Rebecca Watson has a very good summary of her SXSW panel on Reddit. Reddit has an introspection problem (they don’t) and a criticism problem (they don’t accept it, even when they have a serious problem that needs correcting).
The panel then moved on to discussing where Reddit came from, how it differed from other forums and communities, and how its features have impacted both the internal community and the outside world.
On that last point, I talked a bit about how I think that Reddit’s shared values of “freedom of speech” and anonymity combine with the “karma” voting system to create an ideal environment for the proliferation and normalization of bigotry and hate. I showed screenshots that I grabbed from just the previous few days of posts on r/ShitRedditSays, with credit given and a brief detour for us to talk about whether the existence of a self-critical subreddit like SRS is cause for hope (my answer being “no,” because SRS is popularly seen by other Redditors not as a helpful part of Reddit but as a hateful, misguided, humorless, and occasionally dangerous outside threat, an idea that supports my forthcoming point that Redditors hate and resist criticism). I pointed out that the karma system resulted in bigoted ideas being not just tolerated but rewarded, sometimes by people thinking they were being edgy and ironic and sometimes by actual hate groups like Stormfront, a racist forum that encourages users to game Reddit so that their ideology is represented prominently.
Free speech is a good thing except when you fetishize it to such a degree that it gets elevated well above personal responsibility.
Also, I think the majority of Reddit users are basically good people; their success at promoting great causes (which Rebecca talks about) is testimony to that. However, by refusing to address reasonable limits on what ought to be said, they’ve privileged a tiny minority of trolls and wreckers and parasites who love to rampage and ruin the site’s reputation for others…and management vacillates over doing anything about it, because they seem to think they need to worship the 4chan version of ‘free speech’.
Seriously: does encouraging the existence of a “jailbait” forum that tramples over the civil rights of the targets of their surreptitious photography represent a net increase in civil liberty, or a net decrease? If that’s what you care about, this ideal of personal freedom, then handing it to abusers at the expense of the innocent is not advancing your goals at all. Unless your goal is just making cheap porn and trampling on women.
A nice illustration of the problem:
As an outsider it seems to me that motto Reddit operates under is “anything goes except criticism!”
Coincidence… I just wrote a piece criticising atheists and the r/circlejerk on reddit for attacking and defending Liberty University for the entirely wrong things.
part of it is the wide acceptance of southparkism: no stance is the best stance
I used to enjoy Imgur, which had a fairly supportive community and the trolls and outspoken bigots would be downvoted. Then the 4chan ethos that’s infected Reddit migrated over there, to the point where you’ll be downvoted into oblivion for suggesting that maybe, just maybe, everybody should downvote the troll leaving hate speech everywhere. “Not your personal army!” is the response to that. “STFU, white knight!” being the response to anyone arguing against sexism (because, of course, “there are no girls on the internet”). Sure, there are good people still around there, but I have no desire to be one if I have to wade through that crap.
It almost seems as though the karma system actually encourages this mindset. YouTube is just the more incoherent version of this, really. All of these sites have similar systems for upvoting/downvoting, and a similar swaggering faux cynicism that’s really just a defense of the status quo.
also the peach heads seem to play this game where you get more respect as a braver more principled hero the more atrocious things you tolerate.
“I’m such a believer in free speech I will defend racism!”
“oh yeah I’m such a defender I’ll defend Nazis!”
“I got you beat, I’ll tolerate rapists”
Etc
until you hit the arbitrary limit (often kiddy porn) upon which they use thier outage to that as proof that they are moral and principled really really.
Ffs: tv tropes at one point listed 4chan as an example of alien morality people buy into this garbage so much
Could Reddit be seen as the ultimate example of libertarianism in action?
no we have Somalia for that
I thought that Somalia would be Libertarian paradise. I don’t see them lining up to move there.
I think that free speech needs to be supported even when it is unpleasant. I do question whether this support should be automatically be extended to anonymous free speech. If you are not willing to identify with your hate speech, you don’t deserve protection.
Ing
Yep. Couple that with the karma system and you have the perfect storm for nastiness.
First, there’s the ultimate in slacktivism (“Why should I call out or challenge these bigoted ideas? I already downvoted them!“).
Then, there’s the ability for bigots and trolls to do the exact same thing to all who disagree with them without ever being openly challenged.
And then as the nasty mixer to bring it all together is the push for “tolerance.”
And so anyone who might actually argue against the bigots and trolls gets slapped down for being intolerant. Direct confrontation becomes not only difficult (because you can be downvoted into oblivion), but actively undesirable. Those willing to push things nastier and nastier win.
