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Unlike Nike with its Armstrong advertising, Reddit exerts very little control over subreddits. That's by choice and by design. Reddit basically tries to keep

Unlike Nike with its Armstrong advertising, Reddit exerts very little control over subreddits. That's by choice and by design. Reddit basically tries to keep itself from getting sued, and leaves the rest of the community rule-making to subreddit mods. Why is that so hard for people? People want to make reddit responsible for everything that happens there. But the users are the ones who are actually doing the posting. Let's recognize the truth: that those users are the relevant moral agents when it comes to their posts, not reddit. Reddit's not responsible for violentacrez' fate any more than it was responsible for his posts.

raganwald 14y ago
I open a nightclub. People drink. They fight. They hurt themselves. Do I get to shrug that I exert very little control over what people do in my nightclub? It's my choice whether I exert control or not. It's Reddit's choice not to exert control, and of course they're responsible for the consequences of their non-control. To my mind, they took the money. taking the money and then saying they're not responsible for his fate is not the moral high ground. It may be pragamatic, it may be just business, but it's hardly laudable.
- tejaswiy 14y ago
  Should megaupload delete all the illegal content on their site? If one of the uploaders gets outed as someone from RIAA and looses their job, should they give them jobs too?
  - raldi 14y ago
    The author is taking as a given that VA was already discussing a job with reddit before the controversy. I don't know the scoop on that, but it's a key difference from your example.
- beering 14y ago
  How much money did Reddit make off of VA's subreddits?
- pfraze 14y ago
  I think you're correct, but part of the Reddit mission is to try to remain as hands-off as possible by giving the users the power to handle things. It's not always successful, and it's fair to say that they will eventually have to set tighter boundaries, but they aren't motivated entirely by convenience.
- lmm 14y ago
  >I open a nightclub. People drink. They fight. They hurt themselves. Do I get to shrug that I exert very little control over what people do in my nightclub? Don't you? If they're hurting your other customers that's your responsibility. But if someone gets into a fight in your nightclub and gets fired from his job because if it, I think you have every right to shrug and walk away. >To my mind, they took the money. taking the money and then saying they're not responsible for his fate is not the moral high ground. It may be pragamatic, it may be just business, but it's hardly laudable. I don't know; to my mind they didn't so much take the fruits of his labour like an employee (as Nike essentially did with Armstrong) as sell him a service; he was their customer as much as anything else. To my mind that puts Reddit in the same camp as the printers who'll put whatever you want on a poster and not ask what you're doing with it, or the gun store who sells you a weapon no questions asked, or the casino or wine merchants who let you spend all your money (I don't mention the drug dealer since I believe Reddit blocks anything outright illegal). Some of those businesses are pretty scummy, but they're also some of freedom's greatest defenders.
- surrealize 14y ago
  Analogies being what they are, let's make this one a little more precise. Reddit's not a nightclub, it's a nightclub factory, automating the process of creating a nightclub for anyone who wants to open one. Allowing for variation in how those clubs are run is a big part of the point--to explore the nightclub possibility space. Unlike a real-world nightclub, individual subreddits are separated. In a real-world nightclub, you're automatically exposed to everyone else there, since you're sharing the same physical space. On reddit, you have to purposely enter a subbreddit (aside from the default ones, the curation of which is something I would agree is the responsibility of reddit-central). > It's Reddit's choice not to exert control, and of course they're responsible for the consequences of their non-control. They're responsible for the consequences of their non-control? In my book, control and responsibility go together. To what extent (if any) do you believe that reddit users are responsible for their own posts? Is the president of the USA responsible for your actions? Why or why not?
  - raganwald 14y ago
    Without arguing with you, I do want to point out that "responsibility" is not a zero-sum game. If you make an ill-advised lane change in your car, but I am not constantly observing cars around me an strike you, we both have some responsibility, and the fact that you are 100% responsible for making safe lane changes doesn't mean that I'm not a little responsible, say 20%, for failing to predict your action. And the fact that I'm 20% responsible doesn't lower your responsibility to 80%. So I'm not arguing with your basic feelings about personal responsibility, but at the same time, I'm not granting that if someone is responsible for their actions, it's a given that nobody else is responsible for the consequences.
    - crntaylor 14y ago
      I don't understand the lane-changing example. When something bad happens, we can apportion responsibility for it. Sometimes one party is fully responsible for the bad thing. But other times, some other party is partly responsible, which must mean that the first party is not fully responsible. If you're going to argue that party B is 20% responsible for a bad thing, then party A is at most 80% responsible. Party A can still be 100% wrong (they shouldn't have changed lane) but they're not 100% responsible.
- mseebach2 14y ago
  Compare reddit to a webhost, and this debate is actually similar to the one we had 10-15 years ago. Someone makes a website dedicated to hosting creepy but legal photos. Is the webhost, even though it makes (shudder) money from hosting the material, responsible for it, or for what consequences the author might face for publishing it? I'm pretty sure that debate ended with a pretty resounding no last time around, and I'm not sure why reddit is much different.
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rmc 14y ago
Why is that so hard for people? Because look at the result. Sexual photos of underage girls. Taking photos of up women's skirts without their permission or knowledge. Something is wrong here.

