Yet another article about the ongoing Reddit failures portrays those who run the site as Libertarians who have no idea what they’re doing, and the attitude of dudebros running a place to pander to dudebros is inescapable.
Banning communities that actively encourage rape is unequivocally good (even though action hasn’t been taken yet), but it shouldn’t end the discussion. Reddit doesn’t deserve special credit for banning places that tell men to rape women. That ought to be one of the easiest decisions in the world, and the fact that it seems like a novel approach to governing a site with 160 million monthly visitors is abhorrent. Huffman’s plan for hate communities like r/coontown is to quarantine them from the rest of Reddit. But the mechanism of this isolation is a joke. Former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong’s approach to hateful content was telling everyone that “each man is responsible for his own soul.” Reddit’s new policies are basically a restatement of that, plus a button you have to click on. Users will eventually have to sign into Reddit to access its worst communities, but that means nothing will change for everyone who already uses Reddit — Reddit already requires you to log in to leave comments or vote on links, and those members represent the entire community.
There is no easy way out, and it’s unfortunate that the leadership only wants easy paths that don’t disturb the existing membership, when it’s those people who cause the problems.
Huffman says that the company will “try more aggressive approaches” if “hateful users continue to spill out into mainstream Reddit.” But hateful users pervade mainstream Reddit; their words and ideas can be found nearly everywhere, whether it’s casual talk about rape, or a meme of Neil deGrasse Tyson as “black science man.” It’s definitely not an easy problem to solve, just like solving racism is not easy — but there are obvious ways to attack it. Banning places like coontown is an easy first step. Too bad Reddit’s leaders lack the courage to take it.
I think a dose of reality is in order. Reddit is not about free speech. It’s not about being the “front page of the internet”. It’s about providing a meeting place for privileged young white men to gather and shit on everyone who they perceive as beneath them. The good stuff on the site is an accidental byproduct of having a large enough population of human beings that a subset can sometimes do better than the the majority.
So it’s simple. It’s not my kind of place, and it’s not a good place for women or minorities or anyone who finds racism and misogyny unacceptable. We should all just leave it for the dudebros, who will continue to find it their kind of home on the internet.
Reddit is 4chan for grown ups. Always has been, always will be.
And then find ways to quarantine it from the rest of the internet. Deleting it from search engines, or being linked to, is a start.
I just now saw The Young Turks posted a video entitled “Reddit Cracking Down on Trolls”. What a fucking joke.
AlexanderZ @ 1
I would argue that it’s 4chan for people who think they’re grown-ups. For spiteful babies who think that knowing what Bitcoin is or sprinkling a couple of long words gleaned from thesaurus.com throughout their petulant, hateful screeds gives them more weight.
reddit needs to get over itself. “The front page of the internet”, forsooth! They should remember where the front page ends up a day or two later– lining the litter box.
The most annoying thing about all this, and it’s something that’s been expressed by David Futrelle over at We Hunted The Mammoth and elsewhere, is that reddit’s management is basically asking all the other users of reddit– those who use it for everyday stuff like swapping recipes or knitting or arguing over their favorite TV shows– to subsidise the hosting and bandwidth for those users who’ve turned reddit into a byword for misogyny, white supremacy, paedophilia and worse. You’re expected to turn a blind eye to these scumbags who’ve been harassing and brigading people like you on and off reddit and in return, the reddit management will ensure they won’t turn up in your search results. Some deal! It’s like renting an apartment with a meth lab in the basement but the landlord assures you you inadvertently won’t bump into any of its clientele in the lobby…
If Reddit is a front page, it’s the front page of a sleazy supermarket tabloid, or one of those cheap throwaways that get dumped on your driveway once a week.
“Front page of the internet”…really? Is that what they think of themselves? If that’s the case, I have rarely found myself on the front page of the internet. If Reddit’s reputation for stupid and vile commenters wasn’t enough to keep me away, it’s way too ugly to look at and too busy to find anything interesting to click. I assume I live in a bubble but I rarely encounter anyone discussing Reddit, except here at Pharyngula, so in my small circle of the world it’s non-existent. I have been following the growing debacle from Google News and Guardian online…that’s about it. If Reddit were to disappear tomorrow…meh, I’ll live on, the internet will live on, the universe will live on.
I think a dose of reality is in order. Reddit is not about free speech. It’s not about being the “front page of the internet”. It’s about providing a meeting place for privileged young white men to gather and shit on everyone who they perceive as beneath them. The good stuff on the site is an accidental byproduct of having a large enough population of human beings that a subset can sometimes do better than the the majority.
Hear, hear! (I just had to de-lurk and say this).
I’ve seen the front page, it’s just click bait.
Yea, from Yishan, it sounded like the new CEO was going to get rid of the hateful subreddits. People were disappointed/relieved to see that he was ‘quarantining’ them.
I like Facebook, because 1) I have friends who can disagree and debate without demeaning anyone; and 2) when the occasional misogynist/racist/asshole pops up, I can delete them, delete their comment, and never have to interact with them again. I don’t put up with that shit in meatspace so fail to see why I should entertain it online.
I’m pretty savvy with the internet. But until this recent flap, I didn’t even know what Reddit was. I just knew the name from some speeches. talks, conferences that I view, they might have been a sponsor of same or something. I can assure you that if I don’t use them or their services, they are probably not very relevant (as your blog clearly suggests…lol). Now I can go back to avoiding or ignoring any references to them . Thanks especially to you and your clean and concise explanation of the situation and its relevance. Good job!
I haven’t been using Reddit to a large extend but to the extent I have been using it I have never seen any kind of objectionable content. And probably fewer purely malicious comments than here due to them being quickly downvoted. I’m sure if you seek it out you will find it, but to a lesser extent than on the Internet in general.
@13 vytautasjanaauskas
We don’t subsidize hate speech over here. It is quite an important difference.
Redditor pageviews will now be used to host an ad-free platform for bigots and harassers. That is quite a strong ethical argument to be at least against the new decision or the whole thing.
I thought 4chan was 4chan for grownups.
There was some discussion on reddit about 3d printing and 3d scanning that I’d done in a vimeo video. I read the discussion out of curiosity. One person wondered if a woman could be 3d scanned, someone replied that they would have to remain still, so the woman would have to be tied down first. It was meant as a joke I suppose, but still… *pukes*
There may be nice bits to reddit, I have no idea, but the horrible bits have well and truly driven me away from the site.
The reddit experience is malleable and controllable.
I’ve been skimming reddit in the evenings for a couple of years with enjoyment. Early on I selected from the thousands of subreddits a group that interested me: artisanvideos, askphotography, askreddit, atheismplus, bicycling, comics, godlesswomen, health, iama, philosophy, prius, python, science, secularactivism, skeptic, space, technology, trueatheism, worldnews, writing, wtf. That selection determines what I see on the “front page”, and on a typical evening it generates 10-20 links that I enjoy following up, for an hour of interesting and rewarding internet surfing.
I never see hate speech there, I never see bullying or fat-shaming or any of the things that, apparently, others think are inevitable characteristics of the site. They are not. It’s like living in a big city. You know there are slums and high-crime areas, and you don’t go there.
vytautasjanaauskas @ 13:
It’s a shame I’ll never see a day where humans are aware enough to never, ever use any form of the “well, I haven’t seen ____ that!” form of excuse. The fact that you’ve never seen anything you’d find objectionable doesn’t mean a fucking a thing. It does not mean that there is not an extremely objectionable foundation squirming away under your happy use of Reddit. It does not mean that you are not subsidizing those who thrive on loathing and contempt.
Just an Organic Regular Expression @ 17;
But to expand your city analogy, wouldn’t Reddit be like a city that has serious social issues and a problematic crime rate, and yet the authorities respond to this situation by merely saying “each man is responsible for his own soul” and then doing nothing meaningful whatsoever about the problem? How long would it be before the only way that the inhabitants of the nicer parts of that city could pretend that everything was still OK was to turn a willful blind eye to the inequality and criminality that exists all around their nice, sanitised gated communities? And at what point does that willfully self-imposed ignorance cross the line into de facto complicity?
Reddit functions as a safe haven for rape apologists, misogynists, racists, homophobes and bigots of all kinds. That you don’t see it splashed across your front page doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, that it somehow isn’t a problem, or that you are absolved of any responsibility to take a stand against it. At this juncture, the silence of the broader Reddit community can and will be read as an endorsement of the actions of its most problematic elements, both by the general internet community at large and by those elements themselves, who will be emboldened to further toxic behaviour by what they will see as broad acceptance and support for what they are doing.
If any user of Reddit genuinely believes that what these bigoted subreddits are doing is wrong, then it is time to take a stand. If they don’t, then they can hardly complain when they are lumped in with all the other hateful jerks who oeprate there.
Remember; the standard you walk past is the standard you endorse, whether you realise it or not.
I have a really hard time believing that. Most likely you just didn’t notice it. That isn’t the same thing. I’ve not done much more than skim reddit, and I’ve seen a lot of very casual hate there, generally disguised as “jokes”. Please. You’re just not paying attention.
Just an Organic Regular Expression @ 17
Oh.
Oh.
OH GEEZ.
This is the best fucking analogy.
‘Cause, see, in a city there are some people who have to live in those slums and high-crime areas. They can’t just avoid them. And so your advice is absolutely useless.
In the same way that there are people who are getting harassed and receiving rape threats on Reddit and can’t just avoid them. And get no help from the admins.
Spot. Fucking. On.
Kudos!
@21, “…Cause, see, in a city there are some people who have to live in those slums and high-crime areas. They can’t just avoid them. And so your advice is absolutely useless.”
I’m pleased how well my casual metaphor of reddit as a city fits the case, and I think it is useful to pursue it. But one way it does not fit the city metaphor is that nobody has to live in a slum there. My point was that if you take the time to subscribe to the subreddits you are interested in, you get the reddit you want. Anyone can live in a metaphorical Grosse Pointe. Nobody has to go to the slimy parts unless they like slime.
@20 “Most likely you just didn’t notice it.” No, I did notice it. That’s why, for example, I no longer subscribe to r/atheism, which has — or had, I haven’t looked at in a year — a hectoring, nasty tone to many comments and strident “dictionary atheists” and A+ haters. My point again: you can have the reddit you want, the reddit with civil, constructive discussions and interesting links, and you can easily avoid the reddit you don’t want. Unlike physical citizens of a physical city.
@19, “That you don’t see it splashed across your front page doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, that it somehow isn’t a problem, or that you are absolved of any responsibility to take a stand against it.”
I refuse to feel guilt for this, any more than I feel guilt that there are prostitutes and drug dealers and muggers sharing the streets of San Francisco with privileged techies like me.
The reddit admins are facing genuinely difficult issues, exactly as a city’s mayor or police chief face difficult issues trying to make a city safe. Is a police dept justified in ignoring civil liberties to round all the ho’s and pimps? Probably not, but a police department at least has some physical and legal coercive powers. The reddit admins have fewer tools, less tradition, and almost no legal precedent to back them up. And I imagine they have always the horrid example of Digg in the backs of their minds, and know just how crazily fast a site can go from the hottest spot on the net to a backwater, on the basis of a few bad policy decisions.
Amanda Marcotte piles on the Pao power-play ploy at Pandagon.
robro #7 and KR Short #12
Reddit supposedly has around 150 million monthly visitors, which is a lot (for comparison BBC News Online has 40 million unique visitors a week, i.e. about 160m a month).
You not being aware/not visiting Reddit merely means that you’re disconnected from its user base either due to culture or age. If anything, I find that even more alarming – 150m young adults in the English speaking world (its main user base) being exposed to Reddit’s toxic culture (to the extent that some don’t even see the problem, as was made evident in this thread) is a terrifying concept when you consider how those people will grow, how large their portion of the total population of their countries and how much power those countries have over the culture of the entire world.
____________________
laurentweppe #15
Thankfully not. After a few years even they realize that 4chan is too stupid.
Don’t believe me? Lurk on some of the advice threads and you’ll see they’re mostly in middle-school or high-school.
This weak justification to continue supporting a site that supports bigotry and hate has been addressed.
