Why I am deeply alarmed by reddit censorship

submitted by Jizera from (self.MeanwhileOnReddit)

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[–]Fictionsaur 19 insightful - 1 fun19 insightful - 0 fun20 insightful - 1 fun -  (38 children)

It's bad reddit didn't have any significant competition as a primarily anon website for debate. If other communities like saidit appeared earlier, there would be a more equal distribution of users among these communities and so when reddit go down the path of censorship we could just migrate there. Instead, because of the monopoly, reddit will always come up as the first option for people looking for an anon website.

It's a private company. We can only try to bring as much users to join alternative communities enough for them to compete against reddit even though it will take a long time to happen.

[–][deleted]  (21 children)

[deleted]

    [–]AFutureConcern 19 insightful - 2 fun19 insightful - 1 fun20 insightful - 2 fun -  (12 children)

    You're absolutely right. Google censor anything that could be considered a free speech platform that competes with the tech monopolies (let alone an actual right-biased site). Reddit blocks any links to thedonald.win or voat.co - and shadowbans you if you mention saidit.net. They intentionally fracture competitors as well - if one gets too popular, you can bet it will be censored and another alternative promoted. Since there is no expectation of free speech from the masses anymore, and leftist fools will side with big tech, denying that any censorship is happening, the tech companies feel absolutely free to stifle their competition through aggressive censorship and control of the public discourse.

    [–]konoplya 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    google is absolutely disgusting. half the shit i'm trying to find i can't find anymore. i resort to duckduckgo, which i used to bash for its cumbersome search results, until very recently. i still use google for non-hot topic queries, but anything politcal related or anti left you can't find much anymore. same with youtube results. its absolute shit, unless you change up the filters and sift through a ton of crap to find something useful.

    [–]bagano1 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Many countries are gearing up to go to war against Google. It's the beginning of the end.

    [–]oneinchterror 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Good. It's about time. They should have been destroyed the moment they dropped "don't be evil" as their motto.

    [–]Honestanonymous 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Google is censoring the fuck out of everything

    [–]Dragonerne 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

    The solution for the right is to ban leftist companies. Use their own cancel culture against them.

    The right is afraid of big government because we know that the leftists will use it to oppress us. The left isn't afraid of centralized power because they know that the right wont use it against them. It's time we play their own game.

    [–]jet199 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

    Reminds me of something I read along the lines of "it's funny how Ken Loach makes endless films about how bad, faceless and useless government is but votes for more government."

    It's not that they don't know centralised power is bad. They just think somehow it would be magically better with themselves in charge.

    [–]Dragonerne 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Yes exactly. There is nothing in fact that drives them more mad than centralised power. They're fueled by their hate of centralised power but only when its used against them, because that's an injustice.

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

    That's exactly the problem and look at how the Chaz/chop went or evergreen college, as soon as these passive aggressive jellyfish fucks get their tentacles on any power they start abusing the shit out of it, I wouldn't be surprised if they started putting people in camps for racism or something absurdly stupid like that

    [–]tuesday 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    Is reddit blocking s a i d i t.n e t

    [–]AFutureConcern 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    There are of course ways to encode the information that an automated tool cannot catch, for example

    int.to_bytes(544869074015978395690356, 10, 'big').decode()

    But the mods & admins will surely be watching. If they see you promoting saidit they may well manually shadowban you.

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

    Because people can't just make alts or put the URL in memes.

    [–]Honestanonymous 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Those are some barbaric and cutthroat vicious aggressive people

    [–][deleted]  (5 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]Dragonerne 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

      Yes, try finding studies on race and IQ with google. You'll have an easy time finding studies that are misleading based on fallacies from the 70s, but finding the useful studies is a lot harder.
      I think they use social media to weight the links so they cluster "wrong think" people and based on the links they post or click they decrease/increase in ranking.
      I would assume reddit does this too with their upvoting system. Some votes count more than others - at scale. For small numbers you wont notice but say 1000 upvotes from the "wrong" group might count as only 700 while 1000 upvotes from the "right" group might count as 1500.
      This would be an easy way to control filter content.

      [–]thebonkest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

      I noticed Ruqqus actually does this too when I was downvoted for calling out a racist. Went from 115 Rep to 27 rep, all for two posts that were -14 and -15 points, respectively.

