The same reason if I go to a stranger's house and start debating with them about my own political opinions they are free to kick me out.
Free enterprise and private property are generally considered fundaments of modern civil society.
Im all ears if you have an argument to the contrary.
I'm talking about private property and the right to do with it as one pleases so long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others.
When a group of people create a business this doesn't magically go away.
> In the context of business, California has already made that argument for me, making it illegal to discriminate based on political views.
Certain protected classes are legally protected from discrimination, yes.
To my knowledge "advocating violence" is not a political view; this is what the r/The_Donald is being quarantined for.
Okay, you've signalled that they do do it, but now there are not enough points of data. How many points of data is your burden of proof, before you agree?
That isn't a burden of proof though, which is what the question asked for.
You're basically saying that Reddit should never ban subreddits, which means that you don't even have a burden of proof for banning a subreddit. This means no matter what you're always against banning a subreddit on a privately owned website, yet you fawn at other reasons to justify it (fringe users, not enough data points, etc.)
Your proposed solution instead is that admins should police every user, when mods fail to, which just isn't scalable. Especially when the barrier to just creating a new account to bypass the ban is so low.
That's not entirely correct. California makes it illegal for an _employer_ to discriminate against an _employee_ based on their political views. It does not make it illegal for businesses to discriminate against _customers_ based on their political views.
Companies are not free to choose with whom they do business. There are many constraints, not the least of which is it being illegal to refuse to do business with someone because of their race, sex, sexual orientation, and, in California, political opinions. Free enterprise and private property might have been fundamentals of civil society in the past, but that ship has long sailed since then.
> Companies are not free to choose with whom they do business.
For the most part, yes they are.
For instance, every online business has a Terms of Service detailing many situations in which they will or will not do business with you.
Race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, etc. are specific situations in which governments/society have decided that its worth restricting this freedom for the greater good.
The existence of these relatively few exceptions does not negate their overall freedom to do business with whomever they please.
I don't think anyone has a scientific answer on what is "representative" of the sub besides it's clear support for the president, but honestly it doesn't seem out of line with my experiences of the_donald.
That's not entirely correct. California makes it illegal for an _employer_ to discriminate against an _employee_ based on their political views. It does not make it illegal for businesses to discriminate against _customers_ based on their political views.
Wouldn’t it be invasive to demand that anyone handle anyone else’s business? There’s two freedoms being negotiated there, and the law origins basically boil down to — by emphasizing the business owners freedom the market should be able to support a solution for the other (or you go build that business, if it is needed). Total freedom in that system is higher than in the one that demands anyone do business with anyone.
R_TheDonald is a forum on someone’s product, there’s a low barrier erected here, they could go buy a url and some servers and continue their speech.
It's a step in the direction to fascism, that doesn't mean it is fascist. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The downvote button is part of a ranking algorithm from the userbase, deboosting is part of the ranking algorithm from the host. Would you like it if a "platform" tied an anchor on your success/views because they didn't agree with your opinions? Since you believe in the paradox of tolerance do you agree that the US shouldn't let Islamic migrants come due to their belief in vile things such as throwing gays off roofs?
> It's a step in the direction to fascism, that doesn't mean it is fascist.
Insisting a private business promote any and all content from anyone whatsoever, no matter how abhorrent or anti-social, in a specific way, seems like a bigger step in the wrong direction.
Content is removed from Reddit every day for violating various subreddit policies; the only thing changing here is the way /r/The_Donald is presented with the rest of the site.
> Since you believe in the paradox of tolerance do you agree that the US shouldn't let Islamic migrants come due to their belief in vile things such as throwing gays off roofs?
The USSR heavily censored content, were they stepping closer to fascism? I don't think you're using facism in the right context here, maybe you meant something else?
As someone else pointed out, Reddit's not a democracy so they're not starting as one either. Unless you count their private corporation as a democracy of sorts, but then they're most likely acting in their shareholders' interests. Maybe you meant the word authoritarian instead of fascist?
The US is a democratic republic and they are a US based company, so they should lean towards the laws under which they exist. I'm not playing this semantics game with you.
I disagree completely. This is the same thing as the paradox of tolerance. If you want a tolerant society, you have to be intolerant against intolerance. If you want a non-fascist society you need to be fascist against fascism. Otherwise the intolerant/fascist side gains a platform and turns the community intolerant or fascist overall.
"If you want a non-fascist society you need to be fascist against fascism." This statement says it all, the ends justify the means. Sounds like every terrible dictator or authoritarian society that has existed on the Earth so far.
That's a good parallel actually. There are immune system diseases where the system kills the good cells too because it can't discriminate correctly. You're right!