You aren’t taking any sort of stand. You’re just shrugging and ignoring the bad parts of the site. THEY STILL EXIST. They still spread hate and bibotry. They don’t go away and they don’t stop festering and growing and spreading hate beyond their walls all because you cover your ears and eyes and sing “la la la la”.
Just an Organic Regular Expression, 22:
This is bullshit and ignorance and unexamined privilege talking. Reddit’s a fucking cesspool if you’re marginalized. Even in the spaces that are supposed to be FOR you, moderators have to work like dogs to keep the shitbonnets out, and brigading subs devoted to marginalized people and reproducing their posts on racist/misogynist/eugenic subs is commonplace.
YOU can stick to the nice parts of Reddit and never be troubled for a trembling instant, but I ask you not to speak as if your privileged experience is universal. It’s erasing and untrue.
Not to mention those “nice parts” are still OVERWHELMINGLY white, straight, cis and male. You’re still seeing a lack of any sort of actual diversity.
Organic, would you also feel no guilt if you walked past someone who was harassing someone else for being a woman, or black, or gay and you decided to do nothing? Because the behaviour you walk past in silence is the behavior you accept.
Just an Organic Regular Expression @ 22;
You analogy is flawed; there is little you can do about criminality on the streets of San Francisco, but by continuing to publicly support Reddit and its policies you are actively taking a hand in advocacy on behalf of a site that has repeatedly refused to take meaningful action against utterly heinous bigotry – this is not a morally neutral act on your part. You seem to privileging your enjoyment of the use of Reddit above taking a stand against people who spout toxic hatred and even go so far as to incite the rape of women and other acts of serious criminality, and – since words do not exist in a vacuum and instead contribute to societal attitudes that go on to inform attitudes and behaviour – you are also indirectly placing your enjoyment of Reddit above the lives and right to bodily autonomy of women and other marginalised social groups.
Consider that for a moment; is your use of this site without a troubled conscience really worth more that the security and quality of life of other human beings? Is your preferred form of online recreation really that valuable?
If you honestly think it is, then I would would suggest that you might want to reassess your priorities.
No one is asking the Reddit admins to kick down doors or face down rioting mobs. The city analogy breaks down completely when one remembers that Reddit has a tool that city officials don’t – they can simply ban bigoted subteddits and abusive users entirely. There is no legal impediment to stop them from doing that, since access to Reddit is neither a legally protected right nor a civil liberties issue (I remind you that freedom of speech guarantees freedom from a government or other actor oppressing your general right to free expression, it does not guarantee a right to an audience or access to any specific forum such as Reddit). If they wanted to stop this, they could. They choose not to do so because they think that rampant racism, homophobia and misogyny are not issues that warrant such action. They made that call, now they have to accept the consequences of it.
As for the popularity of Reddit, I don’t think excising the bigoted aspects would harm the site and its user base at all, rather the opposite, since if Reddit cleaned up its act and improved its reputation, then a wider cross section of people may be prepared to use it. Also, doesn’t your own argument back @ 17;
(Emphasis added)
Hinge on the notion that the bigoted parts of Reddit are not a big deal and don’t represent a major component of what Reddit is about? if so, why not just purge the prejudiced trash from the site and allow all the good stuff to bloom without being contaminated by association?
And even if Reddit’s standing and popularity did take a hit, we are back to priorities again – is Reddit’s number of hits per hour really worth more than the safety and quality of life of women and other marginalised groups?
Marilove sums up the pertinent poinst excellently @ 25;
Gregory and Marilove — “You aren’t taking any sort of stand. You’re just shrugging and ignoring the bad parts of the site” — What would you have me do?
Do you think I should not visit reddit at all? Remove my 1/150e6-th part of the daily hit rate? How would that not be “ignoring” it?
Do you think I should deliberately seek out the bad parts of reddit and be outraged by the antics of the juvenile assholes (i.e. make myself indignant the better to understand the indignation of others)?
If you know of an organized subreddit that addresses these things, tell me; I’ll subscribe to it. Or a petition to the admins, give me a link, I’ll go sign it. Specify some practical action instead of dumping on me for (it seems) not being as aflame with indignation as you are.
Eh, what’s a little encouraging people to go and rape women when you’re enjoying the site that’s hosting that sort of stuff, amirite?
Either you are for the bad, or against it.
Make your decision. If against, leave reddit. If for, shut up. You fool nobody here.
I happen to be quite fond of my neurons, and loath to sacrifice them pointlessly, so I’ll pass, tanks
Just an Organic Regular Expression @30:
Stop defending Reddit for one.
For two, write to upper level management about the ethical problems involved in the site providing a forum for all the shitbonnets (love that word ceesays) of the world.
Both of which I’m confident you could have thought of without asking “what would you have me do?”
You also don’t need to stop using the parts of Reddit that you enjoy (though as marilove mentioned upthread, even those are problematic from a lack of diversity perspective-too much bias in favor of white, male, cis, hetero people). Similar to the problematic elements in video games, sci-fi/fantasy novels, or comic books, I don’t think most reasonable social justice advocates would say “quit enjoying your hobby”. They would say be aware of the problematic elements related to your hobby and call attention to those elements in some form or another. For my part, I love comics, and I’m not going to stop enjoying comics because there aren’t enough trans, lesbian, gay, or bisexual characters in Marvel Comics. But I can and do use social platforms (FB and my blog) to criticize the problematic elements of the company (and others).
You can do the same.
Just an Organic Regular Expression (#30)
How about start with this: Don’t come to threads about the entrenchment of hate speech and other bigotry in a media platform to spout off about how you’ve never seen it. As if that’s some kind of valuable contribution rather than an admission of your own obliviousness and complacency.
And definitely don’t say shit like “you can easily avoid the reddit you don’t want” unless you want to sound like you’re blaming the people who do get brigaded and harassed for seeking out abuse.
NOT visit reddit ever again, for any reason. Just like I have done!
Done.
It’s nothing more than a site that aggregates content from other sources and there are other forums you can engage in if you want to have a discussion (you’re doing so right now!).
That’s a super ridiculous fictional strawman you just created in an atempt to make yourself into a hypothetical martyr.
No, I don’t think you should do that. That’s fucking ridiculous. I never even implied that, let alone hinted at such a thing. For fuck’s sake.
The opposite of “don’t give reddit the time or day” is not “should I act like a juvenile asshole ON reddit, then?”
The irony is not lost on me. Your strawman argument is nonsensical. Pedestrian. Juvenile, if you will.
Troll harder.
I don’t visit reddit. I haven’t skimmed in like a year, at least. I have no fucking idea if there is a reddit that is so pure and perfect that it’s moderated by a unicorn. And I don’t give a fuck. Because even if there is that one magical perfect thread moderated by a magical unicorn, there’s still an entire fecal-covered website festering and bubbling and stinking up the whole god damned internet.
Don’t visit reddit.
That’s my wild suggestion.
To clarify: You should speak out AGAINST reddit, but you should not actually visit reddit. So give it the time of day only to vocally speak out against its awfulness, but don’t actually give it or any subreddit any page views.
The internet is vast.
Maybe you can actually seek out a welcoming space that isn’t terrible to marginalized people. A space more diverse. They exist!! You don’t have to use reddit. There are other spaces.
OR EVEN BETTER, create a more open space. Or perhaps advocate for the creation of more open spaces. Support those spaces that are more welcoming and open and diverse!!!
Don’t just shrug and go “THAT’S IT! The internet is done. It’s over. We cannot create a better space. Nope. The interent is limited. We’re done. We have reddit. That’s it. Do you expect me to like actually seek out better spaces or even work toward making better spaces? Do you really expect me to advocate for better spaces? On the INTERNET? The closed, completely limited interent?! Psh. Don’t be silly. We’ve reached the Max Internet Allowed!”
For fuck’s sake — this is the FUCKING INTERNET we are talking about!!!!
Reddit is not the fucking end all be all of the internet. Stop acting like it’s the end of the god damned internet!
I expect you to want a better community.
I expect you to seek out a better community.
I expect you to work a toward better community.
I expect you to help create a better community.
I sure as fuck don’t expect you to just shrug and go “that’s it! That’s all she wrote.”
(shitbonnet isn’t original to me. I picked it up from a friend because it made me cackle.)
i’m a bit confused by all this. the majority of Reddit has good moderation and a level of discussion vastly superior to most commenting systems. most of the subreddits that would appeal to readers of this blog (by touching similar areas) aren’t very good and have a high percentage of immature twits. so i basically ignore /r/atheism, etc. and come here and WEIT for skepticism and biology stuff.
but do try to keep in mind that the subreddits are their own communities. there’s no reason to throw awesome subreddits like /r/mildlyinteresting, /r/explainlikeimfive, and /r/todayilearned under the same bus with /r/gamerghazy and /r/kotakuinaction.
mquinnv @40:
I’m not sure where the confusion is coming from. It’s fairly straightforward.
Problem the first: Reddit provides a platform for racists and misogynists to spew their hatred and bigotry. The problems with that should be obvious. No site is obligated to provide a space for people to talk about raping women or how much they hate n*ggers. Banning hateful, bigoted speech is not a free speech violation unless done by the government. So this is not a case of free speech. Moreover, the fact that the site allows this by hiding behind free speech shows a complete lack of ethics. Racist scumbags and misogynistic fuckwits can easily go create their own sites (A Voice for Men and Stormfront are but two sites that did that very thing).
Problem the second: Reddit is subsidizing bigotry. They won’t be placing ads next to the hateful, bigoted crap. Which means they get places to kick their feet up and say all the hateful stuff they want on Reddit’s dime.
It doesn’t matter that there are fun, non-problematic pages at Reddit, bc as a company they’re hosting some of the most vile shit on the internet.
I hope that clears it up for you.
As soon as you start interacting with spaces on Reddit that are NOT communities for white privileged dudes, you start to see the shit. It’s a fairy tale that pus from the dark corners of the site remains sequestered. There are clues in the overlap between admins of racist/sexist subreddits and default ones. News about feminism and racism tend to be removed or downvoted into oblivion on r/News and r/Worldnews. DoubleX was named a new default and became full of dudebros JAQing off in the comments all the time. Admins who took action against racist brigades into their spaces were shadowbanned along with some of the racist brigaders, in the name of “fairness” and “both sides”.
I was a member of a couple of communities that self-sequestered themselves to try to remain free from harassment. These were usually intersectional communities (e.g., queer women of color) that had a lot to legitimately fear from mainstream Reddit. Eventually, someone would find the group and then there was no way to tell legit requests for membership from people who were looking for pass to troll. With no influx of new people, comments sections dwindled and the subreddits died. Over and over again.
I poked my head in after Pao was named CEO and have been peeking in a bit during the recent anarchy just to see if it’s changed any. No signs of sweeping change that would bring me back as a user. If anything, it’s gotten worse.
@41: the confusion is that it makes no sense to throw out a platform that is so good for a small percentage of distasteful subreddits. we can mock the idiots mercilessly. but why demand that they be silenced?
while i agree that this isn’t a legal free speech issue in so far as Reddit is under no obligation to allow user content of any kind whatsoever, it absolutely is a free speech issue in that the philosophy of the site is to allow open discussion of anything as long as individuals aren’t harassed.
and to be clear: this is a very small minority of subreddits that have a problem. all these people commenting here that they popped on reddit and saw that it was just as bad or worse seem to be making rhetorical points that are more than a little disingenuous. if you go back to a sub where the idiots were and there are still idiots, that doesn’t mean the entire site should be shunned. go find a better sub. they are plentiful.
There is no way to discuss racism/sexism without harassing somebody on the other end. Bigots are bullies.
You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem. You have obviously decided to be part of the problem. Therefore, hushfile time.
mquinnv:
No one is demanding they be silenced. Just that they can’t say it there. Like Tony pointed out @41:
Double block-quote for the win. Getting the hang of this, aiffinkso!
mquinnv… did you honestly just basically say ‘I don’t see the awfulness, therefore there’s not much that is actually awful’? I’m white. I would *never* tell someone who is black that I don’t see many instances of awful racism, therefore them saying they experience racism quite often is disingenuous, because then not only would *I* be making a racist microaggression, I’d also be a privilege blind asshole. As a woman, I get to see/experience sexism in a way that most men will never understand. And as bad as *that* is, the level of bigotry facing trans folk is something that I will never fully understand either, because I’m not trans. Therefore, I’m also not going to tell trans men and women and anyone in between that just because I don’t see all the bigotry, it’s therefore not worth being concerned about.
