>They banned the_donald (which, yes, was spammy, but it seemed to be organic
I used to frequent /r/t_d when it was created, before the Republican primaries for the 2016 election. I visited every day because I was absolutely astonished at the gigantic marketing effort behind it. I had never seen anything like that before, and haven't since. It probably had a team of dozens or hundreds of Russians behind it, creating memes and shitposting on a payroll. And it obviously was 100% inorganic.
I'm actually ok with reddit banning it and taking sides in political conflict. I just wish they didn't pretend to be unbiased when it's made it a useless site for discussing current reality.
Edit: to be clear, I'm more concerned about how russia was basically banned from the site but worldnews itself seems like the primary fountain of western astroturfing on the internet. No matter your opinion of putin, that is extremely unhealthy for productive discourse. I don't care about american domestic politics.
Who decides what "hate" is though? Does it switch with every administration?
Free speech, including "hate speech" should be allowed, as long as it doesn't violate the law (calls to violence, etc)
The particular problem is said speech quite often leads to calls of violence. And when a few people get banned for that you get dog whistles, sentences that are encoded calls for violence. Eventually the new slang is recognized for being violent and then it looks like the site has allowed calls of violence for months.
A short version of this is, if you let a nazi come to your bar, you have a nazi bar.
"Free speech" means you have freedom from retribution from the government. It doesn't mean your fellow citizens need to stand there and listen to your shit, nor does it mean you are entitled to any sort of platform or megaphone. It means you can scream on the side of the road into the ether and you won't be arrested for it.
I agree that free speech is free speech, the private org that runs the platform has a veto, the assumption that these platforms are the equivilant of stepping into the street to stand on a box is a not realistic.
Even HN is only quasi-free speech, there are rules that will get one censored.
If you love freedom, there are mailing lists and other platforms but they arnt as high on dopamine and the audience gets a little bit more sketch.
>They banned the_donald (which, yes, was spammy, but it seemed to be organic
I used to frequent /r/t_d when it was created, before the Republican primaries for the 2016 election. I visited every day because I was absolutely astonished at the gigantic marketing effort behind it. I had never seen anything like that before, and haven't since. It probably had a team of dozens or hundreds of Russians behind it, creating memes and shitposting on a payroll. And it obviously was 100% inorganic.
I'm actually ok with reddit banning it and taking sides in political conflict. I just wish they didn't pretend to be unbiased when it's made it a useless site for discussing current reality.
Edit: to be clear, I'm more concerned about how russia was basically banned from the site but worldnews itself seems like the primary fountain of western astroturfing on the internet. No matter your opinion of putin, that is extremely unhealthy for productive discourse. I don't care about american domestic politics.
I don't think the problem was spam content it was hate content. Hate can be organic
Who decides what "hate" is though? Does it switch with every administration? Free speech, including "hate speech" should be allowed, as long as it doesn't violate the law (calls to violence, etc)
"Everything I disagree with is hate speech"
Reddit is filled with calls to violence, I would say it's gotten quite worse since. What's changed is that it all comes from one side now.
When you curate the echo chamber, the calls start coming from inside the house.
The particular problem is said speech quite often leads to calls of violence. And when a few people get banned for that you get dog whistles, sentences that are encoded calls for violence. Eventually the new slang is recognized for being violent and then it looks like the site has allowed calls of violence for months.
A short version of this is, if you let a nazi come to your bar, you have a nazi bar.
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It's really not that hard to identify hate. We don't have to engage in epistemology
"Free speech" means you have freedom from retribution from the government. It doesn't mean your fellow citizens need to stand there and listen to your shit, nor does it mean you are entitled to any sort of platform or megaphone. It means you can scream on the side of the road into the ether and you won't be arrested for it.
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I agree that free speech is free speech, the private org that runs the platform has a veto, the assumption that these platforms are the equivilant of stepping into the street to stand on a box is a not realistic.
Even HN is only quasi-free speech, there are rules that will get one censored.
If you love freedom, there are mailing lists and other platforms but they arnt as high on dopamine and the audience gets a little bit more sketch.
1 reply →