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I honestly wouldn't mind a "purge." I don't necessarily agree that drawing the line as to what is appropriate on a website is necessarily the destruction of peo

I honestly wouldn't mind a "purge." I don't necessarily agree that drawing the line as to what is appropriate on a website is necessarily the destruction of people being able to express themselves. HackerNews doesn't allow racism, but I don't feel my right to express my opinion (for the most part - the hivemind that is caused by upvoting comments is troubling, but another issue altogether). If people want to be blatantly racist or post teen creepershots or organize to harass fat people, let them do that somewhere else. That wouldn't harm my reddit experience whatsoever (nor would it harm the experience of 99% of reddit users). The only rational argument people can make against the "purging" (of blatantly racist etc. subreddits) is the "slippery slope" argument, which is usually known as a fallacious logical device. There is some merit to it, as reddit seems to be moving the line of appropriateness, but the line just has to be clearly drawn somewhere. That said, anything Yishan Wong says at this point should be taken with a grain of salt. When you are starting your comments with "AYYYY LMAO" and admittedly take a pleasure in hoping to watch the company that fired you crumble, you're not exactly a neutral or reliable source.

baddox 11y ago
> The only rational argument people can make against the "purging" (of blatantly racist etc. subreddits) is the "slippery slope" argument, which is usually known as a fallacious logical device. Not at all true. I don't like any removal of content by reddit employees (as opposed to subreddit moderators) beyond what is required by law. Whether it leads to more and more removal in the future is irrelevant. I would like reddit to be a place for completely free, uncensored expression. And before the political philosophy experts pounce, I am well aware of the argument. It's not a free speech violation when it's a private company choosing what content to host. I'm not saying reddit doesn't have the right to censor. I'm just saying I would prefer that they didn't.
- austenallred 11y ago
  > I'm not saying reddit doesn't have the right to censor. I'm just saying I would prefer that they didn't. I'm genuinely curious as to why. Do you feel your experience on reddit is harmed if /r/coontown is gone? Or is it just the principle of the matter?
  - baddox 11y ago
    > Do you feel your experience on reddit is harmed if /r/coontown is gone? Not directly, of course. My experience on reddit isn't directly harmed if any community I don't visit is removed. But it would be pretty obviously unrealistic for me to propose that reddit remove all subreddits except for the couple of dozen that I'm subscribed to.
    - johrn 11y ago
      But there's obviously some middle ground between 'free-for-all' and 'only your subreddits' that allows for moderation of the subreddits that are literally evil.
      - baddox 11y ago
        Sure, there is plenty of middle ground. It's a continuum. I just personally prefer the free end of the continuum.
        fixermark 11y ago
        I think you still get the free end of the continuum if /r/coontown is gone.
        baddox 11y ago
        The discussion is not over whether to ban only /r/coontown.
        fixermark 11y ago
        But the discussion is also not over whether to ban most, all, or even some subreddit's. It's over a fairly targeted removal, though reddit doesn't have a rubric for targeting in the future, which understandably makes some people nervous---people who like a nice, ordered, clear set of rails to ride on. But this is social, and that's not how social works. It still doesn't take much common sense to guess at what's in and what's out. I mean, what we're basically seeing is this; Yishan Wong, 2012: "We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it." spez, 2015: Wow, that REALLY didn't work. So we're not going to do THAT anymore. Tune in on Thursday and we'll talk about what we'll do instead. Does this mean your favorite subreddits might get killed? Possibly. But probably not. And that's likely to be good enough for an awful lot of users. More importantly, "an Internet with a front page that doesn't have a CoonTown is a better internet" is a pretty easy assertion to buy.
- johrn 11y ago
  > I would like reddit to be a place for completely free, uncensored expression. This is nice in theory, but it basically requires defending the rights of hate groups to silence those they hate. It's hard to freely express yourself when there are people calling for your extermination, or treating everything you say as if it came from the mouth of a five year old.
  - baddox 11y ago
    Why would the targets of hate speech be in subreddits dedicated to that hate speech?
    - johrn 11y ago
      They wouldn't be, but neither is that hate speech limited to the subreddits that are dedicated for it. I am 100% certain that I could go to the comments of any top post on pics, videos, funny, games and probably a dozen other default subs and find some hate speech with a positive score. Remove the subreddits that these people call home, and they automatically feel less welcomed on the site.
      - baddox 11y ago
        > I am 100% certain that I could go to the comments of any top post on pics, videos, funny, games and probably a dozen other default subs and find some hate speech with a positive score. You're saying you could go look for hate speech and find it. That doesn't seem all that troubling to me. Don't go look for it, and you will find it much less frequently.
        johrn 11y ago
