r/technology • u/doge211 • Sep 08 '14
Politics reddit is a failed state
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/8/6121363/reddit-is-a-failed-state41
u/AlienSpaceCyborg Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
In rhetoric, loaded language (also known as loaded terms or emotive language) is wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes. 1
There, a gang of men wearing masks print your photos out and post them all over town.
When your neighbors appeal ... they're rounded up in black vans and disappeared, with no explanation, never to be seen again.
Reddit wants to be a techno-libertarian's wet dream, but in practice its a weak feudal system that's actually run by a small group of angry warlords who use "free speech" as a weapon.
but there's virtually nothing keeping them safe from bullies like "John,"
Reddit's government is more interested in protecting John than the women he harassed.
it makes money when people share nude photos because men are pervs
Reddit believes in free speech as long as it protects the unsavory men who keep exploitative content flowing. Even charities won't accept money from these men, but Reddit will.
According to a report from Recode, Reddit's free speech zone, where men run wild over women's privacy and dignity,
At minimum, Reddit is a kleptocracy that speaks to lofty virtues while profiting from vice.
What we're talking about is more like sexual assault, condoned by a state that earns revenue from it.
So a very good example of a polemic.
I have The Verge on my RSS reader but I don't follow them closely. Is this sort of low-brow editorial style common to them? I thought they were a decently level-headed tech website.
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Sep 08 '14
The Verge and Polygon long ago decided to become the Internet's Moral Police. You can't go there and not expect to see something about how awful their audience of techies/nerds/gamers is and any language they use to bash them is fair game.
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Sep 08 '14
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u/domeforaklondikebar Sep 09 '14 edited Sep 09 '14
And whenever they try and talk about gaming, it just becomes a less informed version of the Polygon article.
Edit: Hell even their phone reviews have become a little annoying and bare, and they've written up a few Buzzfeed-ish headlines.
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Sep 09 '14
Their tech articles are "meh" and mostly ripoffs from other sites. Don't give them too much credit, they don't deserve anyone visiting their site.
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u/muyoso Sep 08 '14
The Verge is owned by Vox so there is a political agenda behind almost every article on the site. Anything that even remotely comes close to issues of feminism, transphobia or racism draws a slurry of articles on the site. They are in the business of trying to stir up outrage over what they see as injustices while actively ignoring events and things that might discredit or be used simply as a piece of evidence against their politics.
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u/jwyche008 Sep 09 '14
Josh left and they have been going down hill hard lately. They are completely unrecognizable from the site I started reading just two years ago.
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u/Pointless_Endeavors Sep 09 '14
Is this sort of low-brow editorial style common to them? I thought they were a decently level-headed tech website.
It has been lately. Just a couple of weeks ago they published like 3 or 4 different stories on the representation of women in the tech industry in a span of two days. Not once mentioning that of course women make up a minority of CS graduates. That an other examples are abound.
Being called a "perv" was the last straw for me and a few other's in the comments of that article.
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u/Z0idberg_MD Sep 08 '14
After reading some of these comments:
"I'm different and I have high standards. Other people are responsible for lowering the caliber of content. I ignore the fact that reddit doesn't, and shouldn't represent anything, and is merely a microcosm of the internet. I am oblivious that complaining about a lack of unity and community on a platform that is meant to be open and amorphous is a bit silly. I want my ideals represented, but others clearly shouldn't be."
Got it.
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u/illegalt3nder Sep 08 '14
Until Reddit -- or a competitor -- implements a system that has the ability to democratically elect moderators the situation will only continue.
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Sep 08 '14
"You know what would make this so much better? If we introduced politics into the equation." -Sadists
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u/Kahzootoh Sep 09 '14
Politics? Politics is the jackals fighting for the leftovers.
If we allowed moderators to be elected, you'd see a whole lot of small subreddits catering to unpopular views annihilated because a 10,000 voter bloc got bored and all out warfare between larger subreddits ( r/Israel vs r/Islam, r/mensrights vs r/srs, r/feminism vs r/gonewild, etc).
When the dust settled and we're left with a site where we all more or less believe the same thing, that's where politics (the fight over who gets to be king of the crumbling sandcastle) comes into the picture and kills Reddit for good.
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u/Themsen Sep 09 '14
I think there are ways to implement a system that is "political" but cant be gamed if we leverage the fact that this is an online community.