Say it ain’t so!
RE Tony! #41:
And it’s not an accident – they’re intentionally hosting this stuff, as the policy change makes clear. And now they’re hosting it on other people’s dime (though that was actually always the case, as Reddit has no functional business model and simply loses money that investors confusingly keep handing over).
mquinnv @43:
Please note that not everyone is saying “shut down Reddit”. Many people are saying “ban the hateful shit”. Again, Reddit is under no obligation to provide a platform for people who engage in such shitty behavior. I think it is perfectly possible for management to shut down any subreddits that are havens of bigotry. And from an ethical standpoint, they ought to do so. But no, they’re too interested in providing a place for virtually anyone to say virtually anything, no matter who is harmed. Of course they don’t acknowledge that there are people harmed by bigotry, nor do they acknowledge their responsibility to do anything about it on their site. Because free speech reasons…which again, are not an issue here.
That’s still not a free speech issue. They’ve *chosen* to provide a platform for racism and misogyny. They can just as easily choose not to do so. They can allow open and honest discussions of topics within limits. Why don’t they? Seems to me, they place far too much value in giving people room to say whatever they want, without caring about the splash damage.
If it’s such a small problem (one you’re clearly fine with minimizing), then why don’t the PTB just fucking ban the subreddits then?
mquinnv,
And any decent human being would at the very least condemn a site whose “philosophy” includes sheltering hate speech. The fact they are under no obligation to put up with this shit but decided to keep doing so anyway makes it all the more outrageous.
Seriously.
They are under no legal obligation to host discussions on, say, raping women, but they’re choosing to do it anyway because… “philosophy of the site”. And you are saying you see nothing wrong with this. You are saying that you’re okay with this. Really. Think it the fuck through.
@46 no, i didn’t say anything even vaguely like that. there’s tons of horrendous crap on reddit. i’m completely opposed to racism, misogyny, and other evils that should be opposed by any moral person.
@48 there are a lot of shut down reddit/boycott reddit comments here. and the last sentence from PZ’s original post is what got me involved. sounded like he thought everybody should just abandon the site.
clearly reddit have not chosen to “provide a platform for racism and misogyny.” they’ve chosen to provide a platform that can be moderated by the community so that the community can make it whatever they want. you seem to be making the value judgement that the chilling effect of banning the speech of these people that you find objectionable is worth accepting. i completely disagree. i think as soon as reddit starts banning subreddits, their membership revolts and you lose many more valuable contributors than asshats.
and that is exactly the opposite of what is needed. what we need is more good people on reddit building stronger communities that run off the assholes, not for everybody to abandon ship. make /r/atheismplus a great place to be. contribute a healthy dose of scientific skepticism to the big well known subs. and criticize and mock the morally repugnant subs.
in my opinion, the way to defeat intolerance and bigotry is to confront it with speech, not to ban it. shutting them down just feeds their indignation.
So, the awfulness is only in a few areas, and anyone saying they see it in more than just these few small areas is being disingenuous, and that if you don’t like it you should just ignore it… which doesn’t help those whose subs are being flooded by the apparently oh-so-few assholes.
Nope, sorry, I think I characterized this fairly well.
And then… then you say this….
Are they banning subredits that spew out racist and misogynistic bigotry? Oh, no? They are, in fact, paying out of pocket with no ad revenue to host those subs? Yeah, in upside-down-land, that’s totally not providing a platform.
Oh noes! We’re further coldernating their frozen drupes! Apparently making minorities and those on the receiving end of bigotry not have to be around it is just HORRIBLE for everyone!
mquinnv, #50
Why allow racist and rape stuff to begin with? You’ve yet to even address this line of questioning. And please don’t just say “free speech”.
If Reddit was yours and you were fully in charge of deciding which subreddits get a pass and which don’t, would you say okay to r/coontown? Why?
In the real world where bigots exist, yes, this strategy is the only one.
But why give them a space on purpose and then say they must be confronted with speech? This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
Allowing r/coontown to exist on your platform is the same as endorsing it.
mquinnv @ 40
Yeah, maybe if you’re a white, straight, cis male.
I’m telling you, as a queer woman, that I DO NOT feel comfortable in ANY reddit space for any reason. But you don’t care because your experiences are all that matter.
And I think that anyone who revolts over reddit banning this kind of shit is an asshat to begin with. Actually, I’ll go one step further: anyone who doesn’t revolt over reddit not banning this stuff is an asshat. Apparently you want to go on record as belonging to this group.
How about both?
Frankly, their indignation is something no one should give a fuck about.
mcquinnv @50:
You’re splitting the finest of hairs here. Reddit’s management knows what is going on in the platforms it is providing people. They continue to allow that shit to go on under their banner. They may as well put up a banner that says ‘Welcome all League of the South! Welcome KKK! Welcome Council of Conservative Citizens! Welcome MRA’s!’
Yes, I am making a value judgement! Glad you picked up on that. I think that these people should not continue to be given a place to spew their bigotry. You keep trying to turn this into a free speech issue, but it’s not. If Reddit banned every last subreddit that was a haven of scumbags, that would not infringe on their speech rights bc Reddit is not affiliated with the government. And these bigots don’t have the right to post at Reddit. That’s a privilege that Reddit continues to extend to them.
The people you’re defending could go form their own site, just like other bigots have. Why do you keep insisting on treating this like its an issue of free speech? And why is it so important for you that Reddit continue allowing this stuff? You’re defending ethically and morally indefensible shit here. That you’re trying (and failing) to justify your support of these people under cover of free speech shows that you don’t understand free speech.
I’m not saying the government should swoop in and ban anyone from talking about offensive material. I’m saying Reddit should stop giving people places to say such shit.
Can you tell the difference?
And the evidence you have to support this speculation is where? Pulling it from your ass doesn’t count.
And really, who cares if people revolt bc Reddit grew some ethics and decided to stop giving people a place to gather and be hateful shitstains? If people get mad at that, they aren’t decent people to begin with and their opinions matter little to me. Apparently they mean a lot to you.
::kicks self for clicking Nightjar’s link at 54::
Why did I do that?!
Tony,
A few seconds after posting #54 I started wondering if I should have put a trigger warning there and feeling bad about not having done so just in case. It was too late, though :-(
mquinnv, #50
You consider people who leave over the ban of atrocious subreddits valuable contributors? Are you sure they’re not asshats at a minimum?
Nightjar @57:
No worries. I had a feeling it was going to be horrible (given the context of the current discussion). I could have left things up to my imagination, but I chose to click on it.
@51 you apparently missed my point. the platform was created to foster discussion, not to promote morally repugnant philosophy or any specific philosophy. i stand by my position on the prevalence of bad subs and my judgment that people who say that a large portion of reddit is infected with assholes are being disingenuous. either they have an extremely thin skin or are ignorant of just how big the reddit community is.
@52 because i feel strongly that all positions should be argued on their merits. morally objectionable content should be exposed as such by being engaged, not by being banned. we’ve failed in our duty to help people understand why they are wrong by banning them instead of allowing them to talk and injecting as much reason into their discussion as we can.
@53 pls explain how the /r/desirepaths subreddit is an unwelcoming place for anybody. for every sub you could name where sexuality would even be relevant to the discussion, i can name 10 where it would be completely irrelevant.
@54 you are ofc entitled to your opinion that people that value unrestricted speech are all asshats unworthy of further consideration. needless to say, i think you are very wrong, even immorally so, to say that we shouldn’t care about these people. if we don’t help them to come around, the intolerance that plagues humanity will stick around much longer. the longer these toxic ideas exist and are popular, the worse off they are, you are, and I am. we are all in this together.
@55 i stipulated at the very beginning that this has nothing to do with legal, governmental free speech. but the same principle that prompted those laws is surely applicable to other situations. i 100% agree. Reddit does not have to allow discussion that its owners find objectionable. But Reddit’s management values unrestricted exchange more than protecting people from offensive viewpoints. Just because you disagree with their assessment does not justify the position that Reddit endorses bigotry by allowing it on subreddits.
regarding which subreddits i would allow if i were in charge, the answer would be all of them. individual comments and accounts that constituted criminal harassment (and anything not generally considered protected speech by the government) would be referred to law enforcement and banned appropriately. but that’s just my view. reddit is less permissive than that.
Intentions aren’t results. The results are the bigots have taken over. And you approve by not disapproving by calling for the banning of those bigoted sites. Showing us you have nothing whatsoever of intelligence to add to any discussion, just liberturdian blather about YOUR freeze peach.
Nerd of Redheard
You’ve crossed into self-parody.
How do you even plan on “injecting reason” into hate speech? Do you think reason is going to work here? Have you tried engaging them?
I didn’t say we shouldn’t care about these people. I said we shouldn’t care about their indignation. The very existence of feminists seems to feed their indignation, should we disappear?
You are very optimistic about them coming around. I wish you good luck with your efforts.
I’m more interested in setting standards, though. If we don’t send a strong message to everyone, including to them, that this shit is unacceptable and no decent human being/organization will voluntarily tolerate and host this level of hate, it will just become more and more normalized.
mquinnv, #60
You’ve just proven to me you don’t know what you’re talking about (because you’re a stranger to me and I give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re not an awful racist person).
Content note: The links below are screen shots of extremely disgusting racist posts from Reddit that mquinnv considers to be “positions” to be “argued on their merits”.
mquinnv, this is what you’re defending*. And this.
*Yes, by saying these should be allowed on Reddit (and on your own site should should you have one), you are defending it. You’re speaking in defense of them. You’re on their side of this issue. Should there be a meeting about banning that subreddit, you would speak against the idea. And those vile racist scum will nod approvingly and say, “We like this mquinnv person. Thank you.”
Well, my account is gone. I was sticking close to the fiber arts subreddits (majority female, though I don’t know about the rest), but I’ll be fucked if I’ll let my pageviews subsidize people who want me to or think it’s okay if I die.
The frantic and desperate defenses by Reddit apologists….it is like clockwork. Same clear defensiveness, same bad arguments, every time.
saad @ 64.
let me get this straight. because i support the rights of people to espouse bad ideas, i support those ideas? i’m a racist because i think racists should be allowed to speak?
surely, you don’t really believe this.
Yes, either you are part of the solution, and want to ban bigots, you tacitly support those bigots, making you bigot.
What the fuck is your problem with basic logic.
For, being a bigot, or against, being a person who understands the limits of free speech.
Your choice stupid bigot….
It’s just Freeze Peach all the way down.
nightjar @63
not caring about their indignation is not caring that you are pushing them farther away from where you want them to be. i’m not optimistic that they will have some sort of mass conversion and no longer be racist asshats. but chipping at the edges is surely better than fanning the flames. you can’t stop ideas by banning them.
i guess there’s an argument to be made that if you ban them from reddit you are marginalizing them. i think that’s misguided, though. the internet is a gigantic place. they are going to gather elsewhere. and if you push them away from reasonable people while pissing them off further, you risk polarization and a growing movement instead of them petering out and fading away. they need to be constantly told that their ideas are unacceptable and why they are unacceptable. you can’t do that if you turn off the dialog.
@68 alright, if this comment is what passes for logic around here, i’ll be happy to step aside.
in general, i think you guys need to reassess what you are doing here.
i’m with you all on the issues. we want the same things at the end. where we disagree is how to get there. and for disagreeing i’ve been insulted at least four times and called a racist and a bigot, when i am neither. it is counterproductive to alienate people that are naturally your allies.
Who cares what a bigot supporter thinks.
They control their territory, You know that. You can’t be that stupid, although you appear to try.
If they couldn’t voted down criticism, it might be different.
But then, free speech absolutists are not in a rational world. They are in a delusional world without traces of responsibility.
