Reddit takes a new direction

http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2012/feb/13/reddit/

by tswicegood • 14 years ago

392 247 14 years ago

I confused about why he thinks it ironic that Nabakov is banned... I mean, it got grandfathered in when child porn laws were written, somehow, but it is certainly fiction about a paedophile, right? Anything that bans other kiddie-fiddler fiction while allowing _Lolita_ is quite obviously inconsistent, and those in favor of this inconsistency probably ought to examine why they like _Lolita_.

_delirium2• 14 years ago

It wasn't grandfathered in; it's unconstitutional, in the U.S., to ban Lolita.

It would be pretty unfortunate if literature couldn't even seriously deal with the subject! (Incidentally, it's pretty hard to read Lolita as being pro-pedophilia; if anything, it's an extended, mostly negative investigation into the protagonist's psyche, although many pages in literary journals have been spent arguing over how to interpret it.)

kanamekun2• 14 years ago

The First Amendment is pretty clear that freedom of speech/press is protected only from Congress and legislation: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Companies and/or websites can ban almost any speech or writing they would like. It's not unconstitutional, because corporations aren't considered a governmental/Congressional body.

carbocation• 14 years ago

Lolita, the novel, is an extended metaphor for the United States.

harshreality2• 14 years ago

Lolita the book is protected because it fails the third prong of the Miller test. Nabokov's Lolita is considered to have "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific" value. However, that test sets the bar at a completely arbitrary level:

What about Adrian Lyne's 1997 movie, Lolita? It has artistic merit, but arguably not as much as the novel.

What about girls' dancing and gymnastics? Should photography of those activities, even including women's international gymnastics competitions, be banned just because, viewed with an eye toward prurience, they might qualify? Certainly the activities have artistic value, but how much?

What about purely fictional depictions of minors, either in manga (see the case of Christopher Handley's manga possession) or even in fictional stories that may not be deemed to have serious literary merit?

comicjk• 14 years ago

I don't defend Lolita in particular, but there is clearly a difference between child porn and fiction about the boring, sad life of a real pedophile. One is meant to arouse and the other to show a truth.

mcantelon• 14 years ago

>those in favor of this inconsistency probably ought to examine why they like _Lolita_.

There is a lot of fiction from the perspective of non-sympathetic characters. If doesn't mean that those who appreciate the insight the fiction provides into the character, or the character's circumstance, are advocates of the character or the circumstance itself.

kijin7• 14 years ago

Some people, myself included, object to banning "kiddie-fiddler fiction", no matter how disgusting it is. The law should not make judgments of literary quality, and literary quality is the only grounds for treating Lolita differently from some (but perhaps not all) of the amateur stuff.

Besides, no actual child was abused in the production of these works, unlike with films and pictures with actual underage models; and potential harm to future children is a rather shaky basis to justify flushing the First Amendment down the drain. That's the argument that ACLU's Nadine Strossen used two decades ago against censorship of (non-child) pornography. I see no reason why the same argument won't apply to child pornographic literature.

But private websites are a different matter, and there's nothing wrong with a moderator who chooses whether or not to discriminate on the basis of perceived literary quality on his or her own site. Many forums ban discussions about religion and politics altogether, but that doesn't infringe anybody's Constitutional rights.

defrost• 14 years ago

Yes. We should ban kiddie fiddler fiction like Romeo and Juliet. Did you read that disgusting line about busting their maiden heads? Yuck. Yuckity Yuckity Yuuuck.

pyre6• 14 years ago

  > I confused about why he thinks it ironic
  > that Nabakov is banned...

It's not ironic that something that is considered 'classic' literature gets banned in a rush to ban all 'pedo' material? If you want to play it up, I'm sure you could conjure up images of Nazis burning books.

erickhill• 14 years ago

I think playing the 'endless game of whack-a-mole' really is their only option in the short term. Yes, it can get expensive. But if they want to continue on their current insane traffic trajectory and gain a wider audience, they need to be on top of the human moderation process.

This traffic report isn't accurate, but the trend is right (from what I've heard): http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com/

josefresco• 14 years ago

What about utilizing the community to police this undesirable content? I'm sure that opens up other exploits but if the community wants to stay healthy, it has to take responsibility for itself and not just rely on the admins to come up with a magic algorithm that will solve the problem.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

Reddit isn't one community, it's sort of like usenet, there are lots of sub-communities that can easily be oblivious and invisible to one another.

Mrow• 14 years ago

This is the reason I scoff when people try to describe an average "Redditor". With the sheer amount of traffic coming through their site it's impossible to come up with an accurate generalization of what the community as a whole feels, even with the small percentage of traffic actually commenting and voting.

I would like to see a lot more emphasis be put on the decision between serving the will of the users, establishing a set of ideals that Reddit chooses to run things by, or a mixture of the two.

showerst4• 14 years ago

The problem is that the 'community' is now so large that you have a subset that considers things appropriate that the wider group doesn't.

So either the small group gets to do things that may damage the larger site (and be illegal), or the larger group squelches the smaller group's freedom by singling them out. It's a lose-lose situation from a purely community standpoint.

Realistically, I support the message that they're sending - That child sexualization is blanket banned because it's too resource intensive to define and monitor shades of gray, and it's a unique issue. The very active marijuana, racism, or even black hat netsec communities may support illegal/gray-area things, but are far less likely to get the site branded as a kiddie-porn hive, which would basically be a death-penalty to the community, or attacked various governments.

Sometimes admins just have to make some executive calls to protect their business, even if they're hypocritical from a strict standpoint. I'd say reddit's defacto bill of rights is still pretty strong for a web community.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

This isn't a workable solution without more massive changes to the way reddit works.

Instant account creation, plus complete anonymity, plus groupthink inside of subreddits...

The first "community police action" of reddit would probably be all the Battlefield 3 fans removing all the Call of Duty subreddits.

ubernostrum2• 14 years ago

You may find it instructive to read the final link in the post -- "LambdaMOO Takes a New Direction"

emmelaich• 14 years ago

Yes, everyone interested in this topic should read that link. And associated topics -- search for 'Mr Bungle LambdaMOO' and in particular: http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html

A Rape in Cyberspace

How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society

First published in The Village Voice, December 23, 1993

starfox• 14 years ago

Doesn't every website that gets used by the unwashed masses eventually have to deal with this problem? How does facebook or youtube deal with it? How did AOL deal with it?