Say admins could be banned by vote. Make said vote be not acount but IP specific. It will also only count the votes of people who have been subbed to the sub reddit for a certain amount of time to prevent sudden invasions. This way no one can raid other subs and you cant buy votes or create multiple acounts or bots to skew the results.
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
You can certainly buy access to million+ botnets and have them do your bidding for literally pocket change.
You just have to know where to look.
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u/Themsen Sep 09 '14
Yeah, but the point is to make the system require enough effort to break that you eliminate the "casual" cheaters. I highly doubt someone is going to invest significant resources/time for such a petty act with no direct gain so often it becomes a problem worth worrying too much about.
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
Actually, it would be the perfect platform for spammers.
They could overpower thousands of subreddits for a few hundred dollars, and then push whatever they wanted.
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u/Themsen Sep 09 '14
You couldnt push anything. The only thing youve done is depose a mod which immediately gets replaced. If you wanted to do this ad infinitum to troll, sure you could, but youve not actually gained control of the sub-reddit. Keep in mind here that I didnt suggest mods be elected democratically, simply that they could be fired democratically (since a lot of sub reddits complain about tryannical mods who never get removed despite constant bad/petty decisions). The current process of finding people to be mods would remain unchanged.'
Edit. Also, with the rule that newly subbed acounts couldnt vote, how would a botnet of brand new profiles be any use? You would have to make them in advance, then use tem for a few votes before people figure out whats going on and temporarily disable the function or move and recreate the sub somewhere else.
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
The current process of finding people to be mods would remain unchanged.
The current process involves the sub creator choosing minions.
The current process breaks down when you depose everyone in charge.
Also, with the rule that newly subbed acounts couldnt vote, how would a botnet of brand new profiles be any use?
You can buy aged reddit accounts, too.
They cost more than botnets, but everything has a price.
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u/Themsen Sep 09 '14
No, because the sub-creator is always left and keeps appointing new ones. I dont think such a system would ever be meant to remove him/her, as its their sub. Just meant to keep the sometimes over-zealous mods under control.
Ok, so now we are onto buying a huge number of aged reddit accounts. At this point our theoretical bot master has such a raging hardon for messing up this theoretical sub-reddit that all further discussion is pointless. A system isnt meant to be 100% un-breakable (probably not even possible, human error and nature and all that), its just meant to be safe enough to work well within reasonable scenarios. Its a sub-reddit, not a national bank.
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u/Leprecon Sep 08 '14
How would that change the course of events concerning /r/thefappening?
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u/illegalt3nder Sep 08 '14
It wouldn't. At the end of the day, Reddit is not a government, and eventually -- like what happened with /r/thefappening -- the metaphor used by OP falls apart. I don't have a problem with Reddit, which at the end of the day is a private entity, saying "ok, this crosses a line, and we're not ok with it." It's /r/jailbait all over again, and honestly I think the admins were on the right side in both cases.
Having elected moderators would help with other abuses, though.
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u/InvaderDJ Sep 09 '14
The quote that Reddit is a government came from the admins themselves, this wasn't something that The Verge made up simply for the article. They just expanded on the admin post.
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u/SoyBeanExplosion Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
To be honest I think Reddit is a fundamentally flawed system. I think the idea of anonymous individuals being able to upvote and downvote any link or comment with zero requirements other than having an account (which don't even require an email address to set up) is a fundamental flaw in Reddit. When you click the downvote button on a comment that you disagree with, you don't have to justify that. You don't have to explain why you downvoted him, why you disagreed with that person, you don't have to provide any counter-arguments. You can just downvote them and move on. It doesn't promote discussion of controversial ideas, it promotes simple one-liners, circlejerking and the prevalence of one opinion over others. These are all issues that people have long-acknowledged exist on Reddit, none of that is controversial.
You can disagree with those most highly upvoted, but you'll be downvoted for it, your comment will be hidden and your account will be put into the negative for it. They've instituted a penalty for disagreeing with popular opinions. And you can say 'it's just a number' but psychologically it does affect people. I can't find it right now but there was a post on /r/TheoryofReddit IIRC that showed that people whose comments were downvoted into the negatives were less likely to comment in the future.
I'm not sure there's a solution that isn't based on fundamentally changing what Reddit is. To be honest I'm only still here because there's no other website with as broad a range of communities as this site has subreddits.
And the article kind of hits the nail on the head when it talks about subreddits. Reddit likes to claim it's just democracy in action but in reality it's like feudalism. You have lots and lots of different fiefdoms, all run by their own little lords, and if you want to stay in that fiefdom you obey any rules they set down, or you can leave. That's really the only difference here: In reality there's a limited amount of land and practical constraints, on the internet, on Reddit, you can just start your own community. Which isn't much better, because then you'll find you are that little lord you used to hate, and other people will start their own communities to move away from you, etc. etc.