It’s not really championing “free speech” at all. The majority literally has the means to silence the minority, and even if the majority may not be bigoted, they think that to be tolerant they should downvote anyone who’s cruel enough to publicly complain about someone else’s FREEZE PEACH.
no it doesn’t need to be supported, just not oppressed. there’s no moral obligation to play cheerleader
it does amuse me that reddit has downvotes. Meaning free speech is absolute until the majority disagrees with it.
These days things are improving in Somalia, at least in the region around the capital.
Freeze peaches for bigots and perverts, but not for their victims or the people who fight against them.
Ladies and gentlemen, the best of the internet! And to think I complained about 4chan…
I’m not familiar with Reddit, but Rebecca Watson sounds like she’s making valid points (as usual.)
Years ago I used to hang out on IRC (Internet Relay Chat.) The chatrooms had a lot of diversity and this of course included its share of trolls, bigots, misogynists, and general assholes coming into different rooms and doing the sorts of things these folks tend to do. Different rooms had different rules on what would get the kick/ban and there were the same arguments about free speech (some of them valid, some of them not, some of them in gray area.)
I’m not sure if my own experience has anything at all to say regarding Reddit, but there were at least times when I personally found the bigots interesting (ok, not the ‘trolls,’ who by definition were insincere.) The IRC gave me the opportunity to do something I really couldn’t do in my real life small town — ask them questions and try to figure them out. What was their story? What were their motivations? What were their reasons? Were those the real reasons, or could you dig deeper? Could anything change their minds?
If I could handle going into #Calvinistapologetics I figured I could deal with #neonazi. You can’t respond to an “enemy” unless you know their viewpoint well enough to dismantle it — and you can’t do that unless you listen. Fortunately — with a few pointed exceptions — ideologues on the internet are usually more than happy to tell you not just what they think but why they think it. And then … eventually … you’ve got them.
Or, at least, you’ve got them listening. Not the “group” — the individuals in it.
As I said, I don’t know if this applies to Reddit or if it’s even particularly valuable. But it’s one thing I always consider when we’re talking about diversity and the inclusion of the assholes. I think there is a level — or maybe just a potential level — where they’re not screwing up the investigation: they are the investigation.
Of course, enough is enough. If you’re getting swamped then nobody is learning anything.
If I get this right you can say any fuckin thing on Reddit and that’s OK you get to “down vote” or presumably up vote anything. What they do not seem to allow is disagreement? How does that even work? I am not in need for a place to go and argue so I wont be bothering with any place like that but still seems odd.
When I have run across people like the example above it has been relatively easy to get them to do the full reveal and show themselves to be a complete worthless asshole because underneath it all they usually believe it of themselves already. The unspoken part is usually along the lines of” and all men are assholes and creeps any way”, right along with feeling of poor me I am so victimized by some part of life.
uncle frogy
Mellow Monkey and Ing — the way you describe this kind of “tolerance” it sounds like costly signaling of membership in the community. Do you think that is what’s going on?
Whatever it is, the point definitely doesn’t seem to be about tearing down social barriers and helping people overcome them, so that they’ll be as “free” as everyone else (to realize their potential as human beings or whatever the end result should be). Some do I’m sure, but I doubt many seriously believe there’s any real harm when a Nazi experiences criticism and social pressure to stop being such a fucking Nazi (at least openly, in places where it isn’t welcome).
That’s just not the concept of “freedom” a lot of people are working with, apparently. It has no content about why or how people should be free. They just should be no matter what, in every conceivable way, because there’s no particular reason why this kind of freedom is supposed to be good or what the point of it is. It just is, period. The point of being free is to be free, and that’s all you have to say. Try asking for reasons. The best I’ve ever heard is that it’s a slippery slope to totalitarianism. That sort of sounds like it could be relevant, but it’s never clear how you get from things like criticizing/removing their content on reddit to a totalitarian state. There doesn’t seem to be a limit on how slippery this shit can get.
So people could think they’re doing it for a good reason (rather than selfishly trying to signal to others in their group); but they have this fuzzy notion in their heads, which perhaps they just haven’t thought about clearly. Or this talk of “tolerance” confuses them into thinking they have some kind of moral obligation to put up with bad shit that’s happening, or that they’re somehow brave by facing it with stoicism (more like disregarding it than facing it, but that’s the idea). Or they’re raging bigots who actually think their rights are being infringed, because they think they deserve a whole lot more than equality with the people they hate.
