "Can't someone kill Trump already". I have seen a lot of the second kind on reddit. The first kind gets you arrested in Britain though, they don't have any meaningful free speech there. But as you say what constitutes "encouraging violence" is not entirely clear, but most agrees that encouraging violence shouldn't be protected by free speech laws.
      - Teever 1y ago
        This all may be well and good but the reality is that Reddit's rules against 'advocating for violence' don't really map out to any laws in the real world. Like, on Reddit you're technically not allowed to say "Man, I'm so glad that Adolf Hitler guy is dead." To my knowledge it is not illegal to say something like that (anywhere you want to live anyways) I think that a world where people are free to talk about how they're glad horrible tyrants are dead is a better world than the one where they aren't free to express those ideas. You wouldn't want to live in an America where it wasn't legal to condone the death of Osama Bin Laden, would you?
- AngryData 1y ago
  Reddit definitely has not set themselves up that way. Many people got banned just for saying they understand and empathize with Luigi's motivations.
  - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
    Historically, before they banned a lot of subreddits. Arguably, to become more attractive to advertisers. I think that was when Voat was set up, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voat (c.2015). There was a lot of unsavoury content (probably a lot of illegal content), Reddit was more like a -chan site to my recollection. Then it was cleaned up somewhat for the sell off to Conde Nast. So Reddit (past tense) set themselves up as place for any user content (?), but have moved away from that progressively over the last, what, 15 years. Maybe it wasn't a conscious thing, maybe it was a startup thing ... Alex O' might yet correct me.
- zahlman 1y ago
  > What country are you from? To "wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there? This is a strawman. Your quoted text does not come from GP and does not fairly represent any of its argument (which makes your use of italics hard to understand). Actual incitement to political violence is actually occurring on these platforms. People have screencaps and everything.
all2 1y ago
There's an article on the reddit blog, still out on archive.org, showing that a huge percentage of the website's traffic comes from... Eglin AFB? in the United States. That base also happens to be home of at least three distinct units that engage in "cyber" stuff.
BryantD 1y ago
I can’t help but notice that Twitter and TikTok didn’t get called for that session. In November 2023, Twitter went from a zero tolerance policy for violent speech to “we may remove or reduce the visibility of violent speech.” Seems really relevant for the topic of the hearings! And yet. I’m thus unwilling to take Rep. Comey’s decision to call Reddit to testify as evidence of anything. Feels more like political theater to me. This doesn’t either condemn or absolve Reddit, it’s just not strong evidence.
- LaurensBER 1y ago
  While Twitter has many problems it does seem to do a reasonable job of not promoting hate and violence towards a large audience. There's many messages critical of immigrants on my timeline but none calling for violence against them (or any other group that Twitter users dislike). Meanwhile posts about violence against Trump, Musk or celebrating the dead of Kirk did get massive upvotes and visibility on some of the biggest and most popular subs on Reddit.
  - GJim 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - LaurensBER 1y ago
      I only have a single Twitter account and can only share what I'm seeing on my timeline. You might be having a different experience, these timeline are after all personalised ;)
  - ngcazz 1y ago
    You're either desensitized or simply don't follow accounts that attract any political issues at all if you say that. Twitter is absolutely, depressingly overridden with genocide apologia and putrid racism.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      > You're either desensitized or simply don't follow accounts that attract any political issues at all if you say that. There are some other options too. For instance, there are people who honestly believe that Twitter is now a much better place and feel right at home because they are the ones pushing the genocide apologia and putrid racism themselves.
LaurensBER 1y ago
Moderation on Reddit has been questionable for a long time and its killing the site. To give some examples: - /r/energy used to ban everyone in favour of nuclear energy - If you post on /r/conservative you can expect to receive a bunch of bans from unrelated (popular) subs. Doesn't matter what you posted, being associated with that subs "taints" your account enough for some moderators. - /r/UnitedKingdom banned me for critizing a government welfare program - /r/assassinscreed banned me for critizing a character in their latest game For me it makes sense that the smaller subreddits should have the freedom to moderate as they want but the larger reddits should aim to at allow opposing viewpoints to prevent echo chambers from forming. Moderation should be focused on quality, not on viewpoints. Obviously it goes without saying that threats of violence and celebration of murder have no place on any platform. The irony is that all this censoring just creates a backlash and further polarisation. If you are only allowed to discuss certain subjects on a "left" space you both create the illusion that the left only cares about a subset of topics and by banning people you create resentment that drives them towards (more welcoming) extreme spaces. There's many factors that form the political preferences and opinions of the younger generation but it would not suprise me if for a subset (young college educated males?) of them Reddit heavily contributes towards increased polarisation.