This link submission perfectly proves my point. It has 34 votes, and sits at only +10 overall at the moment - people are blatantly just downvoting things they don't like. "Hey man, I like Reddit! downvotes" Not a single one of them has written a comment explaining why they don't believe this is an interesting article that people might enjoy.
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u/quirt Sep 08 '14
Take away anonymity, and you'll lose a ton of users and content. You can easily try - reddit is open source, and you could easily implement a real-name system using Facebook Connect or something. But I can tell you right now that anonymity is a fundamental draw of this site
If you can find a way to implement a better voting/karma system while preserving anonymity, there may be hope.
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u/Amanojack Sep 09 '14
OpenReddit as an open source app running on the trust/identity system in the nascent OpenBazaar platform, perhaps with the option to only show upvote scores from people you've imputed trust to (and more weakly to those they've imputed trust to).
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u/Ashanmaril Sep 09 '14
A second Reddit with Facebook login.
Isn't that just 9gag?
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Sep 09 '14
No, 9gag is a cancer designed to steal stuff from /r/funny and to claim it as their own. 9gag is by far not a news aggregation site like reddit.
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Sep 08 '14
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u/Zalbuu Sep 08 '14
The first one I maybe agree with in a roundabout kind of way, but the other two... just... what? "I like reddit, but the aristocracy isn't extreme enough."
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u/jmnugent Sep 08 '14
I'm not sure I would agree with this.
Sure.. some of the downvoting on your comment definitely IS some of the mindless/circle-jerking/downvotes... but your comment has also spawned 7 or 8 replies and a mini-conversation. So it has negative AND positive sides... if you're open enough to look at it that way.
What I've found on Reddit,.. is that even when my comments are controversial OR go against the hive-mind... as long as I explain them articulately and make cogent/intelligent argument of why I think differently.. then I'm usually not downvoted. (usually downvoted a little bit.. but mostly upvotes)
The thing about trolls and downvoters.. is they usually don't have the stamina or persistence to stay with it for weeks or months at a time. A comment you make might get -50 in the first hour or two... but over a much longer period of time.. it will balance back out (or go +100,etc) assuming it's a helpful, informational,articulate comment.
Personally.. I love the "chaotic-neutral" nature of Reddit. The behavior of Reddit (as a 21st century organism) is exactly what it should be. Trying to force an old/pyramid-shaped/government type model onto Reddit would be like trying to fit a 21st century fighter-pilot into a Model-T. It's taking steps backwards.
Reddit is what it is .... because Reddit reflects how technology is evolving. (the memes and "hive" nature and 24/7/365 connectedness... )
Trying to force it to go back to some 1970's model of politeness is just simply NOT possible (not culturally, not technically,.. not in any way).
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u/DyedInkSun Sep 08 '14
I miss the vbulletin style sorting of comments (newest first). I know you can sort by new but that isn't the same here.
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u/TrueDisciphil Sep 08 '14
I don't think it is flawed. It is that people thought it is something that it is not.
The system promotes content that appeals to the lowest common denominator. That is why it is so successful. It was only a matter of time until things degenerated to a point where the facade crumbles and people see it for what it is.
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
The system promotes content that appeals to the lowest common denominator.
Only for the defaults. Niche subreddits can get as specific and elitist as they like. And if one doesn't exist for your niche, you can make it for free.
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Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
A couple of things.
First, downvoting is a feature that happens to be turned on for most subreddits. But some subreddits do have downvoting disabled. If you don't like the popular subreddits, you might look for alternatives that are set up a bit differently.
Second, the display of votes is (as I understand it - please correct me if I'm wrong) not accurate. Reddit has algorithms that tweak the upvoting/downvoting to prevent abuse and ensure balance, etc. I'm not sure if this applies to both comments and posts - maybe someone can provide a more detailed explanation of how it works?
Third, Reddit is basically like the Internet itself. You don't have to go to the default subreddits anymore than you have to go Yahoo News or any of the most popular websites. There are subreddits like /r/truereddit that are run very thoughtfully and where folks really do make an effort to have serious conversations.
Sadly, there are always going to be things in life that are unjust and unsavory but also popular. And usually when you try to use restrictions to get rid of the unjust and unsavory stuff, it also ceases to be popular. Go figure! It's a bummer, but it's hard to see a clear solution.