For all the “but the regular subs aren’t bad” type people. How can you be on reddit much without hearing about ShitRedditSays? They have firm rules about posting comments from “low hanging fruit” subs like racist, sexist, or terrible ones. They only come from these supposed great subs …and somehow there is NEVER a shortage of rape/pedophilia jokes to be posted there. Funny that…
mquinnv, do you think that you can “stop ideas” by refusing to ever ban them, insisting that they be allowed to say whatever they want, unfettered, wherever they want, and that people are compelled to either argue against them or let them burn themselves out until magically we can all live in a land of harmony and rainbows? Letting them have free reign in an allegedly respectable part of the internet doesn’t really, truly prevent them from polarizing: it lends them credibility and gives them a soapbox. It gives them a captive audience and an entertaining game to play at everyone else’s expense. And you are fine with that, likely because you aren’t one of the groups that these people are bigoted against. You know what is wrong with Reddit? Pound for pound, it is people like you with your attitudes, that rationalize the rot and come up with inane justifications for why the most loathsome groups must be preserved and let to fester. You and people like you are the problem. You are consistently more concerned about the bigots than the people that they alienate and terrorize. A saying comes to mind: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
(Your claim that they would polarize themselves in echo chambers elsewhere on the internet, and they need to be Not Banned so that they can be consistently opposed is just completely disconnected from the reality of the problem. The problem is that there are ridiculously bigoted subreddits. Those subreddits are all bigots patting themselves on the back. Though part of the problem is that they go off and troll other parts of reddit. But, in fact, going there to their little dens of bigotry to vocally oppose them and call them out would be AGAINST THE RULES!! That is what “brigading” is! Reddit itself is enforcing the insularity and fostering polarization that you so fear, while still also insisting on hosting odious fucking bigots! It is the worst of both worlds, and yet you either don’t realize it or just don’t give a shit.)
mcquinnv @60:
What does this have to do with Reddit choosing to give forums for people to espouse harmful beliefs? Reddit is under no obligation to play host to bigots, which is a fact you continue to fail to address.
mcquinnv @71:
Nerd is but one of many commenters who have responded to you and is in no way indicative of the tone of most of those responses. Yet that’s how you’re treating it. Don’t do that.
I don’t know about anyone else, but what I’ve been doing is banging my head against a brick wall trying to explain to a nincompoop that since Reddit is not obligated to provide a forum for racists and misogynists that they should stop providing a platform for racists and misogynists. You’re arguing otherwise, but you’ve yet to explain other than through a free speech argument why they should continue to do so. And there is no free speech argument that requires Reddit or any site give a platform to people to say what they want.
Let me put it another way: is PZ obligated to play host to racists and misogynists to display their bigotry?
Or me? I have a blog (click my nym). Am I obligated to provide a platform for racists and misogynists? Or is it just social media sites like Reddit that you feel are required to provide these forums?
Also, are you aware of one of the new policies from Reddit (from the link in the OP):
This is Reddit management regulating what type of content they’ll provide a platform for. These are examples of prohibited content. Given your belief that Reddit should continue providing a platform for people to express racism and misogyny, shouldn’t they also eliminate this new rule?
mquinnv (#60)
And how long must be we pretend that a wholly meritless position could spontaneously develop some substance before throwing it in the trash? This is the core of the problem with your position: you don’t see these discussions as actually going anywhere. For you, perpetual discussion is the goal, and all positions—however discredited—must be seriously entertained simply because some idiots still believe in them.
Pushing bigoted fuckwads out into their own little hate-havens doesn’t prevent gung-ho advocates of watering barren fields like you from going and trying to “reason” with them. But it does protect marginalized people and sends a strong message that bigotry is not acceptable in mainstream society.
(#67)
Reddit isn’t the last place in the world that racists have to express themselves—far from it. You’re not standing up for their right to be allowed to speak by advocating to keep them on Reddit. You’re actually advocating giving them and their ideas a wider platform. So your intentions might not be explicitly racist, but the effect of what you’re asking for sure is.
@mquinnv 71
Mind pointing those out to me?
Link to the previous thread on the subject for those unaware: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2015/07/17/there-are-good-reasons-ive-never-been-a-fan-of-reddit/
PZ has also had previous articles about reddit in the same vein. The combination of the attitudes of the people controlling the place, the outright evil subreddits that exist and will continue to exist due to the lax policies in place, the issues that are obvious even in Mainstream Reddit culture, and the defensiveness and dismissiveness of the Redditors who aren’t directly contributing to the bigotry all leads to a severely negative view of the place. They have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to make even the most minor of changes. As of right now, they are willing to hide and shelter bigotry, but aren’t willing to actually say “this isn’t welcome on our site” and use Freeze Peach and the specter of “Disagreement” to defend the decision. Well, fuck that bullshit, and fuck the people who continue to barge in here to gaslight and insist that there is no problem in True Reddit.
@mquinnv 71
I ask because you do not seem like much of an ally to me.
mquinnv, #67
I have a problem with your use of the term bad ideas to describe the screenshots I posted in #64.
When I think of bad ideas (morally speaking), I think of the anti-abortion stance, the anti-SSM stance, the anti-affordable healthcare stance, etc. They’re bad ideas but they’re at least discussable. Their genuine adherents bring with them (very poor) reasoning, which can be countered with better reasoning. There are people who are anti-SSM out of ignorance more than out of hate, for example.
I don’t want to quote those screenshots but go look at them again and see if the sentences written there carry with them the same vibe as “all life is sacred”. You’re talking about those subreddits as if they’re platforms for espousing positions and ideas that are up for discussion. Same goes for all those rape and violence against women subreddits.
My second issue (and I’ll switch to a group I belong to because I don’t want to pretend to speak from a black person’s perspective): I’m a brown immigrant to the U.S. from a Muslim culture. Suppose I’ve been a huge fan of the many good parts of Reddit for years and one day discover that there are several subreddits that say things like “gas all those sandniggers”. Now, I obviously would not want to support such a platform in any way (by contributing to their traffic or income). What would your response to me be in this case? “Too bad. Don’t visit Reddit then?” Why wouldn’t that be your response to the bigots should Reddit ban their subforums? How come that’s the response I (someone who’s doing nothing wrong) get? This is what I mean by you’re taking the wrong side of things. It’s similar to telling a gay couple “go buy flowers from another shop” rather than signing a petition to have the florist change his discriminatory policy. You can’t just hide this behind “free speech”.
I’m really not sure how to explain this any better.
To answer your question: no, you’re not a racist. You’re just defending them (for some reason).
I think the spam filter may have eaten my previous post (either that or because I didn’t censor a racial slur) so here goes:
mquinnv, #67
I have a problem with your use of the term bad ideas to describe the screenshots I posted in #64.
When I think of bad ideas (morally speaking), I think of the anti-abortion stance, the anti-SSM stance, pro-confederate flag, etc. They’re bad ideas but they’re at least discussable. Their genuine adherents bring with them (very poor) reasoning, which can be countered with better reasoning. There are some people who are anti-abortion out of ignorance or superstition and not out of hate, for example. Those people can be spoken to and shown why they’re wrong.
I don’t want to quote those screenshots but go look at them again and see if the sentences written there carry with them the same vibe as “all life is sacred” or “churches will be forced to officiate same-sex marriages. You’re talking about those subreddits as if they’re platforms for positions and ideas and that those members are interested in debate. Same goes for all those rape and violence against women subreddits.
My second issue (and I’ll switch here to a group I belong to because I don’t want to pretend to speak from a black person’s perspective): I’m a brown immigrant to the U.S. from a Muslim culture. Suppose I’ve been a huge fan of the many good parts of Reddit for years and one day discover that there are several subreddits that say things like “gas all those sandn….rs”. Now, I obviously would not want to support such a platform in any way (by contributing to their traffic or income). What would your response to me be in this case? “Too bad. Don’t visit Reddit then?” Why wouldn’t that be your response to the bigots should Reddit ban their subforums? How come that’s the response I (someone who’s doing nothing wrong) get? This is what I mean by you’re taking the wrong side of things. It’s similar to telling a gay couple “go buy flowers from another shop” rather than signing a petition to have the florist change his discriminatory policy. You can’t just hide this behind “free speech”.
Racists already have a huge platform to speak: it’s called the real world. What you’re arguing for is for private institutions to create from scratch and support new platforms for them to say very, very hateful and hurtful and violent bigoted things. My question is Why?? Why are you for that and not against that?
I’m really not sure how to explain this any better.
To answer your question: no, I don’t think you’re racist. You’re just defending them (for some reason).
Actually, A. Noyd and Tony have gotten to the heart of the matter pretty consicely here. These are the two things you’re failing to address:
A. Noyd, #77
Tony, #76
A. Noyd @77:
Very well put. What can be served by debating racism or sexism further? We’ve heard the “speech” of these individuals, over and over again. It never changes. There is no point in prolonging the debate– or pretending it is a debate, when it’s just hateful people publicly repeatedly airing the same pathetic grievances.
i don’t feel like i’m really getting anywhere here. everybody keeps (not-)countering my arguments with things i’ve stipulated. once again: this isn’t a legal issue. reddit is not required to do anything. my position is simply that there is great value in having a social platform be completely neutral in its value judgments. this is how controversial and marginalized positions can be discussed.
i have no respect for racism, misogyny, the confederate flag, or any of the other things that have been brought up in this discussion. they are hateful ideas and they should be opposed by all decent people. creating a platform where anyone can say what they want to say is NOT supporting hateful ideas. it is getting those ideas in a place where they can be engaged, countered, mocked, and marginalized.
i would urge everyone to remember that these people with hateful ideas and speech are still people. they have a wide range of values and complexity. you can’t just toss them all in the google opt-out village and hope the problem goes away. they need help, not isolation.
Reddit hiding the subs may not be the best solution. But it is a tough problem that hasn’t been solved before. They don’t have to nail it on their first try. Give them a chance to figure it out and don’t call for everybody to abandon ship because Reddit’s solution isn’t your solution.
with that, my 1st foray into the Pharyngula commenting section has come to an end. everyone have a great day.
mquinnv, #83
You ignored my points at #81 completely. That’s terribly inconsiderate. I hope you don’t come back if this is how you engage. The two points I made there simply cannot be avoided if you actually want to have this discussion. And then you dishonestly reduce our position to “tossing them in the google opt-out village”. You’re still acting like “I hate n***er-lovers” is a dialogue that needs to even exist in any part of society let alone on a private platform someone created a few years ago. Why does it need to be there? We should be well beyond this shit.
mquinnv (#83)
Your position is naive beyond reasoning, you’re too fucking full of yourself to listen to people who know better, and you can’t argue worth shit. There exists no better counterargument to your position than your very own self.
Well that was a complete waste of time. Sometimes I don’t even know why I fucking bother to try.
…my position is simply that there is great value in having a social platform be completely neutral in its value judgments. this is how controversial and marginalized positions can be discussed.
Your position is simply dead wrong, and has been proven so by LOTS of recent experience. Platforms that refuse to police themselves, or keep out the most ignorant, hateful or childish elements, have NEVER been good places for the expression of ANY ideas, marginalized or not. Experience shows they simply become cesspools of infantile hatefulness and cyberbullying, and have nothing to offer that moderated platforms don’t do WAAAAY better.
i would urge everyone to remember that these people with hateful ideas and speech are still people…they need help, not isolation.
First, giving people a platform for their basest, most hateful, destructive, irrational emotions does not “help” them to become better people; it only rewards and reinforces their worst instincts, and makes constructive change even harder than it already was. And second, yes, isolating people when they behave badly does indeed help them, by forcing them to see at least some consequences of their actions, and pushing them to change their acts. That’s why I made efforts to improve my outlook and behavior since I hit puberty: because I realized I’d be left behind (as in, isolated) if I didn’t. I agree with A. Noyd — the stupidity and indifference reflected in your comments flatly refutes your own arguments.
It seems to me that some commenters here consider free speech only in legal and negative terms, as requiring only the absence of government action. Such an approach to the concept of free speech is simple minded to say the least. If all persons, legal or otherwise, who are under no legal obligations pertaining to free speech where to ban from their forums/platforms ideas they consider bad or offensive, that would undermine some of the most basic rationales said to underlie the concept.
I am obviously not saying that everyone should feel obliged to host what they consider hateful speech, or to host anything at all for that matter. What I am saying, is that reasonable arguments can be made in support of big platforms like Reddit adopting a “government stance” on this issue, and I think mquinnv is presenting some of those arguments. The issue is complicated.
