Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
See, if Stormfront is promoting violent genocidal ideology like Nazism I think they should be removed from the web. Inciting violence should be universally illegal
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
See, if Stormfront is promoting violent genocidal ideology like Nazism I think they should be removed from the web. Inciting violence should be universally illegal
You have to be really careful with bans like this, as this very thread has people disagreeing what violence is, and it's not that many steps to banning progressive causes because someone has lobbied to get them identified as violent.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
See, if Stormfront is promoting violent genocidal ideology like Nazism I think they should be removed from the web. Inciting violence should be universally illegal
You have to be really careful with bans like this, as this very thread has people disagreeing what violence is, and it's not that many steps to banning progressive causes because someone has lobbied to get them identified as violent.
I mean violence resulting in death, which is the aim of identifiable ideologies of specific groups of people such as National Socialism and Nazism which still exists in the USA
See, if Stormfront is promoting violent genocidal ideology like Nazism I think they should be removed from the web. Inciting violence should be universally illegal
You have to be really careful with bans like this, as this very thread has people disagreeing what violence is, and it's not that many steps to banning progressive causes because someone has lobbied to get them identified as violent.
I mean violence resulting in death, which is the aim of identifiable ideologies of specific groups of people such as the Nazi Party which still officially exists in the USA as a political party
I promise you that people would be rushing to put the Pro-Choice movement, BLM, and other causes on that list.
See, if Stormfront is promoting violent genocidal ideology like Nazism I think they should be removed from the web. Inciting violence should be universally illegal
You have to be really careful with bans like this, as this very thread has people disagreeing what violence is, and it's not that many steps to banning progressive causes because someone has lobbied to get them identified as violent.
I mean violence resulting in death, which is the aim of identifiable ideologies of specific groups of people such as National Socialism and Nazism which still exists in the USA
Speech directly inciting people to kill other people is already illegal. I can pretty much assure you that all these groups work with some caution to make sure there is at least some amount of space between them and where the law would allow the FBI to arrest them, in their public speech at least. Germany has some of the strongest anti nazi laws which exist in the world (you aren't even allowed to say, dress up as a nazi to mock them, or show their symbols in media other than in a clearly identifiable historical context) and they still have PLENTY of nazis. They just use lots of viking and norse imagery rather than their classic skins.
See, if Stormfront is promoting violent genocidal ideology like Nazism I think they should be removed from the web. Inciting violence should be universally illegal
This isn't on topic. We're talking about online communities and their policies wrt racist speech.
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
See, if Stormfront is promoting violent genocidal ideology like Nazism I think they should be removed from the web. Inciting violence should be universally illegal
You have to be really careful with bans like this, as this very thread has people disagreeing what violence is, and it's not that many steps to banning progressive causes because someone has lobbied to get them identified as violent.
I mean violence resulting in death, which is the aim of identifiable ideologies of specific groups of people such as the Nazi Party which still officially exists in the USA as a political party
I promise you that people would be rushing to put the Pro-Choice movement, BLM, and other causes on that list.
Pro-Choice and BLM are not comparable to Nazism. Ignorance of the past isn't illegal, promotion of political organizations that have committed documentable genocide should be in any online community as a default
I think you have to be pragmatic about restricting these communities. You can't just act on principle.
Banning slurs is one thing, but removing the Republican and Conservative communities will not have a positive effect. It won't help prevent racism or bigotry from propagating. It is a broad, politically charged action, and it will probably just energize the right against the left's tyrannous political correctness and other such rhetoric.
When the sites in question are pillars of the web, you have to think of their effects differently from other private decision makers, I think
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
And this is where I get off the train. If only one political ideology is permissible, we might as well pack up this whole Constitutional Republic thing.
It continues to amaze me how many will advocate for "benevolent" single-party rule, as long as they get to decide what "benevolent" means. I get that this is a decidedly left-leaning board, but did we really just jump from, "reddit should get rid of neo-nazi subs" to "delete r/Republican"?
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
+24
Options
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
I think I'm largely in support of we, the public, deeming certain things like obvious racism not acceptable in public discourse, and putting pressure on forums to disallow those things.
Massive hypocrite that I am, tho, I would not support certain other things being disallowed, despite them also being things.