- djxfade 1y ago
  It goes both ways. If you try to post anything remotely criticizing Donald Trump or his government on /r/conservative you'll also get banned. Even if you try to keep it objective.
  - LaurensBER 1y ago
    Fair point, I barely comment on that sub so my experience is limited. I guess the ratio of well moderated subs compared to poorly moderated subs heavily skews towards the poorly moderated. Irrespective of their political viewpoints.
  - user34283 1y ago
    Not really. There's few places on Reddit where you will be banned for expressing liberal opinions. /r/conservative, a place for conservatives to discuss "from a distinctly conservative point of view", is one of them. It's kind of also in the name. Do they ban conservatives for criticizing Trump? I don't know, perhaps. I'm going to assume many such comments on there will in fact be made by liberals. Meanwhile, I was immediately permabanned from my country subreddit when I expressed a pro-Israel opinion in the comment section of a relevant post. In the Modmail I sent, the "moderator" basically insulted me.
jonathanstrange 1y ago
The reason why Reddit is being "investigated" in this way is clearly and without any doubt political and has nothing to do with Reddit's moderation. There are strong anti-free-speech forces in the USA currently, and Reddit is #1 on their target list. Anyone who can't see that is blind on the right eye, which is unfortunately a common phenomenon in certain circles nowadays.
- zahlman 1y ago
  Many years ago, I looked at front-page threads on r/socialism and found blatant, undeniable calls to political violence all over the place. It was way worse than anything I'd ever seen on r/TheDonald. My reports to the admins went ignored, as far as I could tell.
  - jonathanstrange 1y ago
    Bullshit anecdotal evidence. I'm on Reddit every day for the past 10 years and have never seen any call to violence. That's my anecdote. By the way, the US government doesn't just want to regulate Reddit, they would like to take it over and and coerce it into becoming a political propaganda instrument, just like they are doing right now with TikTok. That's why officials use phrases like "deep, dark internet, Reddit culture" and that's why there are congressional hearings. Wikipedia is on their target list, too. N.B.: This is about government censorship, intimidation, and takeovers of media companies and it's not as if the US government keep their anti-free-speech agenda a secret, they talk about this publicly all the time. I'm perfectly fine with private companies regulating and heavily moderating their forums (e.g. banning r/The_Donald, which was mental btw).
    - mlrtime 1y ago
      >Bullshit anecdotal evidence. I'm on Reddit every day for the past 10 years and have never seen any call to violence. That's my anecdote. I should start saving the many many posts where redditors talk about a civil war and revolution to stop their political opposition (In the US). It happens every single day.
- 1y ago
jacquesm 1y ago
> Personally I believe I've seen more people in the past few years wish a politically motivated death on somebody else via Reddit, than I have anywhere else in my life. What you'll also see is a lot of accounts banned just for saying that they can't wait for say Vladimir Putin to die. I'm sure there are ways in which you could construe that to be 'politically motivated death' but that's just a weak excuse to ban an account ignoring the deeper subtext. Wanting mass murderers to shuffle off their mortal coil is a net positive for the world.
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
If those are illegal, where are the prosecutions? In my understanding, libel is a civil tort, and the victim can sue if they think they have been libeled. And wishing someone dead isn't illegal in the US, though it may be elsewhere.
potato3732842 1y ago
It's not a moderation problem. It's a design decision fundamental to their platform architecture.
beloch 1y ago
