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Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

What an amazing multi-level clusterfuck.

You either need to ban /r/TheDonald, or just accept it for what it is, hold your nose, and walk away. I believe that I'd choose the former, but if I had the power to do so I might feel differently.

But this is the worst possible thing. It makes Spez look horrible, it undermines trust in the site and the admins, it confirms all the nutty things the alt-right believes about Reddit, etc. It makes actually dealing with any of the underlying issues much harder; anything that the admins do which is or might look anti-The_Donald can now be spun as "another example of their bias". And since we've already got such a glaring example of that bias, the claim is now plausible in a way it wasn't before.

Should have just quietly banned the sub and moved on. Or not banned it and ignored it. Anything but this.

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Can you please explain why you think /r/TheDonald should be banned? Should they be banned just because they have different political view than you do? Or is it because such opinions are not allowed on reddit as whole? This touches something that is bothering me when sites like reddit look like they are apolitical but clearly that is not the case. They picked side (which is completely fine) and in very non transparent way are punishing anyone who doesn't share their opinions (which is not). For the other side it then looks like its all part of hidden conspiracy when in fact it is just people running the site who cannot accept that not everybody shares their view on the world.

I think they should be banned because last times subs were banned the message was pretty clear: If your sub's influence starts to leak elsewhere on Reddit (with its users acting collectively being the key), you'll be banned.

The "fat people hate" sub seemed to be banned, not even for its subject matter, but because it's users were spreading their mess into other subreddits as a group. From what I've seen, the same thing is happening with The_Donald

/r/nfl should be banned because paytonface.jpg has leaked?

this ideas of "things we like can leak" but "speech that annoys us should be quarantined" is dangerous.

personally I find t_d somewhat useful to peak inside and see what the community is thinking on a given day. i can go read the liberal media for a while, see how Sessions is a racist, then peak into t_d and see the rebuttal. maybe if /r/politics was neutral /r/t_d wouldnt be necessary, but personally I like being able to see what each thought group is up to.

furthermore, you have admin sanctioned sections, like /r/srs, which are designed to mock opposite views.

the admins have tried again and again to suppress a pro-inscere type of speaker who speak in mocking hyperbole and not-literally. now they have grouped into one place, with an ideology (of anti pc speak) that took over a country.

you could argue the liberal pc "polite discourse" tolerance (of everything non white) was winning on reddit. but it didnt last.

t_d is now the anti-liberalism counterculture. the majority suppressing a counterculture they dont like never goes well. the ideas spread and last, and breaking up the places they congregate can make them more sympathetic victims. admins are treading on dangerous ground, and have been for a while.

I'm not saying things can't leak, I'm saying there's a pattern of leaking things leading to bans when the users related to those leaking things act together to cause the leaking (I'm not even saying that's right).

I think they look at it as emergent behavior from popularity vs encouraged behavior from the attitude of users in a sub, but I also they think they aren't above being biased in how they determine what they act on

IIRC the "fat people hate" sub was banned because they started doxxing people, which the admins considered crossed the line. It should have been banned earlier though.

Correct.

So if a sub like /r/randomactsofpizza starts getting popular and discussions of pizza donation spread throughout reddit, they should ban it?

If hordes of users acting on behalf of the subreddit started posting asking for donations in every moderately popular subreddit they'd actually probably be banned.

I'm not going to pretend the threshold for where this "pizza subreddit" would be considered a problem might not end up higher than the one for a sub about a figure Reddit's core demographic appears to dislike, but the core principle is the same

Not at all.

First, I don't think it really makes sense to say a subreddit has opinions as such; it's simply a place for people to post thing. And while the user's do have opinions, nobody is suggesting the user's themselves be banned. Which brings me to...

Second, it's not about opinions. There are much more fringe groups than that sub, and in any case, politically I'm probably significantly closer to the median The_Donald poster than the median Reddit admin. It's not about opinions, it's about tolerance and disruption. Because...

Third, Reddit is a business and a community which thrives on promoting free, open, tolerant discourse. Just looking at the political subs there are communists, fascists, anarchists, libertarians, and everything in between, all happily posting away in their little corners, and occasionally participating in discussions that bring out proponents of different views. And then you have The_Donald. The issue isn't their strange, outrageous views (which aren't so much "outrageous" as "what you get if you cross standard American conservatism with standard European conservatism, put it in a blender, filter through the eyes of a 16 year old, and sprinkle with american flags and memes"). You're talking about a site with actual unironic advocates of actual literal dictatorship on it, come on.

So when you say:

> They picked side

I'm not seeing it. In fact I think they're trying so hard to avoid even the appearance of having picked a side, that they're erring on the side of taking The_Donald's side, and in so doing they're harming the site.

It's not about opinions.

That particular sub-reddit is a mixture of real people, and trolls who pose as trump supporters to egg the supporters on, as well as scaring and pissing off people against trump. The result being that with little effort and prodding on their side they get to see glorious internet mudfights.

However due to the way they're doing it, it's hard to tell which is which. That puts reddit admins in a bind and they have to balance things. Do they keep distance and let subtle trolls go unscathed? Do they take harsher measures and hit actual trump supporters? How much of this spills over into other reddits? How to handle the /all pollution? Letting it get in there just increases the mudfights, but if they take steps they'll be accused of censorships.

I've been browsing The_Donald lately out of curiosity, and it's like 99% memes based on news articles and links to news articles.

I see very little there that is objectionable, certainly nothing that seems worthy of shutting it down.

Certainly there is a lot of 'things to piss off people against trump', but how is that different from any other political site/sub?

It runs afoul of brigading due to the sