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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday April 17 2014, @03:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the First-rule-of-censorship dept.

In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations in mid-2013, moderators at /r/technology configured filters to automatically censor posts containing "politicized" words, based on findings by creq. This censorship appears to be ongoing. The banned words include NSA, Comcast, Anonymous, CISPA, SOPA, Swartz, FCC, net neutrality, GHCQ, EFF, ACLU, and others.

The admins claim they simply configured their bots to delete "politicized" posts. Yet their filters (which were not announced or explained) effectively precluded meaningful discussion of contemporary issues. Could this reflect willing government collaboration by Reddit's admins, or might they have been served with an NSL to force compliance?

News coverage of the censorship is at the Daily Dot. A fuller list of banned words are available on pastebin. The reddit post reporting censorship on /r/rechnology.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17 2014, @05:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17 2014, @05:57PM (#32762)

    So they're fine with child porn and other borderline content, in the guise of free speech, but when free speech is actually the issue, they censor it?

    Yeah, that's pretty accurate to what I know of the reddit administration.

  • (Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Thursday April 17 2014, @11:46PM

    by Nobuddy (1626) on Thursday April 17 2014, @11:46PM (#32900)

    I assume you are not aware that jailbait and all related have been banned for years now. And were banned as soon as they became aware of what they were.
    Yea, it was pretty lazy to not check subs until a news article did it for you- but the action was swift and brutal as soon as it was revealed.