      It's scary how the world is splitting up into factions and how entire social systems are being set up to glorify the opinions of the political faction they market to.

      [–]Dragonerne 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

      Not saying they don't do it but have you considered that some people went through your profile and downvoted all your posts as a possibility?

      [–]thebonkest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

      I checked, those were the only two affected. Any place that allows downvoting opens the door to ideologues exploiting it to silence those they disagree with. And developers will skew algorithms to do the same.

      [–]Dragonerne 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      You can do the same on saidit without downvotes. I hope they wont do that in the future.

      [–]PencilPusher55 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

      Wow! You're right. It is always those lame ass articles "me spent one week on the alt-right version of da innternet!"

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

      It's hard to fight a system that owns the system and knows you're coming.

      [–]tuesday 16 insightful - 3 fun16 insightful - 2 fun17 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

      Instead, because of the monopoly, reddit will always come up as the first option for people looking for an anon website.

      AOL, MySpace, HotMail, and others used to be the go-to sites. Now they're wastelands and people barely remember them.

      it will take a long time to happen

      People can only move to saidit as fast as they hear that saidit exists.

      So put a link in your email sig! Put a link on Linkedin! Don't forget Twitter and Facebook. Tell your friends and family! Casually mention it to your coworkers! Let the pizza delivery guy overhear you talking about! Mumble to yourself when you're on the bus or train that whoops gotta check your saidit account! Tell the bar tender or write saidit on the tip you give the waitress. Tell your non-woke teacher and librarian -- there are just so many people who are already fed up with the media control freakery and more growing every day. And they all want to know about the free speech readily available at saidit.net.

      So tell them.

      [–]bagano1 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

      Overmoderation needs to be a thing of the past. Mods actually need to be punished for banning people for disagreeing with them, fighting with other users or punishing people for social criticism. I don't support racial supremacy of any kind. However, if you want to call people out for bad behavior, I think that should be allowed as long as you can provide some sort of evidence. I think suppressing it, or worse, as we've seen with African-Americans that is becoming a serious problem, siding with them every time something happens is just a bad road to take. Minorities are NOT always right! There are some dumb liberals out there trying to push that and I draw the line at that!

      But back to my point, yeah, unless you are disrupting a board by spamming it or being an idiot, you should not be banned. Period. I've actually done some moderating. It's really not hard. Some sites are exemplary. Others don't seem to understand that overmoderation just makes people frustrated and drives great posters away.

      [–]Fiyanggu 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

      You're absolutely right, but how did we get here from the good old days when people would think for themselves? I blame the whole butthurt Millenial safespace culture. Somehow we have to cater to the lowest common denominator of butthurt and that keeps people from raising an alternative opinion for fear of offending someone.

      [–]magnora7 9 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

      In terms of the internet specifically, I think part of it is that the barrier to access for things like internet forums has become so low that there's literally lots of 8 year olds talking on the forums, whereas 20 years ago, most people online were at least highschool or older and it was a little hard to figure out so you had to be somewhat smart and capable to get there in the first place. Whereas now they can give a baby a phone with a reddit app installed and they can post. The internet used to be filled with geeks, because those were the only people who cared enough to figure it out. Now it's so ubiquitous you can sneeze and accidentally post on the internet

      [–]oneinchterror 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

      Cheap smartphones and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

      [–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      There have been a lot of benefits to it as well. Just like every other tool, humanity is going to have to learn how to use it correctly and in a beneficial way. Right now we're all toddlers with cellphones, mesmerized by the shiny apps. Some day we will grow up and use it like the tool it is, but we're going to have to make the missteps first to learn what not to do

      [–]lairacunda 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

      No, you see. Subs, (and here too), are created with different intentions in mind. Why should people who want to discuss ideas or concepts with others who basically agree with them, have to contend with all the people who disagree with them, AND in all the ways they could possibly disagree with them? At the end of the day maybe you just want to have a conversation without having to justify and defend yourself constantly. Mods agree with the intention of the sub and help keep the space productive and enjoyable for the intended users. There are places that are created with a "debate", change-my-mind outlook. But there are others that are clearly for a particular group of people. They are not and shouldn't be all-inclusive. People with minority opinions should be able to find other like-minded people. Minority opinions can get drowned out by sheer force of numbers. This is known as "brigading". If people stayed in their own lanes, maybe banning would not be necessary. Banning is the only way to ensure QC. Though on Reddit it's a joke because the bans are by user name and not by computer address. Nothing prevents people from brigading under multiple accounts. Plus. depending on who you are, the admins don't give a shit.

