Reddit bans Alt-Right Group

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/01/reddit-bans-alt-right-group.html

by emilong • 9 years ago

90 80 9 years ago

thedailybeast.com

danjoc3• 9 years ago

Freedom of speech*

*To those who own the presses.

intro-b• 9 years ago

this seems like a pretty standard enforcement of their policy - since real-life information was being shared on that community for the purposes of targeted harassment, banning has always been their primary recourse

zdw• 9 years ago

The first amendment only applies to the government making rules restricting speech.

Reddit is privately owned and run, so they get to make whatever rules they want.

danjoc3• 9 years ago

That's what I just said, but you won't be modded down for it like I was.

stefantalpalaru• 9 years ago

The first amendment

There's more to free speech than one country's constitution. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

psyc2• 9 years ago

Honestly, how many more hundreds of times am I going to read this facile straw man, in these exact same tired words? You can't possibly believe you're saying anything original or enlightening regarding the actual issue, can you? Why am I on this site writing this comment? What am I doing with my life?

molmalo• 9 years ago

Honest question:

If I was the owner of an ISP, and just for this exercise assume that I am providing my services in an area where there is at least one competitor (so I don't have a monopoly). And as a human being, I disliked certain topics; for this example, the topics are radical Islam websites, pornography sites and cat pictures.

Now the question; As I am the owner of a private company, am I entitled to block access to all the sites that show pictures of Bin Laden, boobs or kitties?

I might be sued by site owners and some of my clients... but isn't this situation similar to the way some cable network can choose to broadcast certain channels and not others?

I am all in favor for free access to information, and against censure, even when I might dislike certain topics. But I can only see a blurry line between people's right to access something and the owner of a network to block said access.

CharlesW• 9 years ago

Freedom of speech*

*Doesn't mean freedom from consequences

psyc2• 9 years ago

Why do you bother posting cliched platitudes that a bot could post?

noir_lord2• 9 years ago

Freedom of speech means protection against the Government, Reddit is a private organisation and it doesn't apply.

Also Freedom of Speech does not mean Freedom from Consequences.

tyre• 9 years ago

The 1st Amendment of the United States applies to Congress, not everything. Even in that context, freedom of speech has limits (e.g. libel, slander, child pornography, sexual harassment, etc.).

It's not unreasonable to ban hate-speech.

solipsism2• 9 years ago

It's not unreasonable to ban hate-speech

In the US it is, in general, unconstitutional to ban hate speech (except when it also happens to be unprotected speech, such as a threat).

But that has absolutely no bearing on the subject at hand, of course, so I'm not sure why you bring it up.

striking• 9 years ago

It's a ban on doxxing, not on hate speech. There are plenty of things on reddit people consider hate speech, but they remain. r/altright was worse than plain hate speech, it was simply hate (in the form of harassment, through doxxing).

chc• 9 years ago

I'm pretty sure there aren't many people who consider a right to harass to be essential to freedom of speech.

charonn0• 9 years ago

The reddit software is open source, so I'm not sure "the presses" applies. What you probably meant was "the audience", and no one has a right to that.

[0] https://github.com/reddit/reddit

Dobbs• 9 years ago

/r/altright was banned for doxing. An example can be found on imgur http://imgur.com/a/pZ8yN where you can see not only doxing, but crowd funding to support doxing of an individual they disagreed with.

microcolonel2• 9 years ago

I would disagree with somebody sucker-punching a community member in the face. If there are no other targets this seems entirely legitimate.

The ban also seems slightly prejudicial, because on the other side there is /r/antifa where people are bragging[1] about the assault which /r/altright was trying to solve with this bounty. Granted, /r/antifa seems to be mostly dissent against this stuff, so it wouldn't be a subreddit shutdown.

I think that assaulting people you disagree with is a far more serious charge than posting a reward for information which leads to the arrest of a criminal. The latter is something befitting of a police agency.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/antifa/comments/5r5rlp/

diyorgasms• 9 years ago

/r/antifa is run by neo-nazi squatters who want to make antifa look bad. They probably should be shut down, and there are other places actual activists organize.

unprepare2• 9 years ago

if you want to investigate criminal activity, become a police officer.

