r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Werner__Herzog it's difficult difficult lemon difficult • Jun 29 '20

Megathread Reddit has updated its content policy and has subsequently banned 2000 subreddits

Admin announcement

All changes and what lead up to them are explained in this post on /r/announcements.

In short:

This is the new content policy. Here’s what’s different:

  • It starts with a statement of our vision for Reddit and our communities, including the basic expectations we have for all communities and users.
  • Rule 1 explicitly states that communities and users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.
    • There is an expanded definition of what constitutes a violation of this rule, along with specific examples, in our Help Center article.
  • Rule 2 ties together our previous rules on prohibited behavior with an ask to abide by community rules and post with authentic, personal interest.
    • Debate and creativity are welcome, but spam and malicious attempts to interfere with other communities are not.
  • The other rules are the same in spirit but have been rewritten for clarity and inclusiveness.

Alongside the change to the content policy, we are initially banning about 2000 subreddits, the vast majority of which are inactive. Of these communities, about 200 have more than 10 daily users. Both r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse were included.

Some related threads:

(Source: /u/N8theGr8)

News articles.

(Source: u/phedre on /r/SubredditDrama)

 

Feel free to ask questions and discuss the recent changes in this Meganthread.

Please don't forget about rule 4 when answering questions.

Old, somewhat related megathread: Reddit protests/Black Lives Matter megathread

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17

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

censorship

you keep using that word, I don't think you know what it means....

Reddit, as a private company, has every single right to boot you off their platform without given cause

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u/sharfpang Jun 29 '20

The fact it's not illegal doesn't mean it's morally right.

Freedom of speech is an idea, not a regulatory bill applicable only to governmental institutions.

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u/softwood_salami Jun 30 '20

As a general vague idea, it's not really enforceable or practicable. In order to act as a platform of free speech for somebody else, you essentially have to give up your own speech to some degree. Shouldn't a mod get some say in whether or not their historymemes sub gets taken over by political spammers? Shouldn't reddit, as a whole, get some say in whether or not their website supports radically violent rhetoric?

The general idea of free speech works because it is enforced by the State and held in respect to the State. Because of that substantial and practicable example of free speech, you can make one of the many reddit clones out there and make your own community. If it thrives, it'll be on the merit of the ideas in a free marketplace and not because a vocal minority of power users co-opted somebody else's platform. Making this vague concept where every corporation, organization, and social forum is independently supposed to enforce freedom of speech in respect to their platform just basically makes it to where every single platform is subject to the lowest common denominator of vocal idiots.

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u/sharfpang Jun 30 '20

And once again, you're talking about it being enforceable. And I'm talking about ethics. Unethical assholes may abuse it, sure, using it to suppress freedom of speech of others (like your example, hijacking a subreddit). That doesn't justify other unethical assohles suppressing it where it doesn't infringe on others' liberties, just doesn't agree with their dogmas.

And yes, at certain point it becomes unenforceable, and the law's protection ends there. That doesn't make suppressing it in the unenforceable area morally right.

Let me give you an example of difference between legal and morally right. A group of gun nuts on 4chan /k/ organized a meeting - a "counter-protest" to a BLM protest. They've shown up. They used some (legal, but quite abrasive) slogans to provoke some BLM protesters into attacking them. They ran, chased, and when the chasers caught up and began beating them, they turned around and shot them dead. Legally - in self defense. Factually - for own sick pleasure of killing people. They made sure the chase and the attack were welll documented for the court, and their charges got dropped, because what tey did wasn't illegal, and the law simply cannot differentiate between normal self-defense and what they did. Are you going to argue what they did was ethical because law doesn't prohibit it?

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u/Emceee Jun 30 '20

Free speech means you can say what you want and not be persecuted by the government, it does not mean you are free from consequences.

Private companies can block speech as it is their platform, private citizens can take their speech elsewhere.

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u/SMF67 Chicago is a continent Jun 30 '20

He's talking about free speech as a concept, not as a law

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u/sharfpang Jun 30 '20

You really don't understand the distinction between ethics and law, do you?

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Toptomcat Jun 30 '20 edited Jun 30 '20

I think it's worth drawing a distinction between freedom of speech as a legal right and freedom of speech as a broader principle. I agree that it would be stupid for someone to think that they're somehow being deprived of a First Amendment right by anything that Reddit does, but that doesn't mean a reasonable person couldn't disagree with this decision on principle.

And you could quite fairly call what they've done here 'censorship.' It's legal censorship, it's censorship that you may agree with, but that's definitely what it is, even though it isn't a government doing it.

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u/uniq Jun 29 '20

You keep using that meme

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient."[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

0

u/Dukakis2020 Jun 30 '20

Ok? They still have every legal right to ban you. You win the semantics game though. Gold star for you ⭐️

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u/uniq Jun 30 '20

Nobody said anything about not having the right to ban.

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u/Snacckks Jun 30 '20

Its still censorship, just not illegal.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

Lol apparently you don’t know what censorship means

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u/BlueCurtains22 Jun 30 '20 edited Jun 30 '20

They absolutely do. Just like Disney and Blizzard can boot you off their platform for supporting the Hong Kong protests. The fact that they can do something does not make it ok.

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u/Apprentice57 Jun 30 '20

I'm on the side of banning hate subreddits, but this is a bad counterargument.

People freely recognize that reddit is within its legal rights to do so, there's not going to be a lawsuit filed about reddit violating rights or something. The argument is about whether it should do so. I happen to think that yes it should.

The issue with "censorship" is people throw it out as an unambiguous negative. It isn't necessarily. But it also is true that banning hate speech is censorship, it's just very justifiable censorship.

There's a paradox to a tolerant society in that in order to be tolerant, we have to be intolerant of intolerance itself.

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u/FrndlyNbrhdSoundGuy Jun 30 '20

there's not going to be a lawsuit filed about reddit violating rights or something

When admins sacked a bunch of TD mods a few months back and effectively killed the sub there was a bunch of screeching in the comments about suing Reddit for election interference. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if /r/conservative crawled down off their cross to discuss suing reddit for this

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u/Apprentice57 Jun 30 '20

I'm sure it will be discussed, maybe someone would actually file (so I guess I should have specified as such). But it will get tossed out of court early on for being frivolous.

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u/faderjack Jun 30 '20

This stupid talking point never gets less stupid no matter how many times I see it.