Reddit CEO Tells User Banning Hate Speech is Too Hard; Reddit Bans User For Posting Conversation

Reddit saying they were "banned" for sharing the conversation not for talking about hate speech. Tomatoe, Tomato.

"Hate speech is difficult to define."

Wrong.

"We are not the thought police."

Fuck you and this lazy bullshit answer. Not every "thought" is equal. Some are factually bad. Grow a fucking spine.

If he didn't want the conversation shared, he shouldn't have had it.

Or maybe he shouldn't have said such a pathetic thing in it.

ZeoVGM said:

"Hate speech is difficult to define."

Wrong.

"We are not the thought police."

Fuck you and this lazy bullshit answer. Not every "thought" is equal. Some are factually bad. Grow a fucking spine.

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Growing a spine would entail making reddit like voat. These people WANT unlimited free speech. Spez is just like the rest of them.

Huffman go on chapo

cosmicblizzard said:

Growing a spine would entail making reddit like voat.

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Er... what?

Why can't the HuffPo headline be more like this thread's title?

I feel like if I shared the article elsewhere the title would only make sense to a handful of people, so few would actually read it.

Jfc. Reddit is such trash.

And no I don't care if your favourite subreddit is ummm actually a good one. Fuck that.

You would be banned/suspended for doing that here too.

And the point about not wanting hard standards because theyll be abused by the people you dont want is legit. (Obviously allowing td to continue is ridiculous tho)

Over the last couple of years the major Silicon Valley content platforms, as well as other major corporations, have made their stance clear: a white racist's money is just as good as yours, and there are an awful lot of them.

Reddit admins should have used the Thanos snap today to ban all of the_donald

ZeoVGM said:

Er... what?

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I'm saying they don't actually want to ban hate speech because they're in full support of people being able to say it, not because it's too hard. Just like Twitter's Jack, these guys are Libertarian techbros that are totally cool with whatever until it affects their bottom line.

Reddit's so strange to me. It's clearly got a very large amount of successful subreddits that are, to a reasonable extent, free on bigotry (low on bigotry might be a better phrase). Yet for some reason they think they should be 4chan, which is certainly much more niche than Reddit is. I simply don't see how they think that's a successful direction to go in.

It seems like a lot of techbros really believe they need to be psuedo libertarian platforms, but I don't think there's very clear evidence that policing hate speech leads to people leaving websites in any significant quantities. For example, say they banned r/The_Donald. I would bet at least 90% of those users already go on other subreddits, and would continue using reddit to visit those subreddits.

Kirblar said:

You would be banned/suspended for doing that here too.

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Not a valid comparison. Because here, you wouldn't be messaging a mod about the fact that they refuse to ban racists.

And the point about not wanting hard standards because theyll be abused by the people you dont want is legit. (Obviously allowing td to continue is ridiculous tho)

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Hard standards refers specifically to places like td, so that point is not legit.

I just asked my friend why we continue to use platforms that don't advocate for us. Reddit and Twitter are big ones that let hate speech just go unchecked. The easiest way for them to actually take it seriously would be for a mass exodus of users because of these issues.

TheFireman said:

Reddit's so strange to me. It's clearly got a very large amount of successful subreddits that are, to a reasonable extent, free on bigotry (low on bigotry might be a better phrase). Yet for some reason they think they should be 4chan, which is certainly much more niche than Reddit is. I simply don't see how they think that's a successful direction to go in.

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They know a significant portion of their website is made up of terrible people (who the admins don't see as terrible by the by) and taking a stand would be losing them. The successful direction to go in is to lean into their reputation as a libertarian, white nationalist breeding ground. Hasn't really hurt them so far, minus a few blips here and there.

At least do the next best thing then, ban certain subreddits where hate speech is prominent.

You know exactly which ones...

ZeoVGM said:

Not a valid comparison. Because here, you wouldn't be messaging a mod about the fact that they refuse to ban racists.



Hard standards refers specifically to places like td, so that point is not legit.

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It dosen't matter posting private convos to make someone look bad is harassment.

"Can you guys ban hate speech?"

"Naw bruh, it's too hard."

