8 ms·

Reddit Gearing Up to Ban or Quarantine the Alt Right Subreddit

39 points by lucodibidil 10y ago

67726e 10y ago
Everyone I don't like is Hitler!
- recursive 10y ago
  It's more like "Some of the people I don't like have various Hitler-esque tendencies".
  - 67726e 10y ago
    I mean, shit, Obama has consolidated a helluva lot of power. Has Americans killed extra-judicially. I don't call him Hitler.
  - nznsgndhm 10y ago
    >Donald Trump has poisoned our water supply, burned our crops, and delivered a plague unto our houses! >He has? >No, but are we gonna wait around until he does!?
- bbctol 10y ago
  If we actually thought they were Hitler, we'd be at war.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ryanbrunner 10y ago
  Usually when people make this comparison, it's a huge stretch and being done more for grandstanding than an attempt at genuine discussion. But when we're discussing a community that has an iron cross as it's logo and requires members read "The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem" prior to posting... At some point the comparison becomes valid.
- fao_ 10y ago
  You know? The only people I see spouting antisemitic comments turn out to be from the alt-right, or more correctly, fascist movement. If your movement is based upon, and shares many, many ideals with (Or contains people with) both fascist philosophies, and movements such as the neo-nazis, the KKK, etc. then it is correct to put you under that banner, no? The problem is, these philosophies are adopted because they are both poisonous and insidious. They cope very well with rational debate because the techniques employed manage to make whoever is attempting to use rational logic look like a fool. Not to mention, that these people tend to use throwaway accounts -- you can kick one for spamming someone with racism, but they will just move on to a new account and start again. This, coupled with the fact that these people feed on arguments, makes it difficult to moderate such a community. You cannot argue with toxic people, you cannot negotiate with them, because they will play you as the fool. You can really only use the banhammer and hope they don't try and call their friends into the game.
  - 67726e 10y ago
    I could easily claim the same about the left after their golden child lost.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- VikingCoder 10y ago
  I like to minimize the damage caused by hate speech by portraying my opponents as thoughtless brutes who compare everyone they don't like to Hitler!
alexpersian 10y ago
throw r/the_donald in there with them
- Shanea93 10y ago
  Yes! Lets silence the opinions of everyone we disagree with! Lets take away their places to talk so they have to skulk in the shadows! Lets pretend there's no merit to listening to the thoughts of millions of people! Why stop with removing their access to Reddit? Why not make it downright illegal to talk about it? Why don't we make it illegal to think about it, too? I'm exceptionally left-leaning and I don't agree with removing these people from Reddit, it's censorship of views we don't like, plain and simple. Are we really so childish that we believe that if we stop these people talking about it then the problem will go away? They'll just move elsewhere and common discourse will be more difficult, people will be more entombed in their own biased beliefs.
  - fao_ 10y ago
    See, the problem with all of this is that they get the 'left-wing' people to fight for them. These people have not lost anything but an outlet to abuse people, and spread their sexist, racist philosophies (If you disagree with this, try reading through Breitbart without being disgusted at the contents). Do not worry. These people still have their freedom of speech, they are free to spray paint swastikas in bathrooms and put threatening letters through the doors of American citizens, but they will no longer be able to preach their philosophies on Reddit.
    - Shanea93 10y ago
      But why should we not fight for them? I am just as angry about the thought of us being censored as I am of the thought of them being censored. It doesn't matter whether what they say disgusts me or not, I don't have the right to not be offended. People often use Reddit to find news, I believe that Reddit should have a duty to provide that service in an unbiased way without inflicting their own views on the people who use their service. All they should care about it is "is this illegal?" Yes, I understand that they're a company and not a government agency, it's of course just my opinion that they have such a duty.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jjawssd 10y ago
If Reddit can not handle free speech, Voat will. Once Voat is overrun by the enemies of free expression, someone else will take the helm and continue. Such is the nature of a free Internet.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  I would be perfectly happy if these "free speech lovers" were to decamp en masse for Voat.
  - jjawssd 10y ago
    Just because you disagree with their opinion does not mean you should want to kick them out. They are not acting upon their views in any way that affects you. Totally free expression is crucial and in no way will it affect you physically. I disagree with almost everything they stand for, but their presence is crucial for an open discussion of issues in our global societies.
    - chrisrhoden 10y ago
      Reddit is under no obligation to support, nurture, or pay for the resources required to keep this up. They are under no obligation to implicitly condone this content, as they have taken on an editorial role in the past and now anything they don't ban is in contrast to those things they have. As you pointed out, it's the web. There are many web hosts that will refuse you service for hosting pornography. That doesn't prevent anyone from finding one that will allow it.
      - mordocai 10y ago
