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.
* 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.
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!
Except the subreddits banned were some with pictures of older teenage girls (15-17) in non nude situations, the most edgy being bikini pictures. Something that belongs on reddit? That's for you to decide. Paedophilia material? No, not even fucking close.
Besides, pedos wouldn't trade images on reddit, I really refuse to believe people would be stupid enough to trade such pictures through a US website which offers no anonymity.
"Pedos can’t trade their images anymore (whether legal or not)."
The only thing that this move ended up doing was ensuring the use of private subreddits for this act. People aren't going to change simply because someone told them that what they already knew was wrong is now more wrong. The content will still be traded on reddit (even though I highly doubt that cheese pizza pm's actually happened very often), just not with a public pool to gather from.
Plus, all of this shit is still up on imgur.
I’m worried about private subreddits. Admins, however, can see what’s going on inside them so I don’t see that as much of a problem.
From Wikipedia: "There are over 67,000 subreddits to peruse, with the default set being (as of October 18, 2011[4])." I could not find a specific number for the admin staff, but given the fact that wiki lists 11 staff members for reddit that number can not be particularly high; in fact the reddit admins steam group has 6 members. I sincerely doubt that anyone is capable of filtering 10,000 subreddits every day in search of offensive material.
Finally, even if somehow reddit manages to completely and utterly block all things they deem to be CP related, these people will just move to another, probably harder to track venue. All in all, this entire move is rather pointless action in response to people that want the feelgood sensation of "Protecting the Children."
I think that some people didn't want this stuff to end up on CNN, and having the media end up branding them guilty by association (i.e. "Reddit" == "Cesspool of pedos").
Just because you think some people enjoy looking at pictures of young-looking girls (in some cases it's hard to estimate their ages) you think they are "pedos" (and you also create a legal vs. illegal distinction, too). By the same token of jumping to conclusions from small sample of behavior I judge that you are a complete hedge brain, because you cannot even find a synonym for fuck in a short comment.
It is ironic (I wonder if you can understand it) that, had the sort of limitation that you back were in effect on HN, comments like yours would have been deleted.
1. It isn't a slippery slope argument I am making. I am simply stating that when the rules change, people don't like it, for the mere fact of it. Whether or not the reason for their dislike is fallacious, a qualitative difference in an implicit or explicit agreement will affect the community experience, and will anger those who were happy under the previous arrangement.
2. If you want to argue about fallacies, perhaps you shouldn't do so with a strawman. I never defended r/jailbait or any of the other banned subreddits. I was simply pointing out that there are differences between "anything goes" and "walled garden" approaches to community building, and that both have strong positive results, and one is not necessarily better than the other. The level of disingenuity of your reply is up there with "presidential candidate". Get off your moral high horse and reply to my actual statements.
3. I never claimed reddit would be radically different - again: I was discussing people's reactions, not claiming them as reflections of fact. Another strawman (thats at least 2 in one post!)
4. Who the fuck are you to be that condescending? What value do you provide to the world that makes you able to dictate what matters and what I should observe?
I did reply to your actual statements.
I never claimed you defended pedos. Where did I do that exactly?
I was stating that feeling betrayed by this change makes no sense at all. I cannot fathom how one can possibly feel betrayed by such a change. That’s all. Can you explain that to me? Huh?
As a third-party observer, I initially had the same reaction as sophacles, in that your comment appeared, at first, to be a strongly-worded straw-man argument.
However, now that I re-read it I can see your point, but your use of profanity and the general lack of civility in your comment obscured your argument. The tone of your comment was more like an accusation than a reasoned response, even if the content (minus the profanity) was not intended to be.
It was supposed to be an accusation. Some things deserve accusations. And profanities.
Sigh. I’m quite disillusioned about HN, actually. Not that it should surprise me, but damn. People here say the exact same things as on Reddit. If you squint a bit the reactions are the same. That doesn’t make me happy.
I do recognize that I can’t do many constructive things here (short of screaming at people) so I’m going to excuse myself from this thread. I won’t convince anyone anyway.
The first statement of the actual Guidelines of HN is "Be civil." I find it strange that you're disillusioned with HN because your uncivil comment was not well received.
(Just to clarify: I'm not disillusioned about karma or anything petty like that. I’m ok with being downvoted for not being civil. I’m disillusioned about the general attitude displayed here. That attitude made me want to not be civil anymore.)
> That attitude made me want to not be civil anymore.
Then it would be a good idea to take a break, maybe go for a walk, until you can be civil.
> People here say the exact same things as on Reddit.
Perhaps it's because they are correct and you are in fact in the wrong here?
>Sigh. I’m quite disillusioned about HN, actually. Not that it should surprise me, but damn. People here say the exact same things as on Reddit. If you squint a bit the reactions are the same. That doesn’t make me happy.
Then perhaps you need to realize that some of the things people are saying have some merit and you're looking at them wrong. I realize ad populum isn't a valid form of logic, but when the great majority of people are telling you you're wrong, it could never hurt to re-examine your position.
Since you are unhappy here, do us all a favor and just stop coming to the site. The same posts are linked and discussed many other places on the web, where you can have discussion with people who either agree with you, or don't mind you overreacting to disagreements.