While I doubt I can force Reddit to change their stance on racism, I can certainly disapprove of it, and I also am comfortable disapproving of any potential calls to ban stuff I think is good.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
"Let's ban anything thats embraced racism" is gonna eat up way more half the political spectrum my man
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
"Let's ban anything thats embraced racism" is gonna eat up way more half the political spectrum my man
Active moderation and a real policy to combat harassment and harm would be needed to keep some communities open.
Reddit isn't interested in making all subreddits inclusive and "safe" (in the sense that you can have a discussion without death threats).
Here, we can have those discussions and disagree very strongly without fear of someone calling for our deaths.
I think that's a choice reddit gets to make but it's a bad choice.
As always, the government has no place to step in. The "public" have the power here and targeting the money is the only way to get reddit to change.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Where's the line? Terrorist watch lists in the US are undoubtedly racist, should Reddit ban people who, say, think that being on such a list should curtail 2nd amendment rights?
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
This is essentially cherry picking. AngelHedgie was specifically asked about a couple right-wing subreddits, and his response included a qualifier about "if [they] continue to be hosts for bigotry". You have taken this statement and translated it into "discussions opposite from me on the political spectrum should be banned because they're obviously racist."
Clearly, opposing political discussion could still continue provided they didn't host bigotry (through intention or inaction).
And clearly, allied political discussion would also be removed if it was found to host bigotry.
I'm not sure if this was some kind of intentional effort to trap AngelHedgie or an accident, but it's not a good look.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Where's the line? Terrorist watch lists in the US are undoubtedly racist, should Reddit ban people who, say, think that being on such a list should curtail 2nd amendment rights?
There will never be a perfectly fixed line. Context, ever changing culture, and judgement of a situation will always make the determination. Which is fine. We do this already.
Quid on
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Where's the line? Terrorist watch lists in the US are undoubtedly racist, should Reddit ban people who, say, think that being on such a list should curtail 2nd amendment rights?
That pretty obviously doesn't seem to be openly advocating racism in and of itself.
As always, the government has no place to step in. The "public" have the power here and targeting the money is the only way to get reddit to change.
How does reddit make money? I genuinely don't know. And what would it take to remove that funding source because of their stated policies?
They sell ads the same as every website. They also allow users to buy reddit "gold" which provides certain useless perks on the site.
Reddit gold funding would be very difficult to tackle but advertisers are a good target as multiple activist groups have shown recently.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
This is essentially cherry picking. AngelHedgie was specifically asked about a couple right-wing subreddits, and his response included a qualifier about "if [they] continue to be hosts for bigotry". You have taken this statement and translated it into "discussions opposite from me on the political spectrum should be banned because they're obviously racist."
Clearly, opposing political discussion could still continue provided they didn't host bigotry (through intention or inaction).
And clearly, allied political discussion would also be removed if it was found to host bigotry.
I'm not sure if this was some kind of intentional effort to trap AngelHedgie or an accident, but it's not a good look.
For example, I'm a big believer in also nuking TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) subreddits until they glow because they are also in the business of pushing bigotry.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
I don’t trust anyone’s impartiality here. I don’t trust Conservatives to not use that kind of initiative to go on their own moral crusade, and I don’t trust the left for exactly the same reason.
Sometimes “both sides” is correct, in that both sides have aspects that make me absolutely unwilling to let them define and enforce their respective visions of how things should be. Words Are Violence is a fantastic example of something that makes me back away slowly, among others...
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Where's the line? Terrorist watch lists in the US are undoubtedly racist, should Reddit ban people who, say, think that being on such a list should curtail 2nd amendment rights?
That pretty obviously doesn't seem to be openly advocating racism in and of itself.
A policy that bans outright racism but accepts the policies that racism gives birth to seems a bit of a half measure.
I deleted my Reddit account yesterday. Having it pointed out that nazi subreddits don't get ads was the final straw for me. Honestly, I've been pretty disappointed with reddit for some time now. When I was younger, I very much believed that free speech should be absolute, barring the normal crowded theater etc exceptions. But Reddit I feel functions as a pretty good example of why that just isn't the case. The big one is of course r/thedonald, because it's clear as day to anyone paying attention that r/thedonald does not have to follow the rules of reddit. Obvious racism is OK, but if I read the terms correctly brigading other subs is not. And yet, I regularly saw r/askwomen and r/twoxchromosomes threads get shut down by an obvious brigade. If I remember correctly the rules say you can't call for violence, and yet multiple times I would check the Donald and people are literally calling for a genocide against Muslims. But r/fatpeoplehate crossed the line? It's ridiculous. Now these days, you don't even have to go to the Donald to see that kind of thing , if you read threads about anything Muslim on say, r/worldnews there's an enormous body of posters who will immediately dive into all the standard "reasons why it's obvious" that "Muslims are a primitive people that are dragging Europe back to the dark ages."