        Technically you are 100% correct. They are definitely within their rights, as are twitter and facebook. The problem is that we've got a de facto (as opposed to de jure) "censorship" system going on where people with undesired opinions are being forced (whether they wanted it or not) into echo chambers. "Censorship" just forces people underground to talk amongst other people with the same opinions. While it has some kind of measurable effect on preventing impressionable people from being exposed to their opinions, it also prevents people from discussing alternative views with the ones who were "censored". This is a large part of the reason why everyone was blindsided by Trump, the trump supporters were largely either not speaking up due to social penalties for doing so or only talking on-line in forums where other people agreed with them. If the goal is to "defeat" the alt-right movement, then I don't think it is necessarily obvious that banning them is the right move. As I said though, maybe it is since it does limit exposure to their views which in theory limits their membership. Note: Scare quoted censorship due to it not being government run which is what people usually mean when they say censorship.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
> The Alt Right is a racial movement and has always been a racial movement. Race is at the very core of the alt right and there is absolutely no way to be alt right without discussing racial realism, especially from a white perspective Just because you rebrand racism as "racial realism" doesn't mean you aren't racist and Reddit has no appetite for hosting racist speech. Go start your own Reddit if you don't like it. That's the wonderful thing about the web, its easy to make your own discussion forums. I'm sure Voat will love these guys, meanwhile I don't have to deal with "racial realism" brigades and trolls on the subs I read. Seems like a win-win for all involved.
- jklinger410 10y ago
  >Just because you rebrand racism as "racial realism" doesn't mean you aren't racist and Reddit has no appetite for hosting racist speech. Why not? People have been rebranding racism for years.
tdkl 10y ago
Someone should explain the author the difference between racism and a stereotype (linked meme picture).
- fabian2k 10y ago
  Just read the comments of the OP in the linked meme thread. I don't want to repeat it here, but there is one that is as racist as they get (https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/comments/5d8qm6/time_to_stop_giving_away_our_hammers/da3wgte/ https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/comments/5d8qm6/time_to_st...). I would also consider the image racist in any case, it's just not the most racist thing in that thread.
vectorpush 10y ago
Who cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for moderation. For several years now I've seen this non-stop obsession with lambasting reddit as a shit-hole and a left-wing echo-chamber and a shit company run by amateurs and SJWs. Who cares? The overwhelming majority of redditors subsist on photos of animals and drawings of video game characters. Just leave if reddit isn't friendly to your particular proclivities. If you hate fat people, liberals, feminists and BLM activists there are many places on the internet where you can find common cause.
- xnemdncn 10y ago
  >Who cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for moderation. Except it's not that simple. There's a substantial amount of judicial precedent that you can't refuse service to customers just because you disagree with their ideology or background, otherwise it would be okay to refuse service to supporters of gay marriage for example. It's appalling that you would even suggest that.
  - psychometry 10y ago
    There is literally no "judicial precedent" for a website owner being disallowed from moderating user-submitted content. What are you talking about?
    - Alex3917 10y ago
      There actually are lots of safe harbor protections for common carriers. Lack of editorial oversight is why sites like YouTube can qualify for these protections, but sites like Gawker wouldn't be able to. (Even though they ultimately got shut down for ignoring a court order or whatever.)
      - ceejayoz 10y ago
        YouTube still takes down videos, comments, channels, etc., and restricts others by age/country/etc.
EasyTiger_ 10y ago
This thread is going to follow the predictable bizarre reasoning about how all 60,000,000+ Americans who voted Trump are racists because 0.01% of them are in the KKK. Can we PLEASE keep this shit off Hacker News?
lujim 10y ago
Yawn. No big surprise here, and it won't be a surprise when when the_donald is banned. Reddit users tend to be young and young people tend to lean left. It is by definition and echo chamber due to how quickly unpopular opinions are vaporized by downvoting. What would be more interesting is to see what subreddits are tolerated that promote excessively immoral or illegal behavior.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
h4pless 10y ago
Since when has a company enforcing their TOS been discussion worthy? Their content policy clearly outlines what is considered "Unwelcome Content" and it seems like the majority of the alt-right thread would be classified as "Violent Content" under Reddit's terms. I think a much more amusing enforcement of such policy would be for Twitter to ban Donald Trump, thereby also banning the @POTUS account for the term of his Presidency for "Abusive Behaviour" on Twitter such as openly harassing the cast of Hamilton. https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205701105 https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205701105 https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy#section_unwelcome_content https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy#section_unwelcome_... https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311 https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311
fatdog 10y ago
Left needed a new boogyman because the old ones were getting stale. "alt right" is a perfect candidate. If you believe people who agree with some of the alt-rightist views must be held accountable for the standard racists who use that worldview as cover, then logically you must also make it incumbent upon people of muslim faith to tug a forelock to "us enlightened folk" in shared outrage and be accountable for the extremists who act in their name, and for random jewish people to be accountable for settlements, for catholics to feel they owe you something for their Irish "freedom fighters," etc.
chiefalchemist 10y ago
The question is: Does "stopping" the speech encourage or mitigate IRL behavior / action? In addition, forcing ideas underground will likely strengthen the will and beliefs of the hardcore believers. That is, when you marginalize those who profess to be marginalized, you run the risk of enabling them. Sucks being Reddit but it might actually be all for the better, as ugly as it is.

