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Reddit: more racist than Stormfront
- Thread starter Charlie Don't Surf
- Start date
figmentPez
Staff member
I can actually see a reason for referencing the US Constitution, though it works against Charlie's position. Reddit is a site that wishes to house political speech. Not just in a "well, you can use this to discuss politics, if you want" but they've actively promoted the political side of Reddit by having AMAs with various politicians, including President Obama. If Reddit didn't respect the ideals of free political speech, they'd be a pretty poor forum.
That said, I think the more valid reason for Reddit allowing such reprehensible speech is that it's more effective to ignore it than to ban it. It exists, but it's a tiny little trickle of traffic, and in absence of it causing problems for other sub-Reddits, then why spend the effort shutting it down? It's not a trivial matter to have someone spend the time to change their Terms of Service to ban racism, but not infringe upon political speech. A poorly worded addition to the ToS will cause more problems than simply letting a few racist sub-Reddits exist.
I wonder if Charlie refuses to do any photocopying or printing at Kinkos, because they, undoubtably, allow hate speech groups to run off fliers at one of their multitude of locations?
because it advocates and organizes violence against other people? Someone elsewhere put it like this
figmentPez
Staff member
Okay, that's a valid reason for getting specific posters/Redditors banned from the site, and any group that's purpose is to promote illegal activity, but that's a big difference from saying that they should be held accountable for shutting down all racist sub-Reddits.
However, you bring up a valid point about how most major online sites have trouble taking down posts promoting illegal activity. Facebook, Youtube, Tumblr, Twitter, and more are all notoriously bad at getting content promoting violence taken down. But that's a systematic problem that stems more from practicality, manpower, legal precedent, and more, than it necessarily does from any attitude on the part of those site's administration. Most of these sites don't have the staff/infrastructure necessary to deal with the sheer volume of complaints, not in a fair and reasonable matter. They're already swamped with DMCA take-down notices that have the weight of multi-million dollar corporations behind them, and they can't handle those properly. Do you expect them to handle complaints from people who are offended by the political views of others, and be able to do so while sorting through the hyperbole of the scores of people who say "all those shitlords who hate feminism should be strung up by their testicles and roasted alive over burning piles of fedoras!"? Because lots of people say things that, if taken literally, are promoting violence, and it's not always easy to recognize who is being hyperbolic and who is actually making a threat.
You act like this is a simple issue that can be solved with a few mouse clicks, but it's actually a very complex issue, that if Reddit and other sites tried to solve with a quick and heavy hand, would only invite a shit-storm of retaliation.
I think it's a big line between "black people can't swim" and "who has a really great picture of a dead black person?"
like, if there was a femynysm reddit detailing how to castrate a man using household items, well, I would hope it's immediately shut down too
like, if there was a femynysm reddit detailing how to castrate a man using household items, well, I would hope it's immediately shut down too
The thing is, Reddit has shut down problematic subreddits before. Anyone familiar with Violentacrez? He oversaw a slew of borderline pedophilic subreddits (among other NSFW subjects) and got himself and his subreddits banned. Of course, the big reason they got shut down was because that shit hit mainstream media and all of a sudden major networks were breathing down Reddit's neck about harboring pedophiles. So it's not like Reddit is some bastion of free speech, it's that they'll look the other way as long as it doesn't cost them anything.
You could say the same exact thing about Bittorrent, guns, drugs, and many other contemporarily controversial topics. It's the trend towards the abdication of personal responsibility. "I only ate those cookies because you left them out where I could get them." Reddit is a venue, and a venue is like a tool, in that it has no inherent morality about it. I can see those calling for reddit's closure/censure the same way that people would want to shut down a city park if a lot of murders/rapes were to happen there, but that would not be the park's fault.
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
That's all well and good, but it does nothing to address the practicality of the issue. Part of Reddit's Terms of Service is "do not incite harm". Do you have any evidence that any of these sub-reddits you hate exist explicitly to incite harm against individuals or groups? Because I'm betting that none of them exist explicitly for that purpose. Similarly, I bet you don't have any evidence of a user being reported for promoting harm, with Reddit doing nothing in response.
Here's where the rubber meets the road. 1. Do you have any evidence that Reddit has been any more lax in enforcing it's terms of service in regards to racist groups, than it has with any other subject? 2. If not, do you have a concrete suggestion for what Reddit should do to change it's terms of service to make it so that racist groups are not abiding by the rules they have for all users?
i hope y'all know that was a joke strawman
This isn't about racism, but it fits in to the conversation that reddit doesn't always, even in a major case, follow its code. I think there is a strong argument that /r/redpill endorses and embraces rape. You're right: it's not explicit in the subreddit's rules and description, but it is implicit, which is more insidious and more dangerous. But the rule you cite isn't "do not incite harm explicitly," it stops one word short of that, and, by extension, subreddits with implicit ideas of that flavour ought to be shut down, but they aren't.
