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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @09:03PM
Wrong, your solution will lead to exactly the same situation we already have. The problem is with the people, any site can get taken over by any type of group, liberal or conservative. You can't practice tolerance by attempting to ban one group of people... It's simply a sad fact that SJW types fight so hard for tolerance and equality yet often are hypocritical. If you don't want to be a hypocrite then practice tolerance by understanding how/why SJWs become so extreme they violate their own beliefs.
The only type of solution that would result in actual freedom would be a distributed system with impartial rules. Any banning / censorship can be enacted by each individual, or by a group moderator at most. But for true freedom you can't have a central authority over everyone that makes the choices. If a global ban is actually needed, then it is more likely that legal authorities should be contacted...
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday June 12 2015, @11:22PM
Which is why I said you only ban SJWs from -working- for the free and open replacement sites. You want everybody to migrate over and post, create and participate, otherwise you get 8chan or Conservipedia. But if you allow an SJW any authority to hire they will only hire more of their kind and as soon as their numbers grow they will impose their totalitarian worldview on the site.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:41AM
> I said you only ban SJWs from -working-
> they will impose their totalitarian worldview on the site.
Don't you hear it?
The unintentional irony in your posts is deafening!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:26AM
I don't see how not allowing people who would abuse their powers to be moderators or admins is totalitarian.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:06PM
Since you need it spelled out for you, the proposed "solution" is to have all the admins and mods already be totalitarian power-abusers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:11PM
Before you can "ban SJWs", you first need to define the term. "Anyone who disagrees with me" is not objective, and using subjective rules will only ensure the creation of an oppressive echo-chamber. Weren't you trying to reduce censorship? How does censoring different viewpoints help that?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:20PM
Pretty easy for the purpose of my proposal. If you believe in discrimination on the basis of race, gender, etc. you are out. There is zero difference between Al Sharpton and David Duke other than skin color and political power, if you disagree you are probably a bigot. If you believe science is ever 'settled' and thus believe in sending any remaining dissenters off to the camps, you are out. You may of course laugh at the flat earthers[1], you may not believe it acceptable to ban them from public debate. If you believe there is such a thing as 'hate speech' you are right out. If it isn't speech you strongly disagree with, of course you believe in the right to say it, free speech is is about protecting the stuff you do not approve of.
You simply can't set out to build a beacon of tolerance, diversity and free debate and allow those utterly opposed to all of those values to wield authority. You just can't. You must, on the other hand, allow those intolerant bigots to speak if only for the purpose of debate. Rush Limbaugh once said that, someday, when we retake the Universities we should retain one Communist at each so that future generations can see it, speak with it and understand that we weren't exaggerating the evil and the threat it poses.
Sooner or later we are going to have to make the same decision about the country because the exact same problem exists. You can't have a free country while allowing those utterly opposed to freedom and every other core American value to participate. But that is a much thornier problem which can be deferred to another day, companies (for now) are still allowed to hire as they will so long as they don't infringe on the 'protected classes' and political identification is not yet one of them.
[1] Or Chemtrail nuts, Electric Universe folks, AGW fanatics or other critics, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:05PM
Oh, so you propose banning bigots. Say that next time so people can understand you. Is your use of a made-up, meaningless term an attempt to avoid the inevitable "You preach tolerance but you're intolerant of my bigotry!" accusations by only being bigoted and intolerant towards the same label / group as the audience you want to attract is ("SJW"s, whatever that means)?