39 points by lucodibidil 10y ago

67726e 10y ago

Everyone I don't like is Hitler!

recursive 10y ago
It's more like "Some of the people I don't like have various Hitler-esque tendencies".
- 67726e 10y ago
  I mean, shit, Obama has consolidated a helluva lot of power. Has Americans killed extra-judicially. I don't call him Hitler.
- nznsgndhm 10y ago
  >Donald Trump has poisoned our water supply, burned our crops, and delivered a plague unto our houses! >He has? >No, but are we gonna wait around until he does!?
bbctol 10y ago
If we actually thought they were Hitler, we'd be at war.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ryanbrunner 10y ago
Usually when people make this comparison, it's a huge stretch and being done more for grandstanding than an attempt at genuine discussion. But when we're discussing a community that has an iron cross as it's logo and requires members read "The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem" prior to posting... At some point the comparison becomes valid.
fao_ 10y ago
You know? The only people I see spouting antisemitic comments turn out to be from the alt-right, or more correctly, fascist movement. If your movement is based upon, and shares many, many ideals with (Or contains people with) both fascist philosophies, and movements such as the neo-nazis, the KKK, etc. then it is correct to put you under that banner, no? The problem is, these philosophies are adopted because they are both poisonous and insidious. They cope very well with rational debate because the techniques employed manage to make whoever is attempting to use rational logic look like a fool. Not to mention, that these people tend to use throwaway accounts -- you can kick one for spamming someone with racism, but they will just move on to a new account and start again. This, coupled with the fact that these people feed on arguments, makes it difficult to moderate such a community. You cannot argue with toxic people, you cannot negotiate with them, because they will play you as the fool. You can really only use the banhammer and hope they don't try and call their friends into the game.
- 67726e 10y ago
  I could easily claim the same about the left after their golden child lost.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
VikingCoder 10y ago
I like to minimize the damage caused by hate speech by portraying my opponents as thoughtless brutes who compare everyone they don't like to Hitler!

