Reddit Bans Subreddits about Making Fun of Fat People, Neogaf, and others.

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runic knight

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Mar 26, 2011
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tm96 said:
BloatedGuppy said:
Not a freedom of speech issue.
Even if you flash in great big neon lights 24/7 people will still say it is. If this is censorship to some people does that mean schools saying don't swear is censorship?
Yes. Actually, yes, that is not only an issue of censorship by the basic definition of censorship, that possibly actively involves a government backed organization doing the censorship considering the funding of school and the general rulings against schools when applying other government restricting rules such as separation of church and state, thus may also be a first amendment right issue as well. It is very much an example of censorship. But much like the "you can't scream fire in a crowded movie theater" rule, when an argument can be made about the free speech interfering with other rights, the censorship tends to be accepted. So essentially like all rules, if the majority can tolerate it or find reasonable justification to do so, the censorship is accepted.

The problem with this current example is not so much reddit is dictating the rules for their site, as while still censorship, that is the nature of any working forum. The issue is the sudden, unevenly distributed, and heavy-handed response going down on a site that itself has claimed to stand for free speech. So you have a very strange nuclear option against a very disparate group of claimed offenders, most other offenders of worse are overlooked, and the sudden restriction seem nearly arbitrary excuse rather then enforcing of existing established rules in a fair way.

I think they alway forget they can do that. If they did that it at least make the internet at least a little better.
They are also the sole reason the site matters to anyone at all, and they know well that a site that offends the community who made it too much will quickly be passed by competitors. But much like yourself I imagine when a rule in your nation is passed you don't agree with, you don't tend to react the first time by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and moving to another country. Instead you'd likely express your dissatisfaction, try to work within the established system to get the change and should that fail, move on to more drastic options such as full exodus.

You know I find it interesting myself how quickly the "you can just leave" attitude comes up as an excuse for this weird sort of behavior in sites as though the users have no ability or right to disagree with the sites they promoted and helped grow in actual importance and value. Because lets be honest, without the people that are currently being pissed off right now, reddit itself would never have been worth a damn. So I can't blame those that want to stick with the site and get changes to what they see as something wrong with the current actions, even if it is protesting them shutting down specific subreddits with little to no discernible consistency while still claiming to be about free speech.
 

SecondPrize

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Mar 12, 2012
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The silencing of discussion is a problem whether the government is involved or not. Reddit didn't violate anyone's constitutional right to freedom of speech, but they did stifle their freedom to speak, which is a shame given the platform's previous commitment to providing a platform for speaking freely.
 

PainInTheAssInternet

The Ship Magnificent
Dec 30, 2011
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VanQ said:
Casual Shinji said:
Wow... I was never really familiar with Reddit, and now I thank God for that.
I'm only vaguely familiar in that I had a look around there when it was fairly new. Trust me, imageboards and traditional forums are a much better place to discuss things. The biggest problem with Reddit is the upvote system, which means that only the most popular opinions rise to the top while all others naturally sink to the deep depths of the thread where they'll likely never be seen or heard. It's groupthink on an organized scale.
I don't have much doubt that the above happens, but my experience is more along the lines of literal groupthink. The exact same jokes being repeated multiple times on the same thread. Just recently, there was an article about the possible discovery of 75 million year old tissue, and two separate comment sections consisted overwhelmingly of Jurassic Park references, often word-for-word copies of one another.

tm96 said:
BloatedGuppy said:
Not a freedom of speech issue.
Even if you flash in great big neon lights 24/7 people will still say it is. If this is censorship to some people does that mean schools saying don't swear is censorship?
I agree that what happened wasn't censorship, but your example is. It's a representative of the government telling you what you cannot do or say.

OT: Hooray! Some shitty subreddits are gone! That's a good start. There are quite a few to tackle, though this seems to have been just targeted at harassing groups. Now PunchableFaces should be next on the chopping block. All the subreddit does is single out people's pictures and hate on them.
 

Scars Unseen

^ ^ v v < > < > B A
May 7, 2009
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Longing said:
Redditors are such whiny little babies. I cannot for the life of me understand the kind of people who would spend all of their days relentlessly mocking others. What sad, sad little people.
Casual Shinji said:
Wow... I was never really familiar with Reddit, and now I thank God for that.
Just so you know, Reddit isn't some unified community. There are subreddits like the ones mentioned in this thread, and yeah, they're pretty fucking awful(but then there's subreddits that spoof them like /r/farpeoplehate [http://www.reddit.com/r/farpeoplehate/]). And there are political and activist related subreddits that are pretty much giant echo chambers.

But then there are topic-focused subreddits. And those are some of the best places to discuss a specific topic to be found. They can be broad, like /r/anime/ [http://www.reddit.com/r/anime/] or /r/visualnovels/ [http://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/], or you can get more specific, such as /r/projecteternity/ [http://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/] or /r/xkcd/ [http://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/]. Want to learn how to draw? /r/artfundamentals/ [http://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/] wouldn't be a bad place to start. Or try /r/learnjapanese/ [http://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/] to start learning a new language(if the language you want to learn happens to be Japanese). Maybe you feel like listening to music and want to try something new. /r/listentothis/ [http://www.reddit.com/r/listentothis/] has you covered.

Reddit definitely has its dark and grungy side, but overall, it's the best place I've found for discussing most of the topics I'm interested in, including gaming.
 

GladiatorUA

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Jun 1, 2013
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Damn it, Pao. Why FPH? If you decided to ban TumblrInAction or KotakuInAction, I could jump on Pao-hate bandwagon without a second thought. But FPH is a vitriolic circlejerk shitstain of subreddit... But it shouldn't have been banned. On the flip side r/thinpeoplehate is funny.

#firechairmanpao
 

BreakfastMan

Scandinavian Jawbreaker
Jul 22, 2010
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The Lunatic said:
BreakfastMan said:
Spare me your grandstanding nonsense.

And seriously, what is the danger if this is unevenly applied? Or never invoked again? Reddit is only slightly improved instead of massively improved? I don't get why this is an issue. Nor do I get why people assume everything is going to be perfect and instantly fixed when a company says it is going to make improvements. That isn't how real life works.
Then, to put it bluntly, you don't understand freedom of speech. Regardless of what people say, they have a right to say it. I mean, sure, we may wish they wouldn't, but, the important part is allowing them to say it.
Sure. That doesn't mean every private enterprise needs to give them a platform. If people want to post sexist/racist/whatever crap they want, there are plenty of other websites that cater to that, like Stormfront and ReturnOfKings. Reddit doesn't have to allow that shit there.
 

kenu12345

Seeker of Ancient Knowledge
Aug 3, 2011
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Wait, Neofag was banned? Why? Like I don't understand, was it cause of the word fag in the title? I'm gay and I like using that word for myself sometimes. Whats the big deal
 

Silvanus

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Ehh, almost every site and forum moderates the content that is allowed.
 

BloatedGuppy

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Feb 3, 2010
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runic knight said:
Because lets be honest, without the people that are currently being pissed off right now, reddit itself would never have been worth a damn.
Yes, without the sterling denizens of r/fatpeoplehate or Neofag at its heart, reddit would never have been worth a damn.
 

layne

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Jun 14, 2013
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Casual Shinji said:
Wow... I was never really familiar with Reddit, and now I thank God for that.
I feel the same way. I'm glad I've never been tempted to explore that particular area of the internet.
 

Somekindofgold

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Feb 24, 2015
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Reddit claims they will only delete subreddits where their moderators aren't doing what they can to stop these sort of harassing posts, but we've seen that all it takes is one or two bad eggs and then they've got an excuse. We saw an example of how easily you can do this with the /gg/ 'brianna wu doxxing' , all it took was one post, which every other person in the thread called out, that was up for a few minutes before it got deleted, for the national media to permanently label you a hate group.

And like others have said, SRS is STILL up despite their well documented history of doxxing, that is evidence enough that this isnt a harassment crackdown otherwise they'd have been first on the chopping block.

This isnt about stopping hate, its about shutting the undesirables up.

As for why people are mad about this. Reddit got so popular because it offered an alternative to the censorship happy digg, that is what built Reddit, without that moderation style Reddit would have been nothing. The users feel betrayed and rightly so, so now they're leaving or protesting this. Sadly voat is currently down due to the influx of new users straining the site so for a few days the people who want to leave are going to stay and shit up the site to show their dissatisfaction.

Reddit can change its moderation style, its a private site, but the users of that site also have a right to call Chairman Pao every bad word under the sun and show their dissatisfaction.
 

Areloch

It's that one guy
Dec 10, 2012
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Fappy said:
Eh, it's their site. If they want to ban certain discussions that's their prerogative. By all means, tell them their decision is wrong if you believe it to be, but I wouldn't call this censorship. There are other avenues still available to express these ideas and Reddit's CEO isn't stopping anyone from taking their business there.

They clearly want to change the site's image and clean up its content/community. I can hardly fault it for that, honestly. Reddit's rep is seemingly worse than 4chan these days.
This line of thinking seems weird to me. If a private site's censorship of it's userbase is acceptable on the grounds that they could just go elsewhere, couldn't we change a few words and do this:

Eh, it's their country. If they want to ban certain discussions that's their prerogative. By all means, tell them their decision is wrong if you believe it to be, but I wouldn't call this censorship. There are other countries still available to express these ideas and USA's Government isn't stopping anyone from taking their business there.

They clearly want to change the country's image and clean up its content/community. I can hardly fault it for that, honestly. USA's rep is seemingly worse than 4chan these days.
And justify government level censorship too?

Not saying I think privately-owned website censorship is as straightforward as governmental-tier, but the above is kind of a poor handwave of the possible censorship issue, isn't it?
 

Jux

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Sep 2, 2012
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So reddit is a little less of a cesspool now? Good on them I suppose. And there aren't enough laughing gifs on the internet to encapsulate how I feel about people bemoaning this as some great attack on freedom of speech. Reddit is a privately owned platform, there are plenty of other places for people to spew their hate on the internet.
 

SecondPrize

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Mar 12, 2012
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BloatedGuppy said:
runic knight said:
Because lets be honest, without the people that are currently being pissed off right now, reddit itself would never have been worth a damn.
Yes, without the sterling denizens of r/fatpeoplehate or Neofag at its heart, reddit would never have been worth a damn.
Is not liking neogaf a sin now? Yeah, fph is a place most people don't want to go, so they don't go there. But mocking neogaf is the right thing to do.

Jux said:
So reddit is a little less of a cesspool now? Good on them I suppose. And there aren't enough laughing gifs on the internet to encapsulate how I feel about people bemoaning this as some great attack on freedom of speech. Reddit is a privately owned platform, there are plenty of other places for people to spew their hate on the internet.
You understand that all these people are still on reddit, right? They just removed the containment boards.
 

FirstNameLastName

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Nov 6, 2014
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Compatriot Block said:
Here's a thread from Reddit, with some posts explaining the official reason the admins gave. Remember, that subreddit had been around for a long time, but was only banned now.

http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/39bzdf/why_was_rfatpeoplehate_along_with_several_other/

In short: the Imgur staff decided to block pictures submitted from fatpeople hate from hitting Imgur's front page. This made the subreddit users mad, so they found pictures of Imgur staff and put them on the sidebar to ridicule and harassment. Reddit already doesn't like singling out individuals, and doing it to the staff of a website that's pretty integral to Reddit tipped them over the very fine line they had been toeing.

And for what it's worth, I think they should have banned SRS a long time ago, but that's not a valid defense for other people. I'd rather both gone than neither.
Bloody hell, fifty posts into this thread, fucking fifty, and you're the first (and seemingly only) person to actually bring this up.

http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removing_harassing_subreddits/

It's in the fucking announcement people.

The Fucking Announcement said:
Today we are announcing a change in community management on reddit. Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform. We want as little involvement as possible in managing these interactions but will be involved when needed to protect privacy and free expression, and to prevent harassment.

It is not easy to balance these values, especially as the Internet evolves. We are learning and hopefully improving as we move forward. We want to be open about our involvement: We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to <color=red>harass individuals when moderators don't take action. We're banning behavior, not ideas.

Today we are removing five subreddits that break our reddit rules based on their <color=red>harassment of individuals. If a subreddit has been banned for harassment, you will see that in the ban notice. The only banned subreddit with more than 5,000 subscribers is r/fatpeoplehate.

To report a subreddit for harassment, please email us at [email protected] or send a modmail.

We are continuing to add to our team to manage community issues, and we are making incremental changes over time. We want to make sure that the changes are working as intended and that we are incorporating your feedback when possible. Ultimately, we hope to have less involvement, but right now, we know we need to do better and to do more.