It also allows them to be punished. With the karma system, the community can, and does, express its actual viewpoint on these “ideas”. If you look at the actual hateful comments collected by SRS (there’s quite a few), pretty much all of them are 1-downvoted and 2-followed by a put-down reply that has higher karma than the comment in question.
The alternative is to have some committee decide on what people can read or not. Which leads to the next point:
There’s a reason for that. SRS tends to have a very low threshold for what they consider “hateful” or “bigoted”. The vile stuff does end up in there. So does a lot of other stuff (e.g. apparently SRS finds this so reprehensible, they included it twice on their current page).
garlic:
that link contained H2S
uncle frogy
I’m trying to figure out what’s not vile about that.
Who the fuck benefits from pedophiles “exploring their own sexuality” in virtual reality? Normalizing rape, more than it already is, is supposed to be good somehow, because it would prevent it from happening to real people? Or is there some better reason why it’s supposed to be good? And who the fuck says it’s a kind of “sexuality” in the first place, which we ought to have the freedom to “explore,” rather than simply exerting power over others, when the subject is raping people?
@consciousnessrazor
As if to prove my point huh?
A redditor advocates the use of virtual reality to simulate raping children.
SRS points this out.
garlic thinks SRS has a low threshold for vile.
I rest my fucking case.
I’m waiting to see someone actually commit murder on Reddit. Through the intertubes. Somehow. The point is, that could make the ‘tubes enough like “reality” with “real people” in it, so that it will count: we’ll at least know we’re not just imagining this shit. Then, I want to see it downvoted. That will give us our proof that those people are really against the really vile stuff. Maybe not all of reddit, but at least those people.
I never thought I would see Atheists furiously agreeing with one another that speech should be limited to what they believe. The cognitive dissonance is making my head explode. Thank you all for disavowing me of the notion that Atheists are able to see past their own nose, let alone ethically superior in any way.
Almost makes me hope for right-wingers to take over and shut this thing down, just so I can laugh in irony as you are suppressed by the same “peach”-suppressive culture you helped foment.
@MattieF, apparently you missed all the posts on here advocating for blasphemy laws after the Innocence of Muslims drama.
Another classic example of somebody who doesn’t understand the difference between a privately run web site and the public internet. Category error. Makes me weep for the intellectual honesty of concern trolls.
The above works quite well when you substitute Reddit with America.
MattieF
Free speech is protected from the US government, not private organizations on the internet. The US government can’t make a law to infringe on your right to speak (theoretically; they’ve been doing it since the beginning, as most countries with freedom of speech do), but no one is required to provide you a platform either. If I pay for webhosting, I’m under no obligation to allow everyone who feels like it to come and post there. My message board is not required to be a haven for Stormfront. Even the anarchist communities I’m involved in will remove people if they behave abusively, spout fascism and use hate speech. Why? Because allowing that abuse is far more damaging than removing the abusers. We don’t advocate a law against it. We simply reserve the right to choose with whom we associate and to whom we provide a platform.
And even if you take the bizarre stance that Reddit should pretend it’s the US government and not infringe on people’s free speech, it’s doing exactly what the government should not do: speech is not free there, but subject to popular vote. The majority is fully capable of silencing the minority. If you think Reddit should be held to the same standards as the US government, then it has already failed.
Speech on Reddit is already controlled. The question is whether that control is beneficial or not and if some other form of control (such as one based on humanistic ethics) would be better.
MellowMonkey, I am completely aware of that argument. I use it frequently to justify why sites have the right to remove speech they find objectionable. “Freedom of the press” belongs to the owner of the press, not its readers. But I find it ridiculous and backwards to use that justification to try to pressure sites into removing speech I or someone else finds objectionable. They have the right to tolerate objectionable content if it is consistent with their principles to do so.
so, newspapers should be just fine with publishing anything they like, and they should never ever care about backlash.
yeah…. that doesn’t work in practice now, does it.
you haven’t thought out what you’re saying there.
I’ve been a very active member of Reddit for well over 5 years (7, I think) – about the same time that I’ve been reading Pharyngula. In fact, I believe it was Reddit which introduced me to modern atheism, PZ and the “Four Horsemen”. I have been endlessly entertained by the content that Reddit gives me or directs me to. Yes, I have also been disgusted at times, but that is no different from my experience on the internet as a whole.
And just like the internet as a whole Reddit is all things, good and bad. But the great thing about Reddit: you can tailor your experience to the things you enjoy – the selection of communities is wide and diverse. If you don’t agree with MensRights or SRS, or worse, then don’t go in there. If you enjoy the echo chamber that is r/atheism, then go in and circlejerk away. If not, find a different outlet. The subscription system helps ensure that you don’t see the things that you don’t want to see (as reasonably as it can – following random links in comments is obviously done at your own risk).