Is the issue just that Reddit is run by a smaller team than these larger companies?

raganwald• 14 years ago

Facebook is obviously thriving as a business but arousing indignation and ire over their policies, which ban breastfeeding photos but allow hate speech.

So I woud say they have decided to live woth a certain ongoing level of shitstorming as a cost of doing buiness.

nbm• 14 years ago

Facebook does not ban breastfeeding photos in general - https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=340974655932193#Does-Face...?

barclay• 14 years ago

Youtube handles it via whack-a-mole. A friend of mine used to work in their community dept, and would tell horror stories about the things she'd see people put up.

Apocryphon• 14 years ago

My heart goes out to the censors who have to deal with user submissions (as opposed to network censors). I can only blanch at the job that people who manage Google Image Search have to deal with.

TheSOB88• 14 years ago

It's interesting, I think, how much sheer emotion there is behind these child protection issues. Is there anything more emotionally provocative than the thought of harm to your children? Your own flesh and blood, who you've raised from before they could crawl. The amount of emotional and physical pain you've gone through (and willingly continue to go through) for your children far surpasses any other possible source.

Of course, people do overreact sometimes, but I think this is our instinct for a very good reason.

ThomPete• 14 years ago

I have a son and I am not so sure.

Don't get me wrong. If my son was a victim I would probably want nothing but hell for the person who did it.

But I also sometimes can't help but feel that society and the media is actually making matters worse, than they already are.

alex_c• 14 years ago

I think the strength of the emotion is perfectly understandable. The unfortunate side effect is that it makes rational discussion very difficult - because it's such an emotional issue, it's easy to misunderstand what others are saying, or to see something as much more black and white than it actually is.

The worst part is this emotional response is so easy to exploit. It can be "think of the children" laws with unintended (or intended) side effects. Or, like in this case, it can be used as a weapon to attack a person or community (even if I agree with the outcome, this particular instance feels like SA attacking Reddit either out of genuine outrage or, more likely, for shits and giggles).

kooshball2• 14 years ago

My biggest concern over all this is that the policy change came so quickly after the SA thread (similar timeframe as the Anderson Cooper clip). Even though startups and usually praised for moving quickly, I agree complete with the OP that this can be a major directional change (positive or negative) for Reddit overall. This kind of stuff should be thought over long and hard, rather than come down from their parent company. Reactionary policies that sprouts from avoiding bad PR will be good for the short term, I just hope they thought it all out what they will do in the long term.

ubershmekel• 14 years ago

Not that I'd like to defend this move, but it probably has been on the table for a long time now. /r/jailbait was banned and reinstated enough times for the discussions to have gotten old in reddit HQ by now.

kooshball2• 14 years ago

So the result of the discussion was to keep all the other questionable content available until a PR shitstorm starts to brew?

If they already made a decision why would they not act on it at the same time /r/jailbait was banned?

This whole thing smells like they got their hands forced, which is what worries me.

alecco7• 14 years ago

Reddit is changing. It's currently in a renewed and stronger Eternal September. Bastion subreddits like /r/AskScience and /r/Truereddit are reduced to junk and fads. The hope for the group of moderated subreddits (Republic of Reddit) didn't really take off, it's just a handful of submitters.

The top voted comments on threads about censorship are mostly 1 to 3 months old users. And now reddit (had to) surrender to a decadent SOPA-supporting forum and a bunch of trolls from /r/ShitRedditSays (wich starts to look like a *chan long troll instead of a bunch of ultra-feminists).

Sure, a lot of questionable/creepy subreddits shouldn't be there. But where's the line? And who draws it? Also, isn't this an ongoing process? Those subreddits can reopen in minutes with more subtle names. The censorship whack-a-mole is pointless.

It's weird how reddit was a bastion for resisting SOPA/ACTA but fear mongering in US can take over a site. It seems that's the real frontier and we are losing. Next up /r/trees and /r/atheism.

Like so many times before it's time to move on. I wish the best to the owners/admins, they were cornered and probably had a tough choice. And I sincerely hope the new users enjoy this new reddit.

showerst4• 14 years ago

Remember, slippery slope is a fallacy.

I think the admins are sending the right message - This subject is blanket banned because it's too hard to sort out the shades of gray, and it brings a unique risk to the community that other things (drugs, racism, etc) just don't.

I agree that they'll be playing 'ban the sub' whack a mole, but that will happen to any UGC site of scale, the important thing is (ironically) not to let a community coalesce around the subject that's big enough to get reddit targeted by the media or some zealous prosecutor trying to score political points (See craiglist's adult section...)

It would be nice to see them lay down some firm rules that say "OK: These things are blanket banned, these things are fair game just don't break US laws; these things are open season". It would be doable to segregate Jailbait / Trees / Atheism along those lines and remove some fears.

* Edited for grammar, typos, wording of first sentence.

kijin7• 14 years ago

> a false fallacy

The philosophy degree in me screams that there's something wrong with that phrase.

FJim• 14 years ago

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

learc83• 14 years ago

>Remember, slippery slope is a fallacy.

Not arguing with you on the merits of the OPs argument, but a slippery slope argument is not necessarily a fallacy.

It's only a fallacy if one doesn't logically connect the first event with each subsequent event in the chain.

You can check wikipedia if you'd like some examples of fallacious and non-fallacious slippery slope arguments.

blhack4• 14 years ago

Oh for crying out loud...

The stuff that was allowed on reddit would get you an instant, permanent ban on pretty much every website on the internet.

Do you even know what SOPA, PIPA or ACTA do? Reddit has voluntarily taken the stance they won't allow the trade and index of child pornography on their website.

That has got nothing to do with DNS takedowns for linking to copyrighted material. It was a private decision made by a private company.

And good. The idea that people would support the exploitation of children because they have somehow wrapped it up inside of "free speech" is completely disgusting and embarrassing. Yes, you have the right to free speech, so long as it does not infringe on the liberties of others.

Anderkent9• 14 years ago

He mentioned SOPA PIPA and ACTA because somethingawfuls stance of these reflects its general trustworthiness.

No one argues that illegal content should not be removed, and uploaders banned. Which was already being done. Child pornography was never allowed on reddit, and was removed as it was reported.

This is not preventing 'exploitation of children', it's just a majority censoring topics it finds inconvenient/disturbing.

kijin7• 14 years ago

Exchanging child pornography is illegal in the United States (as well as in many other countries). There's nothing unreasonable about stating in your TOS that you can't have a subreddit the very existence of which breaks the law. Sure, people can try to reopen these subreddits under different names, but once the rule is in the TOS, they can be reported on and shut down as a matter of routine. The same applies to warez. Like it or not, you can't operate in the U.S. while allowing your users to post links to warez.