“The politically motivated assassination of Charlie Kirk claimed the life of a husband, father, and American patriot. In the wake of this tragedy, and amid other acts of politically motivated violence, Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence. To prevent future radicalization and violence, the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit must appear before the Oversight Committee and explain what actions they will take to ensure their platforms are not exploited for nefarious purposes,” said Chairman Comer. --------------- Reddit absolutely does have a moderator problem, as one would expect for a platform that relies on anonymous volunteers, but this might merely be the pretext for a witch hunt. e.g. The Trump administration may actually attempt to track down users who posted anti-Kirk or anti-Trump memes. It might be something even more though. There may be an attempt to coerce these platforms to start moderating in a way that's more favourable to Trump. Reddit is a hotbed of anti-Trump memes after all. Protest is the bane of authoritarian regimes. That's why the Trump administration moved to lock down colleges so rapidly early this year. However, online social media also has significant capacity for influencing public opinion. This is why so many authoritarian regimes simply cut off internet access for their people. Others (e.g. China) have attempted to censor, manipulate, and control the internet rather than cutting it off. Americans, and the world, should be paying close attention to these hearings. They should also pay attention to any sudden changes in behaviour of these companies. Merely being summoned to a hearing might be enough of a threat to make them give Trump all he asks for.
- le-mark 1y ago
  > There may be an attempt to coerce these platforms to start moderating in a way that's more favourable to Trump. That’s the real comedy about this; when we like it censorship is good, when we don’t like it (Covid shutdown, anti vax, Jan 6th) censorship is bad. The double standard is shocking, yet completely normalized. Besides any attempt to end violent rhetoric has to start with POTUS himself, theater exactly what it is.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    I mean, this view of censorship is a little black and white. Simply put in reality some censorship of some kind or I can simply 'win' by screaming really loud so no one else can even get a word in about their view. The paradox of tolerance tells us that any view that intolerant of the existence of another person for simply existing should not be allowed as it is a terminal case. Of course electing the most violent and intolerant person we could find means we're going to have a hard time.
exasperaited 1y ago
Worth noting the heavy irony in talking about James Comer taking on bad-faith moderation, though.
grafmax 1y ago
How can we know that this or that example of speech is illegal if there are no charges and no trial? This rule by corporate fiat is exactly what we don’t need. It lacks democratic oversight. To say nothing of the way that disingenuous claims of “political violence” is being used to suppress legitimate dissent in our country.
fennecfoxy 1y ago
>They've now been asked to appear in front of Congress to address concerns about politically motivated violence being incited through their platform Funny how for the last 30 years of right wing violence/extremists far exceeding left wing nothing was done at all about it, no questions asked. Hush hush, don't talk about gun control or the real causes of these peoples' actions. But then the year that left wing violence finally exceeds right wing, they all start crying that it's unacceptable and something needs to be done about it. Source: https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-united-states-what-data-tells-us https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-politi... "So far, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing terrorist attacks outnumber those from the violent far right."
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  >But then the year that left wing violence finally exceeds right wing It hasn't even! Like even if you take the Kirk murder as an explicitly left wing murder, "leftist" violence is still not even a shadow of what it used to be in the US We used to shoot at business magnates for fighting unionization! The weather underground was an explicitly Marxist organization! The black panthers were a black supremacist organization! Your own source makes the point that the reason left wing attacks "outnumber" right wing ones is that right wing attacks have dramatically decreased Because when ICE does it, it's not considered a "right wing attack"!
- DengistKhan 1y ago
  > But then the year that left wing violence finally exceeds right wing this framing will most likely confuse most people because it's essentially a 100s of murders/mass shootings (by the right) vs 2 murders (by the left, the rest is probably property damage or whatever). It's also going to be confusing because Luigi is not a confirmed leftist, the Kirk shooter is not a confirmed leftist, and putting aside the problematic presumption that they are before we have evidence, doing so means totalling up to approx 3 left wing murders since 2020. But ICE's current actions would clearly be classified as right wing violence by those standards, which is overwhelmingly well documented and numerous. Some people also might not like that framing, whether it's because you're a right winger or because you're looking for info on non-state sanctioned terrorism, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to give ICE their own category in the next version of some of those charts.
elevation 1y ago
An acquaintance who used to be active on reddit watched an angry mob "dox" his long-time pseudonym (they found a real person by the same name) with instructions to harass his employer and calls for IRL assault. Shortly afterward, his account was permabanned and he was unable to create a new one from the same IP. This wasn't just a reddit problem, Twitter had plenty of the same cancel campaigns.