The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!
Until it isn't.
> "The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!"
Ugh. Here we go again.
The fact that the slippery slope argument can be a fallacy doesn't mean that all claims of slippery slope is automatically a fallacy.
People seem to think the fact that this word exists means they can use it in all contexts and be right.
[edit] And the slippery slope angle has materialized in this particular case. No sonner had the jailbait subreddits fallen did people start clamoring for the shutdown of /r/beatingwomen, /r/deadbabies, and various other reprehensible subreddits. This certainly hasn't been a we-banned-jailbait-and-now-everything-is-fine deal that people hoped it to be.
I believe this is known as the slippery slope fallacy fallacy.
The "slippery slope" argument can be made more strongly here - a few months ago /r/jailbait was shut down by the admins. There was a lot of hand-wringing about it, but they were eventually swayed by opinion and some media attention.
This time around there was a post on SomethingAwful talking about a few more subreddits, and they were all (including several that were explicitly 18+ content only) shut down immediately. For good or ill, we're not in danger of slipping down that slope any more, we're demonstrably sliding already.
/r/jailbait was shut down by the /r/jailbait moderators, not the reddit admins.
Arrrg!
If you say “slippery slope hurr durr” it is a fucking fallacy. You have to do work to make it one.
No slippery slope has materialized anywhere. That’s bullshit.
Totally agree with you. I don't see why people are kicking up such a fuss. In fact, grab the IP addresses of everyone in those subreddits, hunt them down and throw them in jail. Give them a good beating on route too.
What if someone started a terrorism subreddit promoting hateful and inciteful behaviour. Defend that freedom America. We already know how that is working out. I doubt anyone would even bat an eyelid and this would be a non-story.
Seriously do not believe people are defending this "freedom" of speech. Total BS and people obviously have too much time on their hands doing nothing.
"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.
The point people are making is that once we start making judgement calls like this there will be more and more calls from the community to make more judgement calls to increase the net and shutdown other types of sub-reddits that they disagree with.
Much in the same way that once we give the government a censorship filter on the Internet to 'stop child pornography,' they've got their foot in the door to censor other things as well. Building censorship infrastructure to shut down the websites of people we don't like might not be palatable, but once that infrastructure is already in place, all we have to do is add to the list of banned sites. It becomes so much easier to cross that line when we're standing right next to it, than if we make sure to give it a wide berth.
I'm not saying that I disagree with the shutting down of these sub-reddits -- especially since it seems to only make sense for consistencies sake since they shutdown /r/jailbait already -- but let's not act like this doesn't come with possible consequences.
"The point people are making is that once we start making judgement calls like this"
You act like there's a real choice here. The other choice was Reddit goes out of business. Reddit made the obvious choice.
"there will be more and more calls from the community to make more judgement calls to increase the net and shutdown other types of sub-reddits that they disagree with."
Welcome to the real world. Oh you let kids in your site? Kids have parents. Parents demand standards for places their kids go. Want to startup a reddit clone with no standards? Have at it! Let us know how it works out for you.
"Much in the same way that once we give the government a censorship filter on the Internet"
It's also the case that once you set up an infrastructure to prosecute murderers it becomes easier for the government to move from arresting people for murder to hey let's just arrest some people we don't like for reason XYZ.
That's not a legitimate argument for not having an infrastructure to prosecute murderers though.
Welcome to the real world. Oh you let kids in your site? Kids have parents. Parents demand standards for places their kids go. Want to startup a reddit clone with no standards? Have at it! Let us know how it works out for you.
You know, perhaps it's ok for us to suggest the parents do the parenting, and let us grown ups hang out at the reddit?
Oh wait, right its actually just a strawman argument so you can be the morality police for the world. Sorry for the confusion.
It's also the case that once you set up an infrastructure to prosecute murderers it becomes easier for the government to move from arresting people for murder to hey let's just arrest some people we don't like for reason XYZ. That's not a legitimate argument for not having an infrastructure to prosecute murderers though.
It is however a fantastic reason to talk about the potential consequences of that infrastructure, and perhaps to arrange for safeguards against the unwanted scenarios. This is what some of us are trying to do here while you are clamoring to (extending the metaphor) put everyone in jail who may one day murder someone.
"so you can be the morality police for the world. Sorry for the confusion."
If your post were a New Yorker cartoon I'd have the perfect caption for it. I'm not the morality police, I'm pointing out that morality exists and reddit, as a community was not above that. I'm dreadfully sorry if you're only now finding out that community morality exists and that there are commercial consequences for for-profit private businesses who ignore that in the real world.
As has been pointed out ad nauseum reddit is easily cloneable. If you think all the world needs is a place where the timeless insights of the people that brought us /r/jailbait, and "how to rape your daughter" threads can shine without the "morality police" ever being called on the party have at it.
"This is what some of us are trying to do here while you are clamoring to (extending the metaphor) put everyone in jail who may one day murder someone."
Bullshit. Let me clear up this analogy. I'm saying we have a rule against murder and it's a good rule. You're saying it's a dangerous rule that will lead us down the road to serfdom.