/r/trees is not the same, and I hate slippery-slope arguments predicting its demise. Exchanging actual marijuana is illegal in many parts of the United States. Exchanging information about marijuana is not. You could download kiddie porn on /r/jailbait, and the fact that those images are actually hosted on imgur is unlikely to convince any court. But you wouldn't download marijuana on /r/trees, would you? If /r/trees or /r/atheism ever gets banned, it will be the result of a completely different kind of pressure. It won't be a straightforward extension of reddit's current policy on kiddie porn.

Reddit may or may not be dying, but its latest change of policy on kiddie porn will probably have little to do with its fate.

alecco7• 14 years ago

What are you talking about? Reddit had a very strong stance aginst CP already.

And there's a lot of rules broken on /r/trees so it's far from safe. Like meetups to exchange or people giving tips. That's not legal in US and happens quite often there.

Same with /r/atheism, a lot of their content can be labeled hate speech under US law. (IANAL)

baddox3• 14 years ago

The whole point of this policy shift is that it's no longer about child pornography, just like the jailbait banning wasn't about child porn. The post makes it clear that they've always followed the law regarding child pornography, but that they're now voluntarily banning all suggestive or sexual content involving minors (so, not just child porn). Their main excuse is that they don't have the resources to moderate on a case-by-case basis, and I guess they think a subreddit-by-subreddit basis will require less manpower.

Still, I strongly suspect this isn't purely about legality. Reddit has come under fire (first, in the press regarding jailbait, and more recently by somethingawful users) for having content that's not necessarily illegal, but rather just creepy. Most of the top comments on this post share this interpretation, and most seem to approve of banning creepy content. If other commenters are to be believed, it also appears that many of the banned subreddits contained fairly "standard" pornography and either had strict "no minor" or "no nudity/sex" policies.

Alex39173• 14 years ago

"Exchanging information about marijuana is not."

Except for that now the Obama administration is trying to charge anyone who speaks out in favor of drug reform under the RICO laws, which carry a possible death penalty. Some Montana legislator was just charged a couple weeks ago.

sixothree• 14 years ago

One of the reasons for removing /r/jailbait originally was that users were trading illegal files behind the scenes.

I've heard of the same thing in /r/trees; Eg. seed exchanges and more.

mistercow• 14 years ago

> There's nothing unreasonable about stating in your TOS that you can't have a subreddit the very existence of which breaks the law.

That's not what they did. What they did was to say that suggestive content featuring minors is prohibited. I feel like a broken record, but I guess I need to keep reiterating this: Romeo and Juliet is suggestive content featuring minors.

> You could download kiddie porn on /r/jailbait

No you couldn't. Nothing pornographic or illegal was ever allowed on /r/jailbait. It might have gotten posted a few times, but the submitters would have been banned.

Fukkireta3• 14 years ago

You can't use a slippery slope argument that begins with child pornography in this situation without supporting child pornography. I'm not saying this to try and discredit your argument by association, it's simply a consequence of trying to hold freedom of speech so utterly sacrosanct that you can't breach it under any circumstances.

Yes, it would be easier to not take a stance on things like this, because then we could argue from the superior position of "I've never censored anything (well except posting personal information...)," but that would make us complicit in the trading of child pornography.

So, instead, I say we accept that we now have the harder job of drawing lines and judging what is and not allowable. Accept that the harder thing is to go "I am against SOPA/ACTA in all its forms, but am against being complicit against the trade of child pornography and will ~censor~ it if necessary" because life isn't about black and whites, and sometimes we have to make compromises for the greater good. (EDIT: spelling, grammar)

Anderkent9• 14 years ago

But you can use a slippery slope argument that begins with 'you can post whatever is legally allowed', and trends towards 'you cannot post anything that the majority finds disturbing'. Which is what is happening here - no one argues for allowing already illegal content.

alecco7• 14 years ago

I'm not saying you hate your mother, but...

owenmarshall2• 14 years ago

As plenty of people have said plenty of other places, there's a huge difference between illegal content and distasteful but protected speech.

Further, the legal definition for child pornography is, in many cases, not what people expect. The EFF has a primer that touches on this: https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/adult

If reddit begins cracking down on protected speech like you'd find in /r/trees and /r/atheism, you've got a point. But when reddit (finally) decides to crack down on something that is plainly not legal speech, you're fear mongering with the best of them.

squirrels• 14 years ago

You're right, there is a huge difference between between illegal content and distasteful but protected speech. Yet you seem to be lumping them together in your post...

Inside your link it says, for something to be considered "obscene":

>The Miller test stems from Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), in which the US Supreme Court held that material is obscene if each of the following factors is satisfied:

>1) Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

>2) Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law;

>3) Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

So, by law ALL THREE of the "obscene" criteria have to be met for it to be considered obscene. I want to focus in on #2, because I don't think pictures of children in bathing suits is sexual in nature. If it were, then taking your children out in public wearing said bathing suit would be illegal too... Now, people looking at those pictures may be sexualizing these images in the head, but the images themselves break no laws and show no nudity. So why exactly is reddit drawing the line there? Also, why is Toddlers in Tiaras fine? (there's a subreddit for that too). I don't understand what makes it so different to you (and to reddit admins).

I kept reading and further down in your link it says:

>Child pornography is any visual depiction, where "(A) the producing of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor [under 18] engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and (B) such visual depiction is of such conduct." 18 U.S.C. § 2252 The law prohibits knowingly possessing or transmitting (including by computer) child pornography.

I'm positive that children in swimsuits does not constitute being sexually explicit, so I'm still not getting why you are considering it illegal...

Finally, you say >when reddit (finally) decides to crack down on something that is plainly not legal speech

Yet, based on the legal definition that you provided these subreddits, for the most part, are participating in legal, albeit creepy, speech. Anything illegal has been removed and delt with according to law. Not sure who the real fear monger is here, but calling pictures of children in bathing suits "not legal speech" is disingenuous at best.

JonnieCache• 14 years ago

> Bastion subreddits like /r/AskScience and /r/Truereddit are reduced to junk and fads.

Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/depthhub where they take a different approach: it's a meta-reddit where they link high-quality discussions from the various niche subject-specific reddits. A random example that's on there right now: /r/ludology discusses the tension between plot and choice in games.

alecco7• 14 years ago

Sure, but for how long?

ugh10• 14 years ago

Shit Reddit Says is pretty awesome and definitely on the right side of history. It’s not hard, it’s pretty simple.

scanr• 14 years ago

Hi Ugh. How do you reconcile your view that this is a simple issue with the fact that it seems to be resulting in a large amount of discussion with a wide variety of views represented, some of which are diametrically opposed. I would contend that the evidence suggests that this is not a simple issue.

Locke16895• 14 years ago

They're really not. They're for banning these subreddits because they don't like their content, not because they may represent a legal threat.

They, at best, misunderstand the issue at hand.

neutronicus3• 14 years ago

I gotta say I agree with this. I mean, I've got my misgivings about SRS, but they did a pretty damn good job getting those subreddits shut down.

spindritf2• 14 years ago

Chasing (mostly) attempts at comedy that disagree with your sensibilities may be a fun pastime (seriously) but it has absolutely no part in any sort of struggle for moral improvement if such process is even taking place.

iskander• 14 years ago

There's a lot of dissonance between: > It's currently in a renewed and stronger Eternal September. >The top voted comments on threads about censorship are mostly 1 to 3 months old users.

and

>Sure, a lot of questionable/creepy subreddits shouldn't be there. But where's the line? And who draws it?

The way to deal with a dilution of community quality is communicate and enforce stricter standards. Ban more stuff. Not because of a moral panic, but because the trolls, spammers, pornographers, etc.. can trash your site with force disproportionate to their numbers. You can't fight Eternal September unless you lay down some serious boundaries.

neutronicus3• 14 years ago

/r/ShitRedditSays is entirely sincere. I've been reading it for a while, and they mean what they say.

Locke16895• 14 years ago

This is 100% true. However, they are primarily concerned about the content for the content's sake (as you can see from their ban policy). Reddit is not concerned about the content, only the legal liability associated with the content (otherwise a whole bunch of other subreddits would be on the chopping block).

bragh• 14 years ago

The community which had 'we cum when we kill men' as their slogan for a good while? Really?

Mordor• 14 years ago

It's simple, shutdown anything criminal and keep the rest open.

showerst4• 14 years ago

Sadly it's not that simple. Even if that were the only rule, illegal where? The rules aren't even uniform among the 50 US states, not to speak of city/county level, or other countries.

I think that the (unique?) problem with child issues is that if you allow things that are clearly not illegal (just 'creepy'), you'll draw a community that 1) Looks illegal from the outside and 2) Will, with very high probability, be doing illegal things over the messaging system or private/side boards.

To the greater world, 1 and 2 are enough for a high profile lawsuit or media blitz that would effectively be a death penalty for the community.

harshreality2• 14 years ago

The problem is that criminality is decided by a jury if a case like this goes to trial. In New York or San Francisco or even D.C., getting an obscenity or child porn conviction based on images of minors that are not nude, whether they're fully clothed or wearing swimsuits or bras, would be difficult. Getting an obscenity conviction for fictional depictions would be nearly impossible in those locations.

Then there are cases like the Christopher Handley manga case in Iowa, where he plead guilty to avoid the risk of a longer sentence for possession of purely fictional manga that a jury of his peers may well have deemed "obscene".

pjscott4• 14 years ago

To be clear: that's what they were doing already. This whole hullabaloo was caused by their announcement that they were going beyond that.

evmar• 14 years ago

The comment about "everything that's happened, has also already happened on LiveJournal" really rings true for me. Recent instance: the breast-feeding protesters recently descended on Facebook, which is mostly amusing to me in that they had waited so long. It would be interesting to construct a "here are the trials any internet community is likely to go through" handbook distilling these experiences.

pilif• 14 years ago

While I agree that the world is better off without forums where people can post their child porn or similar ilk, this policy change in reddit shows that there's in inherent issue with centralized platforms.

Back when there was usenet, everybody could post what ever they wanted (some news servers might not have carried the group, but there was no policing the source).

Same with blogs: You wanted to post content the masses dislike? No problem. But you want to post that same content to a centralized platform like Twitter, Facebook or any of Google's properties, now the masses (and/or governments) dictate the content you are allowed to post.

To really make use of the internet's capability of providing an incredible freedom of content you can create and publish, you cannot use a centralized platform.

While sites like reddit or facebook might make it easier for other people to find your crap^Wcontent, they also make it infinitely easier to have it removed again.

zotz6• 14 years ago

> Back when there was usenet

NNTP is still alive. : )

tptacek4• 14 years ago

This shit killed Usenet. Not just child porn, but that and a lot of things like it.

(I ran a Freenix-competitive server in the '90s and hacked on INN).

(Disclosure: it's sad it took Reddit this long to apply this rule, and more than a little repulsive to see people up in arms about it.)

jshen2• 14 years ago

"now the masses (and/or governments) dictate the content you are allowed to post"

Isn't this an exaggeration? There is a lot of room between "everything goes" and North Korea. Stopping exploitation of kids is one notch up from "everything goes".

smokeyj3• 14 years ago

I can't help but feel this policy only serves lip service to "Stopping exploitation of kids". Personally, I think Reddit has the right to have whatever policies it wishes -- but this 'think of the children' argument is the same one that will be used to pass SOPA like regulation.

I don't think a sane person would suggest that exploiting children is acceptable, but the answer then becomes -- to what degree to we sacrifice our autonomy to satisfy the regulator's thirst for a censored communications.

phillco• 14 years ago

It's a little sad, because there was definitely a sense, a few years ago, that Reddit was pretty much user-centered and therefore fully unrestricted, content-wise. You can choose what subreddits you belong to, or make new ones for whatever subject you want. The admins simply created the platform and set the defaults. Freedom!

But at the same time, everyone still felt like redditors, even if you were on /r/investing or /r/TwoXChromosomes or /r/trees or /r/nudecycling. In fact, you could unsubscribe from all the default subreddits, and join a bunch of weird unusual ones, and so you'd probably never even see a redditor who belongs to the "mainstream" community, but you'd still call yourself a redditor.

Unfortunately, we now see the downside of that group identity, because it didn't stop the reputation of the "bad" subreddits from bleeding over and tarnishing the group's. The subreddit boundaries failed, in the end.

flomo• 14 years ago

That to me is exactly the core issue. It's not as if these people were staying in their obscure subreddit, they were leaking out into advice forums and posting IAMA pedo threads and so on, scoring upvotes due to typical young male contrarianism. It was all creating the general impression that this was acceptable behavior which was commonly discussed by Redditors.

