I know that Reddit is immensely popular and has some good qualities, but I’ve never been able to get into it, because it invariably happens that anything I read there will be tainted by some hideous commentary. I don’t just mean comments I disagree with; I read creationist sites for entertainment, you know. I mean comments that cause me to despair for humanity.
David Futrelle has a post up that describes a new subreddit called “PhilosophyOfRape”, which openly advocates raping women to teach them a lesson. It’s a monstrous idea, and the bits quoted from it are simply vile, dehumanizing nonsense to promote criminal behavior.
But then he has to top it all off with a list of other horrible subreddits.
And while PhilosophyOfRape has only picked up a tiny handful of subscribers in the first few days of its existence – and a small army of detractors who’ve collectively spammed the subreddit with kitten pics – other subreddits with a similar, er, appeal –from RapingWomen and BeatingWomen2 to HotRapeStories and ChokeABitch – collectively have thousands of subscribers. CuteFemaleCorpses, a subreddit devoted to sexualizing pictures of actual dead women, managed to rack up a little more than 800,000 pageviews last month. The WatchPeopleDie subreddit boasts 44,000 subscribers.
Racism also sells. The cartoonishly racist GreatApes subreddit, devoted to over the top attacks on “n*ggers” that make Stormfront seem a bastion of tolerance by comparison, generated nearly one million pageviews in September; the subreddit boasts several dozen other smaller subreddits in what it calls its “chimpire,” the overwhelming majority of which contain the word “n*gger” (without the asterisk) or references to apes in their names.
Don’t give me the “these are just a few trolls” speech. Don’t tell me that we have to stand up for Free Speech, and that means defending people’s right to say even words we find odious. Reddit is not the government; the American Constitution does not guarantee you a right to create your own subreddit. What these sites do is encourage criminal behavior against minorities. Reddit isn’t even making a stand on principle — they have shut down subreddits when the PR heat gets too high. Apparently posting prosecutable photos of naked teenagers can be silenced (but only after enough media outlets notice!), while somehow, collecting grisly crime scene and autopsy photos of dead women, and making sexualized comments about them, is a noble expression of commitment to open communication.
Fuck that noise. We need to recognize that reddit is a hate and porn site that has successfully masked its true nature with a thick layer of social chatter. I won’t be linking to it anymore, I won’t be participating on it ever, and I will be disappointed in people that henceforth use it for promotion. (And I say that knowing that some people I like very much have participated in “IAmA” sessions — but that’s all just part of the reddit whitewash.)
Seconded, PZ.
On the plus side, reddit is great for emotional calibration – if you can go an hour on reddit without being revolted or baffled by something, your mental and emotional balance is out, and you need to take yourself to the garage for a tune up.
“Fuck that noise. We need to recognize that reddit is a hate and porn site that has successfully masked its true nature with a thick layer of social chatter.”
Is America a hateful and pornographic society, masking its true nature with a thick layer of social chatter? If so, I disagree but I see you’re being consistent; if not, what’s the difference? The only subreddits I really visit are /r/feminism and /r/askscience — does that make me a frequenter a pornographic hate site?
I think overall viewing ‘reddit’ as a single site functions pretty similar to viewing everything you find on ‘google’ as a single site — Reddit is more like a search-engine / web-host that connects a bunch of functionally independent websites (subreddits) than it is a website unto itself. I suppose you could see it like the Italian city-states at the end of the Middle Ages: sure, you could argue that they’re all part of ‘Italy’, and they may even identify as ‘Italian’, but to treat the actions of one as a reflexion of another doesn’t catch any of the subtleties involved.
That said, I will add a caveat — I do think Reddit should do more to control these subreddits, especially the pornographic ones that ignore consent and the ones that encourage straight-out vilification of various groups, especially minorities.
That is nothing short of monstrously evil. It makes the blood run cold that realise there are people who openly advocate the rape and bodily violation of women to supposedly ‘correct’ their behaviour – which sounds an awful lot like a manifesto to use rape and the threat of rape to force women back into a ‘barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen’ existence. The vitrioloc hatred of women on display here would be hard for me to credit if I hadn’t already encountered variants of this attitude all too often before among MRAs.
Reddit really is a cesspool of the worst bigotry imaginable. That free speech absolutists are actually prepared to misrepresent community standards on a social media site as being equivalent to government censorship, and then try to defend the kind of misogynistic and racist poison we have seen here on that fallacious and disingenuous basis, tells me all I need to know about the true nature of their alleged ‘principles’. It is simply a bigot’s charter, dressed up as a struggle for freedom, and thereby demeans all the legitimate efforts to create a more egalitarian society by its foetid existence.
Despite being an unduely privileged bloke who has never personally encountered the consequences of our toxic rape culture, reading this still left me physically shaking with horror, revulsion and no small measure of rage. I can’t imagine how much worse it must be for rape surviviors. I hope that the authorities take steps to deal with this clearly dangerous individual, who has already publically admitted to committing multiple rapes, before he harms anyone else, though sadly I find it doubtful that any meaningful action will be taken.
I think I am going to have to go and look at cute pictures of fluffy kittehs until I feel human again.
natashatasha @ 3;
Does ‘America’ have admins with the power to simply remove and block offensively bigoted material with a few keystrokes with no particulalrly bad social, political or economic consequences from doing so? I think your analogy falls apart on this point.
The Reddit admins allows the kind of poisonous material mentioned in the OP to flourish without opposition until they themselves fear legal sanction. They could take a more proactive stance, and yet they choose not to because tolerating bigotry is profitable. Whatever other subreddits may be available, it is all part of the same network that trades on bigotry and social dynamics of oppression in order to turn a quick buck, and anyone who uses the site should make themselves aware of that fact and act accordingly once they know the truth of the situation.
If you refuses to do so, then the standard you walk past is the standard you endorse.
What standard do you endorse, natashatasha?
natashatasha @ 3
Yes. There are a million places on the internet where you can talk about feminism and science. You’re making a choice to do it at Reddit, knowing the kind of vile shit that is condoned there; knowing that those vile subreddits are using the innocent ones as cover for their vileness. It’s not rocket surgery.
Reddit and Google aren’t remotely similar. All subreddits are using Reddit’s bandwidth space and fall under the power of Reddit’s admins.
Will FTB be removing the Reddit ‘share this’ button which currently appears below posts? It’s a tacit endorsement of Reddit.
@natashatasha
As yet another example as to how poisonous reddit it, /r/feminism is run by an MRA friendly dude. There’s some long winded history here if you care.
http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/yxc2m/effortpost_the_antifeminist_history_of_rfeminism/
And a sub made to point out how feminists are regularly banned for arguing with MRAs.
http://www.reddit.com/r/wherearethefeminists
Reddit is simply shit.
@5:
I don’t think your criticism of the analogy is valid — you’re arguing that America is not hateful or pornographic because changes to it are expensive, but if it would be easy to change then it would be hateful and pornographic? If Reddit were hard to change, or had ‘particularly bad’ social consequences for changing, would it stop being ‘hateful and pornographic’? I doubt Prof. Myers would say so, and I would agree with him if he didn’t — if I saw something as hateful, it’s hateful regardless of how easy it is to change.
As it stands, I’m not comfortable with applying that to as diverse a group as Reddit — it would be like labelling Christians as ‘hateful’ because some (maybe even a large portion) are. Or atheists as ‘sexist’ despite the existence of examples to the contrary.
As for what standard I endorse, Gregory Greenwood, I should have hoped that I made that clear with the caveat to my first post — I condemn those subreddits that engage in those practices. What do you want me to say? Should I damn all the subreddits, including the ones that are charitable? Because I won’t, just as I won’t damn all Americans or all Muslims or all Semitic peoples with the same brush.
That’s a good point. I have a request in to see if there is a way to do that.
I’d like to remove it from MY site, but I can’t ask that it be eliminated from everyone else’s.
@6: Fair enough. I disagree with your opinion, of course, but it’s yours to hold.
@7: Sure, Google can’t just take sites offline, but they can refuse to link to them.
YES. YES YES YES.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I rail against American hypocrisy & stupidity all the time. I want it to change. We don’t accomplish change by pretending problems don’t exist.
Wow three post in, and the redpillers come out of the wood work. I hear if you say, “Freeze Peach” three times into a mirror, a dude will turn up to mansplain why you’re wrong.
PZ
If it’s anything like the wordpress.com dashboard, you can edit the share-buttons in the Settings/Sharing section.
@14: Oh, that’s very internally consistent of you. Well, I can’t exactly argue with you besides disagreeing with the premise that calling a diverse group by those labels is reasonable. I also disagree with your use of nouns rather than adjectives — without equivocation on my part, you must be aware that ‘Reddit’ refers to the community as well as to the network of webpages themselves.
But I don’t think we’ll see eye-to-eye on that premise (not that it’s unreasonable of you to disagree with me, I don’t mean to imply dishonesty on your part).
@15 Having fun with your ad hominem? I identify much more strongly as a ‘FTB’er than a ‘Reddit’er, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t disagree with something Prof. Myers says. God forbid that I could be intellectually honest, though — I must be making a mindless defence of Reddit, because who could possibly share a view different to you without having an ulterior motive!
It’s a community? Heavens, I thought it was “more like a search-engine / web-host that connects a bunch of functionally independent websites.”
@19: You mean like how the Italian peninsula was constructed of independent states but the people were still ‘Italian’? Or Germany? Or Greece? I can define ‘Australia’ as a community, too, but that doesn’t make the aboriginal people living in slums in the outback equivalent to those racist bigots who want to export all the ‘towel-heads’.
Reddit has a lot of potential, but right now is sort of a microcosm of the internet at large – sometimes useful, but full of assholes emboldened by the anonymity of it. For nearly 20 years now, my favorite hobby has been computer games. Unfortunately, the prime PC gaming subreddit is called “PC Master Race” which, right off the bat makes me slightly uncomfortable. Sure, the name is a joke… but on a website where racism is often upvoted, it’s more than a little concerning. While I’ve enjoyed some of the interactions with the community there, that all ended when “GamerGate” began. Trying to point out in the calmest, most polite way possible that it’s not “radical feminism” to believe women shouldn’t be bombarded with rape/death threats for saying or doing things you don’t like gets me called a white knight and downvoted into oblivion. The white knight allegations just amuse me – I have been in a monogamous relationship with the same woman for about 16 years. The idea that I am rushing to the defense of women online solely because I desire them is absurd, yet it’s thrown at me Every Single Time that I say something in support of feminism. Most reddit users have a very tribalist “us vs them” mentality that they cannot see past. Part of me likes to assure myself that this is a problem with Reddit’s age demographic – it skews very young, so I tend to console myself by quoting Robin Williams from Good Will Hunting, “You’re just a kid. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” But that consolation cuts both ways – if these are the kids of today, how rampant is this unbridled misogyny going to be when they grow up? I would love to assume they will all grow out of it, but it seems unlikely. Reddit should certainly ban all the horrible subreddits – they banned the ones dedicated to the celebrity photo leaks, but that’s likely only due to the threats of legal action from said celebrities. Women without legal teams are out of luck, I guess. But even if they did ban the offending subreddits – which would certainly be an improvement – the same users would still be there upvoting terrible comments and downvoting anyone calling them out on it. Reddit needs its culture changed, I don’t know how that’s going to happen. More women users might help a little – but clearly with such a hostile environment, lots of women are not going to feel like participating. I’ve known a couple women on Reddit that simply keep gender a secret, because as soon as they reveal it they’ve gotten dick pics in their inbox or otherwise harassed. It’s the same sort of treatment women receive from other places online, like Twitter, so this is an internet-wide (and culture-wide) problem. The horrible side of Reddit is a symptom of that larger problem, and I wish I knew of a solution.
