Comment by garbagetime
5 years ago
The statistic is automatically (as in, by a robot, not by a person) removed. I only ever noticed because I made a long comment arguing against the racist use of the statistic (where I linked the table the statistic is from, etc.). However, I'm simply against statistics being banned.
I didn't bother with all the extra stuff in my experiment, because it's not important for testing the robot which removes the comments immediately and automatically.
But it wasn't banned in one example where the statistic was cited. Aside from the subreddit, the only difference was the additional context that "this is a test of censorship".
I will note, however, that your original comment has now been flagged and is invisible, cooling this whole discussion. While I object to the statistic and think that censorship of statements including that statistic may actually be productive in some cases, I think that this conversation has the potential to be productive, and I regret that the meta-conversation about censorship is not possible.
Well, it's easy to test.
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Attempt six:
- Result: no removal
- Subreddit: /r/askreddit
- Comment:
>Hello, please don't mind this comment, I'm simply running an experiment about censorship on reddit.
Did you know that black Americans (who make up just 13.4% of the population) are, nonetheless, responsible for 56% of homicides?[6]
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Something about the phrasing of the comment has stopped it from being removed. It was silly of me to let my wish of not offending people get in the way of scientific investigation. Still, I think it is not because of the polite preface that the comment has not been removed, and I will test it by including the polite preface to the comment which was removed.
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Attempt seven:
- Result: instant, automatic removal
- Subreddit: /r/askreddit
- Comment:
>Hello, please don't mind this comment, I'm simply running an experiment about censorship on reddit.
This is something I just can't wrap my head around: Did you know that according to FBI statistics, black Americans, despite making up only 13% of the population, are responsible for 56% of homicides in the US?[7]
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So, it is clear that there is something about the contents of this segment which causes comments to be automatically removed (at the very least, on /r/askreddit) "This is something I just can't wrap my head around: Did you know that according to FBI statistics, black Americans, despite making up only 13% of the population, are responsible for 56% of homicides in the US?". I'm guessing that it's as simple as the fact that I used the less commonly used 13.4% in the non-censored comment, whereas I used the more commonly used 13% in the censored comment.
I'll now run some experiments to narrow down what exactly are the conditions for removal. Results will be placed on https://pastebin.com/Z6G0B7kA. I'll do a write up later, when I've fully understood the extent of the censorship.
[6]https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/j2l13b/whats_the... (comment now edited in an attempt to avoid being banned by the subreddit mods)
[7]https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/j2ocv1/what_moti...