(I saw a post from a sixteen year old boy describing himself as a "ephebophile" because he liked girls from school. It's just bizarre that kids are learning this sort of inside jargon and using it describe completely normal behavior.)

From a broader community perspective, there's no reason to hang out a sign saying "creeps welcome here". They'll show up on their own, and its not as if Reddit needs their traffic.

snowwrestler• 14 years ago

It's a tradeoff. If you want general-public-scale levels of traffic, you will be subject to the general public's social norms or face their wrath.

The general public did not use Usenet; the audience size was small, relative to what we see today on the WWW. Same goes with most personal blogs. And back when Reddit was not well known, they did not have to have a policy like this.

I don't think centralization has anything to do with it--if your public blog suddenly got as popular as Reddit, I bet it too would be the subject of campaigns about its content.

zotz6• 14 years ago

I've been banned from posting articles on some larger subreddits some time ago. My political, economic and historical opinions aren't welcome for some reason.

My point? Reddit began banning political opinion long before it banned kiddie porn. Reddit's admins don't give a damn about freedom of speech and opinion.

blantonl• 14 years ago

subreddits are moderated by folks who are like-minded individuals that participate in the subreddit. It seems more likely that you were moderated by those subreddit admins, not the Reddit administration.

Furthermore, Reddit is a private organization, and they don't have to give a damn about freedom of speech.

zotz6• 14 years ago

I've been told, by a drunken reddit admin in a late night talk, that no one likes my opinions and I should just go away. True to form, callow youth are generally the most sure of their own views while also being sure that everyone else is wrong.

> Reddit is a private organization, and they don't have to give a damn about freedom of speech.

Agreed. They should stop acting like they care when they don't.

buro9• 14 years ago

You've touched upon an incredibly grey area. Most forums will ban trolls, but therein lies the problem: define "troll".

I don't know what you said, where, and in what context... but I don't give benefit of doubt on this. Nor do I think you're guilty either... all I do know is that running a community is hard, and one of the things that the people of the community look to moderators to do is to keep the peace.

A difference of opinion can be minor, or major. And depending on the topic it can be quite offensive to some.

Have you considered that within a particular subreddit that the moderators were just trying to keep the peace? Has anything stopped you from starting your own subreddit to voice your opinion?

zotz6• 14 years ago

> I don't know what you said

The below article was deleted from the queue in r/politics and I've been unable to post articles in politics and a few other subreddits ever since, using a particular handle from a particular IP.

Ron Paul’s Challenge to the Left: http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/07/a-question-of-morality-ron...

My point stands: reddit has been complicit in silencing political opinion long before it began worrying about whether child porn should be allowed or not.

timdorr• 14 years ago

When you're banned from a subreddit, that's the decision of the moderators of that subreddit, not the administration of the site. You're blaming the wrong people.

lambda• 14 years ago

There is a difference between subreddit admins banning you from a particular subreddit, and Reddit admins banning entire subreddits. Each subreddit is administered by different admins, and each subreddit may have different policies for what is acceptable content or not.

The difference here is that now Reddit has banned subreddits for encouraging people to post "creepy," though not necessarily illegal, content. It's always been the case that subreddit admins could ban you for whatever they wanted.

jballanc• 14 years ago

There is a problem with online communities. Let's call it the problem of "false association". Humans have been forming communities for millennia. Inevitably, in these communities, there are bad apples. However, if there is a child molester that lives in my town, that fact does not (on its own) reflect poorly on me. Even if that molester was my next door neighbor, there may be a bit more suspicion ("how could you not know that was going on next door?"), but I am confident that 9 times out of 10 I would come away with my reputation unblemished.

Of course, before the internet, communities were a more-or-less involuntary phenomenon. They were defined by geography, history, a common resource, or a common industry. Contrast that to online communities that are largely viewed as self-directed, voluntary organizations. This is the view, I think, that will eventually have to change.

This view is poisonous for two reasons. First, as we see here, if anyone, anywhere in an online community (no matter how large) does something offensive, objectionable, or illegal, the knee-jerk reaction of society today is to allow that bad apple to spoil the bunch. Second, this makes it very difficult to form heterogeneous communities online. If I associate with people randomly online, I am a Google search away from being associated with a potential thief/pervert/whatever. The end result is that online communities become insular, or they can only function well under a banner of anonymity, but anonymity has its own problems.

Reddit, it seems to me, struck a useful middle ground: partial anonymity with history (I can create an identity that does not lead back to my real life identity, but can still build up a reputation). Unfortunately, Reddit is still a business. It seems to me that something like Reddit, but based on a distributed model, is what we need.

Let's call it...usenet

jasonkester• 14 years ago

People tend to think of online communities as democracies where the freedoms they're accustomed to from their normal lives apply.

So when a post gets deleted by a moderator, people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue. There's a whole constitution out there specifically defending anybody's right to create a pro-Nazi subreddit, and to otherwise post anything they please on the site so long as it's not illegal, right?

Not really.

Not at all, in fact. Reddit is not the United States. It's Reddit. Online communities are not democracies any more than your back garden is a democracy. You pull weeds, plant seeds, and otherwise encourage the plants in your garden to comport themselves in a manner that ends up with a pleasing result. It's your garden, so you have the absolute right to pull weeds. The weeds get no say.

Reddit seems to have forgotten this for a while, and as a result they started sliding until they became, well, Reddit. The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan.

sophacles5• 14 years ago

* And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan.*

I am honestly not sure we can say that at all. I thoroughly enjoy both hn and reddit, for completely different reasons. Sure, from a strictly legal standpoint, it isn't censorship or a constitutional issue, but at the same time, the "anything goes" attitude in places like 4chan and reddit allow for a lot of creative gems and interesting discussion. People instinctively recognize that while you may have to schlep thought he muck to find those gems, it is still important to have an "anything goes place". People will feel betrayed when they put time and effort into making the community what it is, and suddenly the rules are changed on them -- all their effort has been co-opted or may be co-opted, for something they don't want. It feels slimy.

(yes we are all aware there is no contract or law or whatever, blah blah legalistic point missing, but the decency of it is still in question).