Vigilante justice often describes the actions of a single person or group of people who claim to enforce the law but lack the legal authority to do so.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vigilante_justice

neotek• 9 years ago

Good.

heydonovan• 9 years ago

[deleted as per incorrect information]

bla2• 9 years ago

"has a reputation" is pretty strong; their CEO did it like 4 times in a few hours. That's not a small thing, but there was appropriate outrage and an apology. Also, breitbart link, really?

scentedmeat• 9 years ago

Well, they do have a reputation for deleting sub-reddits they don't like. It would be better, I think, just to come out and say, "we will delete sub-reddits we disagree with."

ajkjk• 9 years ago

Some explanation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/5ri97o/ralt...

"There is a website I can't link that is taking money to crowdfund doxxing efforts. After the admins banned that domain, the mods on /r/altright continued to manually approve submissions to that site and added them as sticky/announcement posts. My guess is that is the reasoning behind the ban."

So they got banned for repeatedly and intentionally, with moderator support, circumventing Reddit's rules -- not for 'suppression of free speech' or anything like that. I'm sure the admins were glad to be rid of them, but, they really brought it on themselves.

askljkdjklsj• 9 years ago

What's the actual incident? Does anybody have details?

Wesearchr was banned from twitter for looking for information about the guy who sucker-punched Richard Spencer live on video. Is this ban for the same incident?

This seems a little different from how I normally use the term "doxxing", which is posting real-life information about a person who would prefer to remain anonymous. I mean, I'm sure the guy who assaulted Spencer would prefer to remain anonymous, but others have good reason to oppose that.

fooey2• 9 years ago

Doxxing is a violation of TOS regardless if it's for "good" or for "bad" reasons.

Mods of such a controversial sub flagrantly participating in doxxing is basically forcing the admins to ban them.

AckSyn3• 9 years ago

In my experience moderating a popular (default) subreddit, the admins and other mods will brush under the carpet actions done by the political left that would have the political right put under notice/(shadow)banned/sub-closed, and it's gotten worse exponentially show since the heat of the election season last summer.

Searching for someone who committed a crime vs senseless "doxxing" (someone who hasn't committed a crime) are two different things. However, when it suits the reddit admin's purposes they'll outright ignore it or use a heavy hand and ban people/communities.

They're heavy leftists, so you can guess where this tends to lead things on that site.

unprepare2• 9 years ago

but others have good reason to oppose that.

Right, but legally the only people responsible for investigating this person are the police and other lawful authorities.

enabling a vigilante justice system is exactly why anti-doxxing rules exist in the first place. do you not remember reddit after the boston bombing?

singold• 9 years ago

If it is a violation of tos shouldn't they ban the user instead of deleting the subrredit?

Edit: now i've read the comment by 'ajkjk and that makes more sense

baudolino2• 9 years ago

six weeks ago I would have regarded the idea of doing this as inimical to the principles of free discourse and debate that I feel are fundamental to democracy and indeed to small-l liberal civilization in general.

now I find myself wondering whether my principles are being contaminated by the immense personal anger I feel, or whether perhaps my principles weren't as rationally derived as I had previously believed.

solipsism2• 9 years ago

Then you probably have not read the article.

EDIT: inserted critical "not"

baudolino2• 9 years ago

I did, in fact. What do you mean?

epistasis2• 9 years ago

Then you may find this concept interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Living in an open society does not mean tolerating those who aim to end the open society. The altright, as a rewarming of white nationalism, which is a rewarming of Nazism, seems to not be such a huge fan of our open society.

vixen99• 9 years ago

What assumption laden, lazy use of words. You throw them around as smears and pretend they have specific meaning rather than the emotive symbols they are.

Nigel Farage who convinced a majority of Brits to exit the EU is generally regarded as being altright. Do we therefore conclude that this British majority went along with someone who supports a 'rewarming of Nazism'. This is vile garbage.

Identifying targets precisely and offering arguments is preferable to sloppy innuendo.

razakel• 9 years ago

I don't think they really had much of a choice. It doesn't look good for a media company to allow neo-Nazi content to be posted.

diego• 9 years ago

The important part: the group was not banned for their beliefs or their speech. It was banned for violating the TOS, in particular for doxxing.

gottam• 9 years ago

Disagreed. The name "altright" itself is now banned. You can no longer make a subreddit named that so effectively, the speech and beliefs are now banned under the guise of TOS violation. Usually when moderators misbehave they tend to trade out moderators, they made a special exception to make sure the subreddit isn't remade. They also tend to selectively enforce these rules on subreddits that dont align with their own political views.