While we do not always agree with the content and views expressed on the site, we do protect the right of people to express their views and encourage actual conversations according to the rules of reddit.

Thanks for working with us. Please keep the feedback coming.

? Jessica (/u/5days), Ellen (/u/ekjp), Alexis (/u/kn0thing) & the rest of team reddit
This isn't some nefarious conspiracy by them no good SJWs to get rid of offensive subreddits, it's specifically about subreddits where the moderators aren't doing anything to stop harassment and doxing of individuals by thier community. That is why all these other even more vile subreddits are still around, because while their content might be disgusting/offensive, it's not harassment.
And before any of you begin listing other subreddits that have a history of harassment but have not been banned, remember that this has only just transpired, so you can't expect these new rules to have been enforced in every instance at this point.
 

Somekindofgold

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FirstNameLastName said:
Bloody hell, fifty posts into this thread, fucking fifty, and you're the first (and seemingly only) person to actually bring this up.

http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/removing_harassing_subreddits/

It's in the fucking announcement people.


This isn't some nefarious conspiracy by them no good SJWs to get rid of offensive subreddits, it's specifically about subreddits where the moderators aren't doing anything to stop harassment and doxing of individuals by thier community. That is why all these other even more vile subreddits are still around, because while their content might be disgusting/offensive, it's not harassment.
And before any of you begin listing other subreddits that have a history of harassment but have not been banned, remember that this has only just transpired, so you can't expect these new rules to have been enforced in every instance at this point.
How do you know the mods did nothing about it? The subreddit had very specific rules about this,no doxxing, no harassing and no cross subreddit linking. We have no idea what the subreddit mods were going to do in response to this, but saying the subreddit fosters harassment when it has bloody rules that say DO NOT HARASS is god damn stupid. At the most the users should have been banned for participating in the doxxing but the subreddit shouldnt have been deleted. Thats like blowing up a vietnamese village to get at the vietcong.
 

BloatedGuppy

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SecondPrize said:
Is not liking neogaf a sin now? Yeah, fph is a place most people don't want to go, so they don't go there. But mocking neogaf is the right thing to do.
I was simply name checking one of the banned subs. Likely the one that has people here in a twist, given the content. The "sin" the subs were banned for was apparently "harassment". The conspiracy wonks will tell you that's a lie/excuse meant to start the white-washing of Reddit to make it safe for sale, and/or a targeted SJW campaign. Keep in mind this is still a website that features subs like r/sexyabortions or r/burningchildren or r/rapingwomen, so I'm more like to believe the "harassment" explanation than the "Reddit is safe space/hugbox only now!" explanation.

Mostly I'm just laughing at the assertion that the populace of the banned subs were the only thing making Reddit "worth a damn".
 

Alterego-X

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Nov 22, 2009
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SecondPrize said:
The silencing of discussion is a problem whether the government is involved or not. Reddit didn't violate anyone's constitutional right to freedom of speech, but they did stifle their freedom to speak, which is a shame given the platform's previous commitment to providing a platform for speaking freely.
If silencing of discussion is a problem, then you should be really glad that fatpeoplehate is gone, because that sub was ALL ABOUT silencing discussion.

Downvoting and banning people for admitting that they have just lost weight recently, banning "fat sympathizers" for suggesting that maybe mocking fat people for working out in the gym isn't combatting fatness, and generally using "fat" as a synonim of "person who disagrees with us" and being fat as a bannable offense.
 

Silvanus

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Areloch said:
This line of thinking seems weird to me. If a private site's censorship of it's userbase is acceptable on the grounds that they could just go elsewhere, couldn't we change a few words and do this:

Eh, it's their country. If they want to ban certain discussions that's their prerogative. By all means, tell them their decision is wrong if you believe it to be, but I wouldn't call this censorship. There are other countries still available to express these ideas and USA's Government isn't stopping anyone from taking their business there.

They clearly want to change the country's image and clean up its content/community. I can hardly fault it for that, honestly. USA's rep is seemingly worse than 4chan these days.
And justify government level censorship too?
The difference is, of course, perspective. Not being able to post certain (rubbish) kinds of stuff on a certain website is not really comparable to being deported.