All that being said, I also like the curated, well organized topical community of HN, because sometimes I just don't want to wade through the crap, but that occasional preference switch doesn't diminish either form of community building.

ugh10• 14 years ago

For fucks sake. Is that really so hard to understand? Pedos can’t trade their images anymore (whether legal or not). That’s the extent of the limitation. How the fuck is that supposed to turn Reddit into something radically different? It’s this one tiny thing. It’s not some big change that changes Reddit.

It’s not so hard. Some people just want to be deliberately obtuse. The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!

Steko8• 14 years ago

"People instinctively recognize that while you may have to schlep thought he muck to find those gems, it is still important to have an "anything goes place"."

I do not think many people "instinctively recognize" this. What I do "instinctively recognize" is that as sites like this mainstream they uniformly clean up "the muck" and that any "creative gems" lost because the community no longer tolerates everything are a tiny price to pay. Whatever "creative gems" went on in /r/jailbait or /r/n*ggerjailbait we can only speculate...

"People will feel betrayed when they put time and effort into making the community what it is, and suddenly the rules are changed on them -- all their effort has been co-opted or may be co-opted, for something they don't want. It feels slimy."

What feels slimy is finding out the popular site you like is chummy with scum like Violentacrez the guy who started 90% of the worst of the worst subreddits. I got news for you, the tiny minority of pedosympathizers on reddit are not what made the site what it is. We aren't "coopting their effort", we're taking a break from construction to clean up a mess we didn't have time to focus on until now.

a_redditor2• 14 years ago

I think you're missing the point of the users who see this new rule as a negative mark against reddit. The admins have always been supportive of allowing any content that is legal, even up to a very specific definition, which is why these now removed subreddits were allowed to exist for so long. Lots of people are making the slippery slope argument, saying things along the lines of "how long before they ban /r/trees?", which is a marijuana-based subreddit. In response, the community organizer, hueypriest, said this:

>They'll ban /r/trees when they pry it out of our cold dead hands.

You can imagine why it might be frustrating to people who would expect them to approach all content with as much vigor as they do in the defense of /r/trees.

The way I understand it, and the way it has been explained by the admins, is that policing the kind of content that is now not allowed had taken up a significant amount of their resources, and it was becoming unsustainable. However, a lot of users clearly see this as a sign that the admins are backing down as a result of legal pressure and also for the purpose of preserving the image of the community.

For users of old, this is a rather new phenomenon, and it is somewhat offputting. If it was solely a question of sustainability (how much time are they wasting policing the content?), that would probably be acceptable, but it's difficult to believe that it is the sole reason for the rule.

Steko8• 14 years ago

"I think you're missing the point of the users who see this new rule as a negative mark against reddit"

We see the point, we're saying it doesn't matter. It's been pretty obvious over the last year that this train has been coming down the tracks and there's ultimately only one way it could play out.

The spam rule was already there and it's not rocket surgery to realize that any content more objectionable then spam is also eventually going to be excluded.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

You are right, in a legal sense, which is why there is no lawsuit over this issue.

But reddit specifically said create your own subreddit and post what you want (as long as it is not spam). That is why this is such a big issue.

mattgreenrocks2• 14 years ago

> But reddit specifically said create your own subreddit and post what you want (as long as it is not spam). That is why this is such a big issue.

A big issue? They updated the minimal set of rules the site runs by. If users don't like it, they can go elsewhere.

There's no issue here, just Redditors doing what they do best: creating a tempest in a teapot.

spindritf2• 14 years ago

> reddit specifically said create your own subreddit and post what you want (as long as it is not spam)

I think moderators can approve spam so you can even post spam to your own subreddit if you wish.

geoffhill• 14 years ago

There is truth to the assertion that sites that run on user contributions must be pruned. Reddit has strived hard to make the community self-policing. The Reddit methodology has always been that users have to be the gardeners. It's more scalable that way. Smaller users garden with upvotes and downvotes. Moderators can use shears.

It's hard when an issue comes up where the game-theoretical approach produces a bad result. The current Reddit structure works well when it assumes that good content is the paramount rule, but now we have a new paramount rule: obey the law. The site structure and the ranking algorithms don't meet the new requirements, and as a result, manual pruning is required.

cbs• 14 years ago

people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue

First-amendment speech is only a subset of free speech. Unfortunately people seem to hear "freedom of speech" and think that the ONLY place that freedom exists is under the scope of the 1st. Its not.

The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their rights to do so) it is a free speech issue. The difference is the argument is not a you can't or you shouldn't be able to, its just a you can but shouldn't.

What people are railing against is not that that reddit, or whoever, has decided not to adhere to the restrictions placed upon congress, but that they've fundamentally changing what it means to be reddit. This is the article's "Very Serious Discussion About What Sort of Community We Are".

It's your garden, so you have the absolute right to pull weeds. The weeds get no say.

Yeah, reddit has complete control. But unless they're happy exercising that control by disabling all user submissions and posts, or actively banning anyone who they don't like discussing the nature of reddits rules, they have given their flowers a voice about the weeds.

Perhaps, when you say that people should STFU and take it, you might be interesting in hearing the thesis of (reddit co-founder) Ohanian's TED talk on social media: "You No Longer Control the Message, and That’s Okay"

icebraining4• 14 years ago

The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their rights to do so) it is a free speech issue. The difference is the argument is not a you can't or you shouldn't be able to, its just a you can but shouldn't.

Well, it is a free speech issue, but whether one should or not is debatable. I'd prefer they didn't, but I don't know if it's fair to ask that from them.

cbsmith• 14 years ago

> The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see.

I think this is more a function of the community's size than anything else. Once you get a broad enough appeal, you need some pretty fancy clustering algorithms to avoid everyone's experiences shifting to the norm.

betterth• 14 years ago

"The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan."

This site is akin to a Reddit subreddit.

The community here is great, clearly amongst the best of the Reddit subreddit communities.

Is this community better than the Reddit community? Honeslty -- no. This is a place for tech news, and that's it.

The Reddit community has done a lot of wonderful things, for each other, for others, and for society in general. This community can make almost none of those claims.

Many people who frequent both look at Hacker News as if it were the real /r/technology.

But I didn't think people compared communities in general -- this place is tiny compared to even many of the subreddits!

kiba• 14 years ago

Agreed. Gardens die by extreme pacifism.

pjscott4• 14 years ago

A phrase coined in this insightful article:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/

drivebyacct29• 14 years ago

You start out by saying that reddit is not bound by US law, but then turn around and fault reddit for respecting and trying to stick with "full freedom of speech" for as long as they have? Come on, that's not fair at all. You win either way, you just have to mention and criticize their position by saying "haha, just look at it", there's hardly any real argument there at all.