whatshisface 1y ago

That may be a politically motivated congressional hearing. :-)

Meekro 1y ago
You mean there's another kind?

pbhjpbhj 1y ago

What country are you from? To "wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there? Reddit set itself up as a speakeasy, people speak their minds openly because it appears in some areas to be free of thought policing. Do you think it is wrong to wish a dictator dead? Over the past decades USA has not only wished it, but made it happen, at the cost of many lives.

throw-10-8 1y ago
Many people in this forum mistakenly think that violence isn’t a historically efficient way to solve political problems.
- gambiting 1y ago
  And many others think that violence is the only way to solve political problems.
- beeflet 1y ago
  Well at least we can all agree violence is efficient way to create political problems
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - throw-10-8 1y ago
    Remind me again how the American slaves were freed?
    - beeflet 1y ago
      by creating new problems
    - watwut 1y ago
      Slavery was violence. It can't exist without considerable violence and involved violence. So, we can say that it was violence problem that got solved by violence. Not just political problem.
      - krapp 1y ago
        If you want to go there, all governments and their laws (and thus politics) are predicated on their monopoly on violence, and civil society and the rule of law cannot exist without violence. Therefore all politics is violence and all political problems are also violence problems.
        watwut 1y ago
        I do not want to go there. I made comment about huge amount of violence slavery in Americas required daily back then. Slavery was violence in amounts completely incomparable to what you are trying to equate with it. Moreover, that sentiment was literally expressed by slavery opposition back then. Afaik, the sophistry about "any government is violence therefore, it is the same, que" was not all that much thing back then.
Jensson 1y ago
> What country are you from? To "wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there? It is illegal in most countries, no? Even in USA you aren't allowed to instigate murder.
- mcny 1y ago
  I didn't think it should be illegal to say "I wish X were dead" unless you have the means to make it happen like a rabid audience with a track record of killing people you wish were dead. Even then, I think there needs to be coordination or a wink nod of some kind that needs to be proven to muzzle free speech. Freedom of speech we don't like is the true litmus test of free speech. It is trivial to say I support free speech when someone says nice things about me.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    > Freedom of speech we don't like is the true litmus test of free speech. It is trivial to say I support free speech when someone says nice things about me. People are free to say mean things, they just aren't allowed to encourage violence. There is a difference between saying "I hate how Trump runs the country, he is an idiot" and "Can't someone kill Trump already". I have seen a lot of the second kind on reddit. The first kind gets you arrested in Britain though, they don't have any meaningful free speech there. But as you say what constitutes "encouraging violence" is not entirely clear, but most agrees that encouraging violence shouldn't be protected by free speech laws.
    - Teever 1y ago
      This all may be well and good but the reality is that Reddit's rules against 'advocating for violence' don't really map out to any laws in the real world. Like, on Reddit you're technically not allowed to say "Man, I'm so glad that Adolf Hitler guy is dead." To my knowledge it is not illegal to say something like that (anywhere you want to live anyways) I think that a world where people are free to talk about how they're glad horrible tyrants are dead is a better world than the one where they aren't free to express those ideas. You wouldn't want to live in an America where it wasn't legal to condone the death of Osama Bin Laden, would you?
AngryData 1y ago
Reddit definitely has not set themselves up that way. Many people got banned just for saying they understand and empathize with Luigi's motivations.
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago
  Historically, before they banned a lot of subreddits. Arguably, to become more attractive to advertisers. I think that was when Voat was set up, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voat (c.2015). There was a lot of unsavoury content (probably a lot of illegal content), Reddit was more like a -chan site to my recollection. Then it was cleaned up somewhat for the sell off to Conde Nast. So Reddit (past tense) set themselves up as place for any user content (?), but have moved away from that progressively over the last, what, 15 years. Maybe it wasn't a conscious thing, maybe it was a startup thing ... Alex O' might yet correct me.
zahlman 1y ago
> What country are you from? To "wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there? This is a strawman. Your quoted text does not come from GP and does not fairly represent any of its argument (which makes your use of italics hard to understand). Actual incitement to political violence is actually occurring on these platforms. People have screencaps and everything.

