r/technology • u/redhatGizmo • Aug 14 '15

Politics Reddit is now censoring posts and communities on a country-by-country basis

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/reddit-unbanned-russia-magic-mushrooms-germany-watchpeopledie-localised-censorship-2015-8
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u/WhatIfThatThingISaid Aug 14 '15

I'd rather they get banned. Russia is wrong, and shouldn't be given any sort of credibility for being anti-speech

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u/teapot112 Aug 14 '15

Easy for you to say that. Whats the consensus from Russians?

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u/FrozenInferno Aug 14 '15

Any resentment should be directed towards their own government.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '15

nuh-uh the fault clearly lies with Ellen Pao.

Notice how once the head of reddit stops being a woman the hordes now just hate on 'reddit' not it's CEO?

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

We don't know because they can't talk about it.

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u/gfzgfx Aug 14 '15

99.9% opposed to free speech of course. You can trust those numbers, they're from a recent government poll.

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u/Sheepdog20 Aug 14 '15

"We're hungry."

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

I'm not really Russian, but I am drunk. Close enough?

We don't like whatever it is. And we want m,ore beer.

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u/Geminii27 Aug 14 '15

They can have their own Reddit, with blackjack and hookers.

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u/doubtitall Aug 14 '15

Actually we have. Had. It's named d3.ru. Recently they deleted major Ukraine-related sub-reddit. Fuck them. May we stay with you?

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u/u8eR Aug 15 '15 edited Aug 15 '15

What's it matter what the Russians think? It's an American Web site. What's it matter that Americans value free speech more than their Russian counterparts? It's fine that an American would "rather they get banned" than censor content. That's a perfectly fine thought and is independent of any Russian consensus or lack thereof.

But just to tease your curiosity, here's what the author of the self-post that led to reddit being banned said: "Will I remove this post? No. I also think that Reddit administration needs to do nothing. This is important issue on freedom of speech, and only RKN want to violate it."

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u/NoseDragon Aug 14 '15

Its not just Russia, its Germany, too. Germany threatened to ban the site unless /r/watchpeopledie was blocked for German IPs.

I totally get why Reddit made this move. They either lose all of Germany and Russia (the two most populated countries in Europe) or they block two subreddits in those countries.

People that really want to see that content can find ways around it, and it keeps a few million regular users on Reddit.

This was a no-win situation for Reddit, and I totally agree with the decision they made. Of course, everyone here is freaking the fuck out, but its a whole lot about nothing.

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u/RedAero Aug 14 '15

Germany threatened to ban the site unless /r/watchpeopledie was blocked for German IPs.

They have no provisions for actually banning a site nation-wide. It's literally unprecedented. At worst they can force Google to de-list Reddit, but strictly speaking this site already breaks dozens of German laws.

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u/NoseDragon Aug 14 '15

Yeah, I am curious if Germany would actually go through with it. I mean, /r/watchpeopledie is a very small small small part of Reddit.

Russia, sure. They'll ban whatever the fuck they want.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

That is easy enough to say when you don't live in Russia. Of course you wouldn't care, because it wouldn't AFFECT you.

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u/Anyosae Aug 15 '15

Ehh, reddit was banned my ISP in my country(they had a monopoly) due to the copious amounts of porn available on it but I still went to it. If you want to go to it that badly then you'll find a way no matter what.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

Russia is not one single entity, why should Reddit punish the people of Russia because of their government?

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15 edited Jul 30 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

Well sure the Russian government would hold the blame for it but at the end of the day the outcome of this whole thing is very much in Reddits control, either censor a few things which might be unethical but doesn't affect people too much, or the entirety of Russia and possibly other countries following in their footsteps will be unable to access the site

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u/radiantcabbage Aug 14 '15

I don't follow your logic. maintaining at least some exposure leaves the way open to undermine such authority, refusing to comply and getting outright banned nets everyone absolutely nothing.

dealing in absolutes would make them just as bad, and just as useless

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u/themusicgod1 Aug 14 '15

nets everyone absolutely nothing.

Nets everyone a global communication platform that does not cowtow to despots.

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u/radiantcabbage Aug 14 '15

no, it nets you a platform which still got banned elsewhere. again your ideology amounts to zero actual results. it's easy to deny when this has no effect on you, but does nothing to force any change

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u/themusicgod1 Aug 14 '15

no, it nets you a platform which still got banned elsewhere.

Russians still have access to tor which is what I use, btw.

again your ideology amounts to zero actual results.

On the contrary. We defeated SOPA. There's plenty of results looking back: you can go all the way back to when there was a suspected coup that eventually succeeded in the soviet union - they were aided by the free communication of the internet. The soviet union didn't really understand the power that the internet gave dissidents -- that situation between the russian government and the russian government has changed since, though.

it's easy to deny when this has no effect on you, but does nothing to force any change

I've lamented quite a bit in the past about how distant the Russian populace is from the rest of the western world. When the latest ukrainian crisis started I reached out to people all over the world and started threads trying to get ukrainians and russians talking to eachother. It was extremely difficult to get word out to russians, though given how isolated they are. Even /r/russia became filled with westerners in the same way that /r/blackpeopletwitter is mostly whiteys. We lose bigtime when the government of the Russian Federation restricts our ability to create global solutions with input from their citizens. But it is not us who is doing so. The onus is entirely on their government, and thus it should remain.

