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Eh... it's their playground. While I don't like the idea of what's offensive being so subjective, there is A LOT of shit on Reddit that I would be happy to see

Eh... it's their playground. While I don't like the idea of what's offensive being so subjective, there is A LOT of shit on Reddit that I would be happy to see gone. If Costco had a corner in every store where people were allowed to stand around yelling racist commentary all the time, and Costco laid out a policy to remove this from their stores, I think the majority of people would applaud this move, thus improving business. Reddit is a business and is free to do what it believes is best to grow. If it thinks this is the right move for them? Great, go for it. I actually doubt that Reddit is going to miss most of these people when they inevitably migrate somewhere else, it's not exactly a very marketable audience to begin with.

trose 11y ago
Yeah, I think its a vocal minority that is truly upset. The issue that compounds all of this is that it only takes a few thousand upvotes to reach the front page. So to extrapolate on your analogy, this is like the racist people in the corner protesting that they can't shout in the corner anymore. Meanwhile most of the shoppers didnt even realize that they were there and dont care enough to comment on the situation.
acbart 11y ago
Well, people don't go to Costco for commentary, they go there to buy things. So a more apt comparison would be a section that sells things that certain groups may find offensive - e.g., sex toys, confederate flags, bibles, guns[1]. The metaphor holds mostly, Costco is free to do what it wants to cater to those people, but I don't think it's unreasonable for some groups to want to fight to hold on. It's hard to make blanket statements about some of the groups - of course, that's less true for some than others. I don't have any horses in this race, personally, I don't think anyone is planning on banning r/corgis or r/noideadogs. As for profitability, I'd argue that stupid people with strong opinions and a need to vocalize them are advertisers favorite kind of people. They're probably surprisingly profitable. [1] Don't assume I'm putting any of those on the same level as each other, just making a list of what I suspect are violatile items to some groups.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Imagine if Costco sold itself as the go to sight for all your political needs. They sold what ever political prop you wanted. They carried everything. Costco promised all parties that weren't terrorist were allowed. Most of it wasn't on the store floor in the physical buildings, but you could go online or order it to be delivered. As such, many smaller parties made Costco the go to place for all party related needs while in other cases Costco was better than the official party. Then they decided to remove some crazy political party's items for sale. Say one of the anti-immigration parties in Europe. Then they took out the US Tea Party. Then ex-Costco leaders said a purge was coming. Now people are left wondering which party is next. That if their political party's goal doesn't align, they may be kicked out. Not a massive problem, except that Costco picked up a lot of the market share and thus has not insignificant voice in larger matters. Do now the political parties are pulling back and thinking they need to pick some other entity as their official seller.
- vectorpush 11y ago
  > So a more apt comparison would be a section that sells things that certain groups may find offensive - e.g., sex toys, confederate flags, bibles, guns[1] Not a great analogy since the subreddits that are analogous to the examples you listed are all permitted on reddit without question. There are plenty of sex/flag/bible/gun related subs and nobody on either side of the reddit debate is trying to ban them. A better analogy would be if a group of patrons meeting up in one section of the store, proceeded to roam about the premises harassing overweight customers who are there to make purchases. Naturally, store management would seek to remove these individuals from the store so that the other customers can shop in peace.
pavanky 11y ago
I do not think people would be pissed about reddit enforcing the bans if they did not market themselves as a bastion of free speech on the internet. It was not just Yishan who did it. Redditors even created a new sub[1] showing all instances where someone belonging to reddit has said or implied that they are for free speech on the internet. People who are pissed are angry because it looks and sounds like bait and switch. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/BoFS http://www.reddit.com/r/BoFS
- austenallred 11y ago
  Absolutely. Very few are sad to see that /r/coontown is going to be banned; they're frustrated because the goalposts are moving and they don't know where they will end up. Usually the slippery slope argument is a fallacy, but if a company says "our standard is and always will be 1" and then comes out later and says "our standard is 2," it's hard to believe.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Well the real problem is that they are at 4 or 5 now. Slippery slope may be a fallacy, but when you look up and see that you've been going down a slide, the intelligent thing to do is to assume you are, in fact, on a slide.
- differentView 11y ago
  They should ask for a refund.
  - chc 11y ago
    Unfortunately, no one can refund time.
  - maaku 11y ago