all2 1y ago

There's an article on the reddit blog, still out on archive.org, showing that a huge percentage of the website's traffic comes from... Eglin AFB? in the United States. That base also happens to be home of at least three distinct units that engage in "cyber" stuff.

BryantD 1y ago

I can’t help but notice that Twitter and TikTok didn’t get called for that session. In November 2023, Twitter went from a zero tolerance policy for violent speech to “we may remove or reduce the visibility of violent speech.” Seems really relevant for the topic of the hearings! And yet. I’m thus unwilling to take Rep. Comey’s decision to call Reddit to testify as evidence of anything. Feels more like political theater to me. This doesn’t either condemn or absolve Reddit, it’s just not strong evidence.

LaurensBER 1y ago
While Twitter has many problems it does seem to do a reasonable job of not promoting hate and violence towards a large audience. There's many messages critical of immigrants on my timeline but none calling for violence against them (or any other group that Twitter users dislike). Meanwhile posts about violence against Trump, Musk or celebrating the dead of Kirk did get massive upvotes and visibility on some of the biggest and most popular subs on Reddit.
- GJim 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - LaurensBER 1y ago
    I only have a single Twitter account and can only share what I'm seeing on my timeline. You might be having a different experience, these timeline are after all personalised ;)
- ngcazz 1y ago
  You're either desensitized or simply don't follow accounts that attract any political issues at all if you say that. Twitter is absolutely, depressingly overridden with genocide apologia and putrid racism.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    > You're either desensitized or simply don't follow accounts that attract any political issues at all if you say that. There are some other options too. For instance, there are people who honestly believe that Twitter is now a much better place and feel right at home because they are the ones pushing the genocide apologia and putrid racism themselves.

LaurensBER 1y ago

Moderation on Reddit has been questionable for a long time and its killing the site. To give some examples: - /r/energy used to ban everyone in favour of nuclear energy - If you post on /r/conservative you can expect to receive a bunch of bans from unrelated (popular) subs. Doesn't matter what you posted, being associated with that subs "taints" your account enough for some moderators. - /r/UnitedKingdom banned me for critizing a government welfare program - /r/assassinscreed banned me for critizing a character in their latest game For me it makes sense that the smaller subreddits should have the freedom to moderate as they want but the larger reddits should aim to at allow opposing viewpoints to prevent echo chambers from forming. Moderation should be focused on quality, not on viewpoints. Obviously it goes without saying that threats of violence and celebration of murder have no place on any platform. The irony is that all this censoring just creates a backlash and further polarisation. If you are only allowed to discuss certain subjects on a "left" space you both create the illusion that the left only cares about a subset of topics and by banning people you create resentment that drives them towards (more welcoming) extreme spaces. There's many factors that form the political preferences and opinions of the younger generation but it would not suprise me if for a subset (young college educated males?) of them Reddit heavily contributes towards increased polarisation.