#16: That helped me bury it a little bit, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to completely delete an existing service.
natashatasha @ 3:
I bolded the pertinent bit for you.
There’s a difference between owning a phone book containing the number for the local Klan office and having them over for a lawn party.
@23 Okay, what about one of those organisations that assign domain names in the place of ‘web-host’? They literally have the power to wipe those sites off the world wide web.
Please note what I am proposing: it is not to wipe reddit off the world wide web. It is to personally refuse to use it, and to make posts like this to raise awareness of the wretched management of Reddit that enables such scumbaggery as “PhilosophyOfRape” and “CuteFemaleCorpses”. If even that makes someone unhappy (and irate reddit apologists are already descending on me, as expected), then they don’t really know what free speech means.
natashatasha @ 10;
natashatasha #20
Oddly enough, no one tries to portray those Italian city-states as “a” community. You’re trying to have your cake and it it. All of which misses the point anyway. By supporting and defending Reddit as not-all-that-bad-really-honest-it-ain’t, you’re giving tacit approval to Reddit’s lack of sensible moderation. As I said in a virtually identical comment regarding 4chan the other week, if Reddit wont change, then vote with your feet. There are other social media sites available which do manage to moderate at least the most hateful content.
@25 I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I thought that’s what you meant; I do realise that you intend to boycott the site, which is your prerogative (I boycott a lot of things, too).
I am curious, though — did you boycott Facebook when they were doing some of the shitty things I recall you posting them doing? If not, would you mind elaborating here why you think a boycott is appropriate against Reddit and not against Facebook (that is, ‘appropriate’ for yourself, not as a general tool to catalyse change)? Obviously that has no connection to any ‘legitimacy’ in this boycott (not that the concept of an ‘illegiitmate’ boycott makes sense), I am just curious.
@27: “There are other social media sites available which do manage to moderate at least the most hateful content.”
I know, which is why I spend so much time here; I don’t use Reddit as a social media site, though, I use it as a search engine for ‘the things people have found most interesting today in these specific categories’. As for being moderated … sections of Reddit are incredibly well moderated, although I am open to suggestions for websites that do what Reddit does without the undercurrents of bile.
@26 Sorry for responding out of order, I didn’t initially recognise your response because it was in a quote (the lack of an edit button has its upsides and its downsides).
I don’t think that I’m drawing a false equivalence at all, since my main point is that I disagree with the way the description is made, and was illustrating it with a diverse group of people — of course, Prof. Myers was consistent in his argument and also applies those descriptions the exact same way,a s he stated above in #14, so whether it was falsely equivalent or not we disagree on the level of our premises.
I understand, and share a little bit of, natashatasha’s opinions. Saying all of Reddit* is bad because its management team are assholes dismisses the sub-Reddit moderators who ensure their sites remain free of hate. It’s like YouTube or Twitch or other similar sites. The management team in charge of everything does little to help with the hate and vileness within the site as a whole. I’ve seen scores of Twitch users being complete assholes; sexists, racists, homophobes, transphobes. Some Twitch broadcasters share these attitudes and spout hateful or sexist language. Then there are those others who shut that language down immediately, with moderation teams silencing and banning hateful people the second they rear their ugly heads into the chat. YouTube is very similar, some channels are full of hateful tripe, others are completely free of it because either they completely shut down commentary, or the community self-polices.
*(I frequent one sub-Reddit – /r/Yogscast – specifically because it’s the best place to get information on the Yogs and the easiest way to interact with some of the members (I’ve personally been able to communicate with Bebopvox and Will Strife, and have seen Hannah, Kim, Turps, and Ridgedog communicating with other members of that sub-Reddit.) Their main website and forums are inundated by people, and I can’t even access them on my computer sometimes.)
digg and stumbleupon spring to mind. I’ve always tended to the more direct method of subscribing to the RSS of people who say interesting stuff though, so my experience of user-suggestion based aggregators is somewhat limited.
I don’t even…
Here, we see an endless wave of apologists, excusing sexism, excusing misogyny, excusing rape, but there’s no rape culture, nope, nosir. “Oh, you all want to play victim!” “Not all men!” “Rape jokes don’t enable or encourage anyone!”
@32: “digg and stumbleupon spring to mind. I’ve always tended to the more direct method of subscribing to the RSS of people who say interesting stuff though, so my experience of user-suggestion based aggregators is somewhat limited.”
I dislike stumbleupon, but I will give digg a shot. I RSS those that I find most interesting, too (which is why I saw this post), although my RSS feed has dwindled now that I’m not just a lazy undergrad (now I’m a lazy postgrad!), and so don’t have as much time as I used to. Which was one of the advantages of Reddit; it’s so much faster to scroll through the front page of a hundred potential links that have been pre-vetted, without having to sort through a tonne of RSS feeds.
See title of post.
I can tell I’m going to be getting this all day long: “PZ Myers says my favorite subreddit is evil!”, because I’m already seeing a lot of it from apologists.
Good thing I’ll be tied up in lab most of today.
natashatasha:
There wasn’t an argumentum ad hominem. Do not use ad hominem as a synonym for insult. It will weaken any argument you put forth, and it won’t help you look like you’re arguing in good faith.
Kevin, Youhao Huo Mao @ 31
Except for the part where neither Twitch nor Youtube would turn a blind eye to something like PhilosophyOfRape or GreatApes.
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube comments are also bastions of vile filth. I avoid them all.
Another alternative. Bookmark tags on wordpress such as:
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/feminism
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/atheism
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/climate-change
Kevin @ 31:
How is this helping? Indulgence in Reddit apologetics will no doubt fill this thread with people willfully missing the point. “Some sub-Reddits are good!” is fucking meaningless. It’s up to users to stop using such reasoning, because it’s that reasoning that allows PhilosophyOfRape / RapingWomen / BeatingWomen2 / HotRapeStories / ChokeABitch / CuteFemaleCorpses / WatchPeopleDie / GreatApes and more.
Defending Reddit on the basis that some sub-Reddits are good simply makes you one of the people who enable all the evil shit.
@36: “There wasn’t an argumentum ad hominem. Do not use ad hominem as a synonym for insult. It will weaken any argument you put forth, and it won’t help you look like you’re arguing in good faith.”
Oh, I thought you were just trying to discredit my point, rather than needlessly insult me. How very constructive of you.
Kevin @ 31:
How is this helping? Indulgence in Reddit apologetics will no doubt fill this thread with people willfully missing the point. “Some sub-Reddits are good!” is fucking meaningless. It’s up to users to stop using such reasoning, because it’s that reasoning that allows PhilosophyOfRape / RapingWomen / BeatingWomen2 / HotRapeStories / ChokeABitch/ CuteFemaleCorpses / WatchPeopleDie / GreatApes and more.
Defending Reddit on the basis that some sub-Reddits are good simply makes you one of the people who enable all the evil shit.
Gregory Greenwood @5,
This leads me to ask how Reddit pays for itself. More to the point, does visiting the “good” subreddits subsidize the evil subreddits?
It seems that Erik Martin and Yishan Wong hide behind frozen peaches, despite allowing subredditors to censor posts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Free_speech_rationale
Meanwhile, how might someone go about finding the identity of the user “PhilosophyofRape”? That sort of thing has been done before, when Adrien Chen found out Michael Brutsch.
@Seven of Mine:
Probably not, but YouTube has thunderf00t and The Amazing Atheist. YouTube has some horrific videos showing violence, pornography, and even murder. The management team of YouTube cannot moderate the entirety of the site, and they must rely on the self-policing of the community to handle the hate and vileness. (Last estimate I saw – 100 hours uploaded every minute.) They’re better than Reddit in they’ll take action against flagged channels, users, and videos while Reddit doesn’t seem to do so much of that, so I agree there. But within those specific “communities” that don’t self-police, you can be sure people are perfectly free to spout all kinds of vileness and hatred.
natashatasha:
Perhaps you could pay attention – I did not make the comment @15 which you complained about, I was trying to help you by pointing out that using ad hominem incorrectly will weaken your arguments.
Also, in aid of clear communication, please quote people. To quote, use <blockquote>Paste Text Here</blockquote>
Kevin @ 43:
That does not make your Reddit apologia okay.
Considering your point is WAAHHHHH, MEEENNNIIIIEEE, why not insults?
@44
I offer you my unreserved apologies. It is rather late, and I should retire (to explain my mistake, not excuse it).
@46 What a pathetic caricature. Why don’t you just call me a ‘dumb bitch’ while you’re at it?
I used to have a Reddit account but now I deleted it. I deleted my Reddit account especially after reading this post, skipping over the most abhorrent posts ever read about women that completely hard to read. I never used Reddit anyway so there’s no point in using it again let alone looking at it to find deep garbage like this.
It’s kind of funny because I’m pretty sure the MRAs say the same thing about the Reddit admins, that they’re all feminist SJWs or something.
I could never get into Reddit because of the lack of moderation. It’s often just an unpleasant place, even ignoring the places of absolute horror. And you have to be in the right mood for ShitRedditSays. It can be a good resource for some things, though.
Who are the Reddit admins? Have they given such responses or anything? Are all of them anonymous?
Kevin, Youhao Huo Mao
Then you agree with the whole point because that is the whole point: that it practically takes an act of congress to get Reddit to lift a finger.
natashatasha @ 47:
No worries. I hope you have a good rest.
Nerd:
That was not natashatasha’s point. There was a misunderstanding, that’s all.
@Crazyharp81602
I just did the same. I haven’t used it for a year or something.
Guess what was in my inbox/notification thingy when I went there? One response to me on a post. I had pointed out that (in gaming I think) it’s a hassle to have to discover first hand who is alwful and take the time to block them. In other words, I was advocating for a more centralized efficient system that decreased harrasment.
The response I received was not infavor of this, and glibly said “welcome to the internet”.
doublereed @ 49
Google “reddit bans child porn” You’ll find a bunch of articles from 2 1/2 years ago when Reddit extremely begrudgingly added a rule against child porn in response to a lot of bad press. Lots of quotes from admins bleating the expected freeze peach type shit.
And I linked to PZ post here in the section that asked why I was leaving reddit.
natashatasha
Did you really pay attention to what this Philosophyof Rape person is doing? Admitting to, or at least claiming to, be a serial rapist, and encouraging and showing other men how to get away with rape – and the reddit admins are allowing him to do it.
What the hell are you thinking, leaping in to defend such a site?
@PZ – one way to hide the button for any FTB site (individually, assuming each blogger has control of their CSS) is to just hide the container it is in:
li.share-reddit { display: none!important; }From early in the Mammoth comments:
Also mentioned here at Pharyngula last month: Link to comment (bolds mine)
Sure, there are subreddits with good mod crews and good material, but that’s in spite of the Reddit admins. The subreddit admins keeping bigots out of inclusive spaces are doing the real work and taking the brunt of the toxicity.
