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"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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by https on Friday June 12 2015, @03:47PM
I find comments I disagree with modded to +5 ALL THE TIME around here. Your "echo chamber" is pretty much theoretical.
I don't want the free exchange of ideas. I want the free exchange of good ideas. Bad ideas, give them roadblocks - a toll, even.
Community moderation, namely having to convince a majority of interested people that your idea is good before it becomes visible-by-default to a casual observer, is effective. That it has flaws is not a reason to abandon it - there is no system that cannot be gamed from time to time.
This Mills dude didn't think it all the way through. Some ideas deserve death after their collision with truth.
Offended and laughing about it.