        Maybe it's not as troubling if it needs to be searched for. But it doesn't need to be searched for. It's everywhere on the defaults, that's the troubling part. You don't have to go to a specifically racist subreddit to see racism. You don't have to go to a specifically woman-hating subreddit to see misogyny. I'm saying that it is everywhere. Not "I could find some hatred in some submissions", but "I could find hatred in any submission".
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  So, why are you here at HN, which has much stricter guidelines and much more active moderators than reddit will ever have site-wide? Reddit is still vastly more "free" than HN, and yet...the caliber of conversation here is generally higher (not always, and the HN demographic has its blind spots), and I believe it is precisely because it has no tolerance for fools. In short, I don't care about racist's "right" to rant on reddit. They can go write it on the wall of the cave they live in, for all I care.
  - baddox 11y ago
    > So, why are you here at HN HN is roughly the equivalent of a single subreddit on reddit. I don't have a problem with individual subreddits with strict moderation, because those policies don't affect the policies of other subreddits. HN doesn't (as far as I know) intend to be a host for a plethora of communities each dedicated to a specific topic or hobby. > Reddit is still vastly more "free" than HN, and yet...the caliber of conversation here is generally higher (not always, and the HN demographic has its blind spots), and I believe it is precisely because it has no tolerance for fools. HN generally has high quality discussion, but so do many (mostly small) subreddits.
    - fixermark 11y ago
      Are those subreddits threatened by a ban on /r/fatpeoplehate? If not, there's very little to be concerned about.
      - mreiland 11y ago
        Perhaps a bit extreme, but the underlying point is applicable here. First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
        SwellJoe 11y ago
chc 11y ago
Not really. It seems like the Internet equivalent of burning books. Just because I think the content of the book is awful doesn't mean I'm in favor of book-burning. You might say, "Oh, we'll only burn books that are offensive" — but that is just as true for everyone who has ever burned books. There are many books that actually are awful and not worthy of any respect, but we still look askance at book-burning as a practice. Dwight Eisenhower initially supported purging communist books. But later, he had a change of heart, telling students: > Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship. > How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, and what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? It is almost a religion, albeit one of the nether regions. > And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn't America.
- fixermark 11y ago
  It's less like burning books and more like urban renewal. People don't consider reddit threads to be stores of historical knowledge; they're street-corners where people mingle. If those people are mingling to do illegal things or form hate mobs, the town is under no obligation to keep the street corner available to them. ... which, actually, may draw an interesting parallel between book burning and gentrification. Perhaps a topic for another day. ;)
tzs 11y ago
> HackerNews doesn't allow racism [...] HN is the equivalent of a single sub-reddit. Readers see the titles of all submissions that make it to the top pages or to the RSS feed they are using. They also see the user name that submitted the story, and the site it is from. This necessitates restrictions on content, because nearly everyone has some kind of content they do not want to read to the point that they will choose not to visit sites where they cannot avoid it. Without restrictions, it would be too much effort to pick out the things you are interested in from among the things that you find extremely distasteful or offensive that it just would not be worth the effort for most people. Reddit has sub-reddits. As long as an offensive sub-reddit is not made a default sub-reddit, and you do not subscribe to it, and you aren't subscribed to sub-reddits (or external sources) that discuss whether or not Reddit should allow offensive sub-reddits, you will rarely or never see that offensive sub-reddit. For example, I had no idea that /r/coontown existed until it was mentioned several times here on HN. Reddit would be best off in the long run, I think, if they set the line at legality under the laws applicable in whatever state they are incorporated, along with a no doxing and no FPH-like material, combined with a logical split of Reddit into two sets of sub-reddits: Prime Time Reddit (PTR) and Uncensored Reddit (UR). The two would share accounts, but only PTR shows up on your front page, and there would be a link to take you to a UR front page (or maybe an option to show UR top content after PTR content on a unified front page, with a separator between the two sections). Both would require (1) legality, and (2) no doxing and FPH-like behavior. PTR would in addition require that sub-reddits (including their topic, their acceptable submissions, and their comments) be things that would be acceptable if they were part of a US nationwide prime time television show. Advertisers would be able to specify whether their ads just go to PTR, just to UR, or both, and maybe there should also be separate Reddit Gold systems on the two.
- tptacek 11y ago
  By the standards of US prime time television, almost all of Reddit would need to be on UR, even the heavily moderated parts.
  - tzs 11y ago
    Yeah, at least for language. Fuck is a lot more common on Reddit than it is on prime time television. I probably should have went with US cable television, with the premium networks (HBO, Showtime, Starz, and so on) excluded, and with a more European approach to nudity and sex.