I’ve frankly never understood Reddit at all. I’ve tried it, but it’s just an awful way to find links to anything of interest and the comments – well, some people think Reddit’s commenting system is really good and like the way it works on their subreddits, even decent and good people, but as far as I can tell, in full awareness of the irony here, it’s just internet comments. Which means it’s awful by definition. And basically, it’s a site dedicated to elevating the awful comments above the source material. It’s also a place where ridiculous amounts of utterly false information thrive and spread like nowhere else I’ve seen.
But more to the point: The awful subreddits are not hard to find. They’re not hard to define. They’re not subtle, they’re not questionable in content. Have you seen some of the titles of these things? It would take very little effort on Reddit’s part to say, “We’re not going to host hate content. We may not always catch every comment or post, but we’re not going to tolerate whole subreddits that espouse hate and violence as their entire purpose”, and then go in and clean them out. Delete them all. Done. When people cry freeze pceach, quote the above: “‘we are not the goverment.’ Your right to free speech does not imply that we as a company must be forced to give you a platform for it. We are not interested in being censors, but we will take action against obvious hate content every time in order to give a better experience to our users, to avoid legal liability, and frankly, to be able to live with ourselves and sleep at night knowing we’re not making money by hosting white supremacist and rapist forums.”
From the mouth of a reddit admin.
“Sorry, but we don’t really ban for rape threats”
There’s an image in this post for the above quote.
This is reddit.
http://www.reddit.com/r/TheBluePill/comments/25vawg/the_last_delete_and_a_few_thoughts_about_trps/
Here’s the statement of the mods of r/blackladies themselves, 18 days ago. (Yep, I went to reddit and looked. reddit link)
Free speech doesn’t even apply here. This guy is claiming to have committed crimes, is encouraging other people to commit crimes, and giving them detailed information on how to do so and how to get away with it.
This is, by definition, NOT protected speech under the 1st Amendment.
Just want to QFT a comment on the thread linked by psycholist:
This is it. Reddit’s admins are, as Pteryxx has shown, sympathetic to bigots. When they have to be forced to take down child porn sections, when they allow rapists to put how-to pieces up, I go further in wondering if they are only sympathetic, or have skeletons in their closets. Because this PoR is inciting rape and admitting to it. Why the fuck didn’t the admins shut this guy down and pass the information to the FBI?
and from ShitRedditSays, detail of the incident with references and screenshots: (another reddit link)
For context, they’re talking about the petition I just quoted above.
I’m just wondering if the well-moderated subreddits could move to a different server or come up with a new server separate from reddit. That might be a good solution for those who like certain parts of reddit but don’t want to support the hateful, dangerous parts. Because if you are leading a well-moderated subreddit site, I would imagine that you wouldn’t wanted to be associated with thathateful crap that goes on other reddit sites. The main issue is that we, as a society, need to challenge these sociopathic comments and sites. To get people to listen, you sometimes have to say “either you change or I am leaving.” Because the way to combat the KKK and other hate groups is to make them social outcasts as much as possible
@natashatasha Actually I was insulting you for your bad logic. If I was making an ad hominen attack I would say that your logic was bad, because you are bad. And yes, I find your tortuous logic hilarious.
I imagine the funny little face you must be making amusing, as you bravely race into the lions den armed only with the intellectual equivalent of a rubber chicken. I find it really amusing because there’s always a guy like you.
You strike me as the kind of guy that will readily jump to the defense of a tyrant, because the trains run on time. Never mind the disappearances, and the mass graves over there. I’d go into why I think you’re logic is flawed, but others here have done it so much better than I ever have.
Besides which, my take on it isn’t that everyone here hates reddit per se. It’s the horrible management culture it has. It the disgusting habit of quietly encouraging hate groups to fester on their site. It the deliberate dragging of there feet when these issues are brought to light, that’s only dealt with when it starts costing them money.
Resolve those issues, and there wouldn’t be a problem.
Reddit: it’s like a shit sandwich, but we’re supposed to like it because someone added sauce to it.
gijoel @67:
It’s not funny at all, and if you can’t manage to make an actual argument, I suggest you avoid your keyboard. There are serious issues at stake here, and basically substance free comments aren’t going to help.
This is pure stupid shit, which contains the assumption of natashatasha’s gender. Don’t do that.
natashatasha
This does not make any sense at all and will probably win an award for worst comparison this week.
People are born into a certain country, there’s not much choice in leaving, since that comes at a high cost and is quite useless in these cases since there are bigots everywhere on the planet. But Reddit isn’t your country of birth. You need to actively go there and join up. If you do so you’re willing to be in company of horrible racists and misogynists and you support a site that gives those people ample space.
@karmacat:
If /r/Yogscast left Reddit, I would follow along and leave that site for good.
Kevin #71
If you’re not willing to follow your principles when they inconvenience you, you don’t have principles.
@Daz:
Did you mean for your statement to sound incredibly assholish?
I saw a bunch of people bringing up Facebook’s spotty record as if there’s an equivalence between Reddit and 4Chan and FB last time this topic came up too, and I remain just as baffled. Facebook will act to take down pages. Their rules are a mess and unevenly applied and there is content they allow that IMHO they should not because it qualifies as hate speech, but they will act to remove offensive material at least some of the time.
In other words, they’ve shown that they will respond to complaints, so continuing to use the site while advocating for the removal of objectionable content is a reasonable course of action. YouTube will also pull things down when they get notified – there was just a case in the last week or so of some guy posting “prank” videos of himself assaulting women and people started sharing it and flagging it and it got taken down.
Reddit never takes action until there’s an imminent threat of a lawsuit or legal action against the owners. As other people have observed, they are not responsive at all to complaints. If people are trying to take a stance against this kind of content, there is no reason to continue to use Reddit because remaining and working for change from within has been demonstrated to do absolutely no good.
Here is something that I need the people complaining about PZ’s post to explain to me. If group shaming is not appropriate I need:
*To know why it is not appropriate, AND
*To have a realistic and functional alternative to group shaming in combating shitty behavior.
My general take on human emotions and their mutual manipulation is that they are there for a reason and using them appropriately and with some ethics and morals is just fine. I am frankly going to think that anyone using sites like Reddit and 4chan is a worse person if they let racist, sexist, and misogynistic behavior stand unopposed. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
If you see and are not actively criticizing things like what PZ posted in the OP, or psycholist posted in #9, or Pteryxx posted 58, 61, and 65 then I will continue to think you are a crappy human being on this issue. You should be sending the admins complaints at the minimum.
I have little time for bruised feelings over the connection to groups that you chose. Especially when you offer no reasonable alternatives, and your actions put all the pressure on people suffering from shitty behavior or reasonable outrage over it.
Kevin @ 73:
It may sound assholish, but it’s true, Kevin. There comes a time when we all have to face things that we are doing enable and encourage others in doing seriously bad shit. It’s like when people explain that moderate, liberal theists, while not bad people themselves, give cover to those who are bad people.
Remember The standard you walk past is the standard you accept? That’s where a line should be boldly and noisily drawn.
Kevin #73
I’ll expand:
You’re against reddit allowing shit stuff I assume. That’s your principle and good on you. But if you say “I’m gonna ignore that shit stuff ’cause I’d lose this one bit I happen to like,” then you’re ignoring your own stated principle as a matter of personal convenience.
What part of that statement is arseholish?
So um wow:
Kevin, Youhao Huo Mao @ 71
Yogscast > not supporting a site that harbors incredibly vile bigots, rapists and assorted other criminals.
Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism @ 72
It’s kind of shitty of you to only follow your principles when it’s convenient for you.
Kevin, Youhao Huo Mao @ 73
Kevin, I’d like to introduce you to my friend Mirror. Kevin, Mirror. Mirror, Kevin. I’ll just let the two of you get acquainted, shall I?
Kevin starting at #71… a question. I hesitate to say outright that you *should* bail on reddit immediately, because maybe your community there could do something useful; I wouldn’t know. However, my question is: if your own subreddit that you value, r/Yogscast, were to try to support r/blackladies’ petition or to organize to ask that the rape-promoting subreddit in the OP be removed, what do you expect would happen?
Would your own folks get banned for that? Would your subreddit get raided or shut down? Do you think the reddit mods would have your community’s back in that situation? Would you, yourself, get banned for trying to mention these problems?
Because if your corner of good people *would*, but y’all don’t speak up because of what might happen to your own, well… maybe that should inform the decision you make.
@Daz:
It sounded like you were telling me I have no principles, which is incredibly offensive to suggest.
Kevin #80
I’m pointing out that principles not acted upon are effectively not principles.
PZ Myers
The hiding it through CSS tip given up thread should work, but fyi, it looks like your share buttons are from Shareholic given the symbol on the more button. I’m not sure how it works for blog networks like FTB, but I know for individuals you can just go into your account and change your buttons there. Perhaps something to ask the FTB people in charge of this stuff about to get more control over your buttons.
@Pteryxx:
Hard to say. The Yogscast sub-Reddit doesn’t really touch social justice issues* since they’re a video game channel, most of the sub-Reddit is people commenting on videos and communicating with the Yogscast members. I don’t think they’d support the petition because that’s not what they do.
I was waiting until my lunch break to start drafting an “I’m concerned” type post on the sub-Reddit, mentioning the whole of the Reddit’s moderators are complete asshats stuff. Perhaps suggesting what Karmacat said, that they shift off of the Reddit architecture to somewhere not run by people enabling hateful sub-Reddits. To that end, if they respond with a “meh, we’re staying” or anything other than “we’ll start looking.” Well then that community can fuck itself.
*One of the Yogscast members – Zoey – is a lesbian, and she frequently has her girlfriend in her videos. The moderators hard ban people using anti-LGBT language. They also hard ban anyone who says sexist stuff about the female members of the Yogscast. Those actions aren’t really necessary cause those comments get downvoted into oblivion.
*tries to imagine r/yogscast doing something feminist*
*has easier time imagining kitty astronauts *
Part of Freedom of Speech means the freedom not to have to pay attention to someone screaming at you.
Kevin, that is a pretty bad example in my opinion being that Zoey is one of the smaller/best fish in that big ole dude bro pond.
Smaller/est* , sorry I have a hard time typing on my tablet.
@speed0spank:
Don’t forget Hannah and Kim.
Aww… Zoey’s only got 445k subs.
Of course, Will only has 192k…
(warning because the OP *was* about rape and not just Reddit)
Kevin… a reminder, “corrective rape” as being advocated in the new subreddit has been used to supposedly “fix” lesbians’ orientation.
There are commenters speaking in the Mammoth thread who *have been* “correctively” raped.
Kevin:
Y’know, Kevin, you could pay attention to the actual issue here, instead of acting like Reddit is the only possible place on the ‘net for you to get info on games and such. People extended you a lot of courtesy because you’re a regular here – anyone else would have been utterly shredded by now, had they been posting what you have, and ignoring the whole herd of elephants in the room.
Kevin, just because Hannah and Kim are women doesn’t mean anything. I would like to know what you were trying to imply by bringing them up. Is every women an ardent feminist or something? Bitch is one of the most used words on Hannah’s videos just in case you’re not familiar.