djxfade 1y ago
It goes both ways. If you try to post anything remotely criticizing Donald Trump or his government on /r/conservative you'll also get banned. Even if you try to keep it objective.
- LaurensBER 1y ago
  Fair point, I barely comment on that sub so my experience is limited. I guess the ratio of well moderated subs compared to poorly moderated subs heavily skews towards the poorly moderated. Irrespective of their political viewpoints.
- user34283 1y ago
  Not really. There's few places on Reddit where you will be banned for expressing liberal opinions. /r/conservative, a place for conservatives to discuss "from a distinctly conservative point of view", is one of them. It's kind of also in the name. Do they ban conservatives for criticizing Trump? I don't know, perhaps. I'm going to assume many such comments on there will in fact be made by liberals. Meanwhile, I was immediately permabanned from my country subreddit when I expressed a pro-Israel opinion in the comment section of a relevant post. In the Modmail I sent, the "moderator" basically insulted me.

jonathanstrange 1y ago

The reason why Reddit is being "investigated" in this way is clearly and without any doubt political and has nothing to do with Reddit's moderation. There are strong anti-free-speech forces in the USA currently, and Reddit is #1 on their target list. Anyone who can't see that is blind on the right eye, which is unfortunately a common phenomenon in certain circles nowadays.

zahlman 1y ago
Many years ago, I looked at front-page threads on r/socialism and found blatant, undeniable calls to political violence all over the place. It was way worse than anything I'd ever seen on r/TheDonald. My reports to the admins went ignored, as far as I could tell.
- jonathanstrange 1y ago
  Bullshit anecdotal evidence. I'm on Reddit every day for the past 10 years and have never seen any call to violence. That's my anecdote. By the way, the US government doesn't just want to regulate Reddit, they would like to take it over and and coerce it into becoming a political propaganda instrument, just like they are doing right now with TikTok. That's why officials use phrases like "deep, dark internet, Reddit culture" and that's why there are congressional hearings. Wikipedia is on their target list, too. N.B.: This is about government censorship, intimidation, and takeovers of media companies and it's not as if the US government keep their anti-free-speech agenda a secret, they talk about this publicly all the time. I'm perfectly fine with private companies regulating and heavily moderating their forums (e.g. banning r/The_Donald, which was mental btw).
  - mlrtime 1y ago
    >Bullshit anecdotal evidence. I'm on Reddit every day for the past 10 years and have never seen any call to violence. That's my anecdote. I should start saving the many many posts where redditors talk about a civil war and revolution to stop their political opposition (In the US). It happens every single day.
1y ago

jacquesm 1y ago

> Personally I believe I've seen more people in the past few years wish a politically motivated death on somebody else via Reddit, than I have anywhere else in my life. What you'll also see is a lot of accounts banned just for saying that they can't wait for say Vladimir Putin to die. I'm sure there are ways in which you could construe that to be 'politically motivated death' but that's just a weak excuse to ban an account ignoring the deeper subtext. Wanting mass murderers to shuffle off their mortal coil is a net positive for the world.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago

If those are illegal, where are the prosecutions? In my understanding, libel is a civil tort, and the victim can sue if they think they have been libeled. And wishing someone dead isn't illegal in the US, though it may be elsewhere.

potato3732842 1y ago

It's not a moderation problem. It's a design decision fundamental to their platform architecture.

beloch 1y ago

“The politically motivated assassination of Charlie Kirk claimed the life of a husband, father, and American patriot. In the wake of this tragedy, and amid other acts of politically motivated violence, Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence. To prevent future radicalization and violence, the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit must appear before the Oversight Committee and explain what actions they will take to ensure their platforms are not exploited for nefarious purposes,” said Chairman Comer. --------------- Reddit absolutely does have a moderator problem, as one would expect for a platform that relies on anonymous volunteers, but this might merely be the pretext for a witch hunt. e.g. The Trump administration may actually attempt to track down users who posted anti-Kirk or anti-Trump memes. It might be something even more though. There may be an attempt to coerce these platforms to start moderating in a way that's more favourable to Trump. Reddit is a hotbed of anti-Trump memes after all. Protest is the bane of authoritarian regimes. That's why the Trump administration moved to lock down colleges so rapidly early this year. However, online social media also has significant capacity for influencing public opinion. This is why so many authoritarian regimes simply cut off internet access for their people. Others (e.g. China) have attempted to censor, manipulate, and control the internet rather than cutting it off. Americans, and the world, should be paying close attention to these hearings. They should also pay attention to any sudden changes in behaviour of these companies. Merely being summoned to a hearing might be enough of a threat to make them give Trump all he asks for.