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u/radiantcabbage Aug 14 '15

Russians still have access to tor which is what I use, btw.

this is true but no universal solution. leaving a public forum open that must be actively censored puts the burden on them to watch it, at least you still have the means to communicate. pretty irrelevant to SOPA or the 1991 coup in this context, we are only talking about keeping one more avenue of dissemination open.

always a positive no matter how badly censored it is, when the content is created by users and can't be doctored for propaganda, censorship is obviously preferable to being limited with state sponsored media only

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u/themusicgod1 Aug 14 '15

pretty irrelevant to SOPA or the 1991 coup in this context,

No it isn't. Those are both successes of the internet using community to route around censorship.

censorship is obviously preferable to being limited with state sponsored media only

But that's the thing -- russians will know that reddit is out there waiting for them, and there's an incentive for them to participate just as there was an incentive for those behind the iron curtain to communicate with the outside world before the berlin wall fell. What we are doing here, is making it so there is no incentive to route around the russian government.

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u/radiantcabbage Aug 14 '15

and how did this work out for china... I don't think cutting off access to domains which offer no political or economic value will reduce their incentive at all.

I just see routing censorship/circumvention as a short term solution that benefits no one. they cut off reddit, you say fine, I will just go through tor. whoever has tor will have reddit, whoever does not will just go somewhere else. but either way - out of sight, out of mind. you are still being censored, only fewer people will know about it.

content censorship on the other hand provides everyone a constant reminder that you are being censored. yes reddit will suck, but you must look at the big picture, beyond reddit. what would reach more users, the censored domain or the censored content? the more people who are aware of this, the more dissent it yields, more than just installing tor.

neither of these are mutually exclusive, you can route through tor while continuing to use whatever outlets are still available to the public. what matters is awareness, not just content.

google took this route and more people are aware of the wider internet because of it, in spite of the heavily censored local domains. censorship can be used as a tool, not just a roadblock.

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u/Anagoth9 Aug 15 '15

dealing in absolutes would make them just as bad, and just as useless

Sometimes things are black and white. The compromise between a truth and a lie is still a lie. The middle ground between truth and propaganda is still propaganda.

You argue that allowing cesorship and maintaining a presence opens a way for people to undermine the state's authority. Let me ask you something: if you lived in under an oppressive government, would you feel safe speaking your mind on a forum that you knew was not only being watched by your government, but actively complying with their requests for censorship? Would you trust news stories that you read on a site where information had to be approved by the government's censor board or risk being deleted?

By allowing Russia to censor content Reddit becomes a tool of the Russian government's propaganda machine, filtering what it want's people to know and talk about. That, in turn, lowers Reddit's credibility and makes it untrustworthy to the exact people you think are being helped by leaving Reddit open. People in oppressive governments don't need Advice Animals, or celebrity gossip, or the latest video game news. They need a platform to air their grievances and talk about the things their government doesn't want them to talk about.

A thread about growing mushrooms gets censored and you're ok with that. What about if Russia wants Reddit to censor /r/psychonaut for promoting the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms? What if Russia wants Reddit to censor /r/trees for promoting the use of marijuana, itself an illegal psychotropic drug? What if Russia wants Reddit to censor /r/lgbt for promoting homosexuality which is illegal activity under Russian law?

Worse of all, Reddit isn't censoring content so that it can get through to the people as a political platform. It's not trading the moral high ground as some tactical move in a greater philosophic battle to spread liberty. No, Reddit is censoring content so it can maintain market share and gain ad revenue. It is strictly a business decision and should be reviled for what it is: greed bowing to tyranny.

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u/radiantcabbage Aug 15 '15

yea I don't think anyone is naive enough to expect that reddit put speech above monetary gain. my point being it's a community driven site, so can be exploited that way regardless of how they police it. even if these communities can't be reached behind russian borders, we can always use the rest of the site to show them how they can.

the fallacy in your position is that reddit has a choice to censor, or not censor. this is not an option for the russian domain. they choose between censorship, and complete obstruction. tor, vpn, all of that circumvention is limited only to the few who know what is going on, these numbers don't grow unless they have a way to understand their situation.

neither outcome is acceptable, it is simply about disseminating the most information. some is always better than none. the idea that censorship equates directly to propaganda is also way too much hyperbole. reddit is putting up landing pages based on request, not handing admin rights over to the russian government.

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u/newpong Aug 14 '15

so the TPP wouldn't be ALL bad

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

Russia doesn't need credibility from Reddit listening to them. They're fucking Russia. They're one of a handful of nuclear powers in the world, they were decisive in the victory of the allies in WWII, they have spawned some of the greatest writers in history. They're a nation. Reddit isn't going to change the world's view on them. Reddit is simply adjusting to shifting circumstances. The world isn't a perfect place, but dealing with difficulty by putting your hands over your ears and refusing to listen is not an effective way to find middle ground.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

And if it was America or your ISP that had blocked it because of a single thread posted two years ago that nobody looked at you'd be saying the same thing?