Also are you really trying to do some subscriber competition bullshit? Really? Simon , Sips, and Hat Films seem to be the favorites with way way way more subs than Zoey, as if that means anything. ( The reddit guy in the OP admitting to rape has a very small following so he must not even matter, eh?) Perhaps if I didn’t have to work so much over the next few days I cold pull up a million and one pretty horrible things said by those popular guys to discredit your silly Zoey argument.
My comment has perhaps been eaten by sharks, and it took so log on the damn tablet!
Kevin, Hannah and Kim are women. What the hell does that have to o with literally anything?
I realize this is a major derail and you nice people don’t know me at all, so I am happy to let it go. The OP is why more important than bickering about a group of gamers. I apologize.
speed0spank:
No worries. This side discussion can always carry on in Teadome, if you wish. It’s nice to see you posting again.
Well, I’m being courteous because that’s how I want to make my point, for what it’s worth. I think, if someone’s part of a Reddit community that’s good enough and strong enough to be better than this, it makes sense to at least attempt to get that community as a whole to speak up and/or leave. More communities pressuring Reddit should be more effective than individual users pressuring Reddit.
Besides, Reddit basically banks on the threat of having to leave one’s established social community as the price of criticizing it. That’s why the r/blackladies petition says:
Yet Reddit mods have banning and behavior policies but quietly selectively enforce them, so users can make their own communities but *cannot* protect them from outside attack. They want users to connect up and make friends *before* finding out what Reddit covers up, so that the price of objecting becomes risking one’s very reason for being there. (We ought to be plenty familiar with THAT tactic by now. It’s basically the same dynamic as rape culture, writ small.)
However, if people are more committed to their communities themselves than the platforms they run on, then it becomes a Facebook/Ello situation. Leave, and take as much of your social network as possible with you.
I love reddit. But I stay away from from all those subreddits that PZ complains about. I frequent /r/askscience, /r/android, /r/askreddit, /r/hypotheticalsituation, /r/neuroscience, /r/science, /r/technology, etc.
Reddit’s great if you know where to go. It’s like saying you hate New York City because every time you visit, you go to slums of the worst part of the city and get mugged.
I love X because the bad stuff X promotes doesn’t affect me. People shouldn’t look at the bad stuff X promotes and then complain that X is bad, merely because it promotes bad stuff that affects people who aren’t me.
Fucksake.
Marshall says:
…And after you complain about getting mugged in your own house, and identify the muggers to police, they ignore the muggers and turf you out of the city for complaining.
Yeah, nice try there bud.
I suppose that analogy would work if the City of New York supplied both the muggers and honest businesspeople with knives and then did nothing to curb mugging. It would also work if you were simply stupid.
A more accurate analogy would be that you’re skipping past the homophobic Christian dominionist policies at Chik-Fil-A to enjoy their great chicken sandwiches.
@98 That would be true if when you pointed out the issue to New York City and they claimed that those muggers had a right to mug you because of, I don’t know, possession is 9/10 of the law.
Spoken like a true white guy. Gold star!
PS: Reddit user for 7 years (I’m ashamed to say), I deleted my account today. Enough is enough.
Pre-emptive:
THAT’S RACISTE ITS JUST AS RACIST TO SAY THAT JUST BECAUES IM WHITE DOESN’ TMEAN I CAN’T GET RACISTED AGAINST YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM THIS IS WHY I HATE SJWS WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAE
Good for you, Marc.
That’s an example of ethical behavior. Nota bene whiney dudes.
Marshall, #98,
No. It’s like saying you’ll continue to support a racist asshole politician because he builds parks in your town.
No, this analogy only works if you got mugged, went to the police to report it, and were told that mugging people was completely legal and the cops make lots of money from the muggers so shut-up and go away or we will put you in jail. The rules of behavior don’t disappear on the internet. It is illegal to use the airwaves to broadcast hate speech and advocate for crimes and it is time that rule be extended to the internet. Lawsuits and federal fines are pretty effective means of making hate less profitable.
I think the point is that Reddit is more responsible for its contents than America is about its own. See also comments 43, 50 and 54.
And that’s before I got to comment 58. And 60. And 61. And 65 and 74. Gah. Pour chlorine trifluoride over the whole domain.
QFT!
Thank you for bringing this to the top of my mind.
I find that I can enjoy Reddit if I ignore the more hateful aspects of it, and I’ve even given them money (bought Reddit Gold) in the past. Today I canceled my subscription because I finally saw that I can’t allow my money to support the service that spreads this kind of disgusting hatred. It’s quite simply making the word a worse place to live in. No thanks. Just wish I’d seen it sooner.
Thank you, metaladder. That’s all any of us can do.
Marc and metaladder,
Thank you. Your actions means so, so much to me right now.
This is why I only subscribe to just a few subreddits: r/atheismplus, r/genderqueer, and r/bisexual. (Although sometimes r/bisexual can be problematic.)
Thanks for the quote, Pteryxx.
Since that last thread about Reddit, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with my account. I had found Reddit useful as a news aggregator for a while, but in recent weeks it’s become very noticeable to me how much the two main news subreddits (r/news and r/worldnews) are skewed toward the interests of their main demographic. As a result, I tend to miss news that doesn’t interest young white guys, so I miss a lot of what I actually find to be interesting and important (unless it’s so big—like Ferguson—that it overrides that filtering).
I’ve unsubscribed from most of the default subreddits due to insufferable bigotry. In looking at my comment history, most of my comments have been arguments with other commenters about bigotry. I go back and forth about whether this is (1) a useful expenditure (2) of my time and energy. I’ve considered quarantining those comments by creating a troll account—maybe “downvotesyourhate” or “pointsoutyourbigotry”—just to keep an emotional punching bag handy.
I also like jumping on Reddit and Twitter to discuss a current event that’s unfolding in real time. But this can go badly, as with the witch hunt* after the Boston bombing.
I like that I see internet fluff—cat vids, memes—several days before it hits Facebook. An amazing number of news articles are based on Reddit discussions, so I see those first, too. But I see the good stuff eventually, anyhow, so just wanting to see it first is a petty excuse.
The atheist subreddits are all shite. The slymepit has a lot of sympathizers among young white guys who are new to examining assumptions, so the atheist subreddits are dominated or brigaded by a bunch of jerks to the point of being useless.
And I’m part of a few small subreddits that monitor shit on Reddit or pertain to niche interests, but any niche subs that attract the attention of haters quickly become unpleasant or useless.
So I’m finally ready to make the break and delete my account. The ship is sinking into an ocean of shit. Best to deploy life rafts now. Also interested in alternatives. Has digg recovered from the right-wing brigades of yore?
In bad news, this announcement today from Reddit will distract Redditors from ethics discussions because money.
*Using “witch hunt” carefully but think it’s appropriate here, as they were actually harming people based on far-fetched “evidence” of guilt, and the mob energy there was scary.
FWIW, the reason I gave when I deleted:
Also, this article about why Reddit sucks explains quite a lot. It’s worth a full read, but here’s the meat:
Whoops, my delete-account comment exceeded their 500-character max, so I pared it down a bit. Here goes:
Apologies for the thread-bomb; I’ll be quiet now. Thanks for the kick in the pants, PZ.
– Reddit is not the government; the American Constitution does not guarantee you a right to create your own subreddit.
Neither does the American constitution guards your right to visit reddit in the first place. If you don’t like it then just don’t go there.
Marion Pierce:
Done.
Now also supporting advocacy aimed toward encouraging others to do the same. Got a problem with that?
Fuck no. I’m all for private organizations and communities having speech codes, but leave the government out of it. Outlawing advocating for crimes would make calling for civil disobedience illegal. Those laws against broadcasting hate speech have sure made talk radio a nice, friendly, non-threatening environment. And how long will it take before heinous cracker abuse is considered a hate crime?
@ Marion Pierce
Why the government reference? Because the main thrust of the conversation here is about non-governmental means of influencing culture. Criticizing a group for allowing shitty behavior, and encouraging enough other people to do the same so that it becomes effective is mostly non-governmental, at least with respect to the US.
But there is a collection of behaviors here that do violate laws. Passing around stolen images for example should include government involvement. And there is room for discussion of things to be added to what the government should be interested in. Organized harassment should be a government interest in my opinion. I also think that advocating rape should be a government interest.
@Pseudonym
I can somewhat agree with your example, I want to see society take a primary role in condemning hate-speech. However I think that the government should take an interest in investigating some kinds of hateful speech that borders on incitement. But what would you say about the example in PZ’s OP? That seems like incitement with respect to rape to me.
For what it’s worth, Reddit’s position seems to be that it is the government: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-for-his-own.html
I also deleted my rarely used Reddit account. Like #117 my response was too long, so this was what I ended up with. Should have edited outside of that tiny submission field instead of chopping out bits right on the site.
Pseudonym
Hate crimes can only be committed against living beings by definition, and are already illegal under federal law. Inciting others to hurt/rape/kill/lynch is a hate crime. The federal constitution is also very clear that civil disobedience is a right that shall not be infringed, so your fears of evil government are entirely unfounded.
Those laws have been circumvented by a supreme court decision authored sometime in the last 20 to 30 (?) years by the excreable Scalia. IANAL and I am not able to recall the exact details so as to find a reference, but there was a time that Rush Limbaugh would have found himself banned from radio for the hatred he spews. As for the cracker, it is an inanimate object, not a living being. so again your fears are baseless.
Marion Pierce
“If you don’t like it then just don’t go there”. It sounds like you are very invested in not solving the problem. Why is that, I wonder?
Pseudonym
Oh for fuck’s sake. The crimes in question are rape and murder. Murder threats. Rape threats. Are you really gonna say that shit should be legal? Because you are also seem to be implying that it already is legal, and it ain’t (well, death threats are illegal at least. Rape threats I know are at least legally actionable in the UK but can’t vouch for elsewhere).
You also seem to be wedded some sort of slippery slope fallacy defense of Free Speech Absolutism. Why? It isn’t logical. Practical limits are necessary. Just because limits are in place does not mean that suddenly that free speech is abandoned and we are living under Big Brother.
Oh god, from the redditblog:
Anyone else smell glibbertarian?
Or morally bankrupt liberturdian? Their shit smells the same from a mile way….
#126: I think I’ve heard that before…from Christians, to escape the problem of evil.
This is beyond revolting. PZ, I’m re-blogging this to my personal blog to help get the word out.
Iyeska, flos mali
Consider me honored that you recognize me at all!
(Taking things to the Thunderdome always conjures up images of people in black leather jackets, slinking down dark alleys, and snapping in unison. Takin’ it to the T-dome to have a dance battle or some such.)
Iyeska, I feel your comments are patronizing and insulting, because I grew up in an abusive household where a difference of opinion was met with physical and verbal abuse. I appreciate you not caring for my point, but telling me to shut because I don’t agree with you is playing from these troglodytes play book.
I don’t want to derail the comment thread by an argument over this, but I would like to point out that it took three comments before someone leapt in to justify the unjustifiable. Hell, PZ’s following post was about emails from these idiots trying to make out that Reddit isn’t bad, and that he should just shut up.
I do find it amusing that they would do that. Maybe that a defense mechanism, because the alternative is crying my heart out.