le-mark 1y ago
> There may be an attempt to coerce these platforms to start moderating in a way that's more favourable to Trump. That’s the real comedy about this; when we like it censorship is good, when we don’t like it (Covid shutdown, anti vax, Jan 6th) censorship is bad. The double standard is shocking, yet completely normalized. Besides any attempt to end violent rhetoric has to start with POTUS himself, theater exactly what it is.
- pixl97 1y ago
  I mean, this view of censorship is a little black and white. Simply put in reality some censorship of some kind or I can simply 'win' by screaming really loud so no one else can even get a word in about their view. The paradox of tolerance tells us that any view that intolerant of the existence of another person for simply existing should not be allowed as it is a terminal case. Of course electing the most violent and intolerant person we could find means we're going to have a hard time.

exasperaited 1y ago

Worth noting the heavy irony in talking about James Comer taking on bad-faith moderation, though.

grafmax 1y ago

How can we know that this or that example of speech is illegal if there are no charges and no trial? This rule by corporate fiat is exactly what we don’t need. It lacks democratic oversight. To say nothing of the way that disingenuous claims of “political violence” is being used to suppress legitimate dissent in our country.

fennecfoxy 1y ago

>They've now been asked to appear in front of Congress to address concerns about politically motivated violence being incited through their platform Funny how for the last 30 years of right wing violence/extremists far exceeding left wing nothing was done at all about it, no questions asked. Hush hush, don't talk about gun control or the real causes of these peoples' actions. But then the year that left wing violence finally exceeds right wing, they all start crying that it's unacceptable and something needs to be done about it. Source: https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-united-states-what-data-tells-us https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-politi... "So far, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing terrorist attacks outnumber those from the violent far right."

mrguyorama 1y ago
>But then the year that left wing violence finally exceeds right wing It hasn't even! Like even if you take the Kirk murder as an explicitly left wing murder, "leftist" violence is still not even a shadow of what it used to be in the US We used to shoot at business magnates for fighting unionization! The weather underground was an explicitly Marxist organization! The black panthers were a black supremacist organization! Your own source makes the point that the reason left wing attacks "outnumber" right wing ones is that right wing attacks have dramatically decreased Because when ICE does it, it's not considered a "right wing attack"!
DengistKhan 1y ago
> But then the year that left wing violence finally exceeds right wing this framing will most likely confuse most people because it's essentially a 100s of murders/mass shootings (by the right) vs 2 murders (by the left, the rest is probably property damage or whatever). It's also going to be confusing because Luigi is not a confirmed leftist, the Kirk shooter is not a confirmed leftist, and putting aside the problematic presumption that they are before we have evidence, doing so means totalling up to approx 3 left wing murders since 2020. But ICE's current actions would clearly be classified as right wing violence by those standards, which is overwhelmingly well documented and numerous. Some people also might not like that framing, whether it's because you're a right winger or because you're looking for info on non-state sanctioned terrorism, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to give ICE their own category in the next version of some of those charts.

elevation 1y ago

An acquaintance who used to be active on reddit watched an angry mob "dox" his long-time pseudonym (they found a real person by the same name) with instructions to harass his employer and calls for IRL assault. Shortly afterward, his account was permabanned and he was unable to create a new one from the same IP. This wasn't just a reddit problem, Twitter had plenty of the same cancel campaigns.