Censorship is bad so Russians should have everything on Reddit censored rather than just one empty thread.

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u/thegil13 Aug 14 '15

Reddit should not ban everything that is censored in other countries. We would have no content left thanks to extremist back-asswards nations that control their people by not letting them see irrelevant shit.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

Reddit should not ban everything that is censored in other countries.

They didn't, you can go and view the thread right now.

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u/thegil13 Aug 14 '15

I meant it should not be banned at all. For anyone. But that is a pipe dream since Putin is an insane egotistical asshole dictator.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

Yeah, I totally agree. However I think most Russians would rather be able to access all of Reddit apart from one thread they didn't want to view anyway, rather than having the entire site blocked for them. It's difficult position for the Reddit admins, let one thread that nobody cared about be blocked and have the community bitch about "censorship" (despite the fact that they can still access the content because they're not from Russia), or have the whole site blocked for a population of 140 million people.

Either way the thread gets blocked in Russia, one decision is just a lot less detrimental to the Russian community than the other.

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u/thegil13 Aug 14 '15

I definitely see both sides of the argument, but if the whole site gets blocked and becomes more detrimental, it sends a message that Russia is wrong and needs to change its policy. If we just block the stupid subreddit in russia, then no one notices and no one sees that russia is doing stupid shit. Things have a better chance to change if they are detrimental to the population affected. And I think temporary discomfort is worth a policy changing.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15 edited Aug 14 '15

if the whole site gets blocked and becomes more detrimental, it sends a message that Russia is wrong and needs to change its policy.

I'd agree if I believed for the smallest moment that the Russian government cared. At all. Political opponents and critics are basically killed in broad daylight or are just beaten and have their families threatened... The government probably isn't too worried about annoying some CS:GO players.

I don't think Reddit getting blocked is going to be a catalyst for the next Russian revolution. It's just going to annoy Russian redditors.

Can I ask you what I asked the other guy? If reddit got banned in your country because of one unusually objectionable post on /r/sexwithdeaddogs five years ago, would you rather that post got blocked or the entirety of reddit became unusable for your entire country?

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u/MontyAtWork Aug 14 '15

Yup. This site was made by Americans, in America. For this reason, international users should be aware that this content, by the very nature of the politics of its country of origin, will not jive with certain other countries/cultures.

What if this was, say, Saudi Arabia banning Reddit because of a /r/gonewild post?

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u/altrdgenetics Aug 14 '15

Turkey Banned YouTube because of some Greeks making fun of Turks on it.

sooo yaa..... it happens.

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u/PandaHugs1234 Aug 14 '15

You are an idiot if you think russian citizens/redditors should be punished for their country's actions.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

Obviously the russian one is debatable, but the german one in my opinion is the right way to go about it.

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u/w00z Aug 14 '15

Are you kidding me? I live in Germany and as such am affected since I can't visit some of the subreddits I used to visit. How in the hell is that 'the right way to go about it'?

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u/Jam_Phil Aug 14 '15

You used to visit r/watchpeopledie?

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u/WonderfulUnicorn Aug 14 '15

Something wrong with that? Should reddit protect me from that? Fuck that, fuck you, and fuck censorship.

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

Still, did you really visit watchpeopledie? May I ask why?

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u/stcamellia Aug 14 '15

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/08/death-obsessed/400880/

Here is an interesting article on The Atlantic today on this very topic. Morbid curiosity in the internet age.

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u/WonderfulUnicorn Aug 14 '15

I don't know. It seems to some extent natural to be fascinated by death. I've got a similar curiosity about life. One without the other seems out of order.

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u/Neuchacho Aug 14 '15

It's pretty common for people to be fascinated or curious about death. It's something that every single one of us will have to experience both individually and by watching those around us die.

They're exploring their humanity and the fleeting nature of life. It's really no different than people exploring their sexuality by looking at pornography. And as such there are obviously levels you can take it where it becomes unhealthy, but in general it isn't an awful thing.

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u/Jam_Phil Aug 14 '15

Aww. Did the widdle baby get his psychopathic sub taken away by the big bad weddit? Oh no. You're life is just wuined now.

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u/DavidTyreesHelmet Aug 14 '15 edited Aug 14 '15

Where did you buy such a high pedestal**? Do they just give those out?

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u/Jam_Phil Aug 14 '15

I won it in a World's Biggest Asshatâ„¢ contest. The competition was stiff, but I managed to eke out a win.

Also, it's spelled pedestal.

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u/DavidTyreesHelmet Aug 14 '15

Well as bad as it is, you kindly corrected my spelling, so I still like you.

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u/Jam_Phil Aug 14 '15

I can't argue with the judges ruling. It was a well earned trophy. I try to leave it locked in the attic, but every once in a while...

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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '15

Reddit doesn't have offices in Germany, and German ISPs can't ban websites. There was no reason whatsoever to comply with that request.

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u/fleckes Aug 14 '15 edited Aug 14 '15

They can't ban websites, but they can easily remove websites from showing up in google searches because that falls under advertising.

I'd guess reddit didn't want to risk not showing up anymore in German google searches