6 ms·
The notion of group responsibility for individual actions is insidious, because it's too easy to mount a circular-logic based offense and also because it leads
by oldmanjay 11y ago
The notion of group responsibility for individual actions is insidious, because it's too easy to mount a circular-logic based offense and also because it leads to humanity's favorite game, us v. them.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 11y agoHumans aren't really individuals, though they labor under the illusion of such. They're weak hiveminds. Individuals, if they exist at all, are rare and want nothing to do with the rest of you. When foreign hiveminds come into contact, one attempts to absorb the other, and failing that, to destroy the other. Memes are highly infectious, and so it's often important to police memes to make sure no foreign ones disrupt the hivemind's self. One or another hivemind sent off a few spurious signals, and a few highly excited human units acted on those. The hiveminds in question don't feel responsible because they didn't intend to send those signals (or want to pretend they didn't).
- oldmanjay 11y agoThat's fairly cynical, and I don't have that experience at all, and I do not agree with you, and I do not know of any evidence backing a single one of your statements.
- nhf 11y agoThis wasn't an accusation of group responsibility. In fact, they specifically state in their announcement that > Ellen asked me to point out that the sweeping majority of redditors didn’t do this, and many were incredibly supportive. Although the incredible power of the Internet is the amplification of voices, unfortunately sometimes those voices are hateful. Like any popular site, Reddit attracts everything from enlightened discussions to 4chan-level casual trolls (and worse). Pointing out the issues with threats and indicating that the community could be better without individuals who would publicly threaten the life of another person seems very reasonable to me.
- oldmanjay 11y agoI have no problem with the notion that those running reddit suffer from extreme cognitive dissonance over this issue. They've been acting in extremely odd ways for some time now. Actions like the banning of subreddits for the actions of a few bad actors belie the notion that this is how you and they describe it.
- CamperBob2 11y agoYou were modded down, but I don't know why. On what planet does it make sense to ban /r/fatpeoplehate while permitting /r/CoonTown? If you don't have a coherent content policy -- and no sane person could argue that Reddit does -- then you're better off with none at all.
- oldmanjay 11y agoI've been modded down rather interestingly in this thread. Clearly someone has a beef with my observations.
- mcphage 11y agoWhat? Clearly both should be banned, but banning one is much better than banning neither.
- CamperBob2 11y agoNo, it isn't. Given that there was no blatantly illegal content involved, there are only two possible reasons for not treating these two subreddits the same. Either the admins are a) clueless nitwits who don't know what's going on with their own site, or b) sympathetic to one but not the other. Which do you believe is the correct explanation? Can you see any other possibilities?
- mcphage 11y agoIf you're in my house, I'm going to hold you to a much higher standard than "not blatantly illegal". If you resent Reddit doing the same, well, the Internet isn't lacking for dank underbellies.