It's obvious that the real criterion for a sub getting banned is whether or not reddit administration think it will hurt them financially, and as such the Donald basically gets a free pass because it's huge. Back in the halcyon days of what, 2016? Reddit made a big hullabaloo about changing the algorithm to prevent "certain subs" from gaming the system and loading all their posts on the front page. Instead of just moderating "certain subs."
Compare that to this forum (thanks Tube!), and it's clear to me at least what kind of policy re: hate speech on your internet forum is preferable.
+1
Options
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
I feel both Frankie and AngelHedgie are both arguing points while deliberately ignoring context which implies and suggests need for compromise here.
It's not political suppression to hush a voice that is specifically calling for hate, murder, and systematic killing of others. Nor is allowing political discourse that has, even frequently, supported those who have such positions the same thing as advancing the goals of hate, murder, and systematic killing of others. Racism and Nazi behaviors are not valid political standpoints in a modern culture (or any culture), but nor are those things necessarily the same thing as Conservatism (even if a considerable population of Conservatives lie in the overlap between them).
It's pretty easy to have context-based, yet well defined moderation that allows you to both allow a wide range of opinions while locking out those that are promoting illegal and overtly harmful positions. This forum is a great example, but there are lots of great examples out there for both conservative and liberal positions. I think we are at a maturity level of society to be able to differentiate between actual Nazis and people who just happen to support legislation we don't like. There is a line where those things overlap, and that's where questions of how we moderate edge cases could be discussed, but let's be honest with ourselves. The majority of cases for racism and such are not flirting-the-line things so much as blatant, asshole behavior that can and should be moderated immediately.
It's not even a censorship argument by US standards. We already regulate for hate speech and damaging speech (such as shouting fire in a theater or making death threats/bomb threats/etc.). Online may be a wild, wild west, but there is no reason we shouldn't both expect and drive ourselves towards matching those goals in all discourse communities where possible.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
And this is where I get off the train. If only one political ideology is permissible, we might as well pack up this whole Constitutional Republic thing.
It continues to amaze me how many will advocate for "benevolent" single-party rule, as long as they get to decide what "benevolent" means. I get that this is a decidedly left-leaning board, but did we really just jump from, "reddit should get rid of neo-nazi subs" to "delete r/Republican"?
I (and many others I'm sure) would appreciate it if we didn't take one user's post and extrapolate that he is speaking for all lefties on this board or the left as a whole. Thanks.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
I don’t trust anyone’s impartiality here. I don’t trust Conservatives to not use that kind of initiative to go on their own moral crusade, and I don’t trust the left for exactly the same reason.
Sometimes “both sides” is correct, in that both sides have aspects that make me absolutely unwilling to let them define and enforce their respective visions of how things should be. Words Are Violence is a fantastic example of something that makes me back away slowly, among others...
It’s too late for that. We already restrict speech. We have for centuries. Both socially and legally. And yes there have been abuses at times but we’re still better for it overall. Unless you’re adamant that literally all speech, to include slander, fraud, threats, etc should also be allowed there’s no reason racism shouldn’t be treated similarly by Reddit.
+16
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Where's the line? Terrorist watch lists in the US are undoubtedly racist, should Reddit ban people who, say, think that being on such a list should curtail 2nd amendment rights?
That pretty obviously doesn't seem to be openly advocating racism in and of itself.
A policy that bans outright racism but accepts the policies that racism gives birth to seems a bit of a half measure.
Yes, I imagine that the thing you're arguing against not being extreme enough to easily discredit must be annoying.
But, like I said, because I'm a massive hypocrite I am willing to support banning outright racism without supporting the banning of other things.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Where's the line? Terrorist watch lists in the US are undoubtedly racist, should Reddit ban people who, say, think that being on such a list should curtail 2nd amendment rights?
That pretty obviously doesn't seem to be openly advocating racism in and of itself.
A policy that bans outright racism but accepts the policies that racism gives birth to seems a bit of a half measure.
Yes, I imagine that the thing you're arguing against not being extreme enough to easily discredit must be annoying.
