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posted by janrinok on Friday June 12 2015, @06:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-will-not-ban,-much dept.

The Washington Post:

"We will not ban questionable subreddits," Reddit's then-CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote mere months ago. "You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create."

But in an apparent reversal of that policy, and in an unprecedented effort to clean up its long-suffering image, Reddit has just banned five "questionable subreddits."

The site permanently removed the forums Wednesday afternoon for harassing specific, named individuals, a spokesperson said. Of the five, two were dedicated to fat-shaming, one to transphobia, one to racism and one to harassing members of a progressive video game site.

Unsurprisingly, a vocal contingent of Redditors aren't taking the changes well: "Reddit increases censorship," read one post on r/freespeech, while forums like r/mensrights and r/opieandanthony theorized they would be next.


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  • (Score: 3, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:12AM (#195338)

    As a less dramatic example, let's consider the cone of silence that's descended on the great init system debate. It's amazing how the System D thing got shut down--and continually gets shut down--in the tech world. This post will be modded -1: Troll within minutes of my posting it. This post will explore the reasons behind this.

    Consider the following statement:

    "For a while System D was this inflamed sore spot, now it's old news, a settled debate, and no longer worth discussing."

    We can abstract it and apply it to any number of discussions:

    "For a while $TOPIC was this inflamed sore spot, now it's old news, a settled debate, and no longer worth discussing."

    ...where $TOPIC is a subset of (evolution, gun control, affirmative action, gay marriage, gnu vs. gnu/linux, system d,etc)

    Why is this? I'd offer two possible explanations:

    1) Deadlock. At some point, some debates are recognized as being intractable, and eventually, even bringing them up evokes the "eyes rolled heavenward" response (just think, "vi vs. emacs")

    2) Debate fatigue. After enough screaming, the losing party usually gives up or gives in, and nobody wants to talk about it anymore.

    I'd argue that in modern society (say, the past 50+ years or so) a great number of contentious debates have been resolved, not by reaching a compromise or consensus, but by the discussion reaching the point where options 1 and/or 2 are the only way forward. Once that mark has been reached, reviving the topic is considered to be in poor taste, to say the least! The result: downmodding, banning, etc.

    So here we are in the Linux world. Apparently System D has "won" and it's "settled science." I'm sure Reddit hasn't banned any anti-System D subreddits yet, but I'm sure that's only a matter of time. Part of this might be generational: the millenials tendency toward apathy means that we arrive at the second state (Debate fatigue) with increasing fatigue.

    In conclusion, I can only state this observation: people are always excited about a debate or controversy, but only as long as it's fashionable. One could argue that real or manufactured controversies are the lifeblood of a comment-driven website (or, more broadly speaking, the entire news media), and that once debate fatigue sets in, it's time to move on to a new topic.

    For some of us, System D provides an endless source of amusement and hilarity, and the topic remains forever fresh and lulzworthy.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +3  
       Offtopic=2, Insightful=1, Interesting=2, Underrated=1, Touché=1, Total=7
    Extra 'Offtopic' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:43AM (#195345)

    This post will be modded -1: Troll within minutes of my posting it.

    Your prediction was obviously wrong. There's still no troll moderation (or any other moderation) on your post.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:47AM (#195346)

      But do snarky replies count? Discuss amongst yourselves.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:58AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:58AM (#195350)

        No, they don't count. They don't decrease visibility of the post; indeed, they increase it. Therefore if anything, they should be considered an up moderation.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @07:12PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @07:12PM (#195492)

          While it may increase the visibility, it also adds to the noise drowning out what little signal there may have been.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @07:30PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @07:30PM (#195500)

            > While it may increase the visibility, it also adds to the noise drowning out what little signal there may have been.

            Only for people who read comments sorted newest first, all other sort options will make the original post more prominent than the snarky replies. Unless that is, the snarky reply gets modded above a filter threshold that would have made it invisible. But that still increases visibility for the OP since without that upmodded snarky reply the entire thread would be invisible.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @09:08PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @09:08PM (#195537)

          They don't decrease visibility of the post

          So decreasing post visibility is censorship? By posting, you're increasing the number of posts, which decreases the visibility of each individual post, which means posting is censorship!

          Stop posting, otherwise you're censoring me!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:54AM (#195349)

    (evolution, gun control, affirmative action, gay marriage, gnu vs. gnu/linux, system d,etc)

    Evolution is about what happend. That's a question that can be settled through science. And it has been settled through science, by mounting heaps of evidence for it. The only thing that could legitimately re-open the debate is new evidence that doesn't fit evolution.

    All other topics in your list (with the possible exception of "affirmative action"; I have no idea what you mean with that) are about what should happen. That is, a question that cannot ever be decided purely through science; science can help in making the decision, but there's no way this can be decided by science. Therefore those questions can ultimately only be settled by agreement.

    In short: Evolution does not belong on your list.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @02:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @02:41PM (#195406)

    You are so right about the systemD amusement.

    It's like a B rated movie trying to be serious, but just gets funnier as you watch.

    I especially like the binary log thing.
    Why not run the logs through some brainfuck program and then encrypt it all too, while your at it?
    There must be an App for that.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by cykros on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:27AM

    by cykros (989) on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:27AM (#195626)

    I think the big thing with systemd is that those of us that decided it was problematic enough have resolved to use open systems that don't use it (Slackware, Gentoo, the BSD's, etc). The rest either don't care, and use whatever most popular/supported distro they're going to use, or outright LIKE systemd (while it may seem strange, I can kind of relate, being someone who voluntarily uses pulseaudio on Slackware due to some of its functionality actually making my system do what I want it to...#slackware on freenode will NEVER let me hear the end of it if it gets brought up though). The rest at this point is generally just repeating what has already been said in countless other situations, and yes, it gets tiresome. Moreover, it derails other conversations that all parties involved actually are able to find middle ground on into a realm of shouting matches.

    That isn't to say it should never be a topic that gets discussion, just that the time and place for those discussions are no longer in the big general forums, but rather, with those who have not yet become aware of the debate in the first place, or those who are just now realizing the issues that are resulting from having systemd. You can yell at the masses all you like, and then complain when they turn their backs and walk away (or outright find some way to silence you), but change comes in the trickle of individuals having thoughtful conversations, one on one, and making decisions.

    As for places like Soylentnews though, it's worth noting that the choir sometimes gets sick of being preached to. In my experience, there aren't many systemd apologists around here...just those who hated it enough to do something about it for themselves, and those who decided that despite it being abhorrent, the cost of changing things outweighed the benefits, and it's just one more obnoxious part of dealing with modern tech (to throw onto the pile). That isn't to say that novel systems that make avoiding its use won't be welcome, but that merely talking a lot about how nice they'd be will get treated as the empty words and actionless complaining it amounts to. At the end of the day, systemd, sysvinit, bsd init, and the various derivatives are all FOSS, and if you really want to do something about anyone, the source code is in your hands to do something with. Don't be surprised when choosing to complain about it rather than do something about it draws eyerolls instead of applause.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @10:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @10:03AM (#195726)

      That, sir or madam, was a very thoughtful post.

      I salute you!