You are correct that fascists aren't the only ones who censor. But that doesn't make it something that should be a normal part of a free, democratic society. (Your Soviet and CCP examples highlight that, which may have been your point.)
You could also say that “not listening to speech you despise is a step in the direction of fascism,” and it’s an equally empty statement. I mean, I guess it’s technically true. But it also means that literally everybody is a virulent and unrepentant fascist in their social lives.
Remaining unbiased in the secular/science domain is critical to the future of humanity. If you are going to be biased, please at least do your research. Don't just browse twitter and think you are informed.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by a government[5], private institutions, and corporations.
That's the first definition I found when I googled the word. Reddit, a private institution, considered the content harmful. Seems to fit the definition.
Based on that definition it cannot be assumed that censorship is always wrong. For example, removing a post that was doxxing an individual would be considered censorship but could also be the moral thing to do.
I would also point out that the_donald has a very aggressive moderation policy where most comments critical of the president are removed, so I don't think there is much room for them to complain about censorship.
Deplatforming, shadow banning, deboosting, demonetization are all modern forms of censorship. It might not be exactly like the Chinese or other types of censorships we have seen in the past but it is a valid form of censorship. Definitions aren't everything, context matters. If you want to see a rising power filled with authoritarianism, look towards Google.
China kills people who speak out against the government killing people. Reddit is literally still broadcasting everything /r/the_donald wants, they just aren't linking to it as much. I don't think that's the same as murdering individuals for political speech.
Brand new accounts posting trollish or flamebaity stuff get treated differently. Software filters some of those, and we shadowban some of them, especially if there's evidence that this is someone we've banned many times before. The converse is also true: if software has filtered out a new account that's not posting trollishly or flamebaitily, we restore their posts and mark the account legit so it won't happen again.
I think this is a reasonable balance between transparency and defending the site against abuse. If we tried to give every banned account the same high-effort attention that we give established users, we'd do nothing else all day and still not get through them all. That would just be a new vector for people to DoS the moderators. A small number of abusive users can create a large number of disruptions. Shadowbanning is an appropriate tool for those cases.
Edit: there is also a significant amount of spam, and if we told spammers we were banning them, they would spam us with emails demanding attention, asking why, and telling us how high-quality their articles really are. Actually they do this a lot already, and it's a pain.
These kinds of comments make me so disappointed. You are out of touch. Labeling people that you don’t understand as “fascist” is going to lead you to a shithole.
Get out of your bubble, arm yourself with some compassion, and go try and understand what motivates people to disrupt the status quo. Most trump supporters hate fascism. You are deluding yourself by tossing a mr. yuck sticker on people you don’t understand.
So the guy tried to swim across Rio Grande, killed himself and his child in the process of doing so, and this somehow means that Trump government is fascist? Well, I guess that would make sense if he tried to swim to escape from the US, but seems like he actually was trying to get inside the "fascist" state. The kids in cages are also there because the parents tried very hard to get them inside the "fascist" state. Seems pretty irresponsible on their side, to put their children in the "fascists" hands, doesn't it?
No, the authoritarian (anti-media, judge filling, etc) and nationalistic (trade wars, rejecting international treaties, etc) policies do. The human stories are just the result of those policies.
Can you explain how the authoritarian and nationalistic policies make humans so eager to get here that try to swim across Rio Grande with their child tucked under the shirt?
It's not the policies, it's the long period of the USA being a high income and (relatively) low crime country in comparison to neighboring countries. Which I don't attribute to any individual president.
I'm not GP, but your straw man is just as disappointing.
- Nobody here is saying trump supporters are fascists.
- Nobody here is even saying that the_donald subreddit represents all of Trump supporters.
So why are you playing that card?
GP is talking about the effectiveness of the deplatforming of hate speech in context to a subreddit that has been reported as inciting violence. The same subreddit that supported the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally that resulted in a Neo-Nazi murdering Heather Heyer.
Whether or not you think that extends to all Trump supporters, and are disappointed by that, is your own inference. Don't attack GP because of it though.
>>Nobody here is even saying that the_donald subreddit represents all of Trump supporters.
So why are you playing that card?
Because of the following comments:
>>“On the contrary. Deplatforming fascism works[1]. This removes a small number of tools that they use to recruit. It is step in the right direction.”
I regret engaging in this discussion. I guess it’s time to give up on trying to understand each other’s point of view, because disagreement is currently seen as a personal attack on HN.
Literally the next comment (at the time I read this, by asdfgasd) literally begins with "Trump supporters are fascists". It's flagged and dead, but it's there (if you have showdead turned on).
asdfgasd is not the GP, who the commenter before me is propping up a straw man against and attacking. They commenter before me is the one talking about all of trump supporters being facist before asdfgasd even commented, so how is what you are saying relevant?
1. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-ba...