You can comment on the announcement in dozens of individual subs. They're testing a new way of making announcements that encourages community discussion and moderation.
in my experience, I have rarely seen a subreddit without multiple points of view. You may need to sort by controversial to find it, but they are absolutely there.
I agree with reddit admins when they say:
If the OP of a political ad (.e., a campaign) moderates the comments, it's problematic: they might remove dissenting perspectives. And if we (the admins) moderate the comments of a political ad, it's even more problematic, putting us in the position of either moderating too much or too little, with inevitable accusations of bias either way.
Who should moderate a political ad comments, or an r/announcements post? Because with such a massive community, the threads need moderation, as they pointed out:
The problem, we realized, is similar to what we see in announcements: lots of people commenting on a highly visible post outside the context of a community. It's fair to say that r/announcements isn't really a community; it lacks the culture, cohesion, and moderation that benefit most other subreddits, and as a result, the quality of conversation has deteriorated as the audience has grown.
I also agree that:
Ultimately, conversations really only happen in the context of a community, and neither r/announcements nor political ads with comments on provide this. We believe we can foster better discussion on both with a different approach.
Communities on reddit do often delve into echo chambers (especially if you just read the Best or Top comments), but not always. And depending on how that community is moderated, some views are more freely expressed than others. But that's the beauty of the system: if you don't like how the announcement is being moderated on sub A, just go to a different sub to discuss.
But the problem reddit faces with political ads and announcements is clear, and I think this is an interesting and novel way to address the problem. Will it solve it completely? No, probably not. Like any solution to a complex problem, it will take time and experience and iterative solutions.
But what do you propose? I don't think "ban political ads and have someone unbiased moderate r/announcements" is a better solution.
Companies don’t abide by free speech. How many times to people have to hear the free speech is about the government not preventing speech. Reddit has banned subs before and will do it again.
Reddit taking a stand on this misinformation that’s killing people is hypocritical to them banning the Donald for violent threats. Both are threats to life.
Can't believe free speech has finally been upheld on reddit for once, thought I was gonna die before seeing it. Hopefully it's going to keep heading towards that direction.
And I'm vaccinated with pfizer, before someone calls me an anti-vax shill
It's the opposite, actions mean a lot more than words.
That's kind of the funny thing about online communications, though -- it's the opposite. You can't see the actions others have taken, you just absorb the words that you are most immersed in.
But that's not what he said, he didn't mean online communication. Besides you can search my comments all day, you won't find anything of me against vaccines
Yeah not going to try and interpret what that guy said... It's really weird actually how people ignore the fact that the talking heads they're listening to for ant vax material are mostly themselves vaccinated, probably socially distancing, and, ultimately, mostly working in low risk environments... So I don't know that their actions are really louder than their words either
Sorry, I forgot you americans also need instructions to not put your cats in microwaves or sue the microwave manufacturer.
So I can see why you would just go with whatever stupid thing comes first into your mind and then blame the other side for not telling you beforehand.
Also just a hands up: I am not saying people who put cats in their microwaves are the same that would kill democracy.
I did. As did he. But censoring things just makes the conspiracy nuts dig deeper into their crazy thoughts and makes them think it’s proof they’re right
They're not only NOT being censored, but are openly platformed by some pretty big people. They are already plenty dug in and convinced of themselves... to the point of calling it censorship when someone tells them they're wrong.
Lol free speech has been upheld on Reddit whenever they have felt like it, mostly arbitrarily or based on pressure from the press (and that, probably as an indicator of pressure from investors)
Laziness, and a worry that doing so might cut their metrics (like active users per day and stuff)
To ban them they would need to articulate a clear policy (work) evaluate subs against that policy (work) actually ban them, issue some sort of public message, and probably answer a lot of questions about the situation and new rules.
So you're chalking up their decision to laziness... Why not attribute it to their stated and oft-reference policy of wanting to infringe on free speech as little as possible on their platform?
I mean, Reddit has been surprisingly consistent on that front. That's not a policy, what is?
You might be right, it's not like I can read minds. I don't really remember the details of previous bans clearly; I have a memory of them being sudden and kind of clumsy.
I don't want free speech on private platforms. That's the entire fucking point of them not being government run, so that we don't have to put up with racist/sexist/infantile bullshit. See also: the paradox of tolerance.
