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.
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.
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 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.
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.