    Har har har. But in all seriousness Reddit become the phenomenon it is because of its users, and the many hours, days, weeks, and months they each individually put in to build communities. To create something with value, larger than themselves. Who's going to rufund that time investment?
baddox 11y ago
The yelling analogy doesn't really work, because the vast majority of the controversial content is content you have to go looking for to find. Obviously there can be some leakages, but most people learn about this stuff because tech blogs or media companies deliberately go looking for it to "expose" how bad reddit is.
- sharkweek 11y ago
  Fair - let's make it a little room in the back where someone might accidentally stumble. Especially when Gawker posts a story talking specifically about it sending people to that dark corner making them think THAT is what Costco is all about. Terrible impression to make on new customers, thus Costco decides, eh, fuck it, let's just get rid of the little room entirely to avoid this repetitious problem.
  - baddox 11y ago
    How would you accidentally stumble onto it? You might make a typo, which is a fair point, but that is probably exceedingly rare. Or you might be linked, but you can already be linked anywhere from anywhere else on the web, so that's hardly a meaningful argument.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Or you might be linked, but you can already be linked anywhere from anywhere else on the web, so that's hardly a meaningful argument. Its a meaningful argument from the POV of Reddit management, and their effort to build a profitable business, given that what people can be linked to that is tied to Reddit -- unlike what people can be linked to that is not tied to Reddit -- impacts the perception of Reddit and both the audience it attracts and its attractiveness to advertisers.
      - baddox 11y ago
        > Its a meaningful argument from the POV of Reddit management, and their effort to build a profitable business Oh absolutely. I'm not disputing that. Of course they are doing all of this in pursuit of profit (or at least in pursuit of pleasing their board). The trouble is that, in my view, there is a conflict between the goal of pleasing the reddit board and the goal of creating a vibrant community.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> While I don't like the idea of what's offensive being so subjective What's offensive is what causes offense (that's what the word means.) Its pretty much the textbook example of something that is completely subjective.
maaku 11y ago
Reddit is an anarchist experiment. No centralized filtering except where external laws are clearly being broken, and even then only in the most extreme cases of violence or exploitation (e.g. child pornography). Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is worth debating. But it absolutely must be said that the anarchy defines what Reddit is. With active moderation, it won't be Reddit, it'll be something else. Maybe that something else will be nicer, friendlier, or whatever. But it will be filling a different need. People who defend the hands-off Reddit are not advocating in favor of racism (to use your example). They're saying, essentially, "a discussion forum with absolute freedom of expression has value, even if (unfortunately) that lack of controls means sharing the site with racists."
- netcan 11y ago
  There's some arguments that anarchy is only possible/advisable in smaller communities. The United States can't be a (functional) anarchy, but maybe the US virgin Islands could be. Maybe that applies here. It's to big to be free.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >Reddit is an anarchist experiment. No centralized filtering except where external laws are clearly being broken, Most of the filtering put in place during the first (to my knowledge) purge was to filter unsavory but legal content due to a public image problem it was causing.
- yAnonymous 11y ago
  If it were anarchy, the users could do something against the censoring, monetizing and shadow banning. Reddit is far more authoritarian than most people realize.
obituary_latte 11y ago
I was in the same boat in terms of stuff being gone -- most recently fatpeoplehate -- but really it was a result of it showing on the front page of the website (which is where I tend to land most often). Had it not appeared there, I wouldn't have known about it and it wouldn't have been a problem for me. Seems like there is some sort of middle-ground where questionable (though not illegal) content could still exist but be relegated in a way where there would be effort required to see it.
- arprocter 11y ago
  I don't think it was the front page - I think it began to show up on /r/all due to the number of upvotes things got once the sub had a lot of subscribers
shubhamjain 11y ago
Reddit is a decade old site. I can imagine what happened to Digg, horrified reddit team to do anything that might upset their users and they continued to operate without revenues / quality in mind but when they realized that something is wrong, the culture of doing anything got in-grained into reddit crowd really well. Most of the reddit history tolerated even most ugliest form of sickness and suddenly they want to clean it up? I am not sure how successful this effort will be. Either it will be that a bunch of arrogant assholes who equate freedom of speech with saying BS would leave or the another Digg fiasco would happen.
rrss1122 11y ago
I don't think the Costco analogy applies well in this situation. I do think Reddit is going to miss most of these people. Personally, I say good riddance, to these people and to Reddit.

