4 ms·

I don't think it is useful to frame this as forums drama (which it certainly is on the surface), but as community self-policing. Yes, /r/politics, /r/atheism an

by thwest 14y ago

I don't think it is useful to frame this as forums drama (which it certainly is on the surface), but as community self-policing. Yes, /r/politics, /r/atheism and Gawker are pretty similar, featuring shallow identity politics in easily consumable outrage-of-the-day snack packages. But /r/politics and /r/atheism aren't the targets. Did you see /r/jailbait, /r/upskirt, /r/CreepShots, etc before they were taken down? Do you really put child porn, upskirt photos, and trading strategies for creeping on unsuspecting women in public in the same moral ballpark as shitty journalism? /r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and shame the participants. Sexual predators need to be confronted globally in any forum they are present in, and community confrontation is exactly what most of the offenders need. The presence of Gawker in the affair is a small price to pay to help reduce sexual violence.

potatolicious 14y ago
> "/r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and shame the participants." I really, really heavily disagree here. /r/ShitRedditSays is very much the opposite end of the spectrum from /r/creepshots (et al), and having the pendulum swing completely in the other direction is, IMO, just as bad. Look at the content of /r/ShitRedditSays. Like, really look at it as a whole with a critical eye - you have a few truly egregious things getting called out, then you have people getting into a populist rage-fest over inane stupidity, and you also get a very large chunk of simply harassing people for going against groupthink/being controversial. /r/ShitRedditSays is exactly the sort of censorship we don't want - i.e., an organized cabal of users who enforce their ideology on everyone else by means of harassment, ad hominem attacks, labeling, and drumming up massive populist outrage. Go up against /r/srs? Congrats, you are now a misogynistic racist gay-bashing bigot, regardless of what you actually said. Once /r/srs readers hook onto a thread all semblance of discussion stops. Silent downvotes plunge posts into oblivion with nary an explanation, combined with a litany of outraged replies, name-calling, and ad hominem attacks. They're not the objective observers they think they are - like every other subreddit they have evolved their own groupthink and notion of what is acceptable and not, and it happens that they've settled into a fairly narrow definition of acceptable content (whereas /r/creepshots have a very very wide definition of acceptable content). No, just no. /r/ShitRedditSays is not the solution to /r/creepshots and the like. You go from an open community with a fringe, disturbing element... to a closed community that toes the party line, or else.

by thwest 14y ago

potatolicious 14y ago

> "/r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and shame the participants." I really, really heavily disagree here. /r/ShitRedditSays is very much the opposite end of the spectrum from /r/creepshots (et al), and having the pendulum swing completely in the other direction is, IMO, just as bad. Look at the content of /r/ShitRedditSays. Like, really look at it as a whole with a critical eye - you have a few truly egregious things getting called out, then you have people getting into a populist rage-fest over inane stupidity, and you also get a very large chunk of simply harassing people for going against groupthink/being controversial. /r/ShitRedditSays is exactly the sort of censorship we don't want - i.e., an organized cabal of users who enforce their ideology on everyone else by means of harassment, ad hominem attacks, labeling, and drumming up massive populist outrage. Go up against /r/srs? Congrats, you are now a misogynistic racist gay-bashing bigot, regardless of what you actually said. Once /r/srs readers hook onto a thread all semblance of discussion stops. Silent downvotes plunge posts into oblivion with nary an explanation, combined with a litany of outraged replies, name-calling, and ad hominem attacks. They're not the objective observers they think they are - like every other subreddit they have evolved their own groupthink and notion of what is acceptable and not, and it happens that they've settled into a fairly narrow definition of acceptable content (whereas /r/creepshots have a very very wide definition of acceptable content). No, just no. /r/ShitRedditSays is not the solution to /r/creepshots and the like. You go from an open community with a fringe, disturbing element... to a closed community that toes the party line, or else.