June 11, 2015

Reddit shuts down 5 subreddits, including "Fat People Hate," "to prevent harassment."

"Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform."
We want as little involvement as possible in managing these interactions but will be involved when needed to protect privacy and free expression, and to prevent harassment. It is not easy to balance these values, especially as the Internet evolves. We are learning and hopefully improving as we move forward. We want to be open about our involvement: We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don’t take action. We’re banning behavior, not ideas.
 One of the best comments at that post — management announcing the new policy — is "What you just did:"

40 comments:

Chris N said...

As I'm reading your front page, in the bar right there's a 'Gwynnie Bee' 'plus-sized' ladies clothing ad.

SociallyExtinct said...

The Social Justice Warriors ramp up their stranglehold of all that was holy and free!

Anonymous said...

Ban behavior, not idea. Anything written down is an idea, idiotic, may be, hateful, may be. Fat people don't have to read them.

Is that Ellen Pao at the helm? Ban harassment. Ban bitchiness. Ban anything little Ellen doesn't like.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Now that my middle-aged skin hangs slack when I'm doing my planks, I'm thinking that maybe it's about time to get fat again.

Anonymous said...

SociallyExtinct said...
The Social Justice Warriors ramp up their stranglehold of all that was holy and free!

Nothing is free. Facebook is not free, Reddit is not free. Join them, they sell your name, your friends' names and make bundles, i.e. they whore you out without you knowing it. They also track you down via your cell phones. My antennas go up when something is "free".

If you mean free speech. It died long ago.

Known Unknown said...

Exactly. You knew where the bad speech was and how easily to avoid it. Now, you don't. It might be lurking on reddit.com/r/cakewrecks or reddit.com/r/spatulaporn

SociallyExtinct said...

elkh1:

Absolute deconstruction of all concepts renders all debate useless if you extend it that far. Of course "freedom" is just another word for something humanly impossible, but I didn't intend freedom to be construed as any earthbound, humanly-limited ideal at all. And definitely not in the monetary context :)

Laslo Spatula said...

Pretty soon you won't even be able to shout 'anal sex' in a crowded theater.

I am Laslo.

Michael K said...

Fortunately, I have never seen reddit and have no desire to do so.

Matt Sablan said...

So, are the Reddit communities that posted George Zimmerman's family's address going to get banned, or any of the many doxxing communities on Reddit?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

If rioting is the language of the unheard...

What kind of "behavior" at Reddit could possibly be so damming as to compel a ban?

Free Reddit!

BarrySanders20 said...

There's that word again -- authentic

Abdul Abulbul Amir said...

Censorship is fun and easy.

Known Unknown said...

OT (Sort-of): Professor, have you any viewpoint on the Reason.com grand jury subpoena? I'd like to hear your legal analysis.

Monkeyboy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ann Althouse said...

"Professor, have you any viewpoint on the Reason.com grand jury subpoena? I'd like to hear your legal analysis."

I have called the police over threats like that against me. I think the police are entitled to investigate threats made by people who are trying to hide their identity and I don't see what kind of privilege Reason has to participate in hiding these identities. The legal question is about whether the commenters were at least reckless in saying something that would cause the target to fear serious violence. Offhand I'd say that they weren't.

MayBee said...

Hmmm....it seems the Reddit re-do is going as one would imagine

Ashe Schow ‏@AsheSchow 23m23 minutes ago
.@reddit mods on r/nottheonion reason for removing the article was that it was “tabloid news”
Embedded image permalink
View photo 34 retweets 15 favorites
Reply Retweet34 Favorite15
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It was a story about a man who passed out at a party and given oral sex was then accused of sex assault

Monkeyboy said...

Reddit's new CEO is Ellen Pao, I knew when they announced reddit being a "safe Space" they were doomed. Now popular boards that do the same (r/peopleofwalmart) will have to go and they lose more viewers, or they start with the "no racism or sexism without power" reasons. Most users should see through that.

I like the graphic because it's similar to what happened when 4chan shadow banned a bunch of gamergaters. Instead of being contained the channers went to twitter and met the SWJs coming out of tubmlr. They rolled the SWJs like a Mongol horde. It was so bad that twitter began pre-blocking people's feeds. So long term Twitter may have issues as well. (edited for readability)

Kevin said...

