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

[Sleepy Sol]

I'm pretty sure mocking another user on here while in a user group is against the rules and can get that person moderated if it is reported.

Mocking a user very directly, maybe. It's probably rather easy to mock a certain opinion or attitude and not catch much for it. But I'm not particularly incensed by it considering most groups of that nature will be private and inaccessible to almost everybody so it stays away from anywhere it can do any greater harm. IIRC, mods can also no longer look into private groups to see what's going on unless they're members of that group.

It obviously can't be reported if a group is private by anyone but somebody already in the group. Just depends if you want to make it a problem or not. As far as I'm concerned it's just people sometimes saying mean things on the internet outside of any place where it really matters. Not important enough to flip shit over.

 

[VanQ]

Here's a list of subreddits that are apparently okay and have not been banned.

/r/picsofdeadkids
/r/coontown
/r/sexyabortions
/r/watchpeopledie
/r/BurningKids
/r/ShitRedditSays
/r/malepeoplehate
/r/watchpeopledie

The bans are less about free speech and more about people actively organizing doxxing and harassment campaigns. Which are things that the banned subreddits actually had a hand in by the looks of it.

 

[spartenX]

so the reason that saying that freedom of speech is alarmist in this situation, where a subreddit that mainly keeps its stuff to its subreddit and does everything it can to ensure that there is no harassment done to the people it mocks and that it doesn't brigade any other subs and is clearly labeled so you what to expect in there, is because of a situation in which a person is intentionally causing a disruption in a government building (assuming you mean public school) that would be a direct insult to multiple people that have no reason to expect anything like that would happen there.

The degree to which this is "censorship" is irrelevant, because we're basically picking nits about where it falls on a completely meaningless scale. It's not government induced censorship. No one's rights are being violated. There is no dangerous chilling effect on the populace's right to dissent. It's the owner of a private website exercising their right to modify their TOU. It happens every day. It's an utter non-event, and should be treated as such.

who cares if its not government induced censorship? the fact is that they decided to ban a subreddit that was not actually harming anyone, for arbitrary reasons. that is still censorship, and it is still a problem, especially on a site that allows other subreddits that actually do directly harass people.

I'm not the sort of guy who would refer to basic human decency as an "arbitrary reason" and it's mildly worrying that you apparently are.

arbitrary considering that it was banned for violating this rule "Keep Everyone Safe: You agree to not intentionally jeopardize the health and safety of others or yourself." despite the fact that there has been no actual reports of that sub (either individual posters, or as a whole) violating said rule or even harassing anyone, while other subs like r/shitredditsays have been known to actually go out of there way to brigade other subs, send threats, and even directly get people fired.

while I don't come close to thinking highly of the people who used that sub (hence my quote in the threads second post) they did not cause anyone harm, and did not violate the rule they are being accused of violating while, while other subs that are much closer to violating those rule are still being left alone.

"Harm" is a difficult thing to measure. If a fat person got on that subreddit, I imagine that would be pretty not-fun for them. If they were of the sort of disposition, they could do something drastic in response. Highly unlikely, sure, and by no means should reddit coddle sensitive people, but I'm just pointing out that it "not causing anyone harm" is probably not true. Words hurt. That's a fact of life.

you'll get no argument from me about words hurting, but I don't particularly think that visiting a sub and getting hurt feelings from comments that aren't even being directed at you (assuming this isn't the once in a blue moon chance that you find a picture of yourself has been posted there at a time that you were also on there) causes enough harm to justify killing an entire sub.

 

[The Lunatic]

"Harm" is a difficult thing to measure. If a fat person got on that subreddit, I imagine that would be pretty not-fun for them. If they were of the sort of disposition, they could do something drastic in response. Highly unlikely, sure, and by no means should reddit coddle sensitive people, but I'm just pointing out that it "not causing anyone harm" is probably not true. Words hurt. That's a fact of life.

I don't recall if it was that subreddit specifically, but, I recall one of the fat-people subreddits had a "Fat to thin Friday" where members spoke about their previous weight and how the sub shocked them into doing something about it.

So, I mean, it's not all bad. It legitimately helped some people.

 

[spartenX]

Here's a list of subreddits that are apparently okay and have not been banned.