trose 11y ago

Yeah, I think its a vocal minority that is truly upset. The issue that compounds all of this is that it only takes a few thousand upvotes to reach the front page. So to extrapolate on your analogy, this is like the racist people in the corner protesting that they can't shout in the corner anymore. Meanwhile most of the shoppers didnt even realize that they were there and dont care enough to comment on the situation.

acbart 11y ago

Well, people don't go to Costco for commentary, they go there to buy things. So a more apt comparison would be a section that sells things that certain groups may find offensive - e.g., sex toys, confederate flags, bibles, guns[1]. The metaphor holds mostly, Costco is free to do what it wants to cater to those people, but I don't think it's unreasonable for some groups to want to fight to hold on. It's hard to make blanket statements about some of the groups - of course, that's less true for some than others. I don't have any horses in this race, personally, I don't think anyone is planning on banning r/corgis or r/noideadogs. As for profitability, I'd argue that stupid people with strong opinions and a need to vocalize them are advertisers favorite kind of people. They're probably surprisingly profitable. [1] Don't assume I'm putting any of those on the same level as each other, just making a list of what I suspect are violatile items to some groups.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
Imagine if Costco sold itself as the go to sight for all your political needs. They sold what ever political prop you wanted. They carried everything. Costco promised all parties that weren't terrorist were allowed. Most of it wasn't on the store floor in the physical buildings, but you could go online or order it to be delivered. As such, many smaller parties made Costco the go to place for all party related needs while in other cases Costco was better than the official party. Then they decided to remove some crazy political party's items for sale. Say one of the anti-immigration parties in Europe. Then they took out the US Tea Party. Then ex-Costco leaders said a purge was coming. Now people are left wondering which party is next. That if their political party's goal doesn't align, they may be kicked out. Not a massive problem, except that Costco picked up a lot of the market share and thus has not insignificant voice in larger matters. Do now the political parties are pulling back and thinking they need to pick some other entity as their official seller.
vectorpush 11y ago
> So a more apt comparison would be a section that sells things that certain groups may find offensive - e.g., sex toys, confederate flags, bibles, guns[1] Not a great analogy since the subreddits that are analogous to the examples you listed are all permitted on reddit without question. There are plenty of sex/flag/bible/gun related subs and nobody on either side of the reddit debate is trying to ban them. A better analogy would be if a group of patrons meeting up in one section of the store, proceeded to roam about the premises harassing overweight customers who are there to make purchases. Naturally, store management would seek to remove these individuals from the store so that the other customers can shop in peace.

pavanky 11y ago

I do not think people would be pissed about reddit enforcing the bans if they did not market themselves as a bastion of free speech on the internet. It was not just Yishan who did it. Redditors even created a new sub[1] showing all instances where someone belonging to reddit has said or implied that they are for free speech on the internet. People who are pissed are angry because it looks and sounds like bait and switch. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/BoFS http://www.reddit.com/r/BoFS

austenallred 11y ago
Absolutely. Very few are sad to see that /r/coontown is going to be banned; they're frustrated because the goalposts are moving and they don't know where they will end up. Usually the slippery slope argument is a fallacy, but if a company says "our standard is and always will be 1" and then comes out later and says "our standard is 2," it's hard to believe.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Well the real problem is that they are at 4 or 5 now. Slippery slope may be a fallacy, but when you look up and see that you've been going down a slide, the intelligent thing to do is to assume you are, in fact, on a slide.
differentView 11y ago
They should ask for a refund.
- chc 11y ago
  Unfortunately, no one can refund time.
- maaku 11y ago
  Har har har. But in all seriousness Reddit become the phenomenon it is because of its users, and the many hours, days, weeks, and months they each individually put in to build communities. To create something with value, larger than themselves. Who's going to rufund that time investment?