Marion Pierce @118:
Don’t like bad things? Don’t look at/visit sites that promote them. That’s a great philosophy for trying to improve the world. Not.
Do you not realize that the problem is that such hateful subreddits exist in the first place? Yes, people have the right to create them. Others have the right to criticize and condemn them, as well as attempt to persuade others to stop visiting forums that promote such hate and bigotry.
Your “advice” does nothing to address the problem. It succeeds in ignoring the problem and allowing it to continue to thrive and potentially grow.
I never said anything about hate crimes. I’m fine with outlawing incitements to violence. The question was about hate speech, and outlawing that on the internet, aside from constitutional issues with the First Amendment, would I think be problematic in practice. I have no clue what you’re talking about when you mention civil disobedience; by definition that is illegal, so of course it can’t be constitutionally protected, unlike encouraging people to commit it.
I don’t know what you’re referring to so it’s impossible to refute it, but as far as I know conservative talk radio took off after the Reagan Administration let the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine lapse. The U.S. government has much broader powers when it comes to regulating the public airwaves than it does when it comes to private communications. Regardless, I think that my fears are hardly baseless when there are already laws in place in other countries that outlaw “blasphemy” as effectively a form of hate speech.
anteprepro@126:
I’m fine with outlawing incitements to violence. The original proposition was to outlaw advocating crime in general, however.
I think there is something of a slippery slope when it comes to giving the government control over speech. Mocking or criticizing people based on their race or sex is usually considered hate speech, and race and sex are usually considered protected categories when it comes to discrimination. Religion is protected too, when it comes to the latter, and I think that it’s easy for those protections against discrimination to bleed into protections against criticism and mockery when it comes to speech. Look at all the Christianists in the U.S. who are convinced that they are being oppressed because they’re being criticized. Do you want a government that puts them in power half the time to be able to ban what they consider hate speech?
Marion Pierce@118:
I am not a constitutional lawyer, but I’d argue that the Constitution does guard your right to visit Reddit. It just doesn’t guard the idea that visiting Reddit is morally defensible.
@Pseudonym
The distinguishing feature you’re looking for is harm.
vaiyt@136:
Harm? Boycotts cause harm. Sit-ins cause harm. Harsh criticism can cause harm. I think the distinguishing feature should be violence, but I’m open to suggestions.
PZ, in the aftermath of “Elevatorgate”, you were among the voices clamoring for change, and would not stop until TAM (and other conferences) adopted a stronger harassment policy.
Your regularly post discussions, such as Emma Watson’s recent HeForShe talk, clearly working toward ending the culture of gender discrimination in the US (and beyond).
What is it about the nature of Reddit that makes it better to abandon the fight, ceding a shared space to hateful voices, instead of agitating until change occurs? I don’t understand what makes this any less important a battle; please enlighten me.
anteprepro@126:
They just announced a new round of funding featuring Peter Thiel. I think they’re trying to paint themselves as a medium or a network rather than a company or group of people. They’re trying to stay above it all and just build mechanisms to let the peons sort things out for themselves. It’s kind of an interesting experiment, in my opinion. I think it would be useful to have some sort of working governance that doesn’t rely on the “deus ex machina” of company-sponsored admins to maintain order and prevent needless suffering. That said, investors making a profit off of rape apologias is not my idea of progress. I also find the defense of lauding “virtue without compulsion” rather pathetic. Like many Christianist conceptions of private charity versus government largesse, it gets things totally backwards. The benefit of virtuous behavior is not in the way it ennobles the giver but in the way it benefits the recipient. Preventing rape threats isn’t a good thing because it makes men choose not to threaten rape, it’s a good thing because women aren’t threatened with rape.
Alexander @138
It has been linked above, a statement from the CEO
http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-for-his-own.html
This stance, creating a safe-haven for rape advice, vile misogyny, racism, and any sociopathic behavior is official company policy. You can campaign for conferences to create and state clear sexual harassment policies to because none existed or were insufficient. You support a movement like HeForShe trying to improve human society because you are part of it by the fact that you exist.
Reddit is a company. Reddit has a CEO who says
If you are a shareholder you can divest yourself. If you are a customer you are free to take your business (presumably all these myriad good things the apologists keep repeating) to another company.
The nature of Reddit that makes it dispensable and probably not salvageable is that the core problem of Reddit is the core philosophy of Reddit.
There is not problem with a internet provider banning hate speech on their site. It is the equivalent of a public bar, where you can go and sip your beverage of choice if you don’t create problems, then you can be banned.
Too many folks think a web site is the equivalent of a public park with a soap box. It isn’t, and never will be.
Those who pretend it is the equivalent of a public park need a lesson in geography and logic.
Alexander
WTF? I don’t understand where this “abandoning the fight” and “less important battle” bullshit is coming from. Why would he being highlighting the issues and calling people to action if he thought so? How is that “abandoning the fight”?
Boycotting those conferences that don’t have sexual harassment policies or enforce them is fighting for change just like boycotting Reddit is. Staying there merely fuels their pocketbooks and gives them no reason to change. They don’t want to change and grudgingly made bans for child porn and upskirt shots, the latter which is confirmed as coming back under another subreddit name. They’ve banned people complaining about racists coming into r/blackladies, FFS. Have you read and understood nothing? Line their pockets by visiting all you wish, but you’re fucking kidding yourself if you think staying there is going to change things.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@141:
The question was specifically about the U.S. government banning hate speech on the internet. I already said I had no problem with private parties policing the content they host. Please, at least attack me for things I’ve actually said.
Pseudonym You keep erecting unlikely strawarguments (blasphemy, civil disobedience, crackers) with the problem being discussed. Reddit directly enables people to act in criminal, hateful manner and punishes people who complain. Why should they be allowed to use a public utility for personal profit while promoting crime? Harassment shouldn’t be tolerated nor is it protected as free speech. Also, attempts to pass blasphemy laws aren’t unknown in some of the more regressive states. It is generally pointed out that they contravene the rights to free speech and religious freedom in addition to violating the establishment clause before the bills are allowed to quietly die.
Tethis@144: What part of “I already said I had no problem with private parties policing the content they host” are you having such a hard time comprehending? And as I said, I’m fine with criminalizing incitements to violence. I’m not fine with outlawing arguments in favor of civil disobedience or criticisms of religious figures or practices. Depending on what you mean by the more regressive states, it’s not just a matter of the establishment clause but also the 14th amendment, and there are already multiple supreme court justices who don’t think the establishment clause applies to the states. Without robust constitutional speech protections that allow even controversial and offensive speech, including what’s currently considered hate speech, I’m not confident that the U.S. government would always permit pointed criticism of religious practices like cracker abuse. There was a serious movement to pass a constitutional amendment banning the burning of American flags, after laws to that effect were overturned by the courts. I don’t trust the government that would pass those laws with broad powers of regulating speech.
@140 skasowitz:
Twitter also has a use policy that does not ban misogyny, racism, and sociopathic speech, but only actions which comprise a targeted attack against a specific user or “direct, specific threats of violence”. Is Twitter therefore toxic in the same manner?
@ 142 JAL:
Boycotting a traditional product or service directly hinders their income; you can be certain that a mass movement to avoid (for instance) TAM would be reflected on their balance sheet. This is not true of online services paid for by advertisement; to effect a change in Facebook’s policy it was required to get advertisers to boycott the site. Since Reddit also is supported by advertisement, similar action will be required in order to effect the desired changes in their corporate policy and culture.
Alexander@146:
Right, because advertisers don’t pay any attention at all to things like the size of a user base or the number of impressions or clicks that ads elicit. Advertisers just ship spare pallets of U.S. currency to Facebook and Reddit without paying any attention to things like CPM or return on investment.
And where did that even come into the conversation, as we have only been talking about private companies hosting internet sites. Mentioning what the government can do is a strawman argument for that conversation, and a certain amount of hate speech is allowed by the first amendment.
Nerd of Redhead @148,
From what I can tell, Tethys brought up the idea of banning hate speech on the Internet in comment 108. Then Pseudonym replied @120, and Tethys replied @124.
It was a little difficult to follow the strands of their conversation because, at first, Tethys and Pseudonym were not citing the name and comment number of the people they were quoting. Pseudonym started doing this later. And I would ask Tethys to please remember to do this, as well. It helps us go back and follow what you are responding to. Thank you.
————–
By the way, I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that in the United States hate speech is illegal only when it is an immediate incitement to unlawful action. However, the oracle of all things tells me that in 1993 the National Telecommunications and Information Administration published a report about the dissemination of hate speech in electronic media. They were instructed to do so by Congress the previous year:
I wonder if Reddit falls under the latter category.
PDF at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/reports/1993/TelecomHateCrimes1993.pdf
Most of the incidents and situations described in the report appear to be about race, and somewhat about sexual orientation, but not so much about sex. The report offers several recommendations for dealing with the problem, starting with the “more speech” approach. They also suggest the use of tools “that allow individuals to protect themselves from receiving unwanted messages, including offensive hate speech”. They specifically cite caller ID and call trace for telephones, and video “lockboxes” for cable television programming. I find this interesting because I had not previously connected the BlockBot with call screening, but they seem to be following the same principle.
Page 40 of the report looks at existing (at the time) law that might be applicable to the current problem. But I’m not sure if U.S. Code Title 47, Chapter 5, Section 223 applies anymore. Or if it does, the target has to be a specific person, not an entire half of the population.
PZ Meyers I have a serious question. Myself and others belong to a counter-culture movement within the shithole that is Reddit called Shit Reddit Says. SRS has blown up into a whole collection of “subversive” subreddits come to be known informally as the Shevil Fempire. They started out calling out pedophiles and creepshots reddits, and to this day call attention to horrible bigots and racists of Reddit, but I can’t help but wonder if by attempting to fight the good fight we are really just helping Reddit to be even more profitable by providing an anecdotal counter-example to the flood of hate the rest of the site generates, proving their “free speech” model has created a self-correcting “Social Justice Warrior” zone on the site.
I think many within the counter culture have realized what you posted here already, and left to create “The Fempire” proper at . It has not caught on hugely, however, since the old SRS network is still alive and well on Reddit proper (unfortunatley, I suppose, at this point?). What should we do? Should I start pushing for more SRS users to abandon Reddit and make the switch to The Fempire?
The biggest argument against this I have is that if we just run from the problem it will only get worse. With no opposition to their echo chamber of hate and nobody calling them out on their terrible behavior, they’ll just become something even worse.
What do you think?
Scr…Archivist
My 108 suggests applying and enforcing (the tricky part) the existing laws against harassment and other forms of hate crimes. There is no reason that the laws that apply to other forms of mass communication should not apply to the internet. If someone mailed you horrible messages every day for weeks the Post Office would investigate. If people call your phone and mouth breath as a pattern of harassment, the phone company traces them. This is not a difficult concept that requires a deep study of constitutional law.
Pseudonym responded to my #108 with a comment about evil government influence and constitutional rights, twice. I’m just burning the straw and would really rather discuss solutions to internet harassment and the people who make it possible. Sorry but I do not use comment numbers since they so frequently change. I generally do quote with attribution or address specific comments by nym though so…? Thanks for spelling my nym correctly and the telecommunications PDF. I’m still not having any luck finding the original decision by the SCOTUS that allowed mass media to change from the news of Walter Cronkite to the abomination that is Fox news. IIRC it is buried somewhere in a trade ruling that allowed a small group of right wing white men to form a near monopoly on broadcasting rights in the US.
