> Serious question: why does this even bother you?
Not the person you aimed the question at, but…
I worked as a volunteer counsellor for a few years in my twenties. Some of the stuff I encountered during those years was folk who were going through horrific, long-term abuse.
One of the patterns that you notice is that abusers go to a lot of effort at times to show that their behaviour as normal. Both as a tool to justify it to themselves (this is normal — everybody does it — I'm not a bad person or doing anything bad), and as a tool to further control the abused (this is normal — this is what you should expect — you won't get any better elsewhere).
Anecdotally the ones who can find or create an active "community" of abusers — where two best friends both hit their partners and acknowledge it to each other, where everybody in an extended family beats on their kids, etc. — the abuse is worse because there is little or no sense of shame in what's done.
It's normal.
Now this was the 90s. Before subreddits were around. But this is why it bothers me. Yes, it's just words. But those words are probably making the lives of other people worse.
It bothers me for the same reason it bothers me that those things exist. They are terrible, and should not be given a platform. I don't feel that we, as a society, should tolerate terrible things in general, much less let them prosper.
May I ask where you are from? Free speech - bigoted, hateful, maybe untrue, or otherwise, is perhaps the one enduring (sacred) tenet of American society.
Harassment isn't. One of the big points of the article is that when law enforcement doesn't act that is justification that the action is legal and thus "free speech". Except that law enforcement almost never acts against online harassment. There are plenty of laws restricting free speech when it harms others, and I'd hope you agree that some of the examples in the article crosses the boundary into things that should be criminal.
The boundaries of harassment are very blurry and tend to favour the powerful. For example, some of the campaigns against online harassers look even more like harassment than the actions they're going after people for: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/online-trolls-w... Except that because it's the press harassing people to the point of suicide, we don't see anything wrong with it.
Not entirely true - the reaction in the UK to this whole incident has been quite negative from what I've seen. Then again, we're not overly happy with our press at the best of times...
The parent wasn't a comment about the article directly, but on a thread that was discussing acceptance or rejection of subreddits for "domestic abuse and snuff". I don't know that these constitute "online harassment".
Free speech, sure. But freedom of association, too. And accepting the consequences of one's actions.
If misogynists and abusers want to go and construct their own forums, nobody can legally stop them (as long as their discussion stops short of the various sorts of criminal speech, like conspiracy to commit). But nobody is legally obligated to support them, either.
Reddit tomorrow could say, "Welp, we're not going to host people who cause harm in way X". And that's perfectly American because they'd be exercising their own rights. That they choose to support abusers is legal, but it is well within everybody else's rights to point that out, with volume and at length.
Reddit could censor all instances of discussion featuring the phrase "hackers news" tomorrow, and it's not as if they would be brought up on freedom-of-speech charges.
Society decides. And sometimes it comes up with the wrong answers. But I don't think that pure freedom comes up with the right answers, either. There are consequences to both sides, and the consequences of no action can be just as bad as the consequences of too much action.
There is a wide gap between being hesitant and serious about prohibiting things and accepting everything for fear of overreach, in my opinion. We need to work towards a middle-ground.
> I don't feel that we, as a society, should tolerate terrible things in general, much less let them prosper.
You mean premarital sex, homosexuality, genital mutilation and women showing their faces? Hint: two of those things are still considered normal in much of the world.
I understand the difficulties. However, just as I would not support a lawless society, I do not support the laissez-faire attitude of the reddit admins. And the reasons are much the same.
We choose between letting everyone go free and dealing with the consequences, or restricting people and living with the consequences. There is no right answer.
> We choose between letting everyone go free and dealing with the consequences, or restricting people and living with the consequences. There is no right answer.
There is no right answer, but restricting information is the wrong answer, primarily because it doesn't work. The leaked nudes are still available, even if not on reddit. You can still download pirated movies, even if it's not as simple as it used to be. Eventually, we'll have to figure out ways of preventing/minimizing the consequences, without restricting information.