I for one will happily welcome mquinnv back. His polite divergence from the Pharyngula mainstream seems genuine and constructive, and is far more preferable than the response of disproportionate self righteous anger and baseless insinuations of moral bankruptcy from some of the commenters, not to mention the immature name calling and illogical ramblings just displayed by certain others (I’m looking at you, Nerd of Redhead).
60@ mquinnv
I went to that reddit and started randomly clicking on ‘nyms to see how long it took until someone posting in that “safe” subreddit was saying horrible shit.
THREE clicks in on the first page, I find someone who recently posted to the subreddit called “ConfusedBoners” which is JUST AS DELIGHTFUL as you might imagine.
Another person is posting in the “Frat” subreddit which I am sure is full of super awesome men, right? Right.
LIKE I SAID, just because you visit the “nice” areas of reddit does not mean the really terrible areas aren’t still there. It also doesn’t mean that they don’t bleed over into the “nice” areas. Those same people in those same racist/sexist subreddits are *also* in those “nice” subreddits.
They are stil there. They don’t just disappear all because you’re on subreddits YOU, as a white man, deem safe.
The issue is complicated.
No, it really isn’t. Platforms that allow the basest and most hateful and uncivil behavior, without adequate moderation or policing, simply have nothing decent to offer anyone. Just like a pub full of drunk loudmouthed bigoted hateful assholes, and no bouncers, is not a pub worth visiting. There’s nothing about this issue that’s too “complicated” for even a teenager to understand. If it’s too complicated for YOU to understand, then maybe you should shut up and spend more time reading and at least trying to understand what more intelligent commenters are saying.
I can block quote super well.
marilove @89: “ConfusedBoners?” That sounds like a great title for some really silly amateur porn — which is the one thing I find Reddit really is good for. (Though I’m pretty sure those subreddits have pretty decent moderation.)
That’s not what it is, though, at least not fully. The very first thing I saw (trigger warning) was a woman being forced to give a pretty violent blow job.
Indeed, I just went back to the thread and there is a graphic gif of a drawn naked women who suddenly gets a penis.
Because that confuses men’s boners: A woman who suddenly grows a penis. That’s not TransPhobic at all!
“Boners” is in the subreddit’s name. The entire point of this subreddit is for (mostly) cis-men to talk about how ha ha ha funny it is when things perceived as abnormal make their dicks hard.
A lot of it is actually naked women with interesting and creepy body paint, because women who don’t toe the line of what “hot” is give men confusing boners!
tristramshandy, #88
Name me one harm that will come from Reddit banning r/coontown.
Most popular websites ban such things and nothing is being undermined there.
marilove, #94
But all ideas are sacred, marilove.
Trans people who want to use Reddit must first educate these misguided innocent souls to stop being transphobic. Cis people, on the other hand, can just join in in any discussion without any issues whatsoever. It’s all fair really. Free speech is nice like that, see?
No, the issue isn’t complicated. There is no such thing as absolute free speech. There is only how much hate speech is tolerated by a civilized society. Given some recent deadly incidents, it shouldn’t be tolerated much as it just encourages some folks to act on their hatreds.
tristramshandy@88: Well played, sir! Your prolix epistolary stylings bring to mind the work of Laurence Sterne and his famous novel from which you derive your nym! Your adoption of the flaccid and circumlocutory style much beloved by the “freeze peach” knaves of reddit is marvelously apropos. Bravo! I can only doff my hat in admiration!
Wait, that was what you were trying to do, right?
OH LOOK!!!
I did a search on r/desirepaths for “porn”
and 8 months ago, a post with an title obviously referring to hardcore porn and an obviously NSFW thumbnail preview of a naked woman was posted and even though someone in the commenters was wondering where the mods were, it never got removed. It is still there.
Yeah.
Super super super moderated, that thread.
It was obviously a spam-bot, but it does not appear that r/desirepaths is as moderated as mquinnv assumes. I wonder what else has gotten in without moderation? What comments and from what users? Huh.
marilove @91 I didn’t know that speaking your mind indicated that you think you can decide the issue. What an utterly childish interpretation of an expression of a point of view. That being said, if you don’t see the hostile cliquishness at play here, I think you are in the minority (though maybe not among some of the most active commenters). I know a lot of people here aren’t fond of tone policing, but seeing as the unwelcoming atmosphere has been a topic of PZ’s this summer I thought it would be ok to point it out in the context of a newcomer basically being told to fuck off for being in factual disagreement. I have no idea if I have a lot in common with mquinnv, and neither do you. And I wonder what exactly you think appreciating a divergent opinion on the best means of combating racism and misogyny is a dog whistle for.
cat mara@98 Is it more appropriate to police writing style than obnoxiousness? English isn’t my first language, I mostly use it for work where I’ve read a lot of stuff written that way and gotten used to it. I agree with your preference for concise language, it just takes me longer to write that way myself – sorry about that.
Saad@96 If you just look at the specific case of banning r/coontown or the Reddit groups mentioned who promote rape or other horrible shit like that, I personally doubt that any harm will come from it. The argument mquinnv used was basically that it is better to “shine the light on the trolls” rather than making them go underground and fester, and that could be true. Unlike some proponents of free speech though, I don’t take it for granted that the best ideas always will win in the free “marketplace”, and in several countries what can be called positive regulation of free speech has been gaining traction i formal law. I suppose the most well known example is national media outlets supporting groups who have a harder time getting their ideas out there because of factors like resources, gender, race and so on.
Nerd of Redhead@97 I know there is no such thing as absolute free speech. Mill’s harm principle is one obvious limitation, and others have promoted what they call the offense principle, which I think is a bad idea. If an offense is severe enough to actually cause real harm, it should already meet the harm principle. Drawing these lines (like defining real harm) is one area where I think it gets complicated.
The rationales for free speech are still valid outside of government regulation, why wouldn’t they be? The point of free speech isn’t so much the speech itself, but the diversity of opinions, both the ones you like and the ones you hate. By relegating opinions disliked by the majority to underground echo chambers we would be acting against this principle, thus undermining the rationales behind it. The rationales could certainly be flawed, though, and that’s part of what makes the discussion interesting and important. It could be that some ideas are so harmful that they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere in the public debate at all (as I assume many would consider r/coontown), and in those cases that harmfulness would also be an argument for making that specific speech illegal. If you Raging Bee@90 had read the literature like you recommend me to do, you would know that other forms of censure than the governmental one is treated extensively, and that the lines are very unclear for what is appropriate. Mill seem to contradict himself at several points in this regard, and contemporary authors have different takes on it.
Just to make my own standpoint clear: I am absolutely convinced that the world would be a better place without people espousing racist and misogynistic ideas. I also think it could be the right thing to do to ban these Reddit groups. The problem is that it touches on some principle issues that, like I’ve said before, I think are complicated, and I appreciate serious arguments from both sides. And luckily there were.
And sorry for the long-windedness there…
tristramshandy @88:
No one kicked them out and no one other than PZ has the power to do so.
I have no interest in getting into the rest of your support for a site that wants to continue subsidizing bigotry and hate.
Seriously? By whom? What the hell are you even talking about? This conversation in particular or something else? You’re off-topic and derailing.
marilove:
I think you called it. Dogwhistle indeed.
Absolute free speech without responsibility is not a serious argument. It is an ideological position. You can be freeze peach absolutist. I won’t agree with you, and will not see any serious argument from you, who sees complications where none exists for their ideology.
tristramshandy,
Two things:
1. If that’s the argument, it’s an off-topic argument. As I understood it, Reddit’s plan isn’t to “shine the light on the trolls”. It’s to make them just a tiny bit harder to find, maybe, all the while actually subsidizing them. Shining the light on the trolls would be something like keeping an eye on Stormfront and A Voice for Men and reporting on what is going on there. I don’t recommend it, but that’s what shining light on them would be like. What Reddit is saying is “please do keep spouting your hate and bigotry on our site! we’ll even make you a nice, ad-free room for this very purpose!”. This isn’t shining light on anyone, it’s sheltering and subsidizing them.
2. It’s easy to defend keeping the hate around in a given platform for the sake of free speech when you aren’t the target of the hate. It must be very easy indeed to say “why don’t you go and engage them instead” when you are not the one they are joking about raping and/or killing. Guess what, no one is going to stop you or mquinnv if you want to go ahead and try to “inject reason” into their “discussions”. But telling the people on the receiving end of the hate that they should go engage the bigots instead of calling for their banning is callous at best.
I don’t want to go into much detail regarding this particular argument right now, but there is big difference between making speech illegal and striving to marginalize it. The difference is how much individual freedom you are sacrificing. If it’s made illegal? You are sacrificing/restricting the freedom of people to speak their minds on certain subjects, you know, actual freedom of expression. As in, the internationally recognized human right, under article 19 of the UDHR. Outside of government regulation, and in this particular case? You are sacrificing the freedom of people to… keep saying whatever they want on fucking Reddit. Saying shit on Reddit is not a fucking right. You don’t have to weight a human right against the harmfulness of hate speech. The same rationales are not at play, not even close, it’s not a difficult decision. It’s not complicated. At all.
Tony@101 I didn’t say anything about him being banned, I addressed what I experienced as an unwelcoming atmosphere to a newcomer who tried to argue his case in a civil manner (and just a disagreement over the means to the same end). And I welcomed him back, you know, as opposed to being unwelcoming (like saying you hope he doesn’t come back Saad@84. It’s not always easy to address everything, you know). And I certainly didn’t claim that everyone was unwelcoming; note the word “some”. As for my relationship to Reddit, it is basically non-existent, and to claim i support them is a misrepresentation at the very least. Like I said, I think it could be right to ban those groups, but I do hold free speech in high regard, and to the extent(!) that my thoughts on free speech align with Reddit’s practices, I support their right along with everybody else’s. By saying I support a site that subsidizes bigotry and hate, I assume you’re saying that i tacitly support bigotry and hate. But you are baking your conclusion into your argument as to what is the best way of combating those issues, which is what we both want to do. If mquinnv happens to be right about the best way of reducing bigotry, you might be the one tacitly supporting it by your own standard. But I don’t think that’s a reasonable way of looking at it.
Nerd of Redhead@104 Still with the absolute free speech? You’re barking up the wrong tree here; did you actually read my post? I’ll say it again: I don’t support absolute free speech – it would be ridiculous.
marilove@102 I was talking about this thread, and in my opinion it is there, but after seeing the development of general hostility over the last 7 years and this being the first time I said something about it, I may have overreacted a bit to this particular incident. But you are right; the hostility is off topic so I won’t pursue it.
Nightjar@105
1. I found the point to be closely enough related to the topic to merit a response, as did others who disagreed. But you may be right, depending on where you draw the lines. Anyways, I also think Reddit’s solution of isolating the racists is a bad idea. The way I have seen the term “shining a light on it” used i free speech issues, is allowing it out in the open where it can be combated for all to see.
2. You are absolutely right that it’s easier when you’re not on the receiving end, but you have to weigh that harm against the potential harms of other approaches. The argument that it is callous could just as easily (almost) apply to the issue of legality, though some aspects of the weighing would be different. I certainly respect that this line of argument can bring about bad feelings in people who have suffered under bigotry, and if I am asked to refrain from it in here in consideration of that, I will. Whether the harm done by exposing people to hateful views outweighs the harms of censure, social or otherwise, is a matter of debate and the answer differs on a case by case basis. A lot of the time it obviously needs to be shut down, at other times not.
As a lawyer I am fully aware of the basic legal aspects of free speech, but you seem to be conflating the concept of free speech with the legal regulation of the right of states to infringe on it. Free speech is more than just a human right, and the individual freedom of people to say what they want is just a small part of it.
But ok, I think that’s it for me for now – time to get some fresh air. I am leaving with a hope of no hard feelings. Have a nice evening, everyone.
Tauriq Moosa has some words on speech that are relevant to this thread:
tristramshandy @106:
He argued in favor of Reddit continuing to host a place for racists and misogynists to spew their shit. I don’t care how many civil words he used. That shit is not cool. Reddit management can do better than this. They can be better than this. They can be better human beings and stop rolling out the red carpet to disgusting human beings who engages in such bigotry. Yet you and the person you’re defending oppose that. And for the fucking life of me, I cannot understand why.
Tony, #109
I think we know the short answer why they’re defending them. I’ve had enough of the benefits of the doubt and charitable interpretation for people like mquinnv and tristramshandy.