I pointed out earlier that the speech we’re talking about–that is, encouraging others to rape and discussing how to evade punishment for rape–is ALREADY illegal and therefore the “free speech” thing is really a red herring in this discussion. There is NO government-guaranteed right to be able to incite hate crimes. Pseudonym seems confused on that front. They appear to think that there is a legitimate argument about first amendment rights that can excuse or protect Reddit from culpability for their permitting illegal hate speech to be broadcast on their platform. I may be misreading their argument, but if I’m not, well, that’s wrong.
Sally Strange
Yes, exactly! It’s also worth pointing out that it’s just a huge fail in logic to spout inane, vague evil federal government rhetoric while warning against encroachment of federal civil rights that are literally enshrined in a federal legal document, in a federal monument, in the fucking federal capitol. Freeze peach faction, please think much harder before you invoke your civil rights to speech or religious freedom as a compelling reason to justify rapists and criminal harassment.
To anyone saying Reddit shouldn’t be responsible for controlling content which endorses and encourages rape (PhilosophyOfRape):
Do you also think Reddit shouldn’t be responsible for controlling content encouraging kidnapping and hurting babies? If so, fuck you. If not, explain (but still fuck you).
Tethys@108:
Silly me, I thought that Tethys was suggesting that the rules governing over-the-air broadcasts should be extended to the internet. I should have assumed that Tethys meant “hate speech” in the sense of “harassment and incitement to violence” and “rule be extended” in the sense of “applying and enforcing existing laws” rather than inventing this strawman from thin air.
Tethys@153:
I’d be offended at the suggestion that I’m in any way justifying rapists or criminal harassment, but since you seem to think that the federal legal document to which you refer offers no protection for “hate speech”, it’s safer to assume that you just can’t read all that good.
SallyStrange@152:
What we have here is failure to communicate. I haven’t suggested that incitement of hate crimes is constitutionally protected; hate speech, in contrast, generally is.
Psuedonym#155
Back during the ‘Nam war/civil rights protests of the ’60s and ’70s, there was a slogan: “Either you are part of the solution, or you are part of the problem”. You, are part of the problem, and by not explicitly condemning rapist instructions to the proper authorities at Redditt, you are tacitly abetting rape.
Why do I detect a free speech absolutist under a cover of
? My suggestion, either follow up your agreement, or stop the concern.
Hate speech is incitement to violence. It just has a better legal leg to stand on thanks to apologists oblivious to the impact of hate speech on the marginalized.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@156:
What the fuck are you talking about? How do I go about condemning rapist instructions to the proper authorities at Reddit? Do you mean reporting? I don’t personally use Reddit. I think that they should close down the offending subreddits. I responded to a comment that seemingly suggested applying to the internet the regulations governing broadcast over the airwaves, and because I don’t think that would be a good idea I’m abetting rape? I don’t think government regulation of hate speech on the internet is the right tool to deal with this problem, just like I don’t think strategic air strikes are. Do both of those opinions make me objectively pro-rape?
Psuedonym
Oh for gobs sake, circular debate is circular so get the fuck off of your free speech=hate speech imaginary argument. Go back and read the actual words I wrote in response to bone-headed analogy about New York. There is no civil rights slippery slope involved in using the law against hate crimes to penalize any person or organizations who commit or facilitate hate crimes. I will repeat it again for emphasis. hate crimes As in actually happening to actual people, daily threats, harassment, and rape. Your continued substitution of the term hate speech, so as to whinge on about some abstract ideal of free speech, is exactly the sort of bullshit that the OP is addressing. No, your civil rights, free speech canard is still not relevant. How many repetitions of this simple fact will it take before you demonstrate understanding and shut up about free speech?
Tethys@108:
Tethys@159:
Then shut the fuck up.
That may be what you thought you answered, but yes, not condemning rape instructions is abetting rape. Get with the program, which is your sophist meanderings are bullshit.
“IF YOU AREN’T PART OF THE SOLUTION, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM”. MLK, letter from a Birmingham jail.
So, where do you fall? Are you part of the solution, or by your freeze peach rhetoric, part of the problem? Your choice cricket…..
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@161:
You accused me of abetting rape. I don’t use Reddit. I don’t support their policy. I don’t support rape threats, or allowing them on one’s private site, or protecting them legally. I don’t support writing or hosting rape instructions. I denounce Stalin and Hitler and genocide too.
I thought shutting the fuck up about a site I don’t use was abetting rape.
I also have to express my appreciation for the beautiful irony of someone quoting MLK Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail at me after I shared my concern about letting the government ban speech that encouraged committing a crime. (As I noted before, I’m fine with banning speech that encourages violence, so don’t bring that bullshit up again.)
Ignoring my multiple clarifying comments about hate crimes to cherry pick the one sentence where I used the term hate speech in reference to criminal harassment? *arched eyebrow What an amazing feat of intellectual dishonesty. Do you also follow the prophetess Rand? Are you wearing a helmet that interferes with your ability to aim at rebels?
Tethys@164:
You fucked up. You used the phrases “hate speech” and “advocat[ing] for crimes” as things you wanted to outlaw on the Internet. I have consistently argued here that I don’t think that would be a good idea. If that’s not what you meant, fine, admit that you fucked up when you wrote those phrases and apologize for your mistake. After all, we’re all mortal. Don’t blame me for responding to what you wrote instead of what you meant. I’ve continued to use the phrase “hate speech” because I’ve been talking about hate speech, not hate crimes. Oh, did you miss the multiple comments I made about treating “hate speech” differently from “hate crimes”? Words have meanings. Reading is fundamental.
Tethys@159:
I didn’t realize that going back and reading the actual words you wrote in response to the New York analogy would be considered cherry-picking, but I’ve learned that you don’t subscribe to conventional definitions of things anyways.
And yet you’re here, defending the right of people to do all that.
Free speech is not absolute or sacrosanct. It’s an agreement that it’s best the government doesn’t give itself the power to decide who has a say in the public arena. However, hate speech effectively curtails the ability of certain groups to participate in the public arena. That’s why people use hate speech – to intimidate and threaten others in order to silence their voices. The government, at this point, has to choose between the free speech of bigots and that of their victims. Your ignorant, absolutist view of free speech has the practical effect of siding with the bigots. You’re saying that the racists, the rape advocates and the misogynists have more of a right to speech than the people victimized by their threats and harassment.
You’re part of the problem.
QFMFT
Now, shut the fuck up Psuedonym, your cover is broken, and your argument was refuted years ago. You nothing but blather.
Oh, and Psuedonym, you are the problem, not part of the solution.
vaiyt@166:
Why do you have such a problem with elementary reading comprehension? “I don’t support rape threats, or allowing them on one’s private site, or protecting them legally.” How can explicitly opposing legal protection for rape threats be considered a defense of the right of people to make rape threats?
Quote me saying that or, in the eloquent words of Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls, shut the fuck up. I have never defended legal protection for violent threats or harassment.
I have concerns about outlawing “hate speech” and “advocating for crimes”, the specific phrases that Tethys actually used, apparently by mistake, not that they’ll admit it. My main concern is about defining the boundaries of hate speech, particularly when it comes to religion. I think it’s likely that outlawing hate speech would in practice make it more difficult legally to make harsh criticisms of religious beliefs and practices. I think government actions like any actions can have unintended consequences, and that the history of government censorship of speech content has been problematic. That’s about the most tepid and lukewarm form of freeze peach absolutism imaginable.
I think, generally, that most countries have struck the wrong balance. But I’m no longer convinced that the US balancing point is the best one. Canada has gone through some serious discussions about this, and ended up with a “hate speech” code that, IMO, works rarely and does a good job when it does work – a very good job – of avoiding false positives. Nearly as much is allowed as in the US, but the state isn’t constitutionally forbidden from criminalizing what is often called hate speech.
But if they’ve gotten the right balance on that, it doesn’t mean that the constitutional latitude given government is necessarily a good thing. The same latitude that permits these fairly well functioning hate speech codes also permits the government to fucked up anti-pornography laws (imported from the States, of course).
Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden@170
I pretty much agree with that. I’m just curious how long it will take for Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls or vaiyt to accuse you of being the problem and abetting rape.
Crip Dyke ,blockquote> Nearly as much is allowed as in the US, but the state isn’t constitutionally forbidden from criminalizing what is often called hate speech. I take this to mean that Canada is not, but the US is constitutionally forbidden from criminalizing some forms of speech. Is this correct? It seems that the term hate speech is so broad as to be useless . Expressing hateful opinions is not the same thing as hate crimes defined as harassing or harming other people because you hate them, but some critics profess a great deal deal of difficulty discerning a difference.
If only there were some way of looking up what a phrase means and how it is used, particularly in legal contexts.
Oops, omitted the closing tag, sorry for the borkquote. My words begin with “I take this to mean that Canada……. I think the term terroristic threats is a slightly better term used to attempt to clarify between protected forms of speech and verbal abuse for the sake of abuse here in the USofA.
Okay, pseudonym, that was unnecessary. Especially since it’s defined differently in Oregon state constitutional jurisprudence, federal US jurisprudence, federal Canadian jurisprudence, each other country’s jurisprudence, and probably quite a few states’ jurisprudence (though there may be some standardization among states with each other’s or the federal definition, there’s been more of that in the US lately).
While it could be looked up, even that definition is going to fail in this multi-state, multi-country conversation.
@Tethys, 172:
Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden@175:
Sorry, but I don’t have a ton of patience for someone who accused me of intellectual dishonesty and being a Randroid stormtrooper for accurately quoting a comment that they had just explicitly referred to.
Thank you Crip Dyke for the clear explanation of difference between Canada law and US law. It seems like a simple task to differentiate between an unfettered right to privately express any and all hateful opinions and the prohibited crime of harassment . Since reddit is clearly a business run by individuals, and a place where the general public interacts, the same laws and legal redress that govern any other business would apply. I realize that logic and the law have yet to come to any sort of consistent conclusions as regards the internet or hate speech but some people who are now being ignored insist that everything from self-professed serial rapists to harassment and bullying be permitted on the premise that it’s protected free speech. I remain of the opinion that the free speech defense is utter bullshit.
Tethys@177:
Since Tethys continues to lie about my position, let me reiterate that I do not and have never once claimed to support legal protection of violent threats or incitements.
@CJO, egregious by any standard
No problem whatsoever. You have a right to do as you wish with your own free time. I just wish more people understood that.
@Tony! The Queer Shoop
What do you mean by solving the problem? Forcing other people to abide by your own preferences? Everything that happens on Reddit is legal so if you don’t like it just don’t go there. You simply have no argument unless what you’re saying is that we should legislate morality. If that’s the case then I’d like to point out the irony of someone with the word “queer” in their name trying to regulate what types activities consenting adults may be allowed to engage in.
As Tethys brought up , here’s a breakdown of cyberstalking and cyberharassment laws in different U.S. states.