"C'mon, you already have rules for similar stuff."

"I'm a private company, I can't make rules."

"But, that just it. Private companies can make their own rules since they're private."

"I'm just going to...ban."

PixelatedProphet said:

It dosen't matter posting private convos to make someone look bad is harassment.

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Showing that someone sympathizes with white supremacists is not "to make someone look bad."

Context matters and you're ignoring it.

What the hell do you mean, it's too hard to ban Hate Speech?

Do you not have morals or integrity?

Without fail, every single place or person that says they're about "open discussion", they'll let people post racist shit day in and out, but perceived personal slights on them? Here comes the hammer.

PixelatedProphet said:

It dosen't matter posting private convos to make someone look bad is harassment.

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No it isn't

Zeyphersan said:

They know a significant portion of their website is made up of terrible people (who the admins don't see as terrible by the by) and taking a stand would be losing them. The successful direction to go in is to lean into their reputation as a libertarian, white nationalist breeding ground. Hasn't really hurt them so far, minus a few blips here and there.

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I editted something like this into my previous post, but I want to follow up to say that just because it hasn't hurt them so far doesn't mean they shouldn't be proactive. The situation they are in is that a small percentage of their site is white nationalists. If they ban such behavior now, they'll retain most of those people-since they likely use the website for more than just white nationalism-while losing a few people who use it only for white nationalism. However, if they don't ban such behavior, that part of the site that's white nationalist will increase. People may begin to associate reddit with white nationalism and stop using all of the site because of it. This could very easily cause the site's userbase to drastically decrease.

I would need statistics to back it up, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is what's happening to 4chan. Instead of removing the /pol/ board, every board got infested with white nationalists drawn on by the /pol/ board and the whole website is now arguably alt-right, and I believe less people are going on it as a result.

Time to stop pretending that they don't mind the promotion of hate speech.

Sites that rely on advertising rely on engagement, and sometimes that means negativity. Now, maybe moderation was better in the past when the site was smaller, where they could ban people permanently and not give out warnings or two week bans or cage things in "duration pending", but eventually the dollar comes around and moderation changes, for advertising or shareholders, depending on the site. Sites grow big, you need more voices, you need more engagement, you need more eyeballs for ads, and there you are, suddenly hosting a site that had dipped in quality and gone down a dark path to giving voice or tolerance to the intolerant. Where that slide goes, or they then decide to fight it, is the prerogative of the owners, since they are the ones who call the shots. Sometimes you just end up leaving those sites because of how terrible they've allowed themselves to become, and sometimes you needle them into hopefully getting back their backbone. But as a user, you can choose to leave and ignore, or continue to push and engage, and as a guest on those sites, that's all you can do. But no site is irreplaceable, including all the majors.

I'm gonna wager that they aren't interested in losing that much traffic to their site.

Silicon Valley is run by white supremacists. It's quite obvious at this point.

FyreWulff said:

Without fail, every single place or person that says they're about "open discussion", they'll let people post racist shit day in and out, but perceived personal slights on them? Here comes the hammer.

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Yup, I think most of us here know that well.

Reddit knows how their bread gets buttered.

They're craven, not stupid.

Is this because Reddit's advertisers and sponsors don't want the ceo to ban hate speech?

FyreWulff said:

Without fail, every single place or person that says they're about "open discussion", they'll let people post racist shit day in and out, but perceived personal slights on them? Here comes the hammer.

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Yep. Same thing when some make claims about wanting to be more transparent in their conduct: it sounds good to say, but that shit just is not true and we all know it.

MrSaturn99 said:

I'm always saying this, but platforms like Twitter and Facebook have become too entrenched in modern society -- speaking personally, I'm a game journalist, so they're a necessity to get my stuff out there.

Even then, I wonder how many people would be arsed enough to do it.

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You never know if a community has enough and enough people are upset it could happen. That is how we all ended up here. Going to the other place now is completely different and all that's left there are ultra right wing assholes.

PixelatedProphet said:

It dosen't matter posting private convos to make someone look bad is harassment.

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It could be considered a dick move, but harassment that is not. Revealing to the world that you're being an ass isn't harassment, but coaxing the world to send you emails that state you are an asshole is harassment.