But, like I said, because I'm a massive hypocrite I am willing to support banning outright racism without supporting the banning of other things.
Oh come off it. Its worth examining why, if the goal here is to make the internet, and by extension society as a whole, a more hospitable place for minorities we would want to ban slurs but not, say, advocating for policies designed to disenfranchise them. Arguably this would ignore the greater harm in favor of the flashier one.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
This is essentially cherry picking. AngelHedgie was specifically asked about a couple right-wing subreddits, and his response included a qualifier about "if [they] continue to be hosts for bigotry". You have taken this statement and translated it into "discussions opposite from me on the political spectrum should be banned because they're obviously racist."
Clearly, opposing political discussion could still continue provided they didn't host bigotry (through intention or inaction).
And clearly, allied political discussion would also be removed if it was found to host bigotry.
I'm not sure if this was some kind of intentional effort to trap AngelHedgie or an accident, but it's not a good look.
And who, exactly, is the arbiter of "hosting bigotry through intention or inaction"? Because I've talked to a bunch of Trump supporters who insist they're not supporting him based on bigotry. Or that promoting stricter immigration policies isn't based on racial animus, etc, etc.
I think many of them are naive or delusional, as is my right, but there you are. We don't even have a common consensus for what constitutes bigotry. I guarantee you this forum's threshold is way, way, lower than the average U.S, citizen's.
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
This is essentially cherry picking. AngelHedgie was specifically asked about a couple right-wing subreddits, and his response included a qualifier about "if [they] continue to be hosts for bigotry". You have taken this statement and translated it into "discussions opposite from me on the political spectrum should be banned because they're obviously racist."
Clearly, opposing political discussion could still continue provided they didn't host bigotry (through intention or inaction).
And clearly, allied political discussion would also be removed if it was found to host bigotry.
I'm not sure if this was some kind of intentional effort to trap AngelHedgie or an accident, but it's not a good look.
And who, exactly, is the arbiter of "hosting bigotry through intention or inaction"? Because I've talked to a bunch of Trump supporters who insist they're not supporting him based on bigotry. Or that promoting stricter immigration policies isn't based on racial animus, etc, etc.
I think many of them are naive or delusional, as is my right, but there you are. We don't even have a common consensus for what constitutes bigotry.
The obvious and directly harmful stuff. Slurs, engagement in broad stereotyping, that sort of thing. This doesn't need to be a slippery slope.
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Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Where's the line? Terrorist watch lists in the US are undoubtedly racist, should Reddit ban people who, say, think that being on such a list should curtail 2nd amendment rights?
That pretty obviously doesn't seem to be openly advocating racism in and of itself.
A policy that bans outright racism but accepts the policies that racism gives birth to seems a bit of a half measure.
Yes, I imagine that the thing you're arguing against not being extreme enough to easily discredit must be annoying.
But, like I said, because I'm a massive hypocrite I am willing to support banning outright racism without supporting the banning of other things.
Oh come off it. Its worth examining why, if the goal here is to make the internet, and by extension society as a whole, a more hospitable place for minorities we would want to ban slurs but not, say, advocating for policies designed to disenfranchise them. Arguably this would ignore the greater harm in favor of the flashier one.
Are you devil's advocating or actually arguing we should be banning more stuff?
Mmm, yes, it's the people of color, the targets of hate, who should have to change where they want to go so as to not become uncomfortable with the speech allowed by a website they want to hang out on. Surely that is the most reasonable option, and won't at all seem like yet another giant middle finger where we're going to protect the people who think the existence of those minorities is, in and of itself, heinous. The onus, as usual, is on them to not get upset that the website is propping up those who would have them wiped from the face of the earth.
Also, why draw the line at "they don't have to visit that website or subforum"? I mean, unemployment is low right now. Should be easy to find a new job if their current co-workers are racists. They could find a new job, so they wouldn't have to visit their current worksite. Again, it should be on them to avoid the racism; not on the people who have control over curtailing it, right? Easy peasy.
Perhaps if I use "I" language it will be harder for you to grandstand quite so hard. So, take the example of r/AganistGayMarriage/, whose current front page is populated by such gems as:
"Debunked: "Homosexuality is healthy""
"European politican speaks out against sodomite promotion in our society"
"Lesbian Couple Convicted Of Murdering 2-Year-Old Son, Abusing Other Children"
etc. etc. etc.