baddox 11y ago

The yelling analogy doesn't really work, because the vast majority of the controversial content is content you have to go looking for to find. Obviously there can be some leakages, but most people learn about this stuff because tech blogs or media companies deliberately go looking for it to "expose" how bad reddit is.

sharkweek 11y ago
Fair - let's make it a little room in the back where someone might accidentally stumble. Especially when Gawker posts a story talking specifically about it sending people to that dark corner making them think THAT is what Costco is all about. Terrible impression to make on new customers, thus Costco decides, eh, fuck it, let's just get rid of the little room entirely to avoid this repetitious problem.
- baddox 11y ago
  How would you accidentally stumble onto it? You might make a typo, which is a fair point, but that is probably exceedingly rare. Or you might be linked, but you can already be linked anywhere from anywhere else on the web, so that's hardly a meaningful argument.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Or you might be linked, but you can already be linked anywhere from anywhere else on the web, so that's hardly a meaningful argument. Its a meaningful argument from the POV of Reddit management, and their effort to build a profitable business, given that what people can be linked to that is tied to Reddit -- unlike what people can be linked to that is not tied to Reddit -- impacts the perception of Reddit and both the audience it attracts and its attractiveness to advertisers.
    - baddox 11y ago
      > Its a meaningful argument from the POV of Reddit management, and their effort to build a profitable business Oh absolutely. I'm not disputing that. Of course they are doing all of this in pursuit of profit (or at least in pursuit of pleasing their board). The trouble is that, in my view, there is a conflict between the goal of pleasing the reddit board and the goal of creating a vibrant community.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> While I don't like the idea of what's offensive being so subjective What's offensive is what causes offense (that's what the word means.) Its pretty much the textbook example of something that is completely subjective.

maaku 11y ago

Reddit is an anarchist experiment. No centralized filtering except where external laws are clearly being broken, and even then only in the most extreme cases of violence or exploitation (e.g. child pornography). Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is worth debating. But it absolutely must be said that the anarchy defines what Reddit is. With active moderation, it won't be Reddit, it'll be something else. Maybe that something else will be nicer, friendlier, or whatever. But it will be filling a different need. People who defend the hands-off Reddit are not advocating in favor of racism (to use your example). They're saying, essentially, "a discussion forum with absolute freedom of expression has value, even if (unfortunately) that lack of controls means sharing the site with racists."

netcan 11y ago
There's some arguments that anarchy is only possible/advisable in smaller communities. The United States can't be a (functional) anarchy, but maybe the US virgin Islands could be. Maybe that applies here. It's to big to be free.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>Reddit is an anarchist experiment. No centralized filtering except where external laws are clearly being broken, Most of the filtering put in place during the first (to my knowledge) purge was to filter unsavory but legal content due to a public image problem it was causing.
yAnonymous 11y ago
If it were anarchy, the users could do something against the censoring, monetizing and shadow banning. Reddit is far more authoritarian than most people realize.

obituary_latte 11y ago

I was in the same boat in terms of stuff being gone -- most recently fatpeoplehate -- but really it was a result of it showing on the front page of the website (which is where I tend to land most often). Had it not appeared there, I wouldn't have known about it and it wouldn't have been a problem for me. Seems like there is some sort of middle-ground where questionable (though not illegal) content could still exist but be relegated in a way where there would be effort required to see it.

arprocter 11y ago
I don't think it was the front page - I think it began to show up on /r/all due to the number of upvotes things got once the sub had a lot of subscribers

shubhamjain 11y ago

Reddit is a decade old site. I can imagine what happened to Digg, horrified reddit team to do anything that might upset their users and they continued to operate without revenues / quality in mind but when they realized that something is wrong, the culture of doing anything got in-grained into reddit crowd really well. Most of the reddit history tolerated even most ugliest form of sickness and suddenly they want to clean it up? I am not sure how successful this effort will be. Either it will be that a bunch of arrogant assholes who equate freedom of speech with saying BS would leave or the another Digg fiasco would happen.

rrss1122 11y ago

I don't think the Costco analogy applies well in this situation. I do think Reddit is going to miss most of these people. Personally, I say good riddance, to these people and to Reddit.