      EDIT: word

      [–]thebonkest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

      And we've seen how completely and utterly destructive that kind of thinking leads, so maybe it's better that people put up with the mild inconvenience of having to defend their position whenever they express it, and actually learn how to connect with other people and debate properly -- or even worse, learning how to just ignore people who say such things and not respond to them at all.

      Or we can all continue to get more and more violent and kill each other in a massive civil war that will collapse the country and allow other countries (Russia, China) to get ahold of our nukes. That would totally be the better option than having to defend our own opinoins

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

      There are places and there should be places where we can all gather together. But then there are places where you really just want to be with "your own", whatever that may be. I'm someone with minority positions and outlooks, I'm also a minority many times over and belong to many fairly powerless subgroupings and demographics. I don't have "popular opinions" and don't wish to be homogenized into the greater whole. I disagree that I should have to continuously defend and justify myself in unproductive and often infuriating conversations, just so everyone feels "included". I should be able to find others who are like me and agree with me. Making everyone partake with everyone is what gets people killed or their cultures destroyed. What you describe as a "mild inconvenience" is not benign but rather closer to forced assimilation.

      [–]thebonkest 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

      I disagree that I should have to continuously defend and justify myself in unproductive and often infuriating conversations, just so everyone feels "included".

      And we've all seen where that kind of frustration leads us. It might suck for you, but if you're finding you have to constantly defend yourself when talking to other people, the problem might not be them, the problem might be you and who you're hanging around with.

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

      I think we're done here. Arguing this point is unproductive and we're not going to change the other's mind. Remember this conversation if you're ever in a situation where you just want some space or to be with your own but someone louder, richer, bigger and more powerful insists on joining you and being part of your group, insists on actually being you, and you're just a bigot if you don't agree, don't love them, don't want to have sex with them, be friends, etc. Remember this conversation when they get you fired from your job, stalked and doxxed for not agreeing that whoever and whatever you are, your identity, is up for grabs and that you owe them because they and their allies say so.

      [–]bagano1 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      Wow, you are a douchebag.

      [–]oneinchterror 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

      IMO a big problem is that most people don't truly believe in unfettered free speech. Take Voat, for instance. After the Ellen Pao fiasco in 2015 and Reddit's first major banwave, Voat exploded in popularity and actually thrived as an all around decent website for a while (intermittent server issues notwithstanding). The thing is, a fairly significant segment of Voat's new userbase was made up of unsavory Reddit rejects from places like /r/FatPeopleHate and /r/CoonTown. Many people soon realized that Voat was dead serious about free speech, and a consequence of that is endlessly being called "kike" and "niggerfaggot" by spergs and seeing racial slurs on the front page. This inevitably lead many people to conclude: "maybe some restrictions on acceptable speech are actually good or necessary". More and more people left the site until only those who were okay with that sort of content remained. It's not at all conducive to building popular competitors. If a website doesn't censor, it turns into 4chan or Voat. If the site does censor, then why leave Reddit?

      Better rules/moderation seems to be the answer, (but who decides what that means?) and there are still serious barriers to entry for new contenders - just look at what fucking VISA did to the founder of Gab.

      [–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

      this is why free speech sites need to make it easy for the user to filter the content too. you need both. a good block button like on the fediverse, notabug.io's delegated moderation, whatever the solution is.

      or a way to positively filter content, like saidit's "friends" feed feature.

      [–]thebonkest 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      You know what would be a viable solution? An algorithm that allows the user him or herself to filter out racist content from their feeds instead of the site censoring everybody.

      I'm sure that would be abused somehow, but if it were made as like an add-on or a separate app the user could remove at any time, guaranteeing the truly unfettered nature of the site underneath, that would allow every faction to coexist on the same website in relative harmony by simply erasing the existence of the other from their view.

      [–]Fiyanggu 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      Usenet was still there up until a few years ago. I never understood the move away from Usenet to specialized websites and forums. It was so convenient to have everything grouped together and pretty much unpoliced. I miss the wild west days of the internet. Even the AOL invasion was better than today's right-think Big Brother internet.