Now, if laws are being broken, then something should be done. If the side admins don’t like certain content on their site, it is well within their authority to remove it. I fail to see a problem with that.
As for Reddit being unable to take criticism, I disagree. Some of the most vocal criticism of Reddit comes from within Reddit, and I see it every day. It’s true that there may be a knee-jerk reaction against outside criticism, but popular comments are usually just popular because they got in early and got a foothold on the karma. The same situation at another time could likely lead to different “top comments” which might be diametrically opposed to the first one, but just as popular.
oh hey someone else who won’t read the damn thread before commenting.
Reddit pretends to be neutral and free for everyone, but they’ve already shown they hold the rights of creepers and pedophiles above those of their victims’. All that highfalutin’ crap about freeze peach is just window dressing.
I wonder if anyone here has ever actually visited/used Reddit regularly, rather than just hearing the criticisms of others and blindly repeating them.
It is important to understand that Reddit is divided into communities called “subreddits”. The main page of reddit displays the most popular subreddits by default, but a user can configure it so it displays whichever subreddits he/she finds most interesting. The moderation/rules for posting in a given subreddit differ. In the most popular subreddits, offensive content IS removed. That means you have to actively look for the offensive content in order to find it. It isn’t as if immediately after visiting the Reddit home page you are bombarded by obscenity, and it’s very easy to completely avoid anything all that vulgar.
Moderation of most posts on reddit is primarily managed by “upvotes” or “downvotes” of ordinary users. There are moderators that can kill posts in each subreddit, but that isn’t the primary mechanism of how content is controlled — it’s mostly based on the voting of the users. Posts and comments that are upvoted rise to positions of greater prominence and are seen by more users. Downvoted posts are hidden and harder to find. If most people who view a post find a post offensive it will be downvoted and hidden.
The integrity of the voting system on Reddit is extremely important to the site as a whole. The whole point of Reddit is that it promotes posts that the users find interesting, not what the administrators of Reddit want them to see. All advertisements/promotions are clearly labeled as such. As there is a lot of ad-revenue to be had from a high-ranking post, the admins try their best to keep anyone from gaming the system (though there’s no question this happens and can’t be stopped completely, and is an ongoing battle between the admins and the voting rings). The admins bend over backwards to make it clear that they are there only to see that the site is running smoothly, not to influence the voting on the content displayed — if it were otherwise the users doing the voting would lose trust in the site as a whole. The voting system is at the heart of what Reddit is.
The source of the vulgar content criticized by this post is the isolated subreddits. Some bigot/racist/asshole will create a subreddit (anyone can create one), which has a relatively small number of members, at least compared to the large subreddits. They are completely ignored, except for other bigots/racists/assholes that seek them out since the subreddit is sufficiently small it doesn’t come anywhere near the frontpage. The result is a small, isolated part of reddit that is full of obscene garbage. Sure, they’re assholes, but they are self-contained. Even if they WERE removed from reddit they would just move to another website (4chan, probably) and the result would be the same — an isolated group of assholes existing on their own. Bigots exist. They find places to congregate. Removing just one of the many, many isolated watering holes for their ilk doesn’t solve the problem of bigotry or even contribute towards solving it.
One of the main reasonons the admins are reluctant to crack down on problematic subreddits is that the integrity of the Reddit voting system requires that they appear as neutral as possible. They can and do step in in extreme cases, and when pressured from the outside, but they err on the side of caution here. Again, there is a LOT of money at stake, and the integrity of the site is entirely dependent on the trust the users place in the admins not to take advantage of their position to arbitrarily promote posts. The admins have the motive and the means to cash in at the users expense, but the quality of the site as a whole depends on this not happening, and the users trusting that it will not happen. Any instance of the admins interfering erodes at this credibility — “If they step in here, when else would they step in? What else might they do?”
