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> Banning the article _was_ censorship. The entire idea of "subreddits" is community-specific curation. If you post a leftist screed to /r/libertarian, they mi

> Banning the article _was_ censorship. The entire idea of "subreddits" is community-specific curation. If you post a leftist screed to /r/libertarian, they might choose to leave it, they might delete it, who knows. It's up to each subreddit to decide what kind of content they want to see, through a mixture of up/downvoting and moderator action. Some communities want the Greenwald article, some don't. Some have very little moderator action, others have a lot, and those differences are part of what defines them (e.g. /r/AskHistorians is known for its aggressive moderation). That's not censorship, any more than HN deleting some stuff is censorship.

giardini 13y ago
The groups where article was removed: /r/news and /r/worldnews and the article was news if there ever was news. Sorry, you lose! Let's review the GCHQ/NSA slides to find which ruse this was intended to be ... hmmm, I can't find "red herring" amongst them. Are we sure they released _all_ the GCHQ/NSA slides? [it's working already! Paranoia is setting in! Aaaaargh!]
bduerst 13y ago
I think this is where the semantics of the word come into play. Is the subreddit community mods banning the article censorship? Yes. Is it a violation of first amendment rights or worth getting upset over? Absolutely not.
- freehunter 13y ago
  >Is it a violation of first amendment rights or worth getting upset over? Absolutely not. It is both of those if the decision to take the article down was made by the government in any way. It's just unfortunate that these questions have to be raised now.
kyrra 13y ago
But when a subreddit is part of the default selection of subreddits (for non-logged in users), that has a fairly large impact for the userbase of Reddit in general. And if it is part of the default, then the normal user (someone that doesn't mess with their subreddit selection much) would also be impacted.
- mahranch 13y ago
  Isn't that even more of a reason to remove the article? It was posted to more than 1 default subreddit, including /r/worldnews which is larger than /r/news. That means you're going to have multiple submissions of the same article on the front page. Duplicate content on the front page doesn't give a good first impression, it looks messy or even spammy. It also takes up valuable space for people who may not care about the topic.
dredmorbius 13y ago
The entire idea of "subreddits" is community-specific curation. There are a number of significant issues with that. Straight off the top, a few that I can think of: • /r/news is a default subreddit. It carries rather more weight and significance on reddit than, say, /r/swoleacceptance or /r/dredmorbius. It really ought to reflect a fair assessment of what is or isn't news. • Subreddit squatting has been known to happen, often by those with a specific axe to grind. In the worst cases, this leads to a very profound drift of a sub from what its initial charter was. /r/srs is probably one of the more significant examples (it went from a general critique sub to a pretty radical political viewpoint). Another case which came up recently is /r/xkcd, yes, the subreddit devoted to the xkcd comic. After its initial moderator went AWOL, it was picked up by a neo-Nazi, Holocaust-denying mod, who installed a number of similarly-minded sub-mods. Randall Munroe even chimed in to voice his disappointment. An alternative sub has formed, /r/xkcdcomic. Story: http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1xdwba/the_history_of_the_rxkcd_kerfuffle/ http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1xdwba/the_history_of_... • There's no real mechanism to keep subreddit drift from happening. This, given the issues above, seems like it could be a long-term problem for reddit. • In the absence of "acceptable" mainstream news coverage of the latest from The Intercept, it seems that /r/news really should have accepted the article. As Greenwald has noted, the MSM and government are clearly biased in their own coverage of this story.

giardini 13y ago

The groups where article was removed: /r/news and /r/worldnews and the article was news if there ever was news. Sorry, you lose! Let's review the GCHQ/NSA slides to find which ruse this was intended to be ... hmmm, I can't find "red herring" amongst them. Are we sure they released _all_ the GCHQ/NSA slides? [it's working already! Paranoia is setting in! Aaaaargh!]

bduerst 13y ago

I think this is where the semantics of the word come into play. Is the subreddit community mods banning the article censorship? Yes. Is it a violation of first amendment rights or worth getting upset over? Absolutely not.

freehunter 13y ago
>Is it a violation of first amendment rights or worth getting upset over? Absolutely not. It is both of those if the decision to take the article down was made by the government in any way. It's just unfortunate that these questions have to be raised now.

kyrra 13y ago

But when a subreddit is part of the default selection of subreddits (for non-logged in users), that has a fairly large impact for the userbase of Reddit in general. And if it is part of the default, then the normal user (someone that doesn't mess with their subreddit selection much) would also be impacted.

mahranch 13y ago
Isn't that even more of a reason to remove the article? It was posted to more than 1 default subreddit, including /r/worldnews which is larger than /r/news. That means you're going to have multiple submissions of the same article on the front page. Duplicate content on the front page doesn't give a good first impression, it looks messy or even spammy. It also takes up valuable space for people who may not care about the topic.

dredmorbius 13y ago

The entire idea of "subreddits" is community-specific curation. There are a number of significant issues with that. Straight off the top, a few that I can think of: • /r/news is a default subreddit. It carries rather more weight and significance on reddit than, say, /r/swoleacceptance or /r/dredmorbius. It really ought to reflect a fair assessment of what is or isn't news. • Subreddit squatting has been known to happen, often by those with a specific axe to grind. In the worst cases, this leads to a very profound drift of a sub from what its initial charter was. /r/srs is probably one of the more significant examples (it went from a general critique sub to a pretty radical political viewpoint). Another case which came up recently is /r/xkcd, yes, the subreddit devoted to the xkcd comic. After its initial moderator went AWOL, it was picked up by a neo-Nazi, Holocaust-denying mod, who installed a number of similarly-minded sub-mods. Randall Munroe even chimed in to voice his disappointment. An alternative sub has formed, /r/xkcdcomic. Story: http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1xdwba/the_history_of_the_rxkcd_kerfuffle/ http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1xdwba/the_history_of_... • There's no real mechanism to keep subreddit drift from happening. This, given the issues above, seems like it could be a long-term problem for reddit. • In the absence of "acceptable" mainstream news coverage of the latest from The Intercept, it seems that /r/news really should have accepted the article. As Greenwald has noted, the MSM and government are clearly biased in their own coverage of this story.