I think this is a little dramatic. It's not about censorship of "unsafe opinions" - you are free to hold your opinion and talk about it, just not on Reddit. It's akin to a hotel owner disallowing a Klan meeting in the conference room. I think any business owner deserves that right.
> The policies are not exactly clear-cut
I dunno, the blog post seems fairly clear cut to me. It's not about blocking content, it's about blocking subreddits whose sole purpose was harassment of individuals.
> It's akin to a hotel owner disallowing a Klan meeting in the conference room. I think any business owner deserves that right.
Sure. But if your business derives its customer base from its longstanding support of freewheeling speech, more than a little pushback is to be expected.
> I dunno, the blog post seems fairly clear cut to me. It's not about blocking content, it's about blocking subreddits whose sole purpose was harassment of individuals.
If your only context is the blog post, it seems exceptionally clear. From following some of the discussions, I'm also aware that they came down on exactly five subreddits while ignoring many others. In a few cases, they appear to have tacitly approved of some.
So the result is that it's not clear what they come down on, why, when, or what gets their attention. Except bad PR - that seems to work miracles.
Business owners deserve that right, certainly. I don't have to patronize the businesses that won't cater to everyone; Internet forums would do well to remember the definition of forum, and realize that they outmode themselves when they stray from it.
Tell me; Would you support that same hotel owner disallowing the NAACP from renting a room? He disagrees with their economic views. Would you support him ignoring requests from GLAAD, because their color scheme doesn't fit with his drab hotel? Private enterprise refusing to serve those they disagree with should be treated no differently than any other form of bigotry.
I don't think anyone's saying reddit isn't within their legal rights to remove that or any other subreddit. They're saying that by banning fph, reddit violates the spirit of the community they've built up, and generally make reddit a shitter place.
I think this is a something without general and clear-cut answer. I don't think there is something inherently wrong if you run a hotel only for women or people of a specific religion, probably because your offering is tailored to your audience in some way. But if every hotel would start to randomly decided to set up rules who can and can not stay there, I would definitely see this as a case of discrimination. There is tension between your right to run your business the way you like and the right of your potential customers to not be discriminated and there seems not to be a general and easy way to draw the line.
There are easy ways to draw the line. There are also comfortable ways to draw the line. There are precious few that are both. Therein, I submit, lies the tension.
I think this is a little dramatic. It's not about censorship of "unsafe opinions" - you are free to hold your opinion and talk about it, just not on Reddit. It's akin to a hotel owner disallowing a Klan meeting in the conference room. I think any business owner deserves that right.
> The policies are not exactly clear-cut
I dunno, the blog post seems fairly clear cut to me. It's not about blocking content, it's about blocking subreddits whose sole purpose was harassment of individuals.