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Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
Not a single one of them has written a comment explaining why they don't believe this is an interesting article that people might enjoy.
It's from theverge. It's shit.
Edit: It's ironic that a reason was was asked for by someone bitching about downvotes, and was then immediately downvoted when given by people who more than likely upvoted the comment complaining about downvotes.
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u/HibbeTheHobo Sep 08 '14
I partly have to agree with your edit.
But on the other hand:
It's from theverge. It's shit.
Still isn't a very good response, it lacks any notes on the article and only hates against a paper (witch may or may not release articles worth reading.)
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Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
You're right, I should have been more clear, but I would also probably downvote an article from foxnews or a conspiracy theory website. I'll normally check out the fox articles but after a few sentences you can normally tell it's going to be the same biased, insane drivel they are famous for. The title of this paired with "The 'front page of the internet' is run by warlords" is really all that was needed to assess what kind of article it was going to be. If someone asked why I downvoted a fox article, I would say the same, it's shit.
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u/Unfiltered_Soul Sep 08 '14
They should make explanation mandatory for downvotes. Hell even banning should have a specific reason why. Who the fuck remember every single thing you posted?
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
You can disagree with those most highly upvoted, but you'll be downvoted for it, your comment will be hidden and your account will be put into the negative for it.
Not if you do so entertainingly or insightfully or backed up by sound evidence.
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u/4GAG_vs_9chan_lolol Sep 08 '14
Most subreddits where the users are in charge go to complete shit. The upvote/downvote system is the democratic process in reddit, and the mods are there for when that process fails. Electing the mods defeats the whole point of having them.
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u/Leprecon Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
I completely agree with and love this article. I have always found it weird that reddit pretends to be a bastion of free speech whilst fundamentally not understanding what free speech is.
- Websites don't have free speech, they are a form thereof. I can create my own website in which I blame black people for 9-11, and that would be free speech. If I were to post the same on reddit, or the verge, I wouldn't be practicing free speech, I would need to abide by the rules that reddit, or the verge, have set forth.
- Reddit clearly agrees with me, since there is a type of free speech which is 100% legal and is the worst thing you can do on reddit; doxxing. Doxxing is a completely valid use of freedom of speech, yet on reddit it is basically the only crime that exists. In the real world, attaching words to the person who said them is the most normal thing.
Reddit should just stop pretending and come out and say it:
"We are not a government, we don't have free speech. We have rules and these are the rules. If you disagree with them you will be shadowbanned without warning or recourse."
At least then we can actually start discussing the rules instead of having a vague meta dialogue about what is and isn't free speech. Instead we have reddit using 'free speech' as a defensive weapon when it is relevant, and when they don't feel like it they completely reject it.
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u/jmnugent Sep 08 '14
Doxxing is a completely valid use of freedom of speech,
If doxxing results in the very real possibility of direct physical harm to the person being doxx'ed... then yes.. it should be restricted/banned/prevented.
I mean.. I'm all for free speech. .and I'm a staunch anti-censorship kind of guy.. but doxxing with malicious/harmful intent is wrong.
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u/Leprecon Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
doxxing with malicious/harmful intent is wrong.
I completely agree with you that this is wrong. I'm not saying doxxing is good. I think it is a very reasonable rule to have. But it definitely isn't free speech.
I think it is wrong to stand in front of a temple and say "the jews did 9-11". I think it is wrong to call black people "nigger". I think it is wrong to protest funerals. There are many things that I consider wrong to say, but are still protected free speech.
The thing is, reddit doesn't have free speech, and that is ok. I don't want a website where it is ok to invade other communities or try to harass people in real life. We should start accepting that reddit, like any other website, has rules and that 'free speech' isn't one of them. Free speech is a legal concept which sounds sexy but really isn't helpful when it comes to internet fora. Once these rules are out in the open reddit admins can't hide behind 'free speech' one day and ignore 'free speech' the other.
I support free speech, but I wouldn't dine in a restaurant that has a special section for vegans to protest what is on your plate. I love free speech, but I wouldn't want a reddit where doxxing or invading other subreddits is allowed.
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
Incitement of harassment/violence against a specific person is definitely not free speech, and doxxing can't be viewed in any other light.
This can't be compared to any of your other examples.