I find it utterly bizarre to suggest that r/AganistGayMarriage is somewhere I "want to go," and so that our only choices are either leaving it up or (unfairly) requiring me, the victim, to change my behavior. I have no interest in going there, for obvious reasons, and not going there doesn't sacrifice any of my interests. But okay--suppose I did go there regularly, and found it very distressing. I would think the very first question would be: "why the fuck are you visiting AganistGayMarriage every day?" There's a pretty obvious fix, here.
Subreddits are very obviously unlike workplaces insofar as visiting them really is a voluntary act oriented around optional common-interest discussion. Not going to a disgusting subreddit is not a meaningful burden.
Yes, perhaps if you make it about your personal experience then I will find it harder to point out that you're blaming the minority populace for feeling that a website supporting racists over them is moronic, immoral, and possibly racist itself. I find it supremely amusing that you want to finger wag at anyone here for "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm not the arbiter of why someone would want to go to a certain subreddit. Maybe they want to see what is being said about minorities. I certainly feel you feel differently, and think they should just shut up and sit down, and stay in their own lanes, while the website they want to be on subsidizes the existence of discussion regarding their being killed en masse. Maybe they want to track down where something else they've seen on Reddit has come from. As was pointed out above, subreddits aren't sealed off clean-rooms. The users of those subs are not banned from posting in other subreddits. They can take the bullshit they learn, or are fed, on /r/imaracistdouchebag and soft pedal it in another sub where they're maybe just asking questions.
I find it utterly bizarre that anyone would think that's a good way for things to operate, but here we are.
This post is heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. For instance, I don't see the existence of r/AganistGayMarriage as reddit "supporting homophobes over me"--a phrasing that prejudges the very issue at hand, namely whether I have some kind of right or interest to get that forum shut down. Reddit is only supporting them over me if we already assume that my request that they be shut down is reasonable.
Suppose I went to my local community center or event space and wandered into a meeting of the local Republican Party chapter. Suppose they're talking about how they want to end food stamps, or amend the constitution to forbid affirmative action and abortion, and I get really upset. So what? That's a meeting space dedicated to Republican ideas, for Republicans. If I claimed aggrieved status in the interaction I would be being ridiculous. If hearing that stuff is too upsetting for you to handle, then yeah, it's fully appropriate to "stay in your own lane."
If there's so much cross-forum raiding that reddit can't sustain wholesome knitting subforums or whatever, I find it understandable why they would get rid of the unmanageable racist subreddits. I don't know enough about reddit culture to say (thought I suspect that I would have different standards here). Whatever. What I disagree with is that the idea of a safe space for me (whatever that comes out to) implies a right to make ~every~ space safe, even the ones I'd never go to, on the grounds that their existence and the people populating them offend me, or on the grounds that people discussing those dangerous ideas might even go out into the world and advocate for them. Sometimes it can be nebulous what a culture of free speech really amounts to, but if there's anything that's incompatible with it, it's that.
If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Where's the line? Terrorist watch lists in the US are undoubtedly racist, should Reddit ban people who, say, think that being on such a list should curtail 2nd amendment rights?
That pretty obviously doesn't seem to be openly advocating racism in and of itself.
A policy that bans outright racism but accepts the policies that racism gives birth to seems a bit of a half measure.
Yes, I imagine that the thing you're arguing against not being extreme enough to easily discredit must be annoying.
But, like I said, because I'm a massive hypocrite I am willing to support banning outright racism without supporting the banning of other things.
Oh come off it. Its worth examining why, if the goal here is to make the internet, and by extension society as a whole, a more hospitable place for minorities we would want to ban slurs but not, say, advocating for policies designed to disenfranchise them. Arguably this would ignore the greater harm in favor of the flashier one.
Are you devil's advocating or actually arguing we should be banning more stuff?
I don't actually have a personal stance I'm decided on on the matter. Obviously a less racist internet would be great and I don't have a problem with most of the stuff being discussed getting banned in and of itself. But on the other hand I'm wary because while the zeitgeist might be in our favor it isn't always.
It's hard to live in The Worst Timeline and think that more top down pressure is necessarily in our best interest.
Hence wondering what level of racist expression would be ban worthy.