Reddit's "slide" is a result of their respect for freedom of speech? Where's the connection there? The "spill over" of pedophiles (or non-CP closet pedophiles, whatever) from jailbait subreddits has caused the deterioration of /r/programming? ha.

ubernostrum2• 14 years ago

In writing this article I tried to stay away from drawing comparisons between sites, because that would've distracted discussion away from the actual topic.

Also, to be perfectly honest, there's a lot I could say about HN that would not be particularly flattering, not least of which is its superiority complex when comparing itself to other sites.

Wartz• 14 years ago

5-6 years ago, Reddit was exactly the same as HN is now.

DannoHung2• 14 years ago

Y'know, it's one thing to be against laws that are ostensibly made in favor of prosecuting child pornography because they can be abused to censor things that are politically unpopular... it's a whole other bucket of beans to be against removing stuff that's basically child pornography because you think something that's politically unpopular might be removed.

jquery• 14 years ago

> basically child pornography

Nothing that got banned was "basically child pornography." That's why there is blood in the water.

DannoHung2• 14 years ago

It was a collection of subreddits for the purpose of eroticism focused on children. It wasn't child porn, but it's as close as you can come without actually getting arrested.

You're full of shit if you're trying to tell me otherwise.

dholowiski• 14 years ago

It's a business decision, plain and simple. Get over it.

Jun82• 14 years ago

I can't believe the narrow-minded approach a lot of comments here suggest. Most of the people seem to subscribe to the argument, which in simplified form says, (1) the subreddits were full of child pornography (2) the people who frequent these were "pedos" and therefore (3) it's a good thing that these got axed.

The terms CP and pedophilia are being thrown around without much thinking, the same way the general public thinks all who are on torrent sites are pirates and "hackers are baad and steal your CC numbers". This sort of blunt scare mongering demagogy is commonly used to create support from the masses, I am amazed that the HN crowd is also susceptible to it.

Here are the facts as I believe them, please point out the ones you think are wrong:

1) Some of these subreddits may have contained CP, the illegal ones were being actively removed by admins.

2) Calling pictures of 16-year-olds in bikinis CP is not very useful and dilutes the term.

3) What is legal and morally right usually does not overlap 100%. Law may say one thing about CP and people may feel another thing. This is OK. Also different cultures, of course, have different attitudes.

4) In light of (3), to me there's "definitely bad CP" and "tolerable CP". The moral distinction is not clear cut and the law does not differentiate these. The situation is similar to the 55 mph speed limit, people break it everyday (avg speed on I-90 is more like 75mph) but if you do 85 the police will get you. So there's a tolerable zone and to me (2) falls in that category.

5) One has to be very careful with these outcries because they have the effect of ratcheting the law machine ever more tightly. Remember, no politician will put relaxation of sex offense laws on their ticket.

But, please THINK A LITTLE AND RESEARCH before you pick up the pitchfork, e.g. read this (http://www.economist.com/node/14164614).

ADDENDUM: For (2), also consider the widespread use of young girls in advertising and movies, e.g. the Vanity Fair topless photoshoot of Miley Cyrus who was 15 at the time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus#Controversies). This is just one that came to mind instantly, many more examples can easily be given.

dkersten2• 14 years ago

ADDENDUM: For (2), also consider the widespread use of young girls in...

Don't forget child beauty pageants. That stuff is IMHO often borderline pedophilia.

joering2• 14 years ago

I dont get this one. CBP does not reveal anything that would even remotely bring porn/nudity on my mind. I think its more a matter of your point of view. Same way I could say that an old man smiling at a 5 years old child on the subway has something dirty on his mind. There are chances but lets not get paranoid here.

reidmain2• 14 years ago

This was the first thing that came to mind when I heard about this.

I've seen a lot of people say "we need to protect the young girls in these pictures". What about the 1-5 year olds who are being dressed up and paraded around by their parents?

Where is the similar outrage over sites like imgur.com (which retain most of the images hosted in a sub-reddit even after its deletion) or TV shows like Toddlers & Tiaras?

drivebyacct29• 14 years ago

>What is legal and morally right usually does not overlap 100%.

This is the key issue that almost NO ONE here understands and it's evidenced by high profile HN members calling people they disagree with "disgusting" because they don't understand that morality is relative and that slippery slopes are only absurd until they come true.

I, along with most everyone here it seems, have no desire for peoples' children to be posted online for other people to fap to. That having been said, reddit has historically deferred to the law for making decisions about what IS and IS NOT allowed.

With this decision, they're asserting that their feelings of morality are now grounds for moderating content. HN always surprises me how anti-drug it is. Would HN call those opposed to shutting down other subreddits "repulsive"? What if reddit decides to shutdown /r/drugs where discussion of "hard" drug use occurs. There is a morality argument that can be made.

The problem is that the bright-legal-line has been broken and from now on censorship becomes a question of appealing to the reddit admin's sense of morality.

xxpor• 14 years ago

>morality is relative

I agree with you, but you are going to have a really hard time making that argument with a lot of people. In fact, I believe John Paul II called moral relativism the greatest evil of our time or something like that.

ceol6• 14 years ago

>1) Some of these subreddits may have contained CP, the illegal ones were being actively removed by admins.

CP was posted in the same subreddits. The admins were tired of spending their time determining if reported images were illegal or not.

>2) Calling pictures of 16-year-olds in bikinis CP is not very useful and dilutes the term.

A 16 year old in their swimsuit at the beach isn't CP. A 16 year old posed in their swimsuit like a porn star in a bedroom is CP. The latter is what was posted in these subreddits.

This isn't an issue with unfair application of sex offender laws or the vilification of accused sex offenders. This is Something Awful forum members forcing reddit admins to finally remove at best objectionable content, at worst illegal material.

burgerbrain4• 14 years ago

Please excuse my ignorance, but what does "like a porn star" mean?

wavephorm• 14 years ago

Reddit had the biggest hissy fit of all about how child porn laws like SOPA were going to go too far and ruin the internet. And here they go banning anything involving a bathing suit.

The hypocricy is strong in this one.

pradocchia• 14 years ago

Not at all. It's quite typical for an industry to choose to regulate itself, when the alternative is statutory regulation imposed by the government.

nkohari• 14 years ago

Uh, SOPA wasn't a child porn law. It was a copyright enforcement law. By definition it didn't cover anything regarding illegal pornography, because illegal things aren't subject to copyright.

trb• 14 years ago

Policing a community is where humans excel and policies/computers fail.