/r/picsofdeadkids
/r/coontown
/r/sexyabortions
/r/watchpeopledie
/r/BurningKids
/r/ShitRedditSays
/r/malepeoplehate
/r/watchpeopledie

The bans are less about free speech and more about people actively organizing doxxing and harassment campaigns. Which are things that the banned subreddits actually had a hand in by the looks of it.

shitredditsays is well known (very well known) for harassing and doxxing people, while FPH was known for having very strict rules in regards to not doing either of those.

 

[VanQ]

Here's a list of subreddits that are apparently okay and have not been banned.

/r/picsofdeadkids
/r/coontown
/r/sexyabortions
/r/watchpeopledie
/r/BurningKids
/r/ShitRedditSays
/r/malepeoplehate
/r/watchpeopledie

The bans are less about free speech and more about people actively organizing doxxing and harassment campaigns. Which are things that the banned subreddits actually had a hand in by the looks of it.

shitredditsays is well known (very well known) for harassing and doxxing people, while FPH was known for having very strict rules in regards to not doing either of those.

Oh, so then the bans were more about feelings than the rules then? How does that not surprise me. Reddit is a site designed from the ground up to promote groupthink, it was only a matter of time before the unpopular opinions got the permanent boot.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Wow... I was never really familiar with Reddit, and now I thank God for that.

 

[Compatriot Block]

Snip

Snip

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.

 

[Compatriot Block]

I don't even know how to respond to the people willingly comparing themselves to horrifyingly racist subreddits. How can you possibly think that "Oh yeah? If you ban us then why didn't you ban the subreddits about hating black people?" would be met with anything other than "Yeah, those are both awful things, they should both be banned"?

Jesus Christ, this is a group literally standing up for their "right" to hate people. Their name was fatpeopleHATE. They were harrassing individual Imgur staff. The CEO came to them to talk, was relentlessly mocked and immediately banned. Their response to being shut down for spreading their hate outside of their own corner was to spread even more hate in an even larger area.

Is this really the hill people want to make their stands on? If this was a group ridiculing gamers (with pictures and names) and talking about how disgusting they all are, would you be standing up for them?

EDIT: I also love the free speech angle coming from a subreddit who literally had a "no dissent" rule.

Ah, but you're forgetting about the golden internet rule - 'It's different when it can apply to me'. Freedom of Speech according to the internet means 'I can say mean things about people but woe be unto you if you say mean things about me', so seeing people get up in arms over a private site saying 'fuck this particular noise' to a handful of subreddits and jumping on the Censorship Train isn't surprising in the least.

Hell, this isn't even the pettiest hill I've seen people die on on the internet. *Thousand Yard Stare as I remember the Mass Effect 3 Ending threads*

Mass Effect 3 controversy was dumb, but in hindsight it doesn't make me as frustrated as I thought it would. When I read about them mocking an album of pictures of a deceased, overweight woman's body in a morgue, my blood boils.

I think we should go back to mailing people RBG cupcakes.

 

[VanQ]

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.

The real problem with this is while anonymous imageboards can provoke brutal honesty, which isn't always the best policy and forums can promote circlejerks, posts are always viewed in the order they were posted rather than being sorted by popularity. So you will at least run into opposing opinions. Something that you wouldn't see on a subreddit. And when you have a subreddit devoted specifically to hate. Well then it can be easy to convince people that that hate is a popular opinion.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Good, and by the sounds of it they need to keep going.

Holy crap, the kinds of subreddits that people are saying are still on the site. Unbelievable.

I'll be sure not to step browser on reddit again.

 

[tm96]

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?

OT: The same reason I don't care and, am actually really happy about this, is the same reason this isn't censorship; those people can go someplace else, build themselves a website. They haven't had their freedom of speech taken away, they've been told to stop screaming in the middle of a popular street.

I think they alway forget they can do that. If they did that it at least make the internet at least a little better.

 

[Casual Shinji]

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.

The real problem with this is while anonymous imageboards can provoke brutal honesty, which isn't always the best policy and forums can promote circlejerks, posts are always viewed in the order they were posted rather than being sorted by popularity. So you will at least run into opposing opinions. Something that you wouldn't see on a subreddit. And when you have a subreddit devoted specifically to hate. Well then it can be easy to convince people that that hate is a popular opinion.