Tony,
Clarification on my #110. That reads like I’m being rude to you. I meant to say I’m done with the benefit of the doubt and being charitable to them. It’s clear what they’re saying here. Nothing but freeze peach fetish and privileged blindness towards others.
Yes, they can say what they want. They also can be criticized, ostracized, and condemned if that speech is nothing but hatred, paranoia, and bigotry. And if it leads to a crime, it is criminal speech. And that is exactly what we are saying should be done. They should find another niche on the internet. One where the police of the world are watching…..
tristramshandy, instead of typing a response to #107 I think I will just quote more relevant words off Tony’s link @#108. Bolding mine.
***
I hope this makes it clear why
is a bad idea in this case. And why the debate on
should be a no-brainer in this case.
But somehow I don’t think it will make it clear. I’m already expecting the next member in line of the “it’s complicated, free speech, censorship!” brigade to come replace you. It’s like a neverending parade of cluelessness. Harmful cluelessness. And you wonder where the hostility is coming from… *sigh*
Just one more thing:
I mean, you have members of marginalized groups telling you that the hate and bigotry are too widespread, too ubiquitous, too much in the open, too difficult to avoid… effectively pushing them away, silencing them, keeping them from participating in and taking part in these platforms. Because it’s too overwhelming and rarely gets called out. And your answer? Let it stay! Bring it more in the open! Shine more light on it! So that more people can see it. Yeah, that’s going to work, that’s going to solve the problem.
Well, if you think so… You don’t even understand what the fucking the problem is to begin with.
Saad @111:
No worries. I’ve interacted with you more than enough by now to know your comment was not meant to be rude (and I didn’t take it that way).
Saad@110 Iff you’re insinuating that I’m racist then fuck you! If you actually knew anything about me you would be ashamed for saying that! Are there any arguments inside all that prejudice of yours?
Tony@108 I agree with most of what he says (just read your quote). This is what I alluded to earlier about positive free speech – to help marginalized groups to get their voice heard. But silencing the assholes isn’t necessarily the best way to do that, except in some contexts where it obviously is. Harassment should never be allowed, just as an example.
Like I said before, I’m not opposing the banning of hateful shit on Reddit, while mquinnv is. He tried to explain why he opposed it, and the short version is that he thinks it is the best way of combating the hateful shit. I respect those arguments even if I don’t agree with them all, as opposed to you who think they are bullshit (I’m assuming here, since you don’t engage the actual arguments). I expect that you would support the policy on hate speech that was most effective in combating it, so I don’t understand why you don’t just argue that the policies espoused by mquinnv wouldn’t work if that’s your opinion. If you (for the fucking life of you) can’t understand the arguments I suggest you read his posts again with an open mind, and if that doesn’t help, read some books on the subject. I mean, you obviously don’t have to agree, but his arguments are quite common in academic works on free speech.
Nightjar@113 The reason why your boldened quote doesn’t make it clear, is because there is no argument in there pertaining to the principle of leaving bad ideas out in the open, it just states that it’s bullshit. There are some serious arguments claiming that it is bullshit though, and I suggest you read up on them before the next brigadier comes along, so that the discussion can be a little more meaningful for everybody. That being said, you are actually engaging the topic with arguments, which is nice.
When it comes to harmfulness, any debate on issues concerning the well-being of people and of society has the potential of harmful effects. In most cases, all the alternative solutions to a problem will be harmful in some way, while some certainly more than others. If mquinnv is wrong and his side of the argument wins and it turns into the preferred policy, there will be harmful consequences, just like there will be if your side of the argument is wrong and you win. What is your solution here – that everyone just conforms to the opinions of the infallible one, who is whom exactly?
For a place that takes pride in defending certain groups of people from generalizing stereotypes and prejudice (which is a great thing to defend people from), some of you sure love generalizing stereotypes and prejudice towards certain other groups, pejorative slurs and all, based on the flimsiest of evidence. It’s not as bad as doing it to marginalized groups, but it sure as shit isn’t any good.
I shouldn’t have checked the comments before leaving… I’m out for now.
Why are you even here, then? You’ve come in with a clear bias. I honestly don’t get it.
Arguments = opinion = bullshit. Evidence = third party facts, which isn’t arguments. Try evidence, you might be believed, but I doubt it. Hot air is dismissed as hot air.
Nightjar (#105)
You can just point to We Hunted the Mammoth as an example of shining light on sites like AVfM. Also, Pandagon often has articles that similarly demystify misogyny.
(#114)
It’s such a ridiculous answer. Those of us who are targeted by it have no trouble seeing it. It’s the non-targets who need to take notice of the hate and abuse, and if its mere existence hasn’t done enough to overcome their obliviousness so far, then giving it more exposure won’t magically get the non-targets’ attention, just subject the targets to bonus harm.
But there are sites, like those mentioned above, which shine a light on bigotry without bringing it into mainstream spaces on its own terms or treating it as a debating partner, proving we can boot the bigotry from the mainstream while, at the same time, shining a light on it by presenting it with commentary, criticism and relevant context. No one needs to be exposed to more bigotry-in-the-raw just to get a feel for it.
tristramshandy (#116)
And his arguments are worthless because they completely ignore what the targets of bigotry have to say about their experiences, needs, and desires. In fact, at one point in #60 he went father and outright denigrated targets of bigotry as oversensitive liars: “i stand by my position on the prevalence of bad subs and my judgment that people who say that a large portion of reddit is infected with assholes are being disingenuous. either they have an extremely thin skin or are ignorant of just how big the reddit community is.”
People who barge into a practical discussion to air their ill-informed, navel-gazey theoretical position while shitting on those who have to live this sort of thing are absolutely not helpful. They’re also very much not polite.
tristramshandy @116:
For someone who said they’re a lawyer and understands free speech, you fail to understand that not providing a platform for hate =/= silencing. Why are you ok with a social media organization providing a place for misogynists and racists to gather? Why aren’t you siding with people who say :
“Reddit, you shouldn’t be doing this. These people are hateful and harmful and are driving off people from marginalized groups. You do not have to give these people a place to gather. You should ban them and these threads. Doing so will not infringe upon their free speech bc they don’t have a right to be here. They are completely free to go start their own website to spew all the hate they want.” ???
Jesus fuck, you remind me of libertarians who thinks there shouldn’t be any civil rights protections for marginalized groups. You care more for ensuring that hateful people are given space to say what they want on sites they don’t own rather than ensuring marginalized groups can participate on these sites without such bigotry.
He never did provide any evidence in support of the idea that Reddit should not ban misogynist and racist subreddits bc allowing them to exist is the best way to combat them. Do you have any?
What the unholy fuck are you on about?
What we’re talking about are the hateful people who are misogynists and racists? How are we generalizing? Who is generalizing? Who is displaying prejudice to certain other groups? What groups?
Point to the comment. Explain why.
What slurs are being used? Who said them?
You just throw out these accusations but don’t provide a shred of evidence. And by the way, insults are not slurs.
tristramshandy, #116
Maintaining a subforum called r/c**ntown on one’s own platform is the best way of combating hateful shit like “I hate n***er-lovers”?
Listen to what you’re saying. Step back and read what you have just written. You’re fucking up bad. I’m embarrassed for you. You’re a lawyer and this is how you argue?
tristramshandy, #116
Did you read the two screenshots I linked in my post #64?
You’re speaking against calls for shutting stuff like that down. In the discussion on whether Reddit should shut those subreddits down, you’re choosing to oppose the side that’s saying “yes”.
You’re a fucking racist.
Also, this “shine more light on it” thing makes no fucking sense.
You know how these subreddits work, right? There isn’t a general conversation going on in c**ntown about cars, movies, plumbing and every now and then someone says something racist and the good people shoot the racism down.
The entire subreddit is made for the very purpose of saying hateful racist shit. Look at its name, for fuck’s sake. That’s all it is. It’s a bunch of racist assholes talking to each other and saying racist shit over and over again.
Both you and mquinnv are either thoroughly ignorant (and choosing to remain ignorant) or racist cowards who can’t come out and say what’s really on your mind and hiding behind this free speech bullshit instead.
This is going to be a long one because it has to be. There are genuine best methods for creating social change and they often need to be outlined so that other people can benefit from them. I take social conflict and social change extremely seriously and thus I actively work to shape myself and allow others to shape me into an effective sociopolitical creature.
@mquinnv, qwints, tristramshandy, Just an Organic Regular Expression
You have a general problem here that you are going to have to address if you hope to deserve serious treatment of your points. This is not primarily an abstract debate. All abstractions must be rooted to real-world situations and goals. You MUST functionally address the overall goal of ending racism, sexism and similar in online environments (specifically Reddit, also places like 4chan). Any positives that these sites might have are not the point. If you want to have things important to you seriously addressed you must be willing to have a social exchange where you address the things that are important to us.
This is not some utopian dream, this is an achievable social goal as the increase in the religious nones and greater LGBT+ acceptance indicates. Solving these issues will require many strategies depending on the social arena and the makeup of the people in that arena. Such strategies include:
*Positive punishment: strategies meant to decrease a behavior by actively adding a negative/noxious stimuli to a social environment that actively or passively affects people when a specific behavior occurs. Criticism, shaming, mockery, bans, visual indicators of problem behavior (like a “racism” or “sexism” tag that gets attached to someone’s name for a time) and more. It is appropriate to add things to our social environments to pressure people to change specific beliefs, ideas and behaviors.
*Negative punishment: strategies meant to decrease a behavior by actively removing a positive/pleasant stimuli from a social environment that actively or passively affects people when a specific behavior occurs. Removing the ability to post, or post as much or permissions for other things.
*Positive reinforcement: strategies meant to increase a behavior by actively adding a positive/pleasing stimuli to a social environment that actively or passively affects people when a specific behavior occurs. Rewards, compliments and useful advice that gives a person functionally useful information that empowers them.
*Negative reinforcement: strategies meant to increase a specific behavior by removal of something negative/noxious from a social environment that actively or passively affects people when a specific behavior occurs. Removable things like shaming, criticism, mockery and similar. It is appropriate to add things to our social environments to pressure people to engage in specific beliefs, ideas and behaviors.
This is what we are as humans. We can’t just stick with the positive stuff because that only gives us half of a weapon/tool kit for social change. Note that just because you don’t like the example of one of these strategies that someone chooses does not mean that it is not an effective strategy. If you want to propose that a different operant conditioning category be chosen you need to demonstrate that it will be appropriate, effective and support the other person’s social goals.
The main point of PZ’s post is “Reddit” getting shamed and criticized which is totally appropriate. Why did I put “Reddit” in scare quotes? Because you need to address what Reddit is in real world terms and how each of its features relevant to the overall goal are to be strategically interacted with. Reddit is not an abstraction. Reddit is:
*The owners of Reddit.
*The employees of Reddit.
*The advertisers funding Reddit.
*The users of Reddit.
*The software that is Reddit and the specific social arenas it provides.
Each of those italicized things need to be broken down into specifics and targeted with one or more of the four means of changing behavior. Those four general categories of creating change in people must be applied to specific places, people, beliefs, ideas and actions. They should be chosen with the goal of affecting as many problem behaviors and personal goals of shitty people doing shitty things as possible.
A place where shitty people who believe, think and do shitty things does not limit itself to small isolated parts of the internet. The people in those places reinforce one another (through those same four means of altering behavior!) and as humans tend to do they try to spread their beliefs and ideas and role-model behavior they think is appropriate. They WILL have an effect on other parts of Reddit, the internet and meat space.
Because this is not primarily about abstract issues and because the overall goals are actually achievable we need to functionally talk about what each of us are going to do to interact with each of these parts of Reddit on AND off of that site including meat space. AND we need to talk about what each of us is going to do with respect to things that provide direct, indirect and de facto support of racism, sexism and similar places, people, beliefs, ideas and actions. Changing society is only done through social interaction and manipulation of the social environment. Yes manipulation because it is a neutral with good and bad versions. Rule changes are social manipulation. Choosing the situational ethics for effective social change is a form of manipulation. Strategically taking the other person and the crowd into account in interactions is a form of manipulation. As long as honesty and personal autonomy are respected manipulation can be a good thing.