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If you're a minority, a woman, and/or impoverished, you'd have every right to be aggrieved with a Republican Party meeting talking about using the law to target you, because the Republican Party does not meet to discuss "hey, wouldn't these ideas be cool", but to work towards implementing those ideas in law, because that's the reason for a political party's existence. And in the same context, white supremacists believe in a society in which they are placed at the top and the groups they despise are "bound but not protected by the law", and they organize to create and normalize that society. This is why hate subreddits exist - to organize and push their ideals out to both Reddit and the world at large. This is why it is so troubling that Reddit management won't oppose bigotry on their platform.
To be clear, is this saying that you think that Reddit should also take down r/Republican, r/Conservative, and the host of related right-wing subreddits?
You have to be really careful with bans like this, as this very thread has people disagreeing what violence is, and it's not that many steps to banning progressive causes because someone has lobbied to get them identified as violent.
If said subreddits continue to be hosts for bigotry, yes. The elephant in the room we all keep avoiding is how conservative movements around the world have embraced bigotry, yet expect everyone to just accept that as OK. Again, bigotry is like toxic waste, and on Reddit, like anywhere else, the best answer is not to make it in the first place.
I mean violence resulting in death, which is the aim of identifiable ideologies of specific groups of people such as National Socialism and Nazism which still exists in the USA
I promise you that people would be rushing to put the Pro-Choice movement, BLM, and other causes on that list.
Speech directly inciting people to kill other people is already illegal. I can pretty much assure you that all these groups work with some caution to make sure there is at least some amount of space between them and where the law would allow the FBI to arrest them, in their public speech at least. Germany has some of the strongest anti nazi laws which exist in the world (you aren't even allowed to say, dress up as a nazi to mock them, or show their symbols in media other than in a clearly identifiable historical context) and they still have PLENTY of nazis. They just use lots of viking and norse imagery rather than their classic skins.
This isn't on topic. We're talking about online communities and their policies wrt racist speech.
Pro-Choice and BLM are not comparable to Nazism. Ignorance of the past isn't illegal, promotion of political organizations that have committed documentable genocide should be in any online community as a default
Banning slurs is one thing, but removing the Republican and Conservative communities will not have a positive effect. It won't help prevent racism or bigotry from propagating. It is a broad, politically charged action, and it will probably just energize the right against the left's tyrannous political correctness and other such rhetoric.
When the sites in question are pillars of the web, you have to think of their effects differently from other private decision makers, I think
How unbelievably convenient it's returned to suppressing speech belonging to your political opponents.
And this is where I get off the train. If only one political ideology is permissible, we might as well pack up this whole Constitutional Republic thing.
It continues to amaze me how many will advocate for "benevolent" single-party rule, as long as they get to decide what "benevolent" means. I get that this is a decidedly left-leaning board, but did we really just jump from, "reddit should get rid of neo-nazi subs" to "delete r/Republican"?
That half of the political spectrum has embraced hatred, bigotry and oppression as acceptable is many things, convenient is not one of them.
Massive hypocrite that I am, tho, I would not support certain other things being disallowed, despite them also being things.
While I doubt I can force Reddit to change their stance on racism, I can certainly disapprove of it, and I also am comfortable disapproving of any potential calls to ban stuff I think is good.
"Let's ban anything thats embraced racism" is gonna eat up way more half the political spectrum my man
The American left is not the first group to hold that they stand upon a foundation of Truth and Right while their opponents are all that is False and Wrong. Nor will they be the last.
Well, at least not so long as we resist the authoritarian impulse that everyone needs to go away and let us fix everything.
And i'm pretty much fine with that.
Reddit isn't interested in making all subreddits inclusive and "safe" (in the sense that you can have a discussion without death threats).
Here, we can have those discussions and disagree very strongly without fear of someone calling for our deaths.
I think that's a choice reddit gets to make but it's a bad choice.
As always, the government has no place to step in. The "public" have the power here and targeting the money is the only way to get reddit to change.
Not everyone. Just those openly advocating racism.
There is zero benefit to racist ideology and a great deal of harm that comes from it. It provides no good and only hurts people. It is demonstrably better for an organization to ban it.
Where's the line? Terrorist watch lists in the US are undoubtedly racist, should Reddit ban people who, say, think that being on such a list should curtail 2nd amendment rights?
Clearly, opposing political discussion could still continue provided they didn't host bigotry (through intention or inaction).
And clearly, allied political discussion would also be removed if it was found to host bigotry.
I'm not sure if this was some kind of intentional effort to trap AngelHedgie or an accident, but it's not a good look.