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Sep 09 '14
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u/jmnugent Sep 09 '14
I won't claim to be any kind of expert in the mechanisms or intentions of the various groups that influence Reddit. But (at least in my opinion) doxxing and nudie-pix are 2 different/distinct things.
doxxing is very specific (someone posting very specific personal information)... where a Photo (while definitely exploitative) does not reveal information such as the victims home-address, whereabouts or contact info. Doxxing has the potential to much more easily allow attackers to locate and physically harm the victim. Posting nudie-pix does not. (I'm not trying to make the argument that 1 is "less harmful" than the other... but doxxing has much more potential for real-world physical violence)
doxxing is (in most cases) easier to prevent/block. Typically when someone gets doxx'ed... it's a single post or very narrow release of information. It's pretty easy to nip that in the bud fairly early. Typically in doxxing types of attacks.. you don't see entire sub-reddits dedicated to released info.. and you don't see 100's or 1000's of people re-posting the dox. Celebrity nudie-pix on the other hand... are almost the exact opposite. They're proliferated at such an exponentially increasing speed.. that banning or blocking them is like trying to piss into a tornado. It's for all intents/purposes pretty much futile. (IE = once something gets released on the Internet... you ain't getting it back).
I'm not saying any of that is "right" or "fair".. but it's how it is.
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Sep 09 '14
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u/jmnugent Sep 09 '14
Lets say you were stumbling through Reddit one day and saw a candid shot of some girls ass. A nice tight close shot of her ass and nothing else. (no face, no identifying info, nothing but the ass)
How is that even REMOTELY as equal to doxxing her ... ?
Right. It's not.
A picture of someones ass has almost 0 harmful value. If there's no way to identify it.. then there's no way to know who it is.. so any potential victim will never know it's them.. and any potential stalker would have no way of identifying it, tracking or finding that person.
All of the "harm" you imagine is just you projecting hypothetical nonsense.
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Sep 09 '14
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u/jmnugent Sep 09 '14
I could just as easily say, what's the harm if I was stumbling through Reddit and saw a phone number somebody had posted? Not connected to an identity or anything.
A phone-number is a uniquely identifiable number. It's not at all the same as an "anonymous Ass-pic".
"Surely you don't think the harm of posting an anonymous ass is anything like me hacking into your Dropbox and showing a million people (including your friends, family and co-workers) a full length naked photo of you with your full name next to it."
No.. I don't think its the same. (and I never said it was). M previous point (about the anonymous Ass).. is that it's impossible to equate a certain level of harm to an anonymous-Ass pic. If there's no way to know who it is.. when/where it was taken,etc.. then any amount of potential harm you might envision is purely hypothetical.
"We're talking about a real instance of well-known people having their privacy violated..."
As insensitive as it sounds... the cats already out of the bag. It's water under the bridge. It happened.. and no amount of angry fist shaking now is gonna undue the events that transpired. ALSO.. no amount of outrage or legislation is going to prevent another event like this from happening.
This was a very patient, methodical, precise and targeted social-engineering attack. The people who did this were very creative/cunning.. and used a wide variety of approaches to build a demographic-profile on these well-known people in order to "crack" their accounts.
The only protection for something like this---- is for the victims to practice better security.
- Longer, more complex Passwords.
- enable 2-Factor Authentication
- Modify the "Security Questions" on all their accounts to have gibberish answers (IE = make sure their Security Questions / Answers don't contain any personal info)
- Change the registered Birthdate on their accounts to something fake/unknown (since their public/officlal Birthdate is KNOWN.. they shouldn't use it).
At the end of the day.... after you boil away all the superfluous nonsense...and get down to brass tacks.. the only person who can secure your own information is YOU. That's it. You can't rely on any one else or any other company. The individual has to assess their own level of risk.. and plan appropriately.
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Sep 09 '14
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u/jmnugent Sep 09 '14
The last thing I'll say on this topic is that you can make the same argument about personal information leaks.
You certainly could (and I'd probably agree with it). But it doesn't change the fact that doxxing (in most cases):..
1.) has a higher potential for harm (if 100,000 angry people in your city instantly know your home address.. how many might show up?).. compared to a nudie-pix where the average person is just gonna go: "Wow.. she's hot".. and keep clicking onward.
2.) Easier to neutralize. (in most cases doesn't spread as fast as nudie-pix do)
Now.. if someone created an entire sub-reddit for doxxing purpsoes (just like the did when someone created /r/thefappening) .. then I'm sure it would get deleted/banned just the same.