baddox 11y ago

> The only rational argument people can make against the "purging" (of blatantly racist etc. subreddits) is the "slippery slope" argument, which is usually known as a fallacious logical device. Not at all true. I don't like any removal of content by reddit employees (as opposed to subreddit moderators) beyond what is required by law. Whether it leads to more and more removal in the future is irrelevant. I would like reddit to be a place for completely free, uncensored expression. And before the political philosophy experts pounce, I am well aware of the argument. It's not a free speech violation when it's a private company choosing what content to host. I'm not saying reddit doesn't have the right to censor. I'm just saying I would prefer that they didn't.

austenallred 11y ago
> I'm not saying reddit doesn't have the right to censor. I'm just saying I would prefer that they didn't. I'm genuinely curious as to why. Do you feel your experience on reddit is harmed if /r/coontown is gone? Or is it just the principle of the matter?
- baddox 11y ago
  > Do you feel your experience on reddit is harmed if /r/coontown is gone? Not directly, of course. My experience on reddit isn't directly harmed if any community I don't visit is removed. But it would be pretty obviously unrealistic for me to propose that reddit remove all subreddits except for the couple of dozen that I'm subscribed to.
  - johrn 11y ago
    But there's obviously some middle ground between 'free-for-all' and 'only your subreddits' that allows for moderation of the subreddits that are literally evil.
    - baddox 11y ago
      Sure, there is plenty of middle ground. It's a continuum. I just personally prefer the free end of the continuum.
      - fixermark 11y ago
        I think you still get the free end of the continuum if /r/coontown is gone.
        baddox 11y ago
        The discussion is not over whether to ban only /r/coontown.
        fixermark 11y ago
        But the discussion is also not over whether to ban most, all, or even some subreddit's. It's over a fairly targeted removal, though reddit doesn't have a rubric for targeting in the future, which understandably makes some people nervous---people who like a nice, ordered, clear set of rails to ride on. But this is social, and that's not how social works. It still doesn't take much common sense to guess at what's in and what's out. I mean, what we're basically seeing is this; Yishan Wong, 2012: "We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it." spez, 2015: Wow, that REALLY didn't work. So we're not going to do THAT anymore. Tune in on Thursday and we'll talk about what we'll do instead. Does this mean your favorite subreddits might get killed? Possibly. But probably not. And that's likely to be good enough for an awful lot of users. More importantly, "an Internet with a front page that doesn't have a CoonTown is a better internet" is a pretty easy assertion to buy.
johrn 11y ago
> I would like reddit to be a place for completely free, uncensored expression. This is nice in theory, but it basically requires defending the rights of hate groups to silence those they hate. It's hard to freely express yourself when there are people calling for your extermination, or treating everything you say as if it came from the mouth of a five year old.
- baddox 11y ago
  Why would the targets of hate speech be in subreddits dedicated to that hate speech?
  - johrn 11y ago
    They wouldn't be, but neither is that hate speech limited to the subreddits that are dedicated for it. I am 100% certain that I could go to the comments of any top post on pics, videos, funny, games and probably a dozen other default subs and find some hate speech with a positive score. Remove the subreddits that these people call home, and they automatically feel less welcomed on the site.
    - baddox 11y ago
      > I am 100% certain that I could go to the comments of any top post on pics, videos, funny, games and probably a dozen other default subs and find some hate speech with a positive score. You're saying you could go look for hate speech and find it. That doesn't seem all that troubling to me. Don't go look for it, and you will find it much less frequently.
      - johrn 11y ago
        Maybe it's not as troubling if it needs to be searched for. But it doesn't need to be searched for. It's everywhere on the defaults, that's the troubling part. You don't have to go to a specifically racist subreddit to see racism. You don't have to go to a specifically woman-hating subreddit to see misogyny. I'm saying that it is everywhere. Not "I could find some hatred in some submissions", but "I could find hatred in any submission".
SwellJoe 11y ago
So, why are you here at HN, which has much stricter guidelines and much more active moderators than reddit will ever have site-wide? Reddit is still vastly more "free" than HN, and yet...the caliber of conversation here is generally higher (not always, and the HN demographic has its blind spots), and I believe it is precisely because it has no tolerance for fools. In short, I don't care about racist's "right" to rant on reddit. They can go write it on the wall of the cave they live in, for all I care.
- baddox 11y ago
  > So, why are you here at HN HN is roughly the equivalent of a single subreddit on reddit. I don't have a problem with individual subreddits with strict moderation, because those policies don't affect the policies of other subreddits. HN doesn't (as far as I know) intend to be a host for a plethora of communities each dedicated to a specific topic or hobby. > Reddit is still vastly more "free" than HN, and yet...the caliber of conversation here is generally higher (not always, and the HN demographic has its blind spots), and I believe it is precisely because it has no tolerance for fools. HN generally has high quality discussion, but so do many (mostly small) subreddits.
  - fixermark 11y ago
    Are those subreddits threatened by a ban on /r/fatpeoplehate? If not, there's very little to be concerned about.
    - mreiland 11y ago
      Perhaps a bit extreme, but the underlying point is applicable here. First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
      - SwellJoe 11y ago