Further, beyond the pragmatic motives of the admins to err on the side of caution, I would argue that given the isolation of the subreddits the censorship proposed here is, in fact, somewhat troubling on its own. Several people have pointed out that since Reddit is a private company the constitutional requirement of freedom of speech does not apply — Reddit can choose to do whatever it wants. The constitution only prevents the government from censoring speech, not private companies. This is absolutely true, but instead of considering what is legal, consider why freedom of speech is enshrined in our constitution in the first place. The reason freedom of speech is important is that it protects the expression of unpopular ideas. There really is no absolute way to judge the quality of an idea — everyone will have an opinion. It is often a bad idea to assume that the most popular ideas are the best ideas. Very often this is not the case. The best you can do is rank ideas according to their popularity, grant access to them all, and let individual make up his or her own mind. Ideas should sink or swim based on their merits, not on what an administrator or someone else in power says is or is not allowed. Any time you have a large number of people trying to abolish the publication of certain ideas popular among a minority — not just vehemently disagreeing, but claiming that those ideas should be censored — there is the potential for abuse of a minority by a majority. It doesn’t have to be a government restricting the speech for this to be true — the principle (if not the law) applies even to a corporation such as Reddit, which is a public forum for discussion, purportedly open to all.
I’m sure the critics here are probably thinking “But.. we’re talking about bigotry and racism here! Bigots deserve to be abused a bit, given that’s what they’re advocating against others. That’s not the same as political speech, there is a good reason to censor it.” I will be the first to agree that bigots and racists cause really big problems, and that it would be great if bigotry such as what you find in the seedier parts of reddit was eradicated. However, that doesn’t mean censorship is justified. First, I would point out that censoring bigots doesn’t end the bigotry. The bigot may not be posting on Reddit but he will still be making nasty comments in public and spreading his bullshit elsewhere. Second, it IS political speech, it’s a really shitty political idea (laws that are biased against certain types of citizens), but it is political. Third, and most importantly, how do you articulate the criteria by which you say that some of these bigots deserve to be censored and others ideas are not? There are a lot of people who think all atheist literature should be censored. If you say that the bigots should be censored since they are promoting the denial of basic human rights, the Christian will make the claim that atheist literature denies some form of basic human right in some roundabout and convoluted way. I certainly don’t subscribe to that view, but the result is that you end up in a detailed argument over semantics trying to justify censorship, which both parties will come away from unsatisifed and unconvinced. It is far simpler to say simply that censorship is always bad. Always. It means you don’t have to try to draw an ambiguous line defining why it’s good to censor some ideas but not others, which will necessarily devolve into an argument over semantics. The result is some things that you may not agree with will be out there… and you are guaranteed the freedom to publicly attack and criticize them. It isn’t bigoted to say that bigots have a right to discuss their stupid ideas, it’s only bigotry if you agree with them. In the case of reddit, the bigots aren’t even spreading their beliefs as only those who already agree with them will seek out the isolated subreddits, making the case against censorship even stronger.
Voltaire didn’t actually say “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”, it was a description of Voltaire’s beliefs by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in 1906. However, it is an extremely accurate way to sum up how I (along with many other proponents of free speech) feel about this issue.
Yawn, tealdeer post of likely concern troll.
If you had actually read the thread and seen how we’ve criticized the “all speech must be protected!” claims alongside “…unless they’re downvoted!” on Reddit, you’d know your answer.
(Hint: You used a whole lot of words to tell us stuff we already know.)
Not all bigotries are unpopular.
Now that’s a great fucking argument. “Well, bigots will be bigots, they will use a platform somewhere so why not ours?”. Do you fuckers even read what you write?
@The Mellow Monkey – The only comment (other than the brief mention in the original post) I see that directly mentions the karma system is your comment #9, so let me address that. You seem to be claiming that the bigots & trolls outnumber those who are not, and that this produces a “tyranny of the majority” based on the voting (karma) system. As I pointed out above, this is only true within some small isolated, tight-knit subreddits, not on the main, prominent subreddits. You have to actively seek out the bigots before you find somewhere that they are the majority. If you disagree, can you please point out which default-front-page subreddit you think is being dominated by bigots, and why you think this is the case?
@vaiyt – You say that not all bigotries are unpopular. Let me ask you the same question I asked The Mellow Monkey above. Can you please point out which default-front-page subreddit (these are the biggest ones) you think is being dominated by bigots, and why you think this is the case?
Second, you describe only half of the relevant argument in your second quote. “Interfering with the voting system and censoring content is a really big deal and impacts the credibility of the admins across all of reddit. Tampering with that could do major damage to a lot of important things that have nothing to do with these assholes. Since no matter what bigots will be bigots they will use a platform somewhere so why not ours? It prevents us from having to deal with a lot of negative side-effects that would arise if we started censoring things and its not as if they’re doing any more harm here than elsewhere.” That’s the full argument. I tried to preserve as much of your language as possible, just added to it. If you want to attack that, feel free, but don’t ignore half of what I’m saying.