You will follow the dictates of Chairman Pao!

Join the Redditor Guards!

Sertorius said...

Very interesting article about Ellen Pao and her husband. Not people I'd like to work for.

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/scandal/2013/03/buddy-fletcher-ellen-pao

John said...

This just shows why you never hire a Progressive if you can possibly avoid it. Reddit's business model is based on the concept that they will host anything no matter how offensive as long as it is not illegal. A normal person who found this model objectionable wouldn't work for Reddit. Progressives like Pao, however, are not normal people. They are totalitarian fanatics. So Pao being a Progressive, sought out the job of CEO and is now proceeding to destroy the company because its business model conflicts with her ideology. If Reddit ends up bankrupt, which they will if they don't fire her, the company will have gotten exactly what it deserves for hiring a Progressive as its CEO.

Anonymous said...

Pao and her husband should be in jail.

Though this has Marc Andreessen's fingerprints all over it.

President-Mom-Jeans said...

Hurray!

Now Bitchtits Mahal will be free of shaming and harassment on Reddit!

Yah for censorship!

Anonymous said...

This reminds me, I have to delete my Reddit account. Thanks, Pao!

Louis said...

I enjoy Reddit. I don't use any of the hate sub-reddits myself but I suspect a move like this is a harbinger of the end of the site.

Interesting,not crazy said...

They banned climate change realists from commenting several months ago.Alarmists only allowed.

rhhardin said...

Commenters are angels. Angelos, = Gk messenger.

Tarrou said...

Apparently redditors are crashing Voat.co. Man the lifeboats!

jr565 said...

Harrasment=saying things that make people uncomfortable or disagreeing with an opinion that all righteous people must hold. Which are coincidentally the positions that liberals hold.

tim in vermont said...

It can't be that hard to replicate the old Reddit on a new free platform.

I don't like the kinds of hateful speech you often see, and I think that death threats are probably over the top as speech, but human speech includes so many components of irony, hyperbole, and plain old sarcasm, and to try to police that is a hopeless task and not a good idea even were it possible.

Could you imagine an enforceable law that all web comments must be interpreted as literal? For one thing, we could have a lot of liberals up on charges of advocacy of genocide against conservatives.

furious_a said...

They rolled the SWJs like a Mongol horde.

So what's the gamergater's secret? Everyone else the SJWs assault gets fed up, frighthened or fired.

President-Mom-Jeans said...

"So what's the gamergater's secret? Everyone else the SJWs assault gets fed up, frighthened or fired."

They give zero fucks.

richard mcenroe said...

Authentic dialogue = Approved dialogue. F*** that noise.

And over at Vox they're trying to say that using the phrase "you guys" is a sexist microaggression.

Mark said...

Could you imagine an enforceable law that all web comments must be interpreted as literal? For one thing, we could have a lot of liberals up on charges of advocacy of genocide against conservatives.

Which is why all institutional thought policing ends with the institution putting the well-meaning people who most enthusiastically supported it against the wall first.

eddie willers said...

Very interesting article about Ellen Pao and her husband. Not people I'd like to work for.

That is one sick "couple".

Rick said...

furious_a said...

So what's the gamergater's secret? Everyone else the SJWs assault gets fed up, frighthened or fired.


1. The lack of institutions for the SJWs to control, ease of gamers replacing the quasi-institutions like kotaku / gaming media who submit to SJW control.

2. Anonymity.

Aussie Pundit said...

Don't worry, they'll cleanse reddit of those red dots, and many other pesky dots, in due course. That picture's just a snapshot of a work in progress.

Michael K said...

"Reddit's new CEO is Ellen Pao, I knew when they announced reddit being a "safe Space" they were doomed."

Yeah, I just figured that out. Oh well. Firefox is down big time since they forced out Eich.

Join the queue.

Guildofcannonballs said...

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/39h3y5/ama_request_ellen_pao_reddit_ceo/

Fen said...

So what's the gamergater's secret? Everyone else the SJWs assault gets fed up, frighthened or fired.

Have you ever been to a gamer forums? Makes the dustups here seem cute.

Those guys will go 10 rounds over whether some item or power needs to nerfed/buffed. And they'll back up their claims like a clerk working for Scalia. The SJWs picked the wrong fricken crowd to bully.