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[–]ctvzbuxr 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Of course it's not quite the same as systemic, forced censorship by a totalitarian government. It's an exaggeration to get the point across. Also, just because Reddit is private and doesn't show up at your house doesn't mean everything they do is okay. They claim to be impartial, but they're not. This is false advertising and manipulation of users. Reddit would not be as big if people knew just how one-sided it is, but they still want to use their unjustly maintained reach to influence elections. This is highly immoral behavior. If reddit wants to be partial and censor their content, they should be open and up-front about it, label themselves as a left-wing platform, and nobody in their right mind would complain about it.

[–]jamesK_3rd 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

No that's what censorship is unless you live in a society where the govt openly controls businesses and what content is allowable online, and we're definitely on the road there, but there is still some freedom left here.

highly immoral behaviour? They're made up of people, and people who reflect their values on it.

This is a fact in life that we must all come to terms with. The best example of this is our beloved media companies, who years ago removed adjectives from their names, such as The Xxxx Democrat Times, the Republican Courier, the Progressive Examiner or the Conservative Post. These were removed by individuals some with the best of intentions or perhaps some with nefarious intent, the end result was the same however. Changing the name doesn't in fact change that the entity is still staffed by people, people with agendas, people with ideologies and core belief systems that skew and reflect a viewpoint through a certain prism regardless of how loud claims of "impartiality" are.

I'm sorry, i don't believe companies such as reddit or google should be required (especially by govt) to censor or promote certain content, which is ultimately where your and in particular the OP author's viewpoint will take us. In fact too often this becomes a tool wielded by govt to control free speech. If you don't like it, leave. Nobody forces you to type redditDOTcom in your browser and scroll through content all day.

If you want to make a publisher vs platform argument I'm all in. In fact, i think it's longpast time someone sues outfits like Twitter and forces them to pick a side instead of mulling around somewhere in the grey area where they can get away with acting as if they're both. Unfortunately, the few times I've seen cases come up against big entities, their ideology seems to have a price, and i read how a settlement out of court has been reached.

But I think you misjudge the people using platforms such as reddit. Back in the earliest beginnings of reddit, it was pretty openly hostile to certain religions and though i can say i don't recall ever seeing them remove content the way i hear of mods doing now, voices were certainly made to feel unwelcome. It didn't bother me, but i found it quite ironic that those who professed to have no religion at all had such fervour and zeal when it came to their own religion and it seemed to be just another groupthink for a particular group of people.

I'm all for smacking these companies like Google, reddit and Twitter. But not with govt. But, I totally realize that I'm in a very small minority now and i think it's only a matter of time until the govt begins overtly picking winners on net as well.

[–]ctvzbuxr 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I didn't say government. Little trivia about me: I'm actually an anarchist. I believe that anything can be resolved without government interference if enough people put their minds to it. That is why I think it's important to establish better platforms such as Saidit, that are dedicated to free speech and will hopefully replace things like Reddit, given enough time. That being said, it's not that simple. Why do you think companies like Reddit are promoting left-wing politics so hard? Because they hope to acquire preferential legislation from the swamp creatures that keeps competition down and secures their monopoly. We are already competing with the power of the state here.