alexpersian 10y ago

throw r/the_donald in there with them

Shanea93 10y ago
Yes! Lets silence the opinions of everyone we disagree with! Lets take away their places to talk so they have to skulk in the shadows! Lets pretend there's no merit to listening to the thoughts of millions of people! Why stop with removing their access to Reddit? Why not make it downright illegal to talk about it? Why don't we make it illegal to think about it, too? I'm exceptionally left-leaning and I don't agree with removing these people from Reddit, it's censorship of views we don't like, plain and simple. Are we really so childish that we believe that if we stop these people talking about it then the problem will go away? They'll just move elsewhere and common discourse will be more difficult, people will be more entombed in their own biased beliefs.
- fao_ 10y ago
  See, the problem with all of this is that they get the 'left-wing' people to fight for them. These people have not lost anything but an outlet to abuse people, and spread their sexist, racist philosophies (If you disagree with this, try reading through Breitbart without being disgusted at the contents). Do not worry. These people still have their freedom of speech, they are free to spray paint swastikas in bathrooms and put threatening letters through the doors of American citizens, but they will no longer be able to preach their philosophies on Reddit.
  - Shanea93 10y ago
    But why should we not fight for them? I am just as angry about the thought of us being censored as I am of the thought of them being censored. It doesn't matter whether what they say disgusts me or not, I don't have the right to not be offended. People often use Reddit to find news, I believe that Reddit should have a duty to provide that service in an unbiased way without inflicting their own views on the people who use their service. All they should care about it is "is this illegal?" Yes, I understand that they're a company and not a government agency, it's of course just my opinion that they have such a duty.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jjawssd 10y ago

If Reddit can not handle free speech, Voat will. Once Voat is overrun by the enemies of free expression, someone else will take the helm and continue. Such is the nature of a free Internet.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
I would be perfectly happy if these "free speech lovers" were to decamp en masse for Voat.
- jjawssd 10y ago
  Just because you disagree with their opinion does not mean you should want to kick them out. They are not acting upon their views in any way that affects you. Totally free expression is crucial and in no way will it affect you physically. I disagree with almost everything they stand for, but their presence is crucial for an open discussion of issues in our global societies.
  - chrisrhoden 10y ago
    Reddit is under no obligation to support, nurture, or pay for the resources required to keep this up. They are under no obligation to implicitly condone this content, as they have taken on an editorial role in the past and now anything they don't ban is in contrast to those things they have. As you pointed out, it's the web. There are many web hosts that will refuse you service for hosting pornography. That doesn't prevent anyone from finding one that will allow it.
    - mordocai 10y ago
      Technically you are 100% correct. They are definitely within their rights, as are twitter and facebook. The problem is that we've got a de facto (as opposed to de jure) "censorship" system going on where people with undesired opinions are being forced (whether they wanted it or not) into echo chambers. "Censorship" just forces people underground to talk amongst other people with the same opinions. While it has some kind of measurable effect on preventing impressionable people from being exposed to their opinions, it also prevents people from discussing alternative views with the ones who were "censored". This is a large part of the reason why everyone was blindsided by Trump, the trump supporters were largely either not speaking up due to social penalties for doing so or only talking on-line in forums where other people agreed with them. If the goal is to "defeat" the alt-right movement, then I don't think it is necessarily obvious that banning them is the right move. As I said though, maybe it is since it does limit exposure to their views which in theory limits their membership. Note: Scare quoted censorship due to it not being government run which is what people usually mean when they say censorship.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

> The Alt Right is a racial movement and has always been a racial movement. Race is at the very core of the alt right and there is absolutely no way to be alt right without discussing racial realism, especially from a white perspective Just because you rebrand racism as "racial realism" doesn't mean you aren't racist and Reddit has no appetite for hosting racist speech. Go start your own Reddit if you don't like it. That's the wonderful thing about the web, its easy to make your own discussion forums. I'm sure Voat will love these guys, meanwhile I don't have to deal with "racial realism" brigades and trolls on the subs I read. Seems like a win-win for all involved.