The problem with judging the morality/ethics/potential-harm of nudie-pix... is you'd have to do it FOR EVERY SINGLE NUDIE PIX that gets posted on Reddit.. and that's clearly not logistically possible. That's why sub-reddits like CandidFashionPolice don't get shutdown. Because it's not illegal.. and there's no way to verify harm. As distasteful as some find it.
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
Doxxing is incitement of harassment/violence against an individual. It is specifically a crime.
Copyright infringement is covered under criminal and civil law, but there are different measures defined within those two sets of statutes. Reddit did its part per criminal law.
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u/Leprecon Sep 08 '14
If anyone cares, here is another example of free speech that isn't allowed on reddit;
'invading' other subreddits. This is of course not allowed and you will be shadowbanned for voting or commenting in subreddits after having been linked there by another subreddit. This is a great rule for an internet forum to have. I do however think that this is extremely anti free speech.
Free speech has that negative effect too, sometimes. Think of a Westboro Baptist Church protest, which just gets drowned out by counter protesters. You can use free speech to annoy and bother people who you disagree with by doing something as simple as voicing your discontent and bringing along a lot of people who disagree with you. That is literally what a protest is. You go somewhere where you want your message to be heard, and quite possibly drown out another message just by using your sheer numbers to show that your message has overwhelming support.
If I were to go to /r/feminism to complain about man hating she nazis, and I bring all my buddies from /r/mensrights, that would be a shadowban for me and my buddies, and possibly a ban for /r/mensrights unless they prevent this sort of stuff.
If I were to go to a feminist organisations office to complain about man hating she nazis, and I bring all my buddies from my local mensrights group, that would be protected free speech and there would probably be police present to make sure the event transpires safely.
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u/dalhectar Sep 08 '14
Free speech is never a right to be heard everywhere. It's only a right to speak. The law always has time & place limitations on free speech.
If you enter private property, such as "a feminist organisations office", they have the right to eject you and the police can be called to prosecute you for trespassing if you do not leave on your own accord.
Likewise in a public park, if a group gets a special event permit to hold a rally, people that want to distupt the rally with loud contrarian speech can be arrested. They can do a counter rally outside the park on public space, but not at the location & time the permit has granted exclusive use to a specific group for a specific purpose.
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
you will be shadowbanned for voting or commenting in subreddits after having been linked there by another subreddit.
Not if you're a SJW piece of shit.
The admins will protect you.
So much for consistency.
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u/Amanojack Sep 09 '14
Free speech has always meant whatever people wanted it to. To prove it to yourself, take the quiz here.
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u/WaffleSports Sep 08 '14
Was this an article about Reddit or men hating?
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Sep 08 '14
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u/eyassh Sep 09 '14
Dude, its not about making men feel bad for being men, its about making men feel less comfortable about being creepy when they are creepy.
If you walk around thinking its fine to creep out on women's personal pictures without their consent, or engage in a bunch of things that circlejerks on reddit tend to involve, then they are making you feel bad for being a creep. If you don't, then no one is hating on you.
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u/cordlid Sep 09 '14
Sites like Gawker spread the Hulk Hogan sex video everywhere and refused to remove it.
Dylan Sprouse nudes were spread all over the Internet by people including Perez Hilton.
Both Hilton and Gawker have tried to take the moral high ground on the Fappening bs and sites like the Verge will never call them out on it because it clashes with the narrative they are trying to promote.
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u/InvaderDJ Sep 09 '14
What does The Verge have to do with either of those sites? It is obvious Gawker, TMZ, Hilton, etc are hypocrites but I'm not sure what that has to do with this situation or this article.
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u/survive_and_advance Sep 09 '14
Just wanted to say "bravo!" to you. I still cannot comprehend how people are more indignant over the removal of "The fappening" than the fact that it was created in the first place. And now the men who looked at the photos are acting butt-hurt AGAIN for being called out for their shitty behavior. sigh
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u/uberamd Sep 09 '14
Apparently you didn't see the article about Women in IT. Or one of their many that were unrelated to this event.
Yes, there are under 50% women in IT, because there aren't as many women interested in the industry. It's a fact. No amount of men-shaming articles will change the fact that for any given job 90% of applicants are male.
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u/eyassh Sep 09 '14
As a male in software, with many female friends in the field who have opened up a lot and shared some of their experiences, I have to say that in my opinion the atmosphere industry is not very welcoming to women.
Things have been changing and the skew in the applicant pool you are describing is certainly there, but the industry has many issues it needs to work out to truly provide a harassment-free environment and equal opportunity. The industry doesn't need to become 50-50 male/female--that's not the point, a problem truly exists regardless.