Unless they can prove that the OP of the reddit thread was directing people to send spam and troll, it's not harassment.

Filter from r/all. Done. Greatest feature they've added. Banning that sub won't stop those conversations happening. They'll just migrate to somewhere else. They're bullshits at least contained away now to the majority of people filtering it.

The last filter stays we're amusing though. More people filtered league of legends that TD.

Reddit's been trash

InfiniteDaremo said:

Filter from r/all. Done. Greatest feature they've added. Banning that sub won't stop those conversations happening. They'll just migrate to somewhere else. They're bullshits at least contained away now to the majority of people filtering it.

The last filter stays we're amusing though. More people filtered league of legends that TD.

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The idea of "containment subs" doesn't work and will never work.

The Resetera staff must be superhuman.

I mean, I get that it's probably difficult to moderate every thread in a site as big as Reddit from the top down and they leave a lot up to the community. That said, they could e doing a lot more with very little effort.

1.) Ban more of the sub-reddits that consistently encourage hate speech (cough cough T_D)
2.) IP ban the worst users.

With that, you certainly wouldn't get rid of hate speech (getting rid of it is incredibly difficult if not impossible on a form as large as reddit), but you would show that it isn't tolerated at the very least.

I agree that posting PM's is in extremely bad form unless allowed, or unless harassment, etc. is occurring in the PM,

Racist subreddits pay the bills, so of course they can stay.

PixelatedProphet said:

It dosen't matter posting private convos to make someone look bad is harassment.

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Doesn't running a white supremacist website that encourages raids, doxing and violence against minorities also constitute harassment?

Xe4 said:

I mean, I get that it's probably difficult to moderate every thread in a site as big as Reddit from the top down and they leave a lot up to the community. That said, they could e doing a lot more with very little effort.

1.) Ban more of the sub-reddits that consistently encourage hate speech (cough cough T_D)
2.) IP ban the worst users.

With that, you certainly wouldn't get rid of hate speech (getting rid of it is incredibly difficult if not impossible on a form as large as reddit), but you would show that it isn't tolerated at the very least.

I agree that posting PM's is in extremely bad form unless allowed, or unless harassment, etc. is occurring in the PM,

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Except Reddit doesn't consider posting Reddit PMs as a TOS violation for anyone else - multiple subreddits they have openly post PM conversations repeatedly. It was just used as a response when someone screencapped their conversation with an admin.

You have to remember, Reddit is the same company where an ex-employee posted about difficulties, which one of their previous CEOs suddenly responded to the post with private information in an attempt to embarass that ex-employee. As I said above, these types are always about the invisible hand of the free market, but have the thinnest of skin when they feel personally slighted, no matter which site they run.

He said gate speeches should go "somewhere else", but what the user doesn't realize is that Reddit IS "somewhere else". And it's why I don't use Reddit.

Link said:

Silicon Valley is run by white supremacists. It's quite obvious at this point.

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Should probably research who you're talking about a bit better before such comments...

Reddit only give a shit when they start getting bad press.

If you want to see the likes of the_donald get banned, start documenting everything and keep blasting it to the media and advertisers. Maybe we should organise a movement on this.

How many targeted ads appeared on t_d? How much money have they made from that subreddit?

Because that's how much hate speech/bigotry/homophobia/xenophobia is worth Reddit. And whatever that number is, it's big enough for them.

FyreWulff said:

Except Reddit doesn't consider posting Reddit PMs as a TOS violation for anyone else - multiple subreddits they have openly post PM conversations repeatedly. It was just used as a response when someone screencapped their conversation with an admin.

You have to remember, Reddit is the same company where an ex-employee posted about difficulties, which one of their previous CEOs suddenly responded to the post with private information in an attempt to embarass that ex-employee. As I said above, these types are always about the invisible hand of the free market, but have the thinnest of skin when they feel personally slighted, no matter which site they run.

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Well if that's true, I take back the last part of my post. I'm not too familiar with Reddit so I guessed posting PM's was against the TOS (which it should be IMO).

This makes me glad I don't use Reddit.