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How Reddit became the Alamo of the Internet’s ongoing culture war
- SixSigma 11y agoAlleged harassment. FPH users were banned for any kind if outside FPH harassment, including brigading. Even links to other parts of reddit were banned. It's pure pandering to the fat majority. And it was more than just shutting down the sub, all of the moderators were shadow banned.
- zxcvcxz 11y agoDo you really believe that the majority of people against FPH are fat?
- SixSigma 11y agoEh, nothing the slightest. I was a very active member of the sub. Fat folk have alleged and alleged. Reddit are not making a stand, they are just fed up of dealing with bullshit but they can't be honest about it so have to wrap it up in this "protection " nonsense.
- dang 11y ago> pure pandering to the fat majority Please don't do this here.
- SixSigma 11y agoexpress my valid opinion relevant to the topic ?
- dang 11y agoInfect HN with this perverse thing about attacking fat people.
- SixSigma 11y ago1) fat people are a majority 2) reddit is pandering to the vocal objectors to FPH, and they are mostly fat people causing a stink with fabricated stories of oppression, doxxing and whathaveyou. If Reddit want to do that, it's their prerogative but don't wrap it up in some PR nonsense talk. Just say "we're fed up of this bullshit".
- anti-shill 11y agothe reason reddit needs to crack on the politically incorrect is because if they fail to do so, the corporate media will demonize reddit, and then reddit will lose money. The corporate media is the enforcer of political correctness. Why? Because the corporate media is supported by advertising purchased by the big corporations, and so the media is the mouthpiece for the big corporations. Political correctness helps mold and shape the culture of america. A politically correct culture helps the big corporations squeeze more immigrants into America and into the workforce. The big corporations love multiculturalism and inclusiveness because that helps grow america, help increase the GDP, helps increase the workforce, increase the supply of labor etc. This all helps increase corporate profits. Which means more money spent on ads in the media. So the media will demonize and ruin any politically incorrect website that is on the way up. Hence, reddit dances to the tune played by the media.
- dragonwriter 11y agoThe problem with your whole theory is that Reddit remains perfectly okay with politically incorrect ideas and content, what they are cracking down on is harassment.
- erikpukinskis 11y agoI don't know. I basically never see the mainstream media write about Reddit. But multiple times I've had people tell me they have looked at Reddit and were put off by the cruelty they saw, particularly towards women. But maybe I am just not following mainstream media sources closely enough to see what you're seeing. I admittedly stay fairly far away from TV news and stuff.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- vonklaus 11y agoI really don't understand the hiring decision surrounding Ellen Pao. Her personal/professional scandal already make her a rather ineffectual leader, and she doesn't seem to embody any of reddit's ideals. They really could kill the company and they need a strong leader with vision to set the pace
- minikites 11y agoDo you think reddit currently has a good set of ideals? It's rare that I see someone say that "reddit is good" without some qualification like "make sure to unsubscribe from the default subreddits" or "only subscribe to the smaller subreddits". If reddit as it is presented to a new user is bad, where are the good ideals?
- vonklaus 11y ago> Do you think reddit currently has a good set of ideals? Ideals aren't granular and are difficult to assess if you ascribe morals to them. They are standards of perfection. Is freedom of speech "good"? I quite like it, at times America has stood for it, China has had a stance firmly against it. Ideals prescribe consistency. Reddit has embodied the ideals of freedom, community & recursive self-improvement. > It's rare that I see someone say that "reddit is good" without some qualification like "make sure to unsubscribe from the default subreddits" or "only subscribe to the smaller subreddits". Television is good, make sure not to watch primetime news. Mass market content caters to the lowest common denominator. Reddit tried to reposition itself as a mass market media company, sort of like yahoo[0]. The "front page" is something that "could" appeal to anyone. It is just like the ycombinator mantra "Make something a few people love rather than something a lot of people like", that is basically defaults vs. your fav "underground" sub. > If reddit as it is presented to a new user is bad, where are the good ideals? This is one of the problems with the narrative. "Reddit" is a disparate set of small communities loosely bound by some overlapping users and a URL. America is bad. Evaluate that statement. Are people in Idaho "bad" because some people in NY are "bad"? Is NY "bad" because people on Long Island, are "bad"? Reddit isn't one contiguous community. It is tens of thousands of communities. Some of them share users, but there are so many viewpoints on reddit that it is silly to say "Reddit does/thinks/is X" unless you are referring to corporate decisions, or something very general. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html
- epistasis 11y agoWhat's shocking to me is the amount of effort that these harassers put into their activity. I'm the third comment on this page according to my preview, and the other two add up to ~200 words of nonsense "reasoning" by people that feel they're making an argument with logic, but seem to be unable to realize the basic contradictions in what they're saying. By their fruits you shall know them, and what these harassers are doing to reddit clearly shows what they did inside their subreddits.
- panic 11y agoThat's what I don't get about this whole thing. Why do people care so much? There are plenty of other, much more fucked up things in this world to be mad about -- reddit deleting a few objectionable communities seems pretty low on the list.
- mberning 11y agoI imagine that these people are miserable in their own right and have nothing better to do with their time than drag other people down. What well adjusted and self actualized person has such an abundance of time to devote to harassing people anonymously over the internet?
- lnanek2 11y agoThis kind of misses the hundreds of people getting shadow banned for not agreeing with Ellen Pao's side of the lawsuit for weeks before this, although that clearly doesn't fit with its pat explanation, so I guess I know why they left it out.
- minikites 11y agoLots of people confusing the "right to free speech" with the ability to express yourself without personal consequence.
- aw3c2 11y agoDo not mistake this very opinionated column for news. Sadly it does not even try to present a balanced view on the issue. What I would really like to know is why subreddits like coontown (racism against black people) are still there if fatpeoplehate was banned. What exactly made them ban it. A little honestly and openness would help everyone, at least I see no reason against it?
- erikpukinskis 11y agoFrom Reddit admin krispykrackers: "When we are using the word "harass", we're not talking about "being annoying" or vote manipulation or anything. We're talking about men and women whose lives are being affected and worry for their safety every day, because people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten them, online and off, every day. When you've had to talk to as many victims of it as we have, you'd understand that a brigade from one subreddit to another is miles away from the harassment we don't want being generated on our site."
- tzs 11y agoI believe fatpeoplehate was doing things like posting pictures of random fat people encountered out in the world so that they could make fun of them and insult them. These were pictures of people who were not public figures or in the news. Based on a brief look at coontown, it looks like it is a generic black people are bad forum. The only mentions I saw of specific black people were black people who were in the news. That seems to be the key distinction.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zxcvcxz 11y agoThis is more than just hate against fat people, there are obvious undertones of anti-feminism and pro-feminism. I'm personally against the PC "SJW's" that force their ideology on people under the moniker of feminism, but the crowd that seems to be pushing the pro-FPH movement is the gamergate crowd. The gamergate crowd needs to distance its selft from FPH and focus on reddit censorship and censorship in general. All in all this is pretty embarrassing for reddit and everyone involved. All this energy put into "censorship" of a sub for hating fat people and hardly any outrage at things like government surveillance.