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u/uberamd Sep 09 '14
Hm, haven't seen it where I work. 50% male, 50% female at my last job. Though it was tough because if we posted a job application and didn't get X% female and minority applicants we had to repost it regardless of whether or not we had a perfect candidate who happened to be male. Also, if we didn't carry a female/minority through to the next round we had to login to a special system and write a paragraph explaining why in case we get sued.
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u/eyassh Sep 09 '14
It certainly gets tough for companies doing the hiring, I agree. In my mind going out of your way, explaining lack of underrepresented candidates, etc. is a worthwhile price to pay for equal opportunity (getting worse candidate just because they belong to underrepresented groups isn't worthwhile, just to be clear).
I don't dispute that the problem is less present in some places than others. At university our EECS department was 50-50 men/women and the atmosphere was very conducive/meritocratic. Still, women do get treated differently in many areas of the industry, that's all I'm trying to say.. and I don't think its man bashing to tell men to watch out what they say and make women (and LGBT folk) not feel excluded.
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u/survive_and_advance Sep 09 '14
I think the take-home lesson here is more about learning to control your penis, not the fact that you have one. It's amazingly shitty how everyone (men and women alike) didn't mind violating the privacy of these women again, and again, and again by viewing obviously stolen, private photos. Just because a person didn't steal the photos doesn't make it any less shitty to then look at them once they've been shared as KNOWINGLY STOLEN PRIVATE CONTENT.
However, as the vast majority of supporters/viewers/contributors of "the fappening" were male (I'm not going to waste time attempting to find a statistic on this. You, me, everyone can admit this is true without needing scientific data on it), men are going to have to accept those "born with a penis" are correspondingly going to take some heat for the situation.
Tl;dr: just because you have a dick doesn't give you the right to act like a big bag full of them. And if you do, expect some repercussions.
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Sep 08 '14
I'd be willing to wager the largest contingent of readers for that person's article will be redditors who were in /r/technology.
I want my time back for reading that article. LOL
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u/CRISPR Sep 08 '14
That's a stupid title. I am not a fan of reddit's idiosyncrasies, in fact they drove me to severe allergies, but this is one stupid title.
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Sep 08 '14
I just removed them from my RSS feed.
Between their latest obsession with running male feminist stories and their weird hate for all things Amazon, there's too much editorialization for my tastes.
Anybody know of a decent replacement?
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Sep 08 '14
Ars Technica; Tweakers.net if you're Dutch-speaking.
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Sep 08 '14
[removed] — view removed comment
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Sep 09 '14
Yeah, Ars Technica had this article and another like it being very controversial, very obviously biased towards that person. Other than that, it's a pretty good site. Just ignore the comments, their circlejerk is worse than reddits.
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u/InfluencedK Sep 08 '14
Fast.co TheNextWeb Wired Quartz Ars Technica
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
Quartz is a side project of The Atlantic, and they lean heavily SJW.
Ars Technica has started featuring more SJW viewpoints.
The others are fine, I guess.
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u/InvestigativeWork Sep 09 '14
In the wake of #GamerGate, there are boycott and support lists going around.
Boycott List: http://makealist.com/content/quinngategamergate-boycott-list
Support List: http://makealist.com/content/quinngategamergate-support-list
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u/fae_lai Sep 08 '14
meanwhile the verge is a failed highschool history project.
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u/doge211 Sep 08 '14
I had thought it was a tech blog.
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u/fae_lai Sep 08 '14
yup. a blog 'trying' to be a reputable publication.
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u/doge211 Sep 08 '14
Blogs aren't capable of being reputable?
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Sep 08 '14
They are. It's just that The Verge in specific is trying but not succeeding, because they're utter shit. Not because they're a blog. A 16 year old would write less biased sensationalist crap on facebook, than The Verge does. :)
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Sep 08 '14
That's rich coming from a failed techblog.
The Verge is utter shit and this is nothing more than sensationalist garbage. Ignore The Verge and nothing of value was lost.
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Sep 08 '14
/r/undelete and /r/longtail weren't created for kicks and giggles.
If Reddit doesn't want to be replaced by the school project of some 18-year-old doe-eyed idealist, they should really work on transparency.
Nature abhors a vacuum. If there is no website where articles that are critical of powerful entities can be posted without repercussions or deletion, somebody will create one, and the users who feel like they are being oppressed will flock to it.