> The leaked nudes are still available, even if not on reddit.
That's the point - I can dump uuencoded blobs of text in HN that are stolen nudes. I'd be downvoted to hellban if I tried.
Online communities create their own standards. Reddit's standards exclude some groups of people. That's a weird choice to make - in the name of freedom of expression we're going to create an environment that is ridiculously hostile to large numbers of people to make sure they can't express their opinions.
> That's a weird choice to make - in the name of freedom of expression we're going to create an environment that is ridiculously hostile to large numbers of people to make sure they can't express their opinions.
So you're suggestion that instead, in the name of safety, we should create an environment that is ridiculously hostile to large numbers of people (banning them) to make sure they can't express their opinions?
> So you're suggestion that instead, in the name of safety, we should create an environment that is ridiculously hostile to large numbers of people (banning them) to make sure they can't express their opinions?
If their opinion is "You should die you stupid fucking cunt" or "I'm going to find you and rape you and then kill you" then yes, ban those people.
"I'd do a lot worse than rape you. I've just got out of prison and would happily do more time to see you berried [sic]. #10feetunder."
"I will find you, and you don't want to know what I will do when I do. You're pathetic. Kill yourself. Before I do. #Godie."
I find it fucking baffling that you chose to defend those people, the people saying stuff like that, at the cost of their victims.
Caroline Criado Perez was not complaining about one or two people sending a few dozens of messages that were a bit mean. She was inundated with thousands of messages, from many people, threatening sexual violence and death. One man was sending 50 messages per hour, over about 12 hours. Another woman sent hundreds of messages. Perez's "crime"? She campaigned to have a woman on British banknotes after the Bank of England phased out Elizabeth Fry on the £5 - leaving no women on the banknotes.
I would be proud to ban those people from any service I ran.
> I find it fucking baffling that you chose to defend those people, the people saying stuff like that, at the cost of their victims.
Oh well, I find it weird that you're twisting my words so much, but I won't insult your intelligence because of it.
Anyways, I don't defend those people - I think they're morons, I would shame them, etc. (I would defend them in court, though, unless they actually (physically) harm anyone - because freedom of speech).
The problem is (1) banning/censorship is a slippery slope, and will inevitably results in censoring some inconvenient truth, and (2) it doesn't work, because the trolls can just make a new account. IMO, personal filters that each user can activate and tune to their desire (akin email spam filters) would work much better.
If you dig, you find that she's an aggressive jerk, and that's why she's a hate magnet. In a different political context, she'd be the "troll." Same for the person she's arguing with. I don't lump Kathy Sierra in this category, but there's a reason some people always find themselves in the middle of a shitstorm.
>I find it fucking baffling that you chose to defend those people, the people saying stuff like that, at the cost of their victims.
See, this is the thing. You see very, very few people defending that. But everybody who doesn't agree with banning vehement disagreement gets attributed that opinion. Every time. The same thing is happening with the so-called gamergate.
> Online communities create their own standards. Reddit's standards exclude some groups of people. That's a weird choice to make - in the name of freedom of expression we're going to create an environment that is ridiculously hostile to large numbers of people to make sure they can't express their opinions.
Who's being excluded by reddit's standards? Aside from egregious racists who become nuisances to others, and/or child porn distributors (both good exclusions, IMO), it seems like a free-for-all. You want to create a subreddit reflecting your odd interests, go ahead!
Such questions are favored by Reddit trolls, because they take virtually no time to formulate, require no effort in self-education, and eat up other people's time.
Without rehashing the obvious problems of giving a platform to harassment, child porn, spam, etc, just read about how Reddit supported and profited off bros like Violentacrez. Just a little research shows these corporations intervene heavily — but in peculiar ways. http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the...
Reddit isn't the government; they're not under any obligation to permit all-speech-no-matter-how-odious. The site chooses who to provide with a platform - why shouldn't the poster you quoted judge them based on that choice?