raganwald 14y ago

I open a nightclub. People drink. They fight. They hurt themselves. Do I get to shrug that I exert very little control over what people do in my nightclub? It's my choice whether I exert control or not. It's Reddit's choice not to exert control, and of course they're responsible for the consequences of their non-control. To my mind, they took the money. taking the money and then saying they're not responsible for his fate is not the moral high ground. It may be pragamatic, it may be just business, but it's hardly laudable.

tejaswiy 14y ago
Should megaupload delete all the illegal content on their site? If one of the uploaders gets outed as someone from RIAA and looses their job, should they give them jobs too?
- raldi 14y ago
  The author is taking as a given that VA was already discussing a job with reddit before the controversy. I don't know the scoop on that, but it's a key difference from your example.
beering 14y ago
How much money did Reddit make off of VA's subreddits?
pfraze 14y ago
I think you're correct, but part of the Reddit mission is to try to remain as hands-off as possible by giving the users the power to handle things. It's not always successful, and it's fair to say that they will eventually have to set tighter boundaries, but they aren't motivated entirely by convenience.
lmm 14y ago
>I open a nightclub. People drink. They fight. They hurt themselves. Do I get to shrug that I exert very little control over what people do in my nightclub? Don't you? If they're hurting your other customers that's your responsibility. But if someone gets into a fight in your nightclub and gets fired from his job because if it, I think you have every right to shrug and walk away. >To my mind, they took the money. taking the money and then saying they're not responsible for his fate is not the moral high ground. It may be pragamatic, it may be just business, but it's hardly laudable. I don't know; to my mind they didn't so much take the fruits of his labour like an employee (as Nike essentially did with Armstrong) as sell him a service; he was their customer as much as anything else. To my mind that puts Reddit in the same camp as the printers who'll put whatever you want on a poster and not ask what you're doing with it, or the gun store who sells you a weapon no questions asked, or the casino or wine merchants who let you spend all your money (I don't mention the drug dealer since I believe Reddit blocks anything outright illegal). Some of those businesses are pretty scummy, but they're also some of freedom's greatest defenders.
surrealize 14y ago
Analogies being what they are, let's make this one a little more precise. Reddit's not a nightclub, it's a nightclub factory, automating the process of creating a nightclub for anyone who wants to open one. Allowing for variation in how those clubs are run is a big part of the point--to explore the nightclub possibility space. Unlike a real-world nightclub, individual subreddits are separated. In a real-world nightclub, you're automatically exposed to everyone else there, since you're sharing the same physical space. On reddit, you have to purposely enter a subbreddit (aside from the default ones, the curation of which is something I would agree is the responsibility of reddit-central). > It's Reddit's choice not to exert control, and of course they're responsible for the consequences of their non-control. They're responsible for the consequences of their non-control? In my book, control and responsibility go together. To what extent (if any) do you believe that reddit users are responsible for their own posts? Is the president of the USA responsible for your actions? Why or why not?
- raganwald 14y ago
  Without arguing with you, I do want to point out that "responsibility" is not a zero-sum game. If you make an ill-advised lane change in your car, but I am not constantly observing cars around me an strike you, we both have some responsibility, and the fact that you are 100% responsible for making safe lane changes doesn't mean that I'm not a little responsible, say 20%, for failing to predict your action. And the fact that I'm 20% responsible doesn't lower your responsibility to 80%. So I'm not arguing with your basic feelings about personal responsibility, but at the same time, I'm not granting that if someone is responsible for their actions, it's a given that nobody else is responsible for the consequences.
  - crntaylor 14y ago
    I don't understand the lane-changing example. When something bad happens, we can apportion responsibility for it. Sometimes one party is fully responsible for the bad thing. But other times, some other party is partly responsible, which must mean that the first party is not fully responsible. If you're going to argue that party B is 20% responsible for a bad thing, then party A is at most 80% responsible. Party A can still be 100% wrong (they shouldn't have changed lane) but they're not 100% responsible.
mseebach2 14y ago
Compare reddit to a webhost, and this debate is actually similar to the one we had 10-15 years ago. Someone makes a website dedicated to hosting creepy but legal photos. Is the webhost, even though it makes (shudder) money from hosting the material, responsible for it, or for what consequences the author might face for publishing it? I'm pretty sure that debate ended with a pretty resounding no last time around, and I'm not sure why reddit is much different.

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rmc 14y ago

Why is that so hard for people? Because look at the result. Sexual photos of underage girls. Taking photos of up women's skirts without their permission or knowledge. Something is wrong here.