We can debate whether the rule is good (not all rules are as clear cut as the one we have for murder). I don't think you will win on those merits though re: this reddit policy.
There's a rule at most community pools that you don't crap or piss in the pool. Somehow this hasn't led to widescale pool tyranny, it's pretty much just a rule not to piss in the pool. Just because there's a slope doesn't mean anyone is going to slip down it.
We can debate whether the rule is good (not all rules are as clear cut as the one we have for murder). I don't think you will win on those merits though re: this reddit policy.
I never have said "this reddit rule is bad". Read extra careful, and you will find no evidence whatsoever of that, only evidence of me discussing human behavior in light of rule changes, and how it is a particularly sensitive topic in the "anything goes spaces". Further I am pointing benefits of those spaces, without actually taking a stance on them. This is how I know you are the morality police, you are choosing to invent words to put in my statements without actually bothering to read them. Those are not the actions of a reasonable person, but rather a lynch mob.
Bullshit. Let me clear up this analogy. I'm saying we have a rule against murder and it's a good rule. You're saying it's a dangerous rule that will lead us down the road to serfdom.
Again not sure where you get this idea... I am simply discussing how people react when rules start encroaching on free-form places, and discussing the consequences of them. This is not declaring serfdom or anything else nearly as dramatic. It is merely me not instantly jumping on a bandwagon. Sorry to be that guy you hate: the one who looks at the world around him and asks questions before deciding.
There's a rule at most community pools that you don't crap or piss in the pool. Somehow this hasn't led to widescale pool tyranny, it's pretty much just a rule not to piss in the pool. Just because there's a slope doesn't mean anyone is going to slip down it.
And yet, you see stories occasionally about how some toddler is banned from the kiddie pool for an accident. This is not tyranny of pools, but it certainly is someone overstepping bounds. Perhaps the public outcry over such things has something to do with it?
Anyway, you are now just tiresome to me. Good night, be well.
My post can be summarized by the last part:
Do you disagree with this? Nothing that you've said in your post even touches on this. All you've done is wave your hands around in the air and make a bunch of emotional appeals, picking very specific parts of my post while steering clear of everything else.
In general, I group this in with 'troll behavior,' but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume that this is a very emotional topic for you (i.e. you see this as a black-and-white issue).
This is the morality police attitude, satisfied that its ideal of justice has been served and unable to recognize the subtlety of the argument.
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"
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.
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.
"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.
How was it obvious? r/jailbait was banned, yes, but that was only after there was a semi-revolution (a mod removed and banned all the other mods, then proceeded to give an ex-mod* his powers back, who then essentially tried to fuck it up (I heard actual preteen porn was posted)).
Assuming that that event necessarily means the removal of the other subreddits seems contrived.
* VA, the guy who also created & mods r/picsofdeadkids, r/PicsOfDeadJailbait, r/incest, etc.
How was it obvious?
How was it not? Reddit exploded and started making money hand over fist. Anderson Cooper shined a light on the seedy underbelly for like 5 sec and they gave up the game. The past week's events are just ripples from that and Reddit coming to terms with the only possible decision they could have made.
What exactly did they gave up when Cooper talked about r/jailbait?
That's when they deliberated for all of 30 seconds, decided they liked the million dollar checks and banned /r/jailbait.
Yesterday's announcement was merely a formalizing of that policy and application to a number of other subreddits in response to a second wave of negative publicity.
The problem is that I was confused. r/jailbait had already been banned in August[1], before the Cooper story. I had no idea it had been unbanned and then re-banned.
So yeah, following the second ban, you could see the writing on the wall.
[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jkmx7/dear_reddit...
>Reddit exploded and started making money hand over fist.
Do you have a citation for this? I was under the impression they were still losing money and the Reddit, Inc stuff was there to allow Condi to distance itself from 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."
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!
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.
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.
> 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.
There's no issue here, just HNers doing what they do best, epitomizing the actions of a few or single person to enable them to look down their nose at the inferior "reddit".
The reaction at reddit has been OVERWHELMINGLY in favor of this ban, the last four days has been top post after top post asking for it to be banned.
Every tiny thing a single redditor does is grounds for dismissal and condemnation of the entire site by many here and it really just baffles me.
FWIW, HN isn't all that great either.
I used to really like Reddit. But I loathed the fact that each subreddit sank into a lowest common denominator appeal as it grew: memes, linkbait-y headlines, groupthink. To be fair, these are problems with groups of people in general: they get dumber and dumber as they get bigger. But the total hands-off nature of Reddit meant that this sort of intellectual race to the bottom was not only inevitable, it was expected and allowed to happen, even if a vocal minority made their points coherently. They were drowned out by populist voices who are quick to decree that the voice of Everyone is worthwhile because, well, damn it, it's Everyone.
And that's bullshit. I prefer a site where people at least pretend to discuss things instead of rushing to post "tl;dr" anytime someone writes a paragraph of text.
> 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.
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.
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.
5-6 years ago, Reddit was exactly the same as HN is now.
> 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.
Agreed. Gardens die by extreme pacifism.
A phrase coined in this insightful article:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/
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.