Finally mquinnv, qwints, tristramshandy and Just an Organic Regular Expression, the specific beliefs, ideas and actions that you choose to reveal to us tell us what your motivations and priorities are and we get to take that into account. Those four forms of operant conditioning are part of normal human interaction and apply to you too. It’s fair to not only look at what you believe, think and do. It’s also fair to look at what you don’t do, what you choose not to respond to and similar. We are not going to demand that you do anything that you are incapable of (strategically unwise and unfair) or might harm you (preventing, minimizing and addressing physical, emotional and mental harm is the point after all). But don’t expect good opinions of you and your desire to talk about your issues if you are going to be passive or neutral in this social conflict or spend your time criticizing the people trying to deal with racism and sexism. We get to judge people for passively allowing bad things to happen or avoiding trying to make good things happen.
And just to get it out of the way yes, I fully expect all of this to apply to me as well. I try to situationally choose the best strategy for the place, people and things in the specific social environment that I am in, including here at Freethought Blogs. I try to make it positive or negative as appropriate, I escalate or de-escalate as necessary. I do criticize, shame and mock “my people” here from time to time and I fully expect to experience it as well.
Responses to specific persons.
Just an Organic Regular Expression 17 and on
We are interested in doing what needs to be done to make hate speech, bullying, fat-shaming and similar never occur again. We are interested in doing what needs to be done to create change that will help people and improve places that are slums, high-crime and similar. Your words show that you are choosing to interact with a social arena in a way that lets you ignore social problems and suffering people. That leads me to rationally suspect that you would take a similar approach elsewhere on the internet and in meat space. You are not a person that this white male would want as a social ally because I have no reason to think that you would be helpful when it comes to attention being drawn to things I care about even if you are not actively doing harmful things yourself.
What would we have you do? First thank you for asking this because that is part of what is needed. Do what you can within your ability and tolerance based on the needs of other people. The best things are the ones that help you and other people so feel free to get creative, but don’t forget that you need to have others let you know how you are doing. Shame or reward specific beliefs, ideas and behaviors that create racism and sexism in the features of Reddit that I listed. Role-model beliefs, ideas and behaviors that prevent and heal suffering, and passively/actively improve society. Take advantage of your in-group psychological advantage that you have from your membership in the groups you are in. Ask the people who are suffering what they need and how you can help (you did this so this is just for completeness).
It may be necessary to abandon Reddit as a means of solving the racism/sexism/…-ism problem. Social neglect is in the tool box. It would be awesome if you can actively go to places where the shitty beliefs, ideas and behaviors are and use the operant conditioning methods to come up with strategies to deal with the shitty beliefs, ideas and behaviors (indignation is situationally appropriate). But while that is a critical and necessary social tool, I understand that people have different tolerances for that sort of thing. You can also criticize and shame or compliment and reward the owners, advertisers, employees, and users (especially the highest levels of the rank hierarchy) for specific beliefs, ideas and behaviors. You can suggest other beliefs, ideas and actions and be prepared to give praise and rewards for when they are implemented.
mquinnv 40 and on
We are interested in the elimination from society of shitty beliefs, ideas and behavior that actively and passively harm people and communities. If the mass of people actively and passively reinforcing and allowing those shitty things is too great to be effectively dealt with “throwing out a platform” is rational and logical. Just like it would be rational and logical for people interested in ethics in gaming journalism to throw out a social symbol that they rally around (gamergate) because of the shitty beliefs, ideas and behavior that are connected with it.
Based on your behavior you do not seem like someone that I would want to have as a social ally and I would want to minimize social interaction and dependency on people that act like you. I have no reason to think that when it comes to things that harm me that you would not also actively interfere with attempts to change society. You chose to come into a post that supports and role-models shaming and criticism of Reddit and the characteristics of it that harm people, and say that removal of something that causes and/or contributes to that harm is a bad thing. The intent of you or Reddit’s founders are meaningless to those that suffer and their allies.
If you want to consider what I have discussed “silencing” people I would remind you that it’s not about elimination of discussions or knowledge about these shitty things. It’s not about socially isolating or physically harming people who believe, think and do shitty things such that their lives or their families lives are put at risk. But discussions should take place in a way that does not disrupt attempts to change society for the better, harm people or otherwise actively or passively propagate and maintain the shitty beliefs, ideas and behavior. And it’s impossible to pretend that doing things that make other people feel bad are not going to be required at some point. If elimination of racist/sexist/…-ist beliefs, ideas and behavior through positive or negative means is silencing I have to say that such silencing is fine by me.
My comments to Just an Organic Regular Expression with respect to things to do and abandoning the site apply. Reddit is something that can be recreated in another form elsewhere, and choices that allow and support shitty beliefs, ideas and behavior are being made so yes it can be said that Reddit has chosen to provide a platform for racism and misogyny because intent is meaningless here. A choice that leads to an outcome is still a choice even if the outcome is not intended. I say yes to banning expressions of racism and sexism that lead to harm and propagation of a system that harms.
Any revolts will primarily be about people angry, sad or disgusted by being unable to engage in expressions that harm people and support a system that leads to harm so if you can’t effectively and functionally deal with those revolutionaries in real-world terms I’m just not going to care about your free speech concerns. You are victim blaming and choosing to hinder efforts to improve society regardless of your intent. If you can’t address our concerns why should we even try to address yours? Social exchanges are exchanges so if you want an exchange you should be prepared to act like it.
qwints 62
You are choosing to shift the discussion towards your own personal problems with others. That gives me reason to think you are a person who would do the same to me and thus you are also someone I would not want to interact with or have as a political ally since you would be likely to do the same to me with respect to issues I care about.
tristramshandy 88
That you bring up the non-governmental and non-legal analog to the concept of “free speech” when the issue is about the effects of shitty beliefs, ideas, and behavior (such as speech) on others is telling. Just as in governmental and legal realms, speech is not totally free and freedom is limited by the effects of what a person does. Anyone who believes that social behavior can and should change just has to accept that addressing speech with the behavior modification categories I mentioned is part of the equation. If you can’t accept that you are likely to be one of the people who is a part of the problem in a way that will be socially addressed.
In this post about the criticism and shaming of people whose beliefs, ideas and actions create an environment that allows harmful expression you chose to be simple-minded. As you said, the issue is complicated and your contribution simply sows confusion and inhibits progress. You chose to bring up irrational and illogical things that distract from attempts to reduce suffering and solve social problems. We get to take stuff like that into account because it is not constructive. Your emotional characterizations of what you see here mean nothing to me. You are also a person who I would minimize interactions with and would not want as a political ally because I have no reason to believe that you would not do the same when it comes to speech that harms me.
A. Noyd, #119:
Yes, exactly. Thank you for bringing up those sites, I knew something like that existed but didn’t remember the names. And this is also the point I was going for @#54 when I asked:
Needless to say, I never got an answer. I still don’t understand why it has to be an either-or question. We can confront it with speech and ban it from places we want to make safer for everyone else. And once you realize this, it becomes a question of creating a safer space vs. not creating a safer space, in which creating a safer space does not equal no confrontation.
Which brings me to…
tristramshandy, #116:
What? There is no argument in there, really? Stating that “prioritis[ing] no moderation effectively leav[es] marginalised and frequently targeted people open to harassment” is not an argument against, well, against prioritizing no moderation of what you’re calling “bad ideas”? Pointing out the consequences of leaving these “bad ideas” out in the open is not an argument?
I don’t even know what you’re going on about here. The internet is a big place with room for every kind of policy, so we can actually see the practical effects of choosing one over the other before or without any side “winning” definitively (and then you’ll be sorry as you seem to be implying). There are sites out there picking mquinnv’s policy, such as, you know, Reddit. Do you see what is happening there? Do you see the consequences? And based on those consequences, do you think that is the right side of the argument? Isn’t the fact that it is turning into a hellhole for some people good enough evidence for ditching mquinnv’s favorite approach and trying a better one?
And with that said, I’m going to channel Nerd of Redhead shamelessly, because I feel it’s appropriate here:
It’s not our opinion. It’s the evidence. Evidence > evidenceless opinion. Look at Reddit. Look at what some people belonging to the groups that are the target of this extreme bigotry are saying about how they feel about even accessing the site. Look at the effects.
I don’t know what else to say. We’re arguing. We’re calling mquinnv arguments bullshit because they demonstrably are. You don’t seem to agree with them yourself, most of the times it sounds like you are on our side on this. And still you have to go on and on about how mquinnv’s arguments have merits (without saying what they are) and how horrible we are all for not giving them the credit they deserve (even though you basically concede that we are right every other phrase). Why? I suppose this is going to piss you off even further, but you sound like a concern troll at times. You really do.
tristramshandy, #116
Stop trying to make this a vague issue. It’s not. Go look at the links in post #64 again. That’s black and white (no pun intended) wrong. That should be banned.
And you’re still not giving even a single example of a harm that will come if Reddit bans that.
I can’t believe people are defending Reddit with the argument that you need to keep the trolls around to shine a light on them and argue with them. More than one person is making this argument and thinks it is a good defense of Reddit. When it is literally the exact opposite of what Reddit is doing. They are justifying keeping the trolls because they are going to make sure that their odious subreddits are more dimly lit and harder to find. So that they can have their own private troll corners and allegedly not hurt or bother anyone else.
It is like Reddit apologists come from fucking bizarro world.
@Brony I strongly disagree with the idea that operant conditioning is an ethical way to change people. Please look into what autistic activists have to say on the subject.
qwints, please give us your ethical way of changing people then.
@qwints 129
1) I’m not going to hunt around for what you have in your head. If you want me to read something post it. If you want me to be persuaded post it and tell me why it supports what you are saying. I’m willing to consider what you have to say because people are differently amiable to the four categories and people with autism often get screwed over by society.
2) What is described as “operant conditioning” is a general framework for elements of how we actually interact with one another with respect to changing behavior. It’s not a matter of avoiding it since that is what we actually do on a regular basis (we just don’t typically think about it in a structured way) so all that is left is determining the morals and ethics, which in many ways is the story of human history. To avoid what operant conditioning describes is to avoid how we actually change one another’s behavior.
There are dozens of examples in this thread alone.
Increasing a behavior.
*Positive reinforcement: Adding something someone want to reinforce a behavior. I thanked Just an Organic Regular Expression for asking questions in my #125
*Negative reinforcement: Removing something someone does not want to reinforce a behavior. forgiving a ban due to efforts to make amends with harmed parties on a website.
Reducing/eliminating a behavior.
*Positive punishment: Adding something someone does not want to reduce or eliminate a behavior. Using highly emotional language such as mockery or sensitive terms such as sexist or racist in addition to content to convey very negative opinions of something.
*Negative punishment: Removing something someone wants in order to reduce or eliminate a behavior. A temporary ban from a website due to specific behavior is a loss of posting privileges.
This just is. The best place to have a discussion is which method to use with what kinds of people under what circumstances.
Broney@131 Behaviorism isn’t nearly as universally accepted as you seem to thing. People shouldn’t be treated like Pavlov’s dogs or Skinner’s rats. For an example of harm done by behaviorism to autistic people, see the example of the Judge Rotenberg Center
I can’t believe people are defending Reddit with the argument that you need to keep the trolls around to shine a light on them and argue with them.
Well, toxic waste does need to be collected and stored somewhere, and it needs to have enough light shone on it so we can make sure it’s not leaking into our groundwater. But that’s not so we can argue with it, it’s so we can avoid it and keep it from destroying things that are important to us.
I strongly disagree with the idea that operant conditioning is an ethical way to change people.
So what more ethical and effective way to you propose for people who refuse to change bad or harmful behavior?
Please look into what autistic activists have to say on the subject.
Vile as it is, the aversive conditioning sometimes used to “treat” autism is only a small subset of all the forms of operant conditioning that are out there. They are not all equally unethical.
Objecting to electroshock therapy is not objecting to all of operant conditioning.
Subscribing to operant conditioning is not subscribing to all of behaviorism. Most psychologists aren’t behaviorists anymore. But I am having a hard fucking time finding any significant amount of people who think ALL operant conditioning is either inherently unethical or unfounded.
It is like you are intentionally trying to muddle this. To distract from Reddit, of course.
