4 ms·

Freedom of speech does not apply here. Reddit is not a forum owned by the public, it's a business. Reddit is within their rights to remove any content as they s

Freedom of speech does not apply here. Reddit is not a forum owned by the public, it's a business. Reddit is within their rights to remove any content as they see fit. Yeah, people complain once they realize walled gardens like Reddit start censoring whatever they choose only /after/ they get too big to stop. Same goes for closed ecosystems like the App Store and Google Play. Guess you should have read the fine print before giving your unquestioned allegiance to all these closed platforms. I yearn for the days when the Internet was truly open. You can still launch any kind of site you want. But the truth is there is an ever shrinking number of players who now get to decide what content should or shouldn't be seen, and who should get referral traffic. The censorship I see is both ideological and business motivated. A relative few will control all of the information everyone gets to actually see, because no one will bother to look elsewhere. Sad really.

gavanwoolery 11y ago
I agree - good points :)
acveilleux 11y ago
I've seen 8chan and after that I do not yearn for a fully open Internet.
- gavanwoolery 11y ago
  haha :)
- codesushi42 11y ago
  No one is forcing you go to (\d)chan. Hate speech is an easy target. But the censoring and anticompetitive practices have spread further than that. Google, Apple, Facebook, can change their ToS to bring down potential competitors. They can remove your app for any reason, block access to their APIs, and ban you for posting content that leads to your own external page. It's happened plenty, and Reddit is no exception. These guys want you to live in their closed ecosystems where they control who the winners and losers are and what information is seen.
  - MBCook 11y ago
    No, but 8chan reaches out to the real world and other forums and people end up receiving death threats. Makes it REALLY HARD to support anonymity online, as it often seems like more people get horribly harassed or SWATed than we get benefits from anonymous whistleblowers and such.
    - codesushi42 11y ago
      Sounds like the same argument that the threat of terrorism makes it really hard to support civil liberties and personal privacy. Same old rhetoric. Pretty scary that a growing number of people seem to share the same opinion.
      - MBCook 11y ago
        I suppose you're right. I don't think I'd make the call to actually do it, but things have gotten so bad in the last year I'm just exasperated. And since law enforcement has been so apathetic/ineffective at dealing with even the most blatant cases that the negative externalities that would normally be there (arrests, social pressure, etc) can't seem to keep the dangerous behavior in check. Don't know what else to do. Can't ignore it, and it's not getting better. Posting about how it's bad isn't useful/doesn't accomplish anything. Actively engaging has proven to very dangerous to people and doesn't seem to have helped. Sometimes the call for censorship is a purposeful play to stamp out or control a group, sometimes it's just exasperation at a lack of any other idea of how to deal with a situation.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
PopeOfNope 11y ago
> I yearn for the days when the Internet was truly open. When was that? Back in the early days, ISPs and hosts would shut down sites with very little provocation. I remember big outcries around sites being taken down by their ISP and/or having their domains seized by the FBI for file sharing and/or hate speech. In fact, you could argue that the internet is more resistant to censorship now than it was back then. The ISPs in the early days had fewer customers and more competition, making them vulnerable to bad press. They pretty much had to act on any crank who complained about objectionable content hosted on their servers. ISPs today are bigger and have de facto monopolies (TWC and Comcast), so they don't respond so much to bad press. While that may be bad news for customer service, it's good news for the conspiracy theorist who wants to discuss which Rothschild is behind 9/11. Also, ISPs don't have to take sites down as often as they used to because most of them are hosted through third party companies like wordpress and google (blogspot).
- codesushi42 11y ago
  True. I wasn't specifically talking about hate speech though. I was talking more about launching a site/app/business or spreading an idea. More often these happen entirely through a few closed channels (social networks, Reddit, app stores) and/or are completely reliant on a few closed channels to get any traction. The Internet used to have more of a creative and community driven focus when people ran their own websites and found information through link networks. Now it's a continuous stream of information fed through a few closed platforms. If you don't submit yourself to the follies and whims of these platforms, you will never be seen. I think that's most of what made Reddit so successful which is reminiscent of the old days-- its subreddits and link network of those communities. I wish RSS, or something like it, hadn't failed.

gavanwoolery 11y ago

I agree - good points :)

acveilleux 11y ago

I've seen 8chan and after that I do not yearn for a fully open Internet.

gavanwoolery 11y ago
haha :)
codesushi42 11y ago
No one is forcing you go to (\d)chan. Hate speech is an easy target. But the censoring and anticompetitive practices have spread further than that. Google, Apple, Facebook, can change their ToS to bring down potential competitors. They can remove your app for any reason, block access to their APIs, and ban you for posting content that leads to your own external page. It's happened plenty, and Reddit is no exception. These guys want you to live in their closed ecosystems where they control who the winners and losers are and what information is seen.
- MBCook 11y ago
  No, but 8chan reaches out to the real world and other forums and people end up receiving death threats. Makes it REALLY HARD to support anonymity online, as it often seems like more people get horribly harassed or SWATed than we get benefits from anonymous whistleblowers and such.
  - codesushi42 11y ago
    Sounds like the same argument that the threat of terrorism makes it really hard to support civil liberties and personal privacy. Same old rhetoric. Pretty scary that a growing number of people seem to share the same opinion.
    - MBCook 11y ago
      I suppose you're right. I don't think I'd make the call to actually do it, but things have gotten so bad in the last year I'm just exasperated. And since law enforcement has been so apathetic/ineffective at dealing with even the most blatant cases that the negative externalities that would normally be there (arrests, social pressure, etc) can't seem to keep the dangerous behavior in check. Don't know what else to do. Can't ignore it, and it's not getting better. Posting about how it's bad isn't useful/doesn't accomplish anything. Actively engaging has proven to very dangerous to people and doesn't seem to have helped. Sometimes the call for censorship is a purposeful play to stamp out or control a group, sometimes it's just exasperation at a lack of any other idea of how to deal with a situation.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

PopeOfNope 11y ago

> I yearn for the days when the Internet was truly open. When was that? Back in the early days, ISPs and hosts would shut down sites with very little provocation. I remember big outcries around sites being taken down by their ISP and/or having their domains seized by the FBI for file sharing and/or hate speech. In fact, you could argue that the internet is more resistant to censorship now than it was back then. The ISPs in the early days had fewer customers and more competition, making them vulnerable to bad press. They pretty much had to act on any crank who complained about objectionable content hosted on their servers. ISPs today are bigger and have de facto monopolies (TWC and Comcast), so they don't respond so much to bad press. While that may be bad news for customer service, it's good news for the conspiracy theorist who wants to discuss which Rothschild is behind 9/11. Also, ISPs don't have to take sites down as often as they used to because most of them are hosted through third party companies like wordpress and google (blogspot).

codesushi42 11y ago
True. I wasn't specifically talking about hate speech though. I was talking more about launching a site/app/business or spreading an idea. More often these happen entirely through a few closed channels (social networks, Reddit, app stores) and/or are completely reliant on a few closed channels to get any traction. The Internet used to have more of a creative and community driven focus when people ran their own websites and found information through link networks. Now it's a continuous stream of information fed through a few closed platforms. If you don't submit yourself to the follies and whims of these platforms, you will never be seen. I think that's most of what made Reddit so successful which is reminiscent of the old days-- its subreddits and link network of those communities. I wish RSS, or something like it, hadn't failed.