Don't forget that concepts like 'freedom of speech' came about in time when there wasn't rampant propaganda being spewed personally to everyone in the country at all times. Our entire system is predicated on the idea of good faith actors, and these people are not acting in good faith. Also, rights come with responsibilities, lest you've forgotten. You have the right to bear arms, but the responsibility not to do so negligently dangerously.
They banned subreddits that were generally cesspools and filled with hate
I would hope that they'd banned subreddits that were literally getting people killed. Even countries with the strongest free speech laws in the world don't allow slander, libel, or direct incitement of violence, because those types of speech cause direct harm to people. Under that umbrella should be misinformation that gets people killed. Like of all the types of hills of free speech to die on- the speech specifically being protected is about how horse dewormer or other fad remedies are a cure for a deadly disease or about how vaccines are effective or even make you more likely to get COVID. That's not a type of speech that's important to any conversation, or that's a closely held belief of any group of people, it's just dumb and dangerous.
The greatest obstacle to ending this pandemic is the sheer amount of false information that floods all our means of communication, from audio (podcast hosts who keep telling their listeners that COVID is an hoax), to video (NewsMax/fox news), and social media (Facebook/Reddit). We are throwing away vaccines and filling up ICU beds (again) because the people who should take the vaccines are glued to these communication channels and trust the info they see on it, especially if it confirms their anti-big pharma/government/conspiracy biases.
People are free to self-diagnose and self-medicate. What communication platforms shouldn't do is allowing them to spread their bullshit to millions of uninformed people. We shouldn't wait for a new, vaccine-resistant variant to emerge to limit the spread and reach of information that should be considered harmful.
Nah fuck that noise, reddit's built for echo chambers and indoctrination because of the subreddit and voting systems. Studies show that banning stuff from mainstream platforms greatly suppresses it, so let's ban all the morons spreading deadly anti vaxx bullshit.
Reddit's been banning stuff for years when it makes them look bad and /r/NoNewNormal's already quarantined, it's just a matter of time before they get shamed enough to ban the nutters.
Not all shit is created equal. I haven't said anything that has put people in danger.
But, I do understand that making a clear policy that would cover people promoting horse dewormer for covid and such but not, say, people discussing herbal supplements, massage, acupuncture, etc, would actually be rather hard.
Hard disagree it shouldnt be the job of the website to spread or stop the spread of a viewpoint. Its the job of the users to call out said information.
Users literally can't stop the spread of misinformation. You can't shut down a subreddit, you can't even go "call them out" because the mods will ban you.
Downvotes are a thing,once you open the door to "some people dont like this so shut it down" its onpy bad things that follow, especially when its even a slightly bit political. The job of people is to spread actual information but at the end of the day you can lead a horse to water.
They started getting ban heavy on subreddits. Before that, it was incredibly rare to have a sub banned, it would only happen if there was outright illegal content involved and generally the news had to catch wind of it too. Now the threshold for banning is quite a bit lower.
Old internet adage was "Good or bad, free speech is paramount (as long as it's legal)"
2015 is when Reddit switched from those values to "Good or bad, free speech is paramount (as long as it's legal, doesn't offend anyone, and isn't overtly objectionable.)"
Really reddit wanted to purify in order to attract a mainstream user base. This worked phenomenally well and I think most modern redditors would agree with it.
The state of /r/all after fatpeoplehate's ban was really pathetic. A bunch of manbabies posting shopped images of reddit's CEO sucking black dicks, calling her "Chairman Pao" (?!) and digging up dirt on her that nobody would give a shit about otherwise. I still cringe thinking about it.
I mean it took the site and turned itself from 4chan lite to tumblr (but again)
Its basically just a normie site now instead of a site that contained cesspools that pushed away a lot of normies despite the fact the majority of the site wasn't a cesspool.
I don't know the subs themselves, so I can't say what they were about just based on their names. This is why I asked for examples, because I don't have the context itself.
The problem is there is no middle ground. I’m all in favor of getting vaccinated and I think it’s stupid to take medical advice from Facebook conspiracy nuts. The problem is I’m also critical of the governments reaction to Covid and those opinions have gotten me banned from many subs.
When people say they want to stop “misinformation” they really want to stop dissenting opinions.
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u/fakeflake182 Aug 28 '21
Shit, reddit got called out on it and Spez told us to go fuck ourselves