For example, in California, penal code section 422(a) reads as follows:
Penal code section 653 includes the following:
I assume that the penal code is carefully proscribing only forms of harassing speech that aren’t constitutionally protected, in particular either threats of violence or obscene speech.
Marion Pierce@179:
We should legislate morality.
Consensual sex is not a moral question. Violence is. Harassment is. Rape is. Unless the rape victims consented to having their privacy violated, and the victims of rape threats consented to being threatened, and the victims of rapes incited by these subreddits consented to being raped, the so-called adults who are consenting to these forms of communication aren’t the only ones being affected.
Take note, the rest of you dumb fucks, this is what an actual freeze peach absolutist rape abettor sounds like.
Umm, we do. Ethics is basically applied morality, legislation is little more than enforced ethics.
@ Marion Pierce
We’re talking about a subreddit devoted to exchanging tips on how to commit rape and get away with it. That involves, by definition, at least one non-consenting person.
Everything?
And, seriously, if your best defence for a thing is that it’s legal to do it… that kinda seems pretty weak to me. I mean, pretty much everything that I do is legal, as far as I’m aware, but I can generally point to things about them other than their legality that make them worth doing.
SallyStrange@152:
For what it’s worth, I’m honestly not sure about the legality of that kind of speech. I think encouraging others to rape is illegal in the U.S. (or at least most states) when it’s an immediate incitement to violence, but beyond that I don’t know that it’s against the law. As for discussing how to evade punishment for rape, I’m not aware of any laws against sharing that kind of information. Are you?
SallyStrange@152:
Also, and let me reiterate that I am not a lawyer, I don’t know the details of any laws pertaining to the legal responsibility that third parties like Reddit would have when it comes to monitoring their site for illegal speech. I think that the DMCA offered some protection or “safe harbor” provisions for sites hosting third-party content, but only if they did not closely monitor and moderate that content. (Ironically that would mean that more active moderation could increase one’s legal exposure.)
That “bullshit” will be brought up until you stop being an absolutist asshole. Which means shut the fuck up.
Then shut the fuck up about legalities.
Who cares what a rape abetter like you thinks. Really, time to shut the fuck up. You have said nothing to change anybodies mind, like all absolutists, you are a True Believer™ and can’t stand to lose.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@188:
Seriously? You don’t see the irony in using MLK Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail to argue for government censorship of any incitement to breaking the law? “Criminally stupid” may just be a metaphor, but you’re doing a great job of proving its relevance.
By shutting the fuck up, I mean stop mentally wanking about the problem. Either solve the problem, or you don’t comment about the problem, and let those who would solve the problem do so. You are trying to prevent a solution by your continued mental wankings. You aren’t helping. Which makes YOU THE PROBLEM.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@189:
Either point out how my position differs from that of Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden, or start referring to her as a “rape abetter” [sic] too.
Either show how you would shut down a rape instruction site, you are a rape abetter.
Also concern troll, and a person who is obviously a person MLK talked about who was stopping progress toward racial equality by making excuses for not supporting it at this time.
This is apparent to everybody here but you.
Why is not taking action so important to you?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@191:
Congratulations, apparently your ignorant and marginally literate comments on an internet blog combined with your presumably strongly worded e-mails to Reddit admins who have already admitted to not giving a shit have solved rape.
Again, why don’t you want to solve the problem? You aren’t helping, and you know that. So, what is the real burr under your saddle?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@195:
I want to solve the problem. I think that your approach of calling everyone who has a slightly different opinion on the practical merit of opening up speech to increased government censorship a rape abettor is a fucking stupid way to solve the problem. You aren’t doing shit about this problem either, according to all available evidence. You’ve posted comments on a third-party internet blog decrying Reddit’s actions. That’s literally the least you could possibly do. I’ve done the same thing. You have no fucking idea what else I’ve done, and it’s none of your fucking business. It also has no bearing on the validity of any arguments I’ve made here; that’s a textbook fallacy that I’m sure you know by name. I’ve raised objections to a suggestion that someone apparently made because they admittedly had no understanding of what the phrase “hate speech” actually means in the real world and is too stupid to Google it.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@193:
Since Crip Dyke has raised similar hesitations when it comes to using the law to shutting down this site, I’m going to assume that you think she’s also a rape abettor but you’re too much of a pathetic coward to admit it. Regardless, I still haven’t heard your plan for shutting down a rape instruction site either. You haven’t provided any response to the argument that providing instructions on how to get away with a crime is not as far as I know illegal and may even be constitutionally protected. Either list some citations or explain in more detail how your plan to get a constitutional amendment passed by two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states that would override the overly broad free speech protections of the First Amendment is the most practical way to reduce rape.
@ Pseudonym #197
I thought you said that using the law to shut down speech that was inciting violent crime was acceptable to you, but that you were wary of extending that practice to shutting down speech that was inciting non-violent crime (so as to protect non-violent civil disobedience advocates and blasphemers). If this is correct, you must be classing rape as non-violent if you have a problem with the current laws being enforced to shut down *this* site. Is that correct?
Ibis3, These verbal jackboots were made for walking@198:
That is correct, in the sense that I don’t have a problem with laws against inciting violent crime being used to shut down this site, since rape is obviously a violent crime.
Pseudonym@197(and quite a few of the earlier comments too)
Just so you know, at this point it sounds like you think giving people advice on how to rape and get away with it is no big thing. I’m guessing that’s not what you want but that’s what it looks like.
bargearse@200:
Well, I’m sorry that you’re misinterpreting me in that way. Giving people advice on how to rape and get away with it is a big thing. It’s a bad thing too. Does that make it any clearer? The fact is that I’m not sure it’s in fact illegal under U.S. law or whether it may be constitutionally protected if it doesn’t involve a threat of imminent violence.
Pseudonym@201:
Sorry, I didn’t intend to come off as so adversarial, and thanks for the warning. I’m tired of being accused of everything from intellectual dishonesty to abetting rape in response to raising the same objections to broad government censorship of hate speech that Crip Dyke more tactfully brought up.
Pseudonym@201
Kind of my point. You’re splitting legal hairs over something that should be obvious as dogs balls. I could give a shit about whether it’s illegal under U.S. law, or any other for that fact since I’m not American. You’re spending an awful lot of time and energy defending something that should be indefensible. Just because it’s not illegal doesn’t mean people who do it shouldn’t be called out.
I don’t give a fuck about the First Amendment.
It has no effect on me.
Marion Pierce @179
Child pornography is not legal, but the admins of reddit were in no hurry to close that down.
bargearse @203
QFT.
WQFMFT
And just because in your eyes it might be legal, is no reason for a web site to condone such posts. They have a moral responsibility to see that their content doesn’t hurt people. Women are people too, and rape hurts everybody who is the victim, and most of them are women. So, either you are for the rape instruction posts because they might be legal, and are part of the problem, or you are part of the solution, and demand without wanking about legalities, that they come down because they are morally and ethically repugnant.. Get it?
bargearse@203:
It doesn’t really matter whether you’re American, since the relevant fact is that Reddit is an American company. And for the umpteenth time, I’m not defending what Reddit is doing, I’m just questioning whether or not either their actions or the speech they’re hosting is illegal or whether it might be constitutionally protected. Did you miss the comments where I called out what Reddit is doing?
For fuck’s sake, people, read the comments that Marion Pierce made and dogpile on those if you want to indulge your sense of self-righteousness by calling out a freeze-peach absolutist.
chigau (違う)@204:
So it would be okay if someone else said “I don’t give a fuck about Reddit hosting rape instruction manuals. It has no effect on me.”? That’s an offensively stupid argument, aside from which, since Reddit is hosted and incorporated in the United States, the First Amendment bears directly on the issue in question here.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@206:
I don’t support Reddit. I don’t agree morally with their position. I’ve written that several times in this thread, but it seems to keep disappearing into some kind of black hole, and apparently quoting the relevant previously posted comments is intellectually dishonest. I specifically criticized Reddit’s free speech “virtue without compulsion” policy as repulsive because it ignores the effect that speech has on women who are threatened with rape. Use the find function of your browser to look it up. Once you find that, explain to me how I’m “for” the rape instruction posts.
Marion Pierce @179:
I’m not talking about forcing anyone to do anything. Nor have I mentioned legislating morality.
Reddit has a problem. It is a social platform that is used by some people to spread hate and bigotry and discuss how to rape women and get away with it. This is wrong. Your response is “don’t like it, don’t view it”. For a lot of people, especially those who are involved in social justice activism, these are social ills that need to be actively fought against rather than ignored. Fighting social ills does not require one to legislate morality. People can be convinced to abandon bad ideas. People can be persuaded out of harmful ideas. Owners of social media platforms can be pressured to crack down on how their platforms are used. This is what I’m talking about, rather than your ridiculously limited option of “don’t like it, don’t view it” or “legislate morality”. No it’s not easy, but social change never is. Fighting for that social change is far preferable to sitting around and ignoring it though.
Incidentally, as someone who is queer, I recognize that the attitudes surrounding homosexuality in the United States have changed in the last few decades through non-violent activism aimed at social change. I hope you can see the benefit of this.
And which part of I don’t care about the legality was unclear? I understand where you’re coming from, the whole disapproving of what you say but defending you’re right to say it is important. But you’re spending a disproportionate amount of time doing the defending and not enough time doing the disapproving. That might be a function of the adversarial nature of Pharyngula comments but right now, you’re coming off as a rape apologist. And frankly, that’s the softest, most wrapped in cotton wool piece of advice you’re going to get around here.
Let me just spell that out again for everyone here who still thinks I’m a freeze-peach-absolutist rape abettor. I’m the one who actually bothered to look up Reddit’s point of view, I’m the one who posted a link to their “free speech” justification published on their blog, and I wrote the specific reasons that I not only disagreed with it but found it morally repugnant.
And yet, you’re here…
You seem to think that defending the legality of people discussing how to commit a crime and get away with it is more important than, well, that they’re fucking discussing how to commit a crime and get away with it.
Do you take us for idiots? Mentioning a crime is not the same thing as inciting it. Don’t be dishonest.
bargearse@212:
Is there some sort of word quota I’m supposed to fulfill when it comes to expressing my disapproval? The reason I haven’t spent more words expressing disapproval is that it’s not something I anticipated being subject to argument. I stated my disapproval and thought it was a moot point since it seemed like something everyone here agreed upon. I was operating under the assumption that one of the functions of blog comments was to be interesting, as opposed to a poll or election whose function is to gauge sentiments. I think the idea that substantive anti-rape activism consists in posting superfluous and repetitive comments on Pharyngula about how rape is bad is, well, silly, but I guess enough people judge one’s beliefs based on volume of words rather than content of words that I should reiterate once again that I am opposed to Reddit’s actions here.
vaiyt@214:
No shit, Sherlock. I’ve been here for what feels like an eternity and in that time I have never once suggested that I supported rape instruction manuals.
Why? The question of legality is actually under debate here, and that’s the only reason I’ve written more about it. That doesn’t mean I think it’s more important.
Do you think that it should be illegal to discuss how to get away with a crime? Which crimes?
Are you suggesting that discussing how to get away with crimes of civil disobedience – the kind that got MLK arrested and imprisoned – should be legal? I don’t know how it is in America, but here in the UK we have a thing called “conspiracy to commit” which would seem to apply here.
