> And for what it's worth, I don't think The_Donald should be banned either. People have a right to speak, and we can ignore them if we want - or we can at least try to engage.
The thing is, with The_Donald, I don't think anyone could reasonably actually try to engage. Their subreddit has and had some of the most heavy-handed moderation. Read their rules on "concern trolling" [1] to get a hint of what kind of things they regularly removed. If you read their full rules, you quickly realize that not being a Trump supporter is a top level rule as well. They were a self proclaimed endless rally, and anything that doesn't fit their narrative was removed.
In my opinion, how notoriously heavy handed their moderation was probably amplified how upset the admins were that they had to regularly step in and clean up content. Anti-trump comments are almost always removed within minutes, and so the idea that they were incapable of moderating away things which violated the site guidelines is easily busted.
> "Deplatforming" whole groups because of their political views
But it's not because of their political views, it was because of how they ran their community. There's a huge difference here. There are plenty of conservative communities that remain on Reddit today. The difference is that those communities have chosen to cultivate and moderate a different environment. T_D cultivated a community that produced problematic content on the regular. They amplified the visibility of that problematic content by hiding downvote buttons and making it more difficult to report. They prevented any sort of self-policing in the community with heavy handed moderation that removed any dissenting opinions on almost any topic. For all the cries about censorship, censorship was at the heart of how T_D was run. Any hopes that you had of interaction with better adjusted individuals providing a counterbalance to the predominant content were removed.
In short, T_D is quarantined because they have intentionally developed a toxic echochamber that amplified content that the reddit administrators view as objectively bad enough to ban site-wide. It's not a matter of political views, it's a matter of views on how to run a healthy community, and a true community T_D is not.
Right, and r/politics, which is the left leaning version of T_D, doesn’t have any reprimands despite having frequent calls of violence against cops. It’s a double standard.
You probably wouldn't have seen those comments, with mostly single digit points, on TD either. They'd be buried deep, well beyond the point most people read the comments.
TD has the population of a midsize city. Of course there are a few violent comments if you look hard enough.
This is like quarantining Hollywood because a few celebrities made death threats in 2017.
Still, /r/the_politics has the population of a large city, so by that logic, if they have these frequent calls of violence against the cops then it should be easy to point those out, right?
Also, if it's now the case that these cop-violence-inciting comments are hidden everywhere, then why does it matter if /r/politics has them too in the first place?
"Get a Rope" is not the same as saying pick up a rifle against cops.
Again, that's not the same as just talking about the effects of riots, and at this point I think you have cognitive bias by thinking these things are the same.
This isn't a refutation of a single thing that I said. "There's calls for violence elsewhere" doesn't negate any point I made. Do these communities have similar heavy-handed moderation practices? Do they also break tooling that communities use to self-police like the downvote button or report button? Do they also have rules that openly and proudly ban any posts or content that doesn't fit with their narrative?
This ban wasn't about an isolated instance of calls for violence slipping through. It is the culmination of years of cultivating a community and moderation practices that have made the admins have to interfere a disproportionate amount relative to the rest of reddit. You can find examples of bad behavior from individuals on any subreddit, but can you find a pattern of behavior that breeds and incites it driven by the moderators of a community itself?
It’s now becoming obvious the 20-something heroes who’ve taken power from the techies who built these platforms are ensuring the US doesn’t make the same mistake it did in 2016.
Considering Trump won close to 50% of the vote - regardless of that silly electoral college - I don’t see this ending like they think it will.
The thing is, with The_Donald, I don't think anyone could reasonably actually try to engage. Their subreddit has and had some of the most heavy-handed moderation. Read their rules on "concern trolling" [1] to get a hint of what kind of things they regularly removed. If you read their full rules, you quickly realize that not being a Trump supporter is a top level rule as well. They were a self proclaimed endless rally, and anything that doesn't fit their narrative was removed.
In my opinion, how notoriously heavy handed their moderation was probably amplified how upset the admins were that they had to regularly step in and clean up content. Anti-trump comments are almost always removed within minutes, and so the idea that they were incapable of moderating away things which violated the site guidelines is easily busted.
> "Deplatforming" whole groups because of their political views
But it's not because of their political views, it was because of how they ran their community. There's a huge difference here. There are plenty of conservative communities that remain on Reddit today. The difference is that those communities have chosen to cultivate and moderate a different environment. T_D cultivated a community that produced problematic content on the regular. They amplified the visibility of that problematic content by hiding downvote buttons and making it more difficult to report. They prevented any sort of self-policing in the community with heavy handed moderation that removed any dissenting opinions on almost any topic. For all the cries about censorship, censorship was at the heart of how T_D was run. Any hopes that you had of interaction with better adjusted individuals providing a counterbalance to the predominant content were removed.
In short, T_D is quarantined because they have intentionally developed a toxic echochamber that amplified content that the reddit administrators view as objectively bad enough to ban site-wide. It's not a matter of political views, it's a matter of views on how to run a healthy community, and a true community T_D is not.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5asj7o/announce...