jklinger410 10y ago
>Just because you rebrand racism as "racial realism" doesn't mean you aren't racist and Reddit has no appetite for hosting racist speech. Why not? People have been rebranding racism for years.

tdkl 10y ago

Someone should explain the author the difference between racism and a stereotype (linked meme picture).

fabian2k 10y ago
Just read the comments of the OP in the linked meme thread. I don't want to repeat it here, but there is one that is as racist as they get (https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/comments/5d8qm6/time_to_stop_giving_away_our_hammers/da3wgte/ https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/comments/5d8qm6/time_to_st...). I would also consider the image racist in any case, it's just not the most racist thing in that thread.

vectorpush 10y ago

Who cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for moderation. For several years now I've seen this non-stop obsession with lambasting reddit as a shit-hole and a left-wing echo-chamber and a shit company run by amateurs and SJWs. Who cares? The overwhelming majority of redditors subsist on photos of animals and drawings of video game characters. Just leave if reddit isn't friendly to your particular proclivities. If you hate fat people, liberals, feminists and BLM activists there are many places on the internet where you can find common cause.

xnemdncn 10y ago
>Who cares? Reddit is a private company, they can set their own standards for moderation. Except it's not that simple. There's a substantial amount of judicial precedent that you can't refuse service to customers just because you disagree with their ideology or background, otherwise it would be okay to refuse service to supporters of gay marriage for example. It's appalling that you would even suggest that.
- psychometry 10y ago
  There is literally no "judicial precedent" for a website owner being disallowed from moderating user-submitted content. What are you talking about?
  - Alex3917 10y ago
    There actually are lots of safe harbor protections for common carriers. Lack of editorial oversight is why sites like YouTube can qualify for these protections, but sites like Gawker wouldn't be able to. (Even though they ultimately got shut down for ignoring a court order or whatever.)
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      YouTube still takes down videos, comments, channels, etc., and restricts others by age/country/etc.

EasyTiger_ 10y ago

This thread is going to follow the predictable bizarre reasoning about how all 60,000,000+ Americans who voted Trump are racists because 0.01% of them are in the KKK. Can we PLEASE keep this shit off Hacker News?

lujim 10y ago

Yawn. No big surprise here, and it won't be a surprise when when the_donald is banned. Reddit users tend to be young and young people tend to lean left. It is by definition and echo chamber due to how quickly unpopular opinions are vaporized by downvoting. What would be more interesting is to see what subreddits are tolerated that promote excessively immoral or illegal behavior.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

h4pless 10y ago

Since when has a company enforcing their TOS been discussion worthy? Their content policy clearly outlines what is considered "Unwelcome Content" and it seems like the majority of the alt-right thread would be classified as "Violent Content" under Reddit's terms. I think a much more amusing enforcement of such policy would be for Twitter to ban Donald Trump, thereby also banning the @POTUS account for the term of his Presidency for "Abusive Behaviour" on Twitter such as openly harassing the cast of Hamilton. https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205701105 https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205701105 https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy#section_unwelcome_content https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy#section_unwelcome_... https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311 https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311

fatdog 10y ago

Left needed a new boogyman because the old ones were getting stale. "alt right" is a perfect candidate. If you believe people who agree with some of the alt-rightist views must be held accountable for the standard racists who use that worldview as cover, then logically you must also make it incumbent upon people of muslim faith to tug a forelock to "us enlightened folk" in shared outrage and be accountable for the extremists who act in their name, and for random jewish people to be accountable for settlements, for catholics to feel they owe you something for their Irish "freedom fighters," etc.

chiefalchemist 10y ago

The question is: Does "stopping" the speech encourage or mitigate IRL behavior / action? In addition, forcing ideas underground will likely strengthen the will and beliefs of the hardcore believers. That is, when you marginalize those who profess to be marginalized, you run the risk of enabling them. Sucks being Reddit but it might actually be all for the better, as ugly as it is.