I ran a community once, with around 30k active users. Definitely not big, but we faced the same problems. Our solution was simple, aside from adhering to the law: "Mods delete what looks icky".

We felt that automated systems would always fail (users would use "4" instead of "a"), and strict policies always led to debate about whether something was allowed or not.

Instead we tried to recruit mods that knew the community, the direction it was heading and were able to keep a level head. Sure, someone went overboard once in a while and deleted o.k. stuff, but we'd just remove their mod privileges and reinstate what they deleted (thinks were removed from the database 14 days after they were marked as "deleted").

We were never accused of harboring pedophiles, or going overboard with removal. Those that complained about free-speech were always radical political groups well outside of "acceptable" for most communities.

The key is to find moderators in line with the community, in a benevolent dictator way. No idea if reddit could find enough of those, but it worked well for us and should scale with community size, as reddit has a larger pool to recruit from.

redslazer• 14 years ago

The problem is that reddit mods are self selected from within their communities by the other mods in that community. The quality of the moderators varies wildly and most subreddits are not run very professionally (obvious exceptions like /askscience exist).

Sure reddit has overall mods but they do not usually get involved and communities manage themselves which usually leads to a lack of coherent policy in regards to what is acceptable and not.

sjs382• 14 years ago

Every time I see k5 get mentioned, I get all nostalgic and think there will never be a community as eclectic as k5 ever again...

nooneelse• 14 years ago

I get similar pangs of nostalgia.

sien• 14 years ago

It's surprising how people have these discussions and don't discuss Metafilter - the discussion site that works.

What has set Metafilter apart from slashdot, K5, Digg and Reddit was that after the initial burst of building a good community it became $5 to join.

That keeps out the morons and pays for moderators to get rid of the asshats.

If HN wants to keep up the quality before the hordes arrive it'd be a good move here too or it will be a matter of time before the idiots kill the place.

Locke16895• 14 years ago

I'm not against Reddit's move, but I do think they're being more than a little naive if they think it will stop here.

hueypriest (Reddit admin) says:

/r/trees isn't in remotely the same legal area as CP stuff. Not even close. They'll ban /r/trees when they pry it out of our cold dead hands.

And yet, facilitating a drug transaction is almost definitely illegal. Posting torrent links is at least legally dangerous. Sure, these things haven't become problems yet, but neither were the other things a couple years ago.

What the Reddit admins are saying right now is that anything goes, as long as it doesn't represent a plausible legal threat that can be waged against them. This is fine. The problem is that Reddit doesn't know that they're saying this. They think it's about CP, but it's not, it's about legal threat.

diminoten2• 14 years ago

The slippery slope you describe simply does not exist. "First they took the CP, and I said nothing..." is not a valid concern, primarily because CP has always been an issue, and whenever it's come up it's always been removed from Reddit. This change in position is not nearly as large as it seems.

Contrast, as you seem to want to, with /r/trees. How many posts in /r/trees get taken down due to their questionable legality? How many posts in /r/letstradetorrents (apocryphal) get taken down due to their questionable legality? None and none. The nature of CP on the Internet is unique, and not viewed similarly to anything else on the Internet. Reddit isn't saying "as long as it doesn't represent a plausible legal threat that can be waged against them", they're saying, "as long as it's not CP, and as long as it's manageable through an ad-hoc process."

Due to the SomethingAwful attack, or due to some other, unknown reason, the volume of CP was too high to continue to deal with it on an ad-hoc basis. That is all.

Locke16895• 14 years ago

First, I'm not saying that they shouldn't be taking the position they are. In fact, I believe that Reddit should always make the best effort to comport itself to US law in order to protect the site's existence for its users everywhere. However, I am saying that CP is not the only possible legal threat and it is naive to assume that it will continue to be the dominant legal threat going forward.

Contrast, as you seem to want to, with /r/trees. How many posts in /r/trees get taken down due to their questionable legality? How many posts in /r/letstradetorrents (apocryphal) get taken down due to their questionable legality? None and none. The nature of CP on the Internet is unique, and not viewed similarly to anything else on the Internet. Reddit isn't saying "as long as it doesn't represent a plausible legal threat that can be waged against them", they're saying, "as long as it's not CP, and as long as it's manageable through an ad-hoc process."

I agree that it is not yet a problem. Reddit has not yet been taken down by the FBI because of widespread drug trade on r/trees. Nor have they been sued because of torrent links. What I question is how long it will take before these things become issues?

What I'm asking is: what is it about CP that makes it the only possible legal threat that Reddit can face? Reddit is still a maturing community that can evolve in many different ways. Reddit's policy is not about CP specifically, it's about credible legal threat. This is not what they say, but what they mean. If you think otherwise, I invite you to tell me what they will do if a non-CP related legal threat comes along.

drivebyacct29• 14 years ago

I'd love to see a single "facilitated drug transaction" in /r/trees. No really, it would be relevant to my interests. Also, it's a load of nonsense, as are most of the comments about /r/trees, /r/atheism and other subreddits that are being compared to CP in this thread.

Locke16895• 14 years ago

/r/atheism I agree -- I have no idea where that came from.

r/trees -- come on. They're currently walking a very thin line but it's just a matter of time until people start crossing it. Case in point: http://www.reddit.com/r/NYCtrees/comments/mw8h0/someet_up/

It was one cautious commenter away from being a thread all about where to meet up to do and buy illegal drugs. You think that just because you say "share" with a wink and a nod everyone's immune from prosecution?

rseymour• 14 years ago

"I originally cut my teeth on sites and services that, frankly, make 4chan and reddit (today’s all-too-frequent bogeymen) look like a knitting circle."

WUT NET WUZ THIS GUY ON? K5/adequacy/early slashdot/b3ta/whatever... nothing like the internet of today. the volume of users alone leads to emergent (gross) behavior that before was drowned out in an invisible minority. USENET, IRC, same thing. You could find shady things if you looked for them, but no one (I knew of) actively did. Occasionally gross stuff would pop up in a listing of newsgroups, but you just didn't click.

No one envies reddit, but they should've changed their policy earlier. Better late than never.

doki_pen• 14 years ago

Reddit is open source. If anyone thinks that this will ruin them then step up to the plate and compete on "freedom of speech"

Reddit takes a new direction

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