There are problems with having a big open forum for discussion. It's probably impossible to have enough staff to moderate and detect and critically read every subreddit, or even a majority of them. This is one reason user reporting can be valuable, but even then I'm sure they get unmanageable volumes and every report can't be addressed with all the care we wish it could. But /r/redpill is a big subreddit, and fairly well-known -notorious, really. Their lack of action on something like that implies, to me, a lack of regard for their own rule, which exists more to give them something to point at when they choose to enforce it than to actually moderate all content. This is their prerogative, but I do not find your argument a compelling defense in its favour.
edit: apparently it's /r/theredpill, but you know what I mean.
figmentPez
Staff member
I know very little about Reddit. I'm mostly just here to poke holes in Charlie's arguments because it's fun. I'm not trying to defend Reddit's inaction, just explaining that their business model doesn't exist to promote racism, any more than Kinko's does. Blaming Reddit for having awful sub-Reddits is like blaming Kinkos for allowing nut jobs to print their fliers there.
And that's the big difference between your example, and what Charlie's article cites. /r/theredpill is one major subreddit, with over 100,000 subscribers. The ones mentioned in the article Charlie linked are at least an order of magnitude smaller, the first one mentioned "CoonTown" has 5,620 subscribers. /r/SneakerMarket, a sub-reddit specifically for selling sneakers, has more subscribers. There are 3,446 sub-reddits with more subscribers than "CoonTown", but only 328 with more subscribers than "theredpill".
This matters because if a small-ish racist reddit gets shut down, another one just gets created. As far as I know, anyone can create a reddit for any reason. Anyone can go down to Kinkos and print off pamphlets. But when something is as big as /r/theredpill, that's something else entirely. To me, Reddit not doing anything about a sub-reddit with 100,000 subscribers means something, but their ignoring reddits that don't even crack the top 1,000 doesn't say a whole lot. Show me that a printing company is running off pamphlets for the national convention of the KKK, and I'd say you've got an argument that Kinkos should be taking notice of what such a large customer is printing. But if they're printing the manifesto of some local nut job, then it's hard for me to think it reflects badly on them for not caring until they get enough complaints.
So, yeah, Reddit is kind of fucked up if what you say about /r/theredpill is true (I've only heard of it in passing. I know it has a reputation for promoting rape, but I don't know how pervasive that is.) However, letting people create awful sub-reddits seems to be just part of what inevitably will happen if you let people create sub-reddits freely.
Well, granted, and I tried to address that when I said it was an impossible chore to moderate all subreddits with whatever staff. I was more addressing your statement that the subreddits don't necessarily explicitly promote violence, or that reddit being no more or less lax about its rules was a compelling reason to say reddit isn't responsible. I suppose more succinctly I think that the problem is reddit has rules not to be followed, but for them to enforce on a subjective whim (viz. You can get away with /r/jailbait, but once it becomes a problem, then they enforce the rule, rather than expecting it to be followed and enforcing it from the word go).
I guess to your question, though posed to Charlie, I wouldn't say they need to change their terms, but they need to consistently enforce them. There are roadblocks to this, that have been discussed. But I don't think the difference between my example of a large subreddit vs some small ones is a big one. If there were only some small subreddits that hadn't been addressed, then I'd agree that they may not have attracted enough attention from the staff behind the scenes. Instead, because there is a big subreddit full of repugnant ideas, I'm inclined to believe that they are part of the same disease of selective enforcement.
As to the Kinko's analogy, I'm undecided if I agree with it or not. My thoughts against it run like this: here we have Staples, which I'll assume is the same style. There, you can just go to the copier and print out your material without the staff ever knowing or seeing it. Hard for them to censor you. Maybe you can make the argument that staff should check materials, but I don't know - I'm uncomfortable with that, though it'd be within their rights. On reddit, of course, everyone can know about and see it. Reddit is more like the hall that the KKK rents out than the shop where they get their materials.
/r/jailbait was banned once it became clear that actual child pornography was being exchanged through it though, not because of violations they knew about but simply didn't care about. Prior to that it wasn't breaking any rules.
I was under the impression it was always being used to post pictures of under-eighteen year olds, just not nude ones, but for pornographic reasons. If that's wrong, then my example is bad, but I stand by the rest of my statements.