There will never be a perfectly fixed line. Context, ever changing culture, and judgement of a situation will always make the determination. Which is fine. We do this already.
They sell ads the same as every website. They also allow users to buy reddit "gold" which provides certain useless perks on the site.
Reddit gold funding would be very difficult to tackle but advertisers are a good target as multiple activist groups have shown recently.
For example, I'm a big believer in also nuking TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) subreddits until they glow because they are also in the business of pushing bigotry.
I don’t trust anyone’s impartiality here. I don’t trust Conservatives to not use that kind of initiative to go on their own moral crusade, and I don’t trust the left for exactly the same reason.
Sometimes “both sides” is correct, in that both sides have aspects that make me absolutely unwilling to let them define and enforce their respective visions of how things should be. Words Are Violence is a fantastic example of something that makes me back away slowly, among others...
A policy that bans outright racism but accepts the policies that racism gives birth to seems a bit of a half measure.
It's obvious that the real criterion for a sub getting banned is whether or not reddit administration think it will hurt them financially, and as such the Donald basically gets a free pass because it's huge. Back in the halcyon days of what, 2016? Reddit made a big hullabaloo about changing the algorithm to prevent "certain subs" from gaming the system and loading all their posts on the front page. Instead of just moderating "certain subs."
Compare that to this forum (thanks Tube!), and it's clear to me at least what kind of policy re: hate speech on your internet forum is preferable.
It's not political suppression to hush a voice that is specifically calling for hate, murder, and systematic killing of others. Nor is allowing political discourse that has, even frequently, supported those who have such positions the same thing as advancing the goals of hate, murder, and systematic killing of others. Racism and Nazi behaviors are not valid political standpoints in a modern culture (or any culture), but nor are those things necessarily the same thing as Conservatism (even if a considerable population of Conservatives lie in the overlap between them).
It's pretty easy to have context-based, yet well defined moderation that allows you to both allow a wide range of opinions while locking out those that are promoting illegal and overtly harmful positions. This forum is a great example, but there are lots of great examples out there for both conservative and liberal positions. I think we are at a maturity level of society to be able to differentiate between actual Nazis and people who just happen to support legislation we don't like. There is a line where those things overlap, and that's where questions of how we moderate edge cases could be discussed, but let's be honest with ourselves. The majority of cases for racism and such are not flirting-the-line things so much as blatant, asshole behavior that can and should be moderated immediately.
It's not even a censorship argument by US standards. We already regulate for hate speech and damaging speech (such as shouting fire in a theater or making death threats/bomb threats/etc.). Online may be a wild, wild west, but there is no reason we shouldn't both expect and drive ourselves towards matching those goals in all discourse communities where possible.
I (and many others I'm sure) would appreciate it if we didn't take one user's post and extrapolate that he is speaking for all lefties on this board or the left as a whole. Thanks.
It’s too late for that. We already restrict speech. We have for centuries. Both socially and legally. And yes there have been abuses at times but we’re still better for it overall. Unless you’re adamant that literally all speech, to include slander, fraud, threats, etc should also be allowed there’s no reason racism shouldn’t be treated similarly by Reddit.
But, like I said, because I'm a massive hypocrite I am willing to support banning outright racism without supporting the banning of other things.
Oh come off it. Its worth examining why, if the goal here is to make the internet, and by extension society as a whole, a more hospitable place for minorities we would want to ban slurs but not, say, advocating for policies designed to disenfranchise them. Arguably this would ignore the greater harm in favor of the flashier one.
And who, exactly, is the arbiter of "hosting bigotry through intention or inaction"? Because I've talked to a bunch of Trump supporters who insist they're not supporting him based on bigotry. Or that promoting stricter immigration policies isn't based on racial animus, etc, etc.
I think many of them are naive or delusional, as is my right, but there you are. We don't even have a common consensus for what constitutes bigotry. I guarantee you this forum's threshold is way, way, lower than the average U.S, citizen's.
I don't actually have a personal stance I'm decided on on the matter. Obviously a less racist internet would be great and I don't have a problem with most of the stuff being discussed getting banned in and of itself. But on the other hand I'm wary because while the zeitgeist might be in our favor it isn't always.
It's hard to live in The Worst Timeline and think that more top down pressure is necessarily in our best interest.
Hence wondering what level of racist expression would be ban worthy.