chc 11y ago

Not really. It seems like the Internet equivalent of burning books. Just because I think the content of the book is awful doesn't mean I'm in favor of book-burning. You might say, "Oh, we'll only burn books that are offensive" — but that is just as true for everyone who has ever burned books. There are many books that actually are awful and not worthy of any respect, but we still look askance at book-burning as a practice. Dwight Eisenhower initially supported purging communist books. But later, he had a change of heart, telling students: > Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship. > How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, and what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? It is almost a religion, albeit one of the nether regions. > And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn't America.

fixermark 11y ago
It's less like burning books and more like urban renewal. People don't consider reddit threads to be stores of historical knowledge; they're street-corners where people mingle. If those people are mingling to do illegal things or form hate mobs, the town is under no obligation to keep the street corner available to them. ... which, actually, may draw an interesting parallel between book burning and gentrification. Perhaps a topic for another day. ;)

tzs 11y ago

> HackerNews doesn't allow racism [...] HN is the equivalent of a single sub-reddit. Readers see the titles of all submissions that make it to the top pages or to the RSS feed they are using. They also see the user name that submitted the story, and the site it is from. This necessitates restrictions on content, because nearly everyone has some kind of content they do not want to read to the point that they will choose not to visit sites where they cannot avoid it. Without restrictions, it would be too much effort to pick out the things you are interested in from among the things that you find extremely distasteful or offensive that it just would not be worth the effort for most people. Reddit has sub-reddits. As long as an offensive sub-reddit is not made a default sub-reddit, and you do not subscribe to it, and you aren't subscribed to sub-reddits (or external sources) that discuss whether or not Reddit should allow offensive sub-reddits, you will rarely or never see that offensive sub-reddit. For example, I had no idea that /r/coontown existed until it was mentioned several times here on HN. Reddit would be best off in the long run, I think, if they set the line at legality under the laws applicable in whatever state they are incorporated, along with a no doxing and no FPH-like material, combined with a logical split of Reddit into two sets of sub-reddits: Prime Time Reddit (PTR) and Uncensored Reddit (UR). The two would share accounts, but only PTR shows up on your front page, and there would be a link to take you to a UR front page (or maybe an option to show UR top content after PTR content on a unified front page, with a separator between the two sections). Both would require (1) legality, and (2) no doxing and FPH-like behavior. PTR would in addition require that sub-reddits (including their topic, their acceptable submissions, and their comments) be things that would be acceptable if they were part of a US nationwide prime time television show. Advertisers would be able to specify whether their ads just go to PTR, just to UR, or both, and maybe there should also be separate Reddit Gold systems on the two.

tptacek 11y ago
By the standards of US prime time television, almost all of Reddit would need to be on UR, even the heavily moderated parts.
- tzs 11y ago
  Yeah, at least for language. Fuck is a lot more common on Reddit than it is on prime time television. I probably should have went with US cable television, with the premium networks (HBO, Showtime, Starz, and so on) excluded, and with a more European approach to nudity and sex.