You're mostly right. Since the pictures weren't nude, they weren't pornography and thus illegal, but after at least one thread in which a non-nude photo led to discussions of the existence of related nude photos and sharing going on, they shut it down entirely and added the new rule banning even sexually suggestive material about minors. To my understanding they were consistent in applying that rule, and any such previously existing minor-focused sexual subreddit is no more.
figmentPez
Staff member
My statement was meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I was making a statement about how Reddit, and indeed many other internet services, function, not saying that they should function that way. Most major services like that turn as much of a blind eye as possible to what goes on. Not just to negative stuff, but to positive and neutral stuff as well. They try to remain as neutral as possible, taking sides only when forced to because of legal concerns, or out of need to promote and expand their business. Ignoring racism by saying "we don't really pay attention to what is posted there, and the group description doesn't say anything about violence or harm, if you have a problem file a complaint" also allows them to do the same thing to /r/weed420bonghits and remain neutral on drug use/politics, religion, sexuality, etc. Granted, it's unlikely some government is going to go after Reddit for promoting illegal drug use if they ban racist forums, while allowing pot sub-reddits, but there's a long standing history of internet services trying to remain as neutral as possible. Reddit is just another in a long line. Not saying if it's right or wrong, or even if it's the only way to be, just that trying to spin Reddit as "violently racist" because of that means they're also "pro drug use, pro-anorexia (/r/thinspo has 32,000 subscribers!), pro-whatever someone can take to an extreme and harm themselves"
It'd be interesting if /r/theredpill put up disclaimers like /r/thinspo has. "We do not condone or advocate sexual assault, or other illegal sexual activity. If you know someone who has been the victim of sexual assault, contact RAINN." Because we all know that despite the disclaimers, a lot of thinspiration photos are used to fuel eating disorders, and may even be photos of people with eating disorders. Furthermore, a lot of eating disorders are very adept at hiding themselves as just healthy eating (there's a whole emerging category of Orthorexia Nervosa, people obsessive about eating right, and it's hard to tell the difference between that and people just following a fad diet, at least on the surface). And that's the thing, we know that eating disorders harm people, but does /r/thinspo existence rely so much on the promotion of eating disorders that Reddit should shut it down? How much policing are they responsible for, once they're aware that it's doing harm, despite it's disclaimers? If Reddit shuts down /r/thinspo, does it shut down /r/P90X and /r/fitness, too? Because some eating disorders revolve around excessive exercise. Where is the line? If the line isn't at explicitly promoting harm, then what level of implicit harm does there need to be before it's over the line, and how do you put that into a Terms of Service agreement?
Kinkos has self service as well, but you can also put in online orders where employees may never read what you're printing. It comes out, they put in in a box, slap on a label, and wait for you to show up to claim it. They may never notice the difference between a playbill for a local theater company, and the manifesto of a guy about to bomb a government building. But that's the problem with trying to equate digital with physical, there is no absolute equality. Sure everyone could see any given Reddit, but most people aren't going to see, even those in charge of administration. Renting a hall generally requires specific permission. Starting a sub-reddit may not get noticed until it reaches a given size, if ever.
If you admittedly know nothing about reddit and are just posting to aggravate me, isn't that the definition of trolling? you could always just fuck off instead
figmentPez
Staff member
"Very little" and "nothing" are not the same thing. You also know very little about Reddit. I don't see how my open ignorance and willingness to examine the issue is somehow more troublesome than your feigned omniscience and refusal to consider the viewpoints of others.
"Poking holes in your argument" and "aggravating you" may functionally be the same thing, but only if you're the type of small minded person who cannot stand to have his logic questioned. I'm not trying to aggravate you, I'm trying to examine the issue and challenge the conclusion you have set forth.
I don't consider myself to be trolling. I'm not disagreeing just because it's you, I'm disagreeing because I honestly think you have flawed reasoning (and I loathe the type of hyperbole you used in your thread title). I'm not posting just to ruffle feathers, I'm not playing "devil's advocate"; I'm just pointing out that the statements you've made about Reddit being racist don't have a logical basis.
I don't view the owners/operators of Reddit to be some sort of saints. There's a good possibility they're really shitty people (there are a lot of really shitty people out there, and a lot of them do well in business). However, that doesn't make them actively racist, at least not in the same way that white supremacy groups are actively racist. Passively allowing people to say horrible things on a website designed to allow people to make discussion groups based on nearly anything is far different than actively promoting a viewpoint.
Well, they banned a lot of the racist subreddits. There are still a lot more, but its something.
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3fx2au/content_policy_update/
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3fx2au/content_policy_update/