Well I mean, there's hate and circlejerking (we have plenty of that here), and then there's pics of dead kids and sexy abortions!? Like, what the fuck?! Far be it from me to look down on others, but God-fucking-dammit that's revolting!

 

[Mr_Spanky]

Say what you like about censorship etc but I think most people would agree that there are certain subreddits that are completely abhorent and serve no place on ANYONES harddrive.

Fat people shaming is one thing - and not a good one. But getting your jollies looking at pictures of dead kids? That's a whole order of magnitude more fucked up.

 

[Dragonlayer]

I'm intrigued that vicious mockery of the obese is unacceptable, but lovingly admiring dead women and abused animals is fine and dandy.

Intrigued, and horrified on so many levels.

 

[Vigormortis]

Couple of thoughts:

A: It's Reddit - a privately owned site that's free to allow, or disallow, whatever content they want. So why should we care?

B: It's Reddit - a den of some of the most vile and repugnant human beings imaginable. It's full of the same sort of grotesqueries one might see on a dark net. So why should we care?

C: It's Reddit - it's owners and operators have always been hypocrites about one thing or another. So why should we care?

D: IT'S REDDIT - WHY SHOULD WE CARE?!

 

[joshuaayt]

Truly a devastating blow to assholes who like to make fun of fat people. A single tear.

There's literally thousands of subreddits, I think probably they just haven't gotten around to shutting down SlutJustice. Which, to be clear, they absolutely should, because harassment isn't OK.

There's nothing stopping jerks from going and making their own platform to be jerks, so this isn't a freedom of speech issue. No one's arresting people for this, or silencing them in any way, they're just saying "Hey, maybe this sort of conduct isn't acceptable, maybe go do it elsewhere."

 

[jklinders]

I can't speak of the other subreddits but it looks like r/fatepeoplehate forgot to leave their shitslinging at home when they left their little corner. That tends to constitute a violation of one of their few rules which is actually about harassment.

Now is this a violation of freedom of speech? No, no it is not. Pretty sure they use US law and as such they can only break the first amendment if they are acting on behalf of the US government.

Is it censorship? Yes it is. They have the right to do just that as the owners of a private communications platform. Not every act of censorship is grounds for a rights violations accusation so that leads to the next question. Is that censorship being unevenly or unfairly applied? Not enough information. Will there be enough information? *shrug* Your guess is as good as mine. honestly their terms of use don't require them to give any explanation. I looked it up upon reading this thread and they have that standard caveat of "we can ban you and your forum at any time for any reason we see fit."

I know I am pissing in the wind here, but can we please stop with conflating the minimal overlap between censorship and freedom of speech violations? The hay fields can't keep up with the demand for all those strawmen being ordered.

 

[DerangedHobo]

Freedom of speech, freedom of expression etc etc ad nauseum. That's the "ideal" anyway, in practice, you don't own the business or the space so they can tell you to get fucked with little recourse (that is my layman's understanding, anyway). However the main problem I have with it is that when you persecute an ideology, be it religious, political, whatever, you give that thought (or at least, it's believers) credibility. They feel as if they are being persecuted and that they are the repressed minority, regardless of how asinine or bat shit crazy that thought process is.

 

[Silence]

1. It is apparently very clear that they don't really care about harrassment. I have yet to see evidence of the opposite.
Shitredditsays I don't know much about, but this sub was also of course not banned:

Edit: Oh, apparently they deleted the thread and made it more acceptable. I hope they also removed the doxxing information of Liana K.

2. It doesn't matter if it is censorship or not. Many people use Reddit, and if they feel censored, it leads to consequence (I can't believe I just used "muh feels" but whatever, it's true in this case).

3. People don't understand the Streisand effect. Wow. pls.


I couldn't give a shit about fatpeoplehate, but that tweet from boogie actually put something like a perspective in me:

People have hated me my whole life. It was actually kind of nice to see them organizing it to prove I wasn't just paranoid.

(https://twitter.com/Boogie2988/status/608772852293230592)