Comment by garbagetime

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...