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[–]zabaru 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Hello

Wow, nice job on the look. Looks exactly the like old reddit which I liked!!

What's the rules here? Hope this isn't China owned and censored like reddit!

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Hello!

Looks exactly the like old reddit which I liked!!

It's forked from the reddit source code from back when reddit was still open source!

What's the rules here?

basics:

  • don't advocate violence
  • no pornography
  • try to actually contribute to the conversation when you comment, with the pyramid of debate as your guide (as explained in the terms & content policy)

welcome message, terms and content policy

Hope this isn't China owned and censored like reddit!

I don't think it is. It's funded by user donations right now.

[–]zabaru 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Great!! Looking forward

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

I think we should drop the porn rule. It's just another source for gray zones if there are borderline porn memes or something. We have the NSFW tag. As long as people use it, others can choose what they see, instead of restricting what people want to post.

If porn was a black and white criterion, I would have less of an issue banning it. But what is seen as pornographic by one might not be considered pornographic by others. It's similar to what people consider violent or "hateful". Don't have loose threads hanging off your sweater. Someone is going to pull on them. We have seen this too often.

I am not eager for porn on this site, though. There are already so many places where you can post porn. Even Twitter, who are so restrictive on political speech, is full of porn. What I don't have on Twitter is freedom of speech, though, so that's more important to me. If whoever are in charge of this site are reading this, consider not making unnecessary restrictions, even if you think that porn does nothing to further freedom of speech. It just gets messy (no pun intended) and we end up with such hypocritical pontifications as can be seen on Gab, from Andrew Torba. I would never invest in such a site because I know that once they are successful and no longer dependent on its founding members for support, they are just going to implement their own flavor of censorship. If there is a loose thread and you pull on it, usually the entire sweater eventually unravels. The fewer gray zones, the fewer moralizing rules the better.

What one person considers pornographic might be different from what another thinks is pornographic. It's not so different from rules against violent content. What is violent? How violent? The same way censorship seeps in when making rules against violent content, offensive content, hateful content. You think it's a clear cut issue, because you have a very firm idea of what is "hateful", and lo and behold, other people have a different view of it. Then, those restrictions only get tighter. The current mods' bar might be at one level and the next wave is yet a little more sensitive. The next wave has even less tolerance until we have the set union of everything every group of past moderators have ever felt is hateful.

Maybe it's better to think about this the other way around: What rules do we need? If a rule is not needed, don't have it. A creation is not perfect when you cannot add anything to it, it is perfect when you cannot remove anything from it.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I think we should drop the porn rule.

I'm sorry but the the thing I immediately thought when I saw the opening line was "username checks out". But to give a more serious reply:

we end up with such hypocritical pontifications as can be seen on Gab, from Andrew Torba.

what happened on gab?

The same way censorship seeps in when making rules against violent content, offensive content, hateful content. You think it's a clear cut issue, because you have a very firm idea of what is "hateful", and lo and behold, other people have a different view of it. Then, those restrictions only get tighter.

Yeah. It's nice to hear someone else who thinks this way (though I still wish it wasn't Mr. Screwtape! I honestly don't know what to make of this post.)

Yeah, SaidIt isn't a free speech site. I think it tries, and is doing a better job than reddit. And this is why I wish they'd be a lot more strict about enforcing the pyramid of debate rule exactly as written instead of using it as kindof a loose guideline: because if you fudge it, it's easy to mess up and not be neutral. Even though it's designed to help make it neutral.

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

username checks out

It's actually a C.S. Lewis reference, the Screwtape Letters, which is more along the lines of a Christian exegesis or apologia. That is part of why I chose that username. I was also considering Wormwood, but he does not fit my character as well. Too often, though, I am the patient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEf7sdiohjk

The Screwtape Letters is a Christian apologetic novel by C. S. Lewis and dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien. It is written in a satirical, epistolary style and while it is fictional in format, the plot and characters are used to address Christian theological issues, primarily those to do with temptation and resistance to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters

I think it is fitting because we increasingly dismiss the teaching of Christianity and many of the sociological woes we are contending with are humorously illustrated in the book. Much of our condemnation of Christianity and western values that were somehow tied with it can be seen in our general attitudes towards ethics and morality. My stance on pornography is not to bring more lewdness to this world, which it certainly does not need, but to try to be morally consistent with our values of free speech we ostensibly proclaim.

What happened on Gab?

It seemed that Andrew Torba, its CEO, got increasingly power hungry and was imposing his own morality on the site. He was pretty outspoken against Hentai and especially material with younger characters. The letter might be understandable, but he increasingly seemed like some priest on a mission and he wanted to transform his Gab clique into some sort of commune. One of the reasons he refrained from downright implementing speech restrictions on Gab was more because it would hurt the initial growth on Gab, not because he viewed it as inconsistent with his stance of free speech absolutism. I am very wary of people like that, because those places usually start out with proclaiming the values and virtues of free speech only for the administrators and other stuff to become increasingly vindictive, until we are back to having little Napoleons ruling over their imagined online empire. All these sites, Twitter, YouTube, Gab, Minds -- they always start out drawing users in with lures of freedom of expression, only to later clamp down when they are no longer reliant on the initial support. I would much prefer a site that is anti-authoritarian, free speech absolutist by design because I do not want to be reliant on the good will of staff and admins, which change over time. That is precisely how these places get reindeer kin and other such characters, as in the case of Twitch, who then ruin the site because it did not have something of the sort of a strong constitution, a founding document, that ensured that the user base could dispose of tyrants, similar to how the US Constitution made provisions to rid themselves of corruption and combat the loss of liberty.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Yes I recognized that it was a reference to "The Screwtape Letters," though it's been a long time since I read that. Screwtape was one of the demons trying to tempt humans into sin... perhaps by putting a bunch of pornography on their site ... no?

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Oh, I was wondering if that was the reason for your comment. I explained it anyway, in case someone else reads it who is not familiar with it. Yes, he was one of the tempters, which would have fit with my comment. Well put.

But, as in the original book, it is not straightforward, sometimes, what leads to salvation and what leads to damnation. There, as in the culture war, many who seem to have good intentions and proclaim themselves to be on the side of virtue end up doing reprehensible things. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hypocrisy, though, is a sure path that strays.

Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile “Oh please, please . .. all want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast”. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, “Oh, that’s far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it”. If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste ; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.

We often try to present ourselves in ways that seem virtuous, for the sake of signaling virtue alone. We avoid doing what is truly virtuous, ethical, and moral as soon as it becomes inconvenient.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I can see your argument about principles of true free speech being something we need to not betray. It's just difficult not to read it as "this comment is an example of how the devil tricks in into believing sinning is virtuous" with that username!

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

True, I can see that.