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I can't figure out if you're merely objecting to the idea that it "protects the weak", or if you're trying to actually justify the position that free speech mea

by eridius 11y ago

I can't figure out if you're merely objecting to the idea that it "protects the weak", or if you're trying to actually justify the position that free speech means you're allowed to harass people. Because that's what the banning was really about. Free speech, at its core, really means the freedom to express any idea. That's pretty much it. It does not guarantee you a soapbox upon which to express the idea, and it does not mean that the community around you cannot react negatively to what you say. All it actually guarantees is that the government cannot restrict what you say. As long as you don't commit a crime. Which harassment is. People can and do get charged with harassment and related offenses, but nobody tries to claim that charging someone with harassment or a related offense is a violation of their free speech. They recognize that there are in fact limits to what you can do and say, which in general are when what you do and say starts violating the rights of other people. But this is the internet, and on the internet, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[1] comes into play. Because it's the internet, people think that they're free to say whatever the hell they want, even if it very clearly amounts to harassment of other people. And that's just plain wrong. Reddit is absolutely correct to ban subs that are harassing people, and I wish they'd be even stricter about it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Arcade#.22Greater_Internet_Fuckwad_Theory.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Arcade#.22Greater_Intern...

studentrob 11y ago
>Reddit is absolutely correct to ban subs that are harassing people, and I wish they'd be even stricter about it. You're never going to stop all online harassment by fighting fires like this. It'd take a paid army to monitor. Reddit had a free army taking care of that and they're slowly dismantling it.
- eridius 11y ago
  But that's kind of the point. The subreddits that got banned are ones in which the moderators refused to take any action to stop the harassment That's why Reddit had to step in and deal with it.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    Hmm, I read that there was no notice given. Either way, I agree with you that personally identifiable information should be forbidden and censored by mods, admins, and the community as general policy. I may have misunderstood your meaning. I read that you support blocking offensive speech. I'm not convinced that removing/blocking the old content (as much as I did not think it was funny) is a good idea. It stokes a fire. Giving notice to the moderators, and then either replacing them, or closing submissions to that sub, and cleansing old data of personally identifiable information seems more appropriate. Under the current circumstances, it's really difficult for the community to verify that what was claimed happened actually happened: we're blocked from seeing it all. There could be more transparency, and I think that's what folks are clambering for. The firing of Victoria, santa, and the leukemia boy with no notice point to the same issue, and these were just the final straws that broke the camel's back for many people. Reddit still has an opportunity to be both an awesome community and a monetizable business. It just depends what steps are taken from here and if they're consistent with old policy, or if managers will really get introspective and work with the community to make some changes, even if they aren't the exact ones demanded in this petition. The way I read this saga is, each time something happens that demonstrates a lack of transparency or oversight in how the community operates, more people get upset: it is more evidence that the lack of communication was not a one-off mistake. Rather, it's habit and deeply ingrained.
    - eridius 11y ago
      Why go to great lengths to preserve content in a subreddit that was found to be in significant enough violation of the rules to warrant banning? There's nothing sacred about that content that demands it be preserved. And trying to preserve the subreddit itself such that people can still participate, while merely attempting to replace moderators, would not solve any problem. The toxic community that engaged in the harassment would still exist, and there's no good way for reddit admins to appoint new people as moderators anyway, because they didn't form the community in the first place. > There could be more transparency, and I think that's what folks are clambering for. In the case of the banned subreddits, there was actually plenty of transparency, and a plethora of various posts explaining what happened. But a lot of people spread a lot of FUD about (whether by accident or deliberately I don't know) and in general did their best to obscure the reason for the banning. It really feels like there's a bunch of users who are doing their absolute best to try and stoke up the fires and create a witch hunt, which is why you get a lot of this misinformation being spread around and a lot of discredited claims being repeated over and over again. I do agree that the firing of Victoria was handled badly, mostly in that there was no notice given to the subreddits and moderators, and no plan in place for how to handle the AMAs that she had been responsible for. As for whether the act itself was justified, I have no idea, because we don't know why her employment was terminated. And we probably never will, unless she publicly states the reason herself.
smsm42 11y ago
I think you are confusing two (or more) meanings of the word "harassment" - unless you can provide an example of somebody convicted for saying something not nice about other person on the Internet, at least in the jurisdiction where freedom of speech is not completely dead yet (e.g. not New Zealand where they just killed it this month). > which in general are when what you do and say starts violating the rights of other people. Somebody saying something that you won't like does not violate your rights. You do not have a right to control what everybody else is saying and demand them saying only things that are pleasant to you. > And that's just plain wrong Being an asshole may be wrong. But if you want to ban people from being assholes, and in general from doing anything wrong (by your definition of "wrong", or anybody else's), please do not call it "freedom". Of course, Reddit - or any private forum - has no obligation to maintain freedom of speech, and can impose any restrictions they like. I have no objection to it. I just have an objection to hijacking the term "freedom" to describe it. Find some other word, this one is already being used to describe something else. > Reddit is absolutely correct to ban subs that are harassing people I'm not sure I understand reddit enough, but how you can harass somebody with a sub if said person never visits the said sub? The mechanism of harassment is not clear to me here.
- eridius 11y ago
  > I'm not sure I understand reddit enough, but how you can harass somebody with a sub if said person never visits the said sub? You can't. The whole problem here was that those subs were not restricting themselves to posting within the sub. They were harassing people outside of the sub. According to one of the Reddit admins[1], all of the banned subs had "numerous complaints that they were harassing people both on and off Reddit". The problem here was not that they were saying mean things on the internet, as you seem to be claiming. The problem was that they were very legitimately harassing people outside of the subreddit. The people being harassed did not have to visit the sub in order to see it, and didn't even have to visit Reddit. And that's what makes it harassment, and what makes it against the rules of Reddit. [1] ekjp, I think this was somewhere in the same thread where he posted https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removing_harassing_subreddits/cs21aj4 https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...