That’s an incredibly complex question, but the short answer is to treat them like thinking and feeling people. Promoting positive stories about marginalized groups seems to help change implicit attitudes. “On the Malleability of Automatic Attitudes” Providing useful explanatory models can help people re-examine their beliefs. When History Hurts: Racial Identity Development in the American Studies Classroom
qwints, I apologize for the “distract from Reddit” remark. That was uncalled for. And your alternatives at 135 look good (second link doesn’t work though, just fyi).
As an example of positive punishment that I would use if I were an authority at Reddit would be to attach a “racist behavior” or “sexist behavior” tag to people with confirmed examples of that behavior (which would be linked to through the tag.
@qwints 132
I’m not interested in the fact that some people that you do not identify don’t accept behaviorism (or operant conditioning I assume) as informative with respect to human behavior. I am interested in why you think their reasons for not accepting it matter.
Behaviorism is a broadly accepted model for how some of our behavior works. It’s a tool with specific benefits and limitations and in no sense a complete picture of how humans change one another’s behavior. You might not like the fact that elements of our behavior are predictable and definable, but it remains that this is true. I use behaviorism as it applies to humans. Dog’s and rats are just how a lot of the basics were worked out.
However I have to point out that you are making an argument from authority and while behaviorism is broadly accepted, I accept it based on my understanding of how it applies to human behavior. I see that you did not engage with a single example that I provided. If you want me to take you seriously you need to be able to say why the things I put in bold below are not relevant examples of each category of behavior modification.
I agree with anteprepro. Just because some examples have been misguided, harmful and ultimately wrong does not mean that the general concept is wrong.
anteprepro,
Here’s the fixed link:On the Malleability of Automatic Attitudes.
No need to apologize for the remark. I said what I felt I needed to say in the last thread, and I feel everyone has made their positions pretty clear. To recap my understanding,
1) Reddit provides its services to bigots and allows them to use those services to promote their bigotry (I agree.)
2) Most people here feel that Reddit should restrict its services to reduce that bigotry in some way. I agree that Reddit does a poor job of enforcing its current rules against harassment, and has an obligation to do better. I would support Reddit adopting the rules removing the content Saad posted in #64 (it recently did ban some of the most horrific content but not very effectively), I would strongly oppose Reddit adopting rules removing the content that marilove posted in #88.
3) Some feel that using Reddit while it hosts such bigoted content is immoral. I have no problem with people don’t want to use Reddit for any reason. I do disagree with people who feel others have a moral obligation to not use Reddit. I don’t think I have an obligation to not use an open platform that is also used by other people for bad purposes. I understand that some people think that makes me morally complicit in the bigotry.
@qwints 135
I agree that it’s a very complex question, nevertheless those four forms of behavior modification are descriptions of things we commonly and routinely do as human beings. Nothing that I have said suggests that we should not figure out the complexity. I will use these techniques because they are broadly accepted socially (the specific manifestations will be counter to usual norms when trying to change society however).
The four forms of behavior modification implicitly require thoughts and feelings to be taken into account in order for them to be used morally and ethically. I will not accept your assertion that using the information provided by the concept of operant conditioning is wrong without you defending that assertion.
You last link is precisely the sort of information that is required to properly implement behavioral modification via operant conditioning concepts with respect to issues relevant to race. That link does not show that the concept is inappropriate or somehow unrealistic, it points at information required to implement it properly.
…the short answer is to treat them like thinking and feeling people.
That’s more like a short NON-answer, with nothing even close to an actual alternative policy. When we try to get people to change their behavior, we ARE recognizing that they are, in fact, thinking and feeling people; which is why we treat them differently from, say, cats and robots.
Raging Bee
I linked a paper listing a dozen alternatives and gave two examples. I’m not trying to be evasive on this – the ethical way to change behavior is to address the reasons (i.e. the beliefs and attitudes) for the behavior. In the context of anti-racism work, in addition to the examples I gave, people can also induce cognitive dissonance between professed ideals and racist behavior (Inducing Hypocrisy to Reduce Prejudicial Responses among Aversive Racists) or induce empathy (Improving Intergroup Relations: The Effects of Empathy on Racial Attitudes [behind paywall]).
Brony
Sorry, but I don’t want to give positive reinforcement to your undesired behavior of advocating behaviorism. /sarcasm
There’s nothing in behaviorism, at least as articulated by practitioners like Skinner or Lovaas, that implies the subject’s thoughts or feelings matter. Seriously, read about Beyond Freedom and Dignity or Lovaas and Rekers’ [Trigger Warning: homophoia, suicide] Sissy boy expirement
@qwints 141
This just looks like cowardice to me. I pointed out bolded real-world examples of the four forms of behavioral modification in my #137. You have refused to engage with them and continue to use a appeal to authority instead of explaining why your objections matter. Your objections do not matter at all to me without explanation and will not change my behavior in the slightest.
Why is that useful to your arguments? I don’t have to respect something when you can not say why it supports your points.
Brony. you’re amusingly transparent in your attempts at manipulation.
@qwints 143
Then we are done. I respect an assertion of transparent manipulation as much as I do an assertion that a part of the psychological sciences is somehow “wrong” (which we have yet to even get into because you can’t or won’t talk about specifics). Enjoy being a failure at advocacy.
But qwints, don’t you want to change Brony’s mind and/or approach? After all, if you can’t change Brony’s mind and/or approach, how the ever loving fuck do you expect to get through to bigots and those people who think that women deserve to be raped and that non-whites should be killed?
…the ethical way to change behavior is to address the reasons (i.e. the beliefs and attitudes) for the behavior.
That and operant conditioning are not mutually exclusive. We can do both, and they sometimes work together. At the very least, we address reasons and motives for certain behavior when we debate whether to regulate or ban it in the first place.
Rowan
It’s more that I want to minimize the number of people who agree with that approach. Brony has stated that the operant conditioning methods were “the four means of changing behavior” [emphasis added] and that “to avoid what operant conditioning describes is to avoid how we actually change one another’s behavior,” but refuses to engage with the ethical implications of such a claim. I note that your attempt to persuade me (inducing cognitive dissonance) isn’t one of the four methods that Brony mentioned.
Raging Bee
Sure, but that’s not a reason to engage in unethical behavior.
qwints, why do you assume that operant conditioning is *always* unethical?
Is it unethical to give ‘gold stars’ to little kids when they behave well at school? That’s positive reinforcement right there.
When you put down an absolute that operant conditioning is unethical, you are making a blatantly false statement.
Funny you should mention gold stars.
Punished by Rewards – The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. Here’s an article discussing the concepts in that book. See also “A Fine is a Price” and the concept of Learned Helplessness.
*shakes head* I’ll just go back in time and tell my horrifically ADHD self that she shouldn’t be happy to get to ding that silly bell when she managed to complete a homework assignment, because that was the only way I *ever* completed homework.
My rewards at work for a job well done tend to include more responsibilities, which fills me with pride (my ‘gold star’) that people I admire so much consider me competent. Being told “Good job today”, because that is a rarity that comes only on excellent days, also fills me with joy. I’ll get right on squishing that reaction down, because apparently being rewarded is going to make my job a drudgery.
What complete and utter bullshit.
@qwints 149
Funny how you became a complete and utter coward again and refused to engage with,
That’s what I meant by a “social exchange” in #125. If you are not willing to give you will get little, and some mockery in addition.
That last comment was drunk posting. It’s not an excuse, just being honest about how I missed the fact that quints’s comment did in fact have to do with what Rowan posted.
I meant to point out how quints did nothing to show how that link supported what they were saying, but fuck intentions. I think I’m done for today.
Regarding “On the Malleability of Automatic Attitudes”:
The finding is that by presenting images of famous and generally well-regarded African Americans along with images of infamous, poorly regarded white people, you can skew prejudices as tested 24 hours. Which does not seem like a practical or useful strategy (and ironically, despite the complaints about rewards not being long-term enough in effect, we have no evidence that this does anything in the long-term).
Regarding “Inducing Hypocrisy….”:
How is inducing hypocrisy and changing prejudice through that fashion:
1. Distinct ethically from any kind of punishment.
2. Ethically superior to rewarding non-racist behavior.
(In addition, it defines the racism that it is observing, “aversive racism”, as low in explicit and high in explicit racism. Which is not the kind of racism we are talking about down in r/coontown….)
Regarding “Beyond Freedom and Dignity”:
Skinner wanted to go “Beyond Freedom” because he didn’t believe in free will. He wanted to go “Beyond Dignity” because he defined dignity as giving credit or blame to someone for their actions, which he deemed inappropriate, because again, he argued there was no free will. In addition, he argues against punishment here, calling it ineffective.
Regarding Skinner and behaviorism:
Skinner retired in 1974. The behaviorism of Skinner would be regarded as “radical behaviorism” today. (The fields that psychologists create seldom stay static.) The state of behaviorism today is that it has not remained nearly as “pure” from the influence of cognitive psychology. The most prominent behavioral therapies and behaviorists also use cognitive approaches. (For the one big example I could find perusing wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_C._Hayes)
Regarding Lovaas and his horrible studies:
Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder by the APA until 1973. In addition, Institutional Review Boards came about in 1974. Before that time, we have:
Stanford Prison Experiment.
Milgram Experiment.
Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
Willowbrook School hepatitis studies
Radiation experiments on uninformed subjects.
Regarding the Judge Rotenberg Center:
Quoted from the wikipedia article for it:
It is one egregious example, but it is the exception, not the rule. And also there has been some progress, even there:
Regarding “Punished By Rewards”:
Here is an article about the author: http://blogs.britannica.com/2009/02/alfie-kohn-is-bad-for-you-and-dangerous-for-your-children/
(The title is a mockery of Kohn’s style)
Rather telling, Alfie Kohn is not a psychologist himself.
(In addition, reading the article about the topics of the book, I note that the best the content does is call into question the efficacy of rewards. Which is hardly a question of ethics.)
I feel distinctly like I am dealing with a Gish Gallop here….
Because I couldn’t simply look away, even more articles about Alfie Kohn (most of them just as humorous as the previous):
http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com/2009/01/bad-political-argumentation.html
http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2008/12/12/eich-bin-ein-reformer-ii/
http://edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2012/half-crazy-half-true.html
http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2006/08/alfie-kohn-dangerous-jackass.html
And the first of a three part series here: http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2009/02/intellectual-dishonesty-of-alfi-kohn.html
Rowan #151
I’m glad it worked for you.
Anteprepro #154
Let me try to focus my points:
1) Operant conditioning is not an ethical way to change people’s behavior;
You’re right in #135 that this is too broad a claim. Using operant conditioning in a context of communication and consent (e.g. CBT) is ethical. To the extent that honest communication or other unobjectionable behavior can be classified as operant conditioning, it is ethical. Using it in an attempt to forcefully impose one’s will on others is not (e.g. Rekers, JRC or pick up artists). Brony’s proposed program in #126 felt much more reminiscent of the unethical latter in its disregard of the targets’ beliefs and attitudes.
2) There are other ways to change people’s behavior besides operant conditioning
I don’t think anyone besides Brony is seriously challenging this. You’re right that it’s really hard to get conclusive long-term data – that’s just a nature of how complex people are. Priming (as in the Malleability study) is a well established way to change behavior, but is not operant conditioning. Appeals to the people’s intellectual consistency (the hypocrisy study) or emotion (the empathy study) are similarly well established alternatives to operant conditioning. Finally, providing people useful models (like the Racial Identity Development theories) can influence people’s beliefs which affects their behavior.
3) Operant conditioning doesn’t always work
This is less important, because it obviously works to some extent in some contexts (e.g. slot machines). Your criticism of Kohn is solid, but there’s very good evidence that extrinsic reinforcement and punishment sometimes don’t produce the effect that behaviorism would expect. At least some kinds of rewards can sap motivation Deci 2001 (finding that monetary rewards sapped intrinsic motivation while positive verbal feedback helped), though it appears possible to design reward systems that do not Abramovich 2013. (Finding merit badges tended to increase motivation in low performing students while participation badges had no or a negative effect). Similarly, punishments don’t always cause people to try to avoid the punishment, as learned helpless studies have shown. In addition, formalizing punishments may recontextualize social obligations into business obligations, which can actually cause the punished behavior to increase, as the study about daycares in Israel suggested.