You can always start one that isnt called "altright" but you're less likely to get eyes on it which may be the entire point.

They're well within their rights to ban whomever they want, but they should be upfront about deleting subreddits that dont align with them politically rather than this game they're playing finding some TOS reason to remove an entire topic from the site. It doesn't make sense otherwise to punish everyone for the actions of a few.

briholt3• 9 years ago

This now the default social media censorship tactic. Apply the TOS harshly to your opponents and loosely to your allies. When an Alt Right sub doxxes people, they get banned; when an SJW sub doxxes people, they get ignored.

a_bonobo• 9 years ago

Do you have a source for that? Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me

et-al• 9 years ago

Anyone remember when they shut down /r/fatpeoplehate? The hate just spilled to other parts of the site.

I'd be concerned of the same thing happening with this.

twblalock3• 9 years ago

I think it's too late to worry about the alt-right spilling over into other subreddits. That already happened a while ago.

taneq• 9 years ago

I recall it being likened to destroying an ant nest with a leafblower.

marricks• 9 years ago

People jump to compare to digg or clamping down on "free speech" but groups that dox or participate in harassment don't deserve to be sheltered.

Sure, reddit started as a sort of "libertarian dream" but it's pretty clear at this point that some groups choose to abuse that.

carsongross• 9 years ago

Well this should be a sane, civil conversation...

davexunit• 9 years ago

Good riddance.

arjie• 9 years ago

Who honestly gives a shit? Not me. There are a veritable army of unproductive losers who spend all their time on the Internet. Nearly every occasion where I've seen people complain about "censorship" from a website, it's unproductive drivel from these people.

Good riddance, I say. When productive people don't like their speech being suppressed they create lobste.rs. But these people aren't productive at all. They're useless wastrels, for whom the psychological kick of receiving an upvote from their feeble-minded brethren is sufficient to drag them through the day.

I will continue to use reddit for /r/rust and whatnot and it will be good.

Normally, I wouldn't even enter this conversation but there's this trend where people assume that these worthless fools are the majority simply because they spend every waking hour whining about some thing or the other. And then people act as if they must be placated. When really they should just go away.

hackuser4• 9 years ago

Note that they were banned for doxxing, not for intolerance or hatred.

Generally I strongly favor free speech and believe the answer to 'bad' speech is more speech. However, there always are limits such as slander, harmful deception (yelling 'fire' in a crowd), provocation to crime ('assault the man in the front row!'), and more. I think there may be a way to clearly and justly draw a line for white supremacist and other hate speech, if and when we want to do it.

Tolerate all but intolerance itself.

There is some theoretical support:

* Think of tolerance as a social contract: I tolerate you if you tolerate me; or, everyone tolerates you if you tolerate everyone. If you break that contract then you have no claim on everyone else's toleration.

* Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance. Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.[0]

On the other hand, the always incredible Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy makes some good arguments against it, especially that humanity will abuse this new authority.[1] Partly for that reason and partly to err on the side of individual liberty, I would apply this rule only when there is a practical necessity. One requirement would be that the intolerant group poses a threat. For example, a group of intolerant Jainists in Los Angeles isn't a threat - they are too few to threaten anyone in that environment. In a tiny town where they are the majority, or in a locked room with one Confucian about whom they are saying intolerant things, it would be a threat.

But this all is my personal analysis; I'd be interested in some established standards such as workplace law, neo-Nazi speech in Germany, etc.

----

[0] I can't find an authoritative source or discussion, but Wikipedia covers it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/ - Search the page for "paradox of drawing the limits"

JohnTHaller• 9 years ago

altright was doxxing, which is against the ToS. Doxxing, regardless of who, is generally a bad idea. For background, see the reddit Boston bomber debacle. You're going to get it wrong and end up harassing or harming innocent people.

PlumNutPrime• 9 years ago

Try a platform that lets you run your groups like you want: www.plumgroups.com.

Setup interest/location based groups and/or install the Chrome extension to comment on every site you visit. Post anonymously or use you Plum Name.

Reddit bans Alt-Right Group

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