by eridius 11y ago

studentrob 11y ago

>Reddit is absolutely correct to ban subs that are harassing people, and I wish they'd be even stricter about it. You're never going to stop all online harassment by fighting fires like this. It'd take a paid army to monitor. Reddit had a free army taking care of that and they're slowly dismantling it.

eridius 11y ago
But that's kind of the point. The subreddits that got banned are ones in which the moderators refused to take any action to stop the harassment That's why Reddit had to step in and deal with it.
- studentrob 11y ago
  Hmm, I read that there was no notice given. Either way, I agree with you that personally identifiable information should be forbidden and censored by mods, admins, and the community as general policy. I may have misunderstood your meaning. I read that you support blocking offensive speech. I'm not convinced that removing/blocking the old content (as much as I did not think it was funny) is a good idea. It stokes a fire. Giving notice to the moderators, and then either replacing them, or closing submissions to that sub, and cleansing old data of personally identifiable information seems more appropriate. Under the current circumstances, it's really difficult for the community to verify that what was claimed happened actually happened: we're blocked from seeing it all. There could be more transparency, and I think that's what folks are clambering for. The firing of Victoria, santa, and the leukemia boy with no notice point to the same issue, and these were just the final straws that broke the camel's back for many people. Reddit still has an opportunity to be both an awesome community and a monetizable business. It just depends what steps are taken from here and if they're consistent with old policy, or if managers will really get introspective and work with the community to make some changes, even if they aren't the exact ones demanded in this petition. The way I read this saga is, each time something happens that demonstrates a lack of transparency or oversight in how the community operates, more people get upset: it is more evidence that the lack of communication was not a one-off mistake. Rather, it's habit and deeply ingrained.
  - eridius 11y ago
    Why go to great lengths to preserve content in a subreddit that was found to be in significant enough violation of the rules to warrant banning? There's nothing sacred about that content that demands it be preserved. And trying to preserve the subreddit itself such that people can still participate, while merely attempting to replace moderators, would not solve any problem. The toxic community that engaged in the harassment would still exist, and there's no good way for reddit admins to appoint new people as moderators anyway, because they didn't form the community in the first place. > There could be more transparency, and I think that's what folks are clambering for. In the case of the banned subreddits, there was actually plenty of transparency, and a plethora of various posts explaining what happened. But a lot of people spread a lot of FUD about (whether by accident or deliberately I don't know) and in general did their best to obscure the reason for the banning. It really feels like there's a bunch of users who are doing their absolute best to try and stoke up the fires and create a witch hunt, which is why you get a lot of this misinformation being spread around and a lot of discredited claims being repeated over and over again. I do agree that the firing of Victoria was handled badly, mostly in that there was no notice given to the subreddits and moderators, and no plan in place for how to handle the AMAs that she had been responsible for. As for whether the act itself was justified, I have no idea, because we don't know why her employment was terminated. And we probably never will, unless she publicly states the reason herself.

smsm42 11y ago

I think you are confusing two (or more) meanings of the word "harassment" - unless you can provide an example of somebody convicted for saying something not nice about other person on the Internet, at least in the jurisdiction where freedom of speech is not completely dead yet (e.g. not New Zealand where they just killed it this month). > which in general are when what you do and say starts violating the rights of other people. Somebody saying something that you won't like does not violate your rights. You do not have a right to control what everybody else is saying and demand them saying only things that are pleasant to you. > And that's just plain wrong Being an asshole may be wrong. But if you want to ban people from being assholes, and in general from doing anything wrong (by your definition of "wrong", or anybody else's), please do not call it "freedom". Of course, Reddit - or any private forum - has no obligation to maintain freedom of speech, and can impose any restrictions they like. I have no objection to it. I just have an objection to hijacking the term "freedom" to describe it. Find some other word, this one is already being used to describe something else. > Reddit is absolutely correct to ban subs that are harassing people I'm not sure I understand reddit enough, but how you can harass somebody with a sub if said person never visits the said sub? The mechanism of harassment is not clear to me here.

eridius 11y ago
> I'm not sure I understand reddit enough, but how you can harass somebody with a sub if said person never visits the said sub? You can't. The whole problem here was that those subs were not restricting themselves to posting within the sub. They were harassing people outside of the sub. According to one of the Reddit admins[1], all of the banned subs had "numerous complaints that they were harassing people both on and off Reddit". The problem here was not that they were saying mean things on the internet, as you seem to be claiming. The problem was that they were very legitimately harassing people outside of the subreddit. The people being harassed did not have to visit the sub in order to see it, and didn't even have to visit Reddit. And that's what makes it harassment, and what makes it against the rules of Reddit. [1] ekjp, I think this was somewhere in the same thread where he posted https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removing_harassing_subreddits/cs21aj4 https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...