The thing with civil disobedience is that the entire point is to break laws, to accept your punishment for breaking those laws, and show how those laws are unjust – it isn’t to break laws and then whine about being forced to accept the punishment. That’s kind of a common criticism of fundamentalist religious types who break anti-discrimination laws and then cry foul when they’re arrested – even if we accepted that it was unjust to punish someone for breaking that law, and were to support moves to overturn the law, it would still be against the law and an activist who wishes to commit actions of civil disobedience should be prepared to accept that for the expressed purpose of making sure that people in the future do not have to.
I’ll be clearer. You don’t need to spend any words defending Reddit. The reason is simple; nobody’s violating people’s right to free speech, no-one’s prosecuting them, there’s no investigation, no legislation. Not a damn thing, yet here you are. You want a word count? Here then: defending rape advice = 0, against = that is bad and it should stop. 7 words, not much of a word count. The right to free speech doesn’t need you to leap to it’s defense, it’s not under threat. People who might be victims of rape aren’t so lucky.
Athywren@217:
I’m not suggesting anything, I’m asking a question—and no, I’m not JAQing off. I don’t know how it is in the UK, but usually I think offenses like “conspiracy to commit” have to involve planning a specific crime, not just discussing a category of crime in general. When it comes to civil disobedience, first of all, take it up with Tethys, who posited the idiotic notion that “[t]he federal constitution is also very clear that civil disobedience is a right that shall not be infringed”. All I’ve done is respond to Tethys’s other idiotic statement that “[i]t is illegal to use the airwaves to broadcast hate speech and advocate for crimes and it is time that rule be extended to the internet”, the quoting of which is apparently intellectually dishonest. I suggested that making it illegal to “advocate for crimes” was a bad idea, in response to which Nerd of Redhead quoted me MLK Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, because Nerd of Redhead is an unbelievably stupid, ignorant, and self-righteous shitstain poking out of the asshole of humanity and has no understanding of irony. So now you know.
bargearse@218:
How many words did I spend defending Reddit? What were those words?
You’re its sole champion. The topic under the OP is how Reddit’s protective attitude towards criminals and shitty human beings make the entire site shitty for everyone else.
Your actions are identical to a derailing tactic – endlessly split hairs over a technicality to avoid addressing the elephant in the room.
It already is in the country where I live.
@Pseudonym, 219
In that case, yes. And the specific crimes that should be considered here are the ones that are crimes.
Sure, but the people directly advocating for people to commit rape and discussing how to get away with rape are quite clearly guilty of conspiracy to commit, as they are planning specific crimes, so who cares about irrelevant hypotheticals?
Obviously there is the point there is that if a crime writer were to engage in some discussion as to how their antagonist might commit a crime in such a way to make them seemingly undetectable, then that could be considered illegal, but they wouldn’t also be advocating for it to actually happen, which would bring the case into the category of irrelevant hypotheticals.
vaiyt@221:
Actually, not quite. Crip Dyke expressed similar sentiments. At any rate, the question of legality was originally posed by Tethys, not me. Tethys suggested an internet regulation I thought overly broad, because I mistakenly assumed that Tethys knew what they were talking about when using the phrases “hate speech” and “advocate for crimes”, and I responded to that, and that’s what kicked off this whole ridiculous kerfluffle. And how many more times do I need to put a bullet through the head of this supposed elephant in the room that I won’t address?
Athywren@222:
What I mean is that I thought “conspiracy to commit” had to involve planning a specific rape of a specific person, for example, rather than how to get away with rape in general. If that’s incorrect, I’d be happy to hear it, and would appreciate any details or citations you could provide.
Pseudonym @ 220
I’m just going to point you to Vaiyt’s comment at 221. Read it. Read it again. The legal issues aren’t under debate yet you keep coming back to that. It’s classic derailling. At this point I have to ask why it’s so important to you to bring up the legal issues?
@ Pseudonym
How about you just drop the fucking subject already? How about stop restating and restating and restating and restating and restating how it came up and why you responded and how Crip Dyke also expressed a similar opinion, etc. etc. etc. etc. and shut the fuck up? That would convince everyone that you’re more concerned with people conspiring to commit rape than you are with splitting hairs about legalities. The fact that someone addresses you in a comment doesn’t obligate you to respond.
bargearse@225:
I keep bringing up the legal issues because I think they’re interesting (does the fact that PZ wrote a post about Reddit mean that he thinks it’s more important than the plight of Dear Muslima?), and secondarily because I feel like I have a right to defend myself from accusations that I’m abetting rape. I agree that it can be construed as derailing, although personally I would rather have comment threads follow their own course of evolution than adhere strictly to the original post. Like I said, I only brought it up originally in response to someone else’s suggestion for regulating the internet. As it turns out, that someone else doesn’t know what words mean, and it was probably a mistake to reply.
Yawn, Pseudonym just can’t admit the concept of Redditt being morally wrong and must change, by seeing that the bigotry and misogyny are fixed so that there is nobody hurt from free but irresponsible speech. Misdirection by strawman doesn’t change that argument. The legality of the situation is pure strawman bullshit, and not the subject under discussion, except by those who defend the publishing of tips on how to rape. Also known as rape abettors for a polite term.
Pseudonym
Something you need to learn if you’re going to be a regular here is that ivory tower wankery over hypotheticals in the middle of a thread about real world harm that’s actually happening will be met with hostility every time. You want to masturbate over the legalities, do it in the Lounge or the Thunderdome.
Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy@226:
How about everyone else in this thread just drop the fucking subject already, if it’s so tedious? I wouldn’t post the same thing over and over if I didn’t keep getting wrongly accused of the same shit over and over. I keep asking people to back up their accusations with evidence but nobody ever does. People have just instantly formed a mistaken impression of me as an indifferent freeze peach warrior in spite of the evidence. You’re right that it’s counterproductive to respond at this point, though, even if I’m sure that I’ll be accused of flouncing and various other sins regardless. Would it be appropriate to draw a line under this thread and take any further discussion of legal niceties to the lounge or elsewhere?
So, wait, this seems to be all my fault.
Reddit hosts platforms where a person who claims to be a serial rapist encourages others to rape and explains how to get away with it.
Reddit defenders would like to look the other way (because fuck rape victims, they’re worthless) claim that there’s nothing Reddit can or should do about it because FREEZE PEACH.
I point out that free speech doesn’t apply here because inciting hate crimes is not protected speech.
Pseudonym thinks I’m wrong. He (correct me if I’m wrong in extrapolating your gender from your apparent lack of concern about the class of people typically targeted by rapists) thinks that it’s only illegal speech if you’re inciting a crime against a specific person.
You might be right about that, Pseudonym. In which case, the conversation goes back to where it began: that Reddit has a responsibility to crack down, both on speech that is clearly outside the bounds of free expression as guaranteed by the laws of the USA, and also on speech that is technically legal but clearly morally repugnant.
Thanks for the derail; it was mostly pointless. If it’s not illegal to incite rape then it damn well should be. Rape should be considered a hate crime against women and non-gender conforming men. The ERA should have been passed a long time ago. Reddit shouldn’t allow discussions of how to rape and get away with it, regardless of whether it’s fucking legal or not.
You don’t look like anything but a pedantic, hair-splitting shitstain right now, but hey. You might get to be right about the whole “is it legal to specifically incite people to rape, so long as you don’t name your intended victims” thing. Yay you?
@ Pseudonym
When multiple people repeatedly misunderstand you in the same way, the most parsimonious conclusion is that you’re communicating poorly, not that they’re all independently coming to the same incorrect conclusions.
Two words for you: Bayesian Priors. When someone comes into a thread and wanks endlessly over hypotheticals when others are trying to discuss real world harm, they’re almost always here to derail and Pharyngula regulars have long been out of benefit of the doubt to extend on that front. Maybe that’s not your intent, but it’s what you look like. You can dislike it all you want but it’s the culture here for good reason and it’s not going to change for you.
SallyStrange@231:
Seven of Mine among many others noted that this discussion is derailing the original post, and I have to agree. Would you mind moving this to the lounge or, god forbid, the thunderdome instead?
Do what you like, asshole.
Pseudonym @ 227
For what it’s worth I always assumed you’re posting in good faith. I’ve reread all your comments and I don’t think you’re a rape apologist. The first problem is you’re using the same tactics and talking points that MRAs use. It’s hard to tell the difference between someone who’s genuinely asking questions, pointing out other issues or playing devil’s advocate and someone who’s just being a malicious arsehole. You think you have a point and you’re just trying to back it up but at this point it’s hard to distinguish you from the bad guys.
The second problem is focusing on legal minutiae in a thread about about various “how to rape” forums is really fucking insensitive. This isn’t an abstract concept for a lot of people including a lot of people who read and comment here.
bargearse@235:
If you want to keep engaging, would you mind posting in the lounge or thunderdome thread instead? I don’t want to keep derailing the discussion here. Thanks.
Supposing it is legal to incite rape, so long as you don’t name specific intended victims, then what? It doesn’t actually change the dynamics of the conversation any. The thing that made Pseudonym look really bad was the tack he took of being concerned that making incitement to rape illegal (assuming for the moment it’s not) would have some sort of slippery slope effect that would make it illegal to discuss tactics for civil disobedience.
There are way too many steps between making it illegal to incite others to rape and making it illegal to discuss tactics for peaceful political protest (when in reality, the government doesn’t need any legal pretext to spy on, harass, shut down, and arrest activists planning direct actions and civil disobedience–they do that anyway and always have) to make that discussion look like anything but a ham-handed attempt to use activists’ concerns about freedom of expression as an excuse to let rapists and would-be rapists run rampant.
Pseudonym @236
If you want to keep engaging, would you mind posting in the lounge or thunderdome thread instead?
Why are you still posting here? Get thee hence. Or to put it another way, get the fuck out of this thread!
Oh hey, its nice to wake up to pseudonym starting to show a few glimmers of understanding about the problem being discussed in the OP, and why derailing into discussing civil rights does not give the impression that you care at all about the subject actually under discussion. It’s sad that it took 110 replies to get that single point through the hairsplitting but carry on horde. My patience for explaining how not to be a narcissist asshole ran out after just a few hours of defensive nit-picking.
Pseudonym, you have referred REPEATEDLY and sarcastically to people supposedly accusing you of abetting rape. You snippily asked if there was a numerical quota, ignoring that you have been derailing this conversation since you entered it. You don’t give a shit about rape. See, people who don’t care do what you’re doing; they derail. And not just that, the fact that you’re using rape to intellectually jerk off in front of people who HAVE been raped demonstrates an indifference so contemptuous as to be nearly hostile. You want to masturbate in public. You’re just forcing everyone to watch. Gee, can’t imagine why people find your posturing tedious.
Ginmar, pseudonymous is over in thunderdome now.
Good place for him.
I mentioned your post over there. Feel free to join the fray, although I’d understand if you don’t want to – my patience is now officially out.
@JAL #84:
FTB appears to be a WordPress multisite installation, so I don’t know what level of control individual bloggers have. However, in single WordPress installations, those buttons come from the “Sharing” module of the “Jetpack” plugin, and can be edited by going to Settings/Sharing from the Dashboard.
I just had to mess with them on my own site, so I thought I’d share in case it helps.