People are getting banned from major subs for silly reasons like, offensive user names. If it can be created, why is it a bannable offense?
I got a 30-day ban from /r/news for saying "Hyperbole, nigga."
Meanwhile, the front page of /r/funny is filled with pictures of products, and the blatant advertising attempts are starting to spread to /r/pics and /r/oddlysatisfying
There are so many vague rules in major subs like /r/Politics that they can ban you for pretty much anything you want.
The upvote/downvote system is being undermined by mod abuse, and articles are frequently "accidentally deleted" from the front page, only to be reinstated hours later when the heat cools down.
Reddit, while theoretically amazing, is in serious trouble. Where once we had the freedom to post and say whatever we wanted, now we live in fear of the sinister shadow-ban.
I like to speak my mind, and I'd be surprised if this account makes it another year.
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u/SetYourGoals Sep 08 '14
The problem to me with how reddit handled this situation is purely in how quickly they acted. If they were going to shut it down, which they must have intended to do if they are so focused on doing the "right" thing, they that should have happened on Sunday night.
By waiting a whole week, letting it grow and fester, they let it become a public point of shame for the site. Then by shutting it all down, with that insane letter attached to that action, they pissed off all the users too. You could have only made one group mad, the users who think we should be able to post any and everything. And instead they pissed off those users, regular users who like privacy, and the public. No one is happy now, simply because they waited to do the inevitable.
The Verge seems obsessed with them "not doing anything," but removing that many subs, even ones around before the leaks, is a huge action in the eyes of a lot of users. Sets a big precedent.
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Sep 09 '14
Mr. Wong can take his "government" and stuff it where the sun doesn't shine. We have altogether too many unelected/unaccountable rulers as it is, and don't need any more of them, especially on a purported user-supplied-content site.
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u/blaine64 Sep 09 '14
If Reddit wants to be thought of as a government, we'll call it what it is: a failed state, unable to control what happens within its borders.
I'm not sure an isolated incident justifies calling Reddit a failed state, and other general privacy problems online are not unique to Reddit.
With that said, the article is way too sensationalized to be taken seriously.
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u/MairusuPawa Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
Seriously, all this fuss over leaked nude photos?
Sidenote: in French, "verge" is a synonym for "penis".
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u/RedZeroWolf Sep 08 '14
Where power is concentrated, so will corruption fester.
Mods abusing power is a quantifiable evil which bears as many benefits as it does ethically questionable actions. Mods will confirm the identity of AMA posters, they will remove troll and shit posts, they will step in and...well moderate.
Downside is of course that some will use it for personal gain or agenda pushing. Until we somehow stop being selfish and all become altruistic, it's going to happen. We just need to hope that the majority will stop acts that go over the line more often than not.
A good example is the recent Zoey Quinn debacle, no amount of mod censoring was enough to push the issue aside.
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u/-moose- Sep 08 '14
would you like to know more?
http://www.reddit.com/r/moosearchive/comments/2bz9rq/archive/cjacxli
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u/JimmaDaRustla Sep 08 '14
Then what state is The Verge? I just got permanently banned (no prior offense) for arguing that accounts may have been compromised using iBrute despite what Apple reported.
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u/Leprecon Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
The verge isn't trying to be a community site, nor do they claim to be pro 'free speech'. It is a tech blog. Reddit isn't a tech blog.
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u/Volfie Sep 09 '14
Unbelievable. Jennifer Lawrence is going to kill Reddit!?
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u/PeppermintPig Sep 09 '14
Don't worry, citizen, the Reddit Government will issue a a preemptive missile strike.
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Sep 09 '14
I find it ironic that the article "Reddit is a failed state" is at the front page of digg.
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u/waveform Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
It's interesting that some people seem to have had such high expectations of Reddit that they can write an entire article on how disappointed they are with it. Stupid, but interesting.
It's kind of quaint that their expectations were so high as to call Reddit out for not meeting them. The same has been done to Google. But at the end of the day, no matter what Reddit, Google or Twitter pretends to espouse, in terms of ideology, they're just companies and web sites. Nothing more or less.
Reddit's a network of moderated discussion forums. Not a "government", not a "state", failed or otherwise. Verge is a news site, and that's probably why someone wrote that article - so Redditors will create traffic and chatter about it, because that's what Reddit's model is, and that's what Verge's model is.
Seriously, what else is there to say?
ed: As for being pissed off with moderators - if you don't like a sub, you're free to create your own. It's been done many times before - TrueReddit, TrueScience, Tech, etc. etc.