That's a completely valid question, and the answer isn't something concrete. I think on one hand it's just overall indicative of the site's priorities (and again, I completely acknowledge that it's those same priorities which also helped foster the subreddits that I love) -- on the other hand, I think it's just the sense of heebie-jeebies, like being a pro bono lawyer for the mob or something -- as though my presence there is somehow contributing to something that I desparately don't want to exist.
More broadly speaking, I would be very willing to bet that an internet community that places harsher standards on acceptable content would result in a better environment for those involved -- but Reddit's stance during the celebrity photo stuff reinforced their position of 'Reddit as a platform', and I don't see that going away.
That's the start of most 'war-on-obscenity' arguments, and usually leads to no constructive ideas. I hate the topic (abusive pornography/snuff) as much as you, but that rational is inappropriate given the peoples' wide variety of tastes in this world, if the material is indeed legal for your region of the world.
>> More broadly speaking, I would be very willing to bet that an internet community that places harsher standards on acceptable content would result in a better environment for those involved
historically that has only served to push users to other services. the success of the regionalization of 2channel into what 4chan is now is a good example. 4chan's success is widely attributed to the pseudo-anonymity that it's users enjoy, and the founder of the site spoke at TED a few years back on what exactly the benefits of such a relationship with their userbase is.
>historically that has only served to push users to other services.
But this is exactly what you want - get rid of the low-quality users and offload them somewhere else. reddit has gotten itself quite a questionable image tolerating pornographic jailbait, necrophiliac porn, stolen nudes and domestic abusers on its platform for very long.
And who is to say these users are inherently low quality? Enjoying any anything socially unacceptable doesn't preclude them from creating content you may enjoy in another subreddit.
I'd argue that personality traits cluster, so that someone who frequents a fappenings-subreddit is way more likely to doxx your users, troll or cause other disturbances than people who don't.
And of course, junk traffic breeds more junk traffic. Even if the first generation of a shady subreddit might make this up with quality in other parts of your site, it will invariably attract generation 2 and later which will create a mini-eternal September.
>And of course, junk traffic breeds more junk traffic. Even if the first generation of a shady subreddit might make this up with quality in other parts of your site, it will invariably attract generation 2 and later which will create a mini-eternal September.
You can argue both ways, the quality increase will attract more quality users.
While those users are creating and posting dog porn they are of low value to me. They're creating noise not signal; consuming resources; and creating negative brand associations. By asking them to take their dog porn elsewhere I risk losing them altogether (which currently isn't much loss) or they start posting other content.
"They shouldn't be posting X because I don't like X" sounds extremely entitled to me.
"They are damaging the brand value of the site" which has nothing to do with you. When I criticise Apple (and you use Apple products), there is no need to take it personally.
A company is free to care about users who want dog porn. That company should not be surprised when other users, or advertisers, steer clear of that company or its brand.
An important part of the question here is are the subquestions of what should be regarded as a "common carrier"-like thing (a category which probably includes email traffic and public Internet traffic at the TCP/UDP level), and what should be tolerated on those services, and what should be regarded as not similar to a "common carrier" (which clearly includes, say, the official Wikipedia version of a Wikipedia page or the non-advertising content of an issue of the New York Times), and what should be tolerated in those venues. Part of the problem of Reddit is that it blurs the lines between the two categories and sends vague or contradictory messages about which side of the line it's on. Things that make Reddit look more like a single publisher or "community" include:
* the single /r/whatever namespace, which was meant to be used as the marker for the canonical or default reddit on a particular topic (and is still used by users for that purpose, whatever disclaimers Reddit may want to hide behind now)
* other technical features like Reddit gold which likewise encourage the perception of Reddit as a single platform
The just-a-platform argument is hard one for any message board or single-host/owner, single-login cluster of message-boards to sustain. Reddit's even more poorly placed to sustain it than others. Twitter, for example, is much better placed to do so, even though it's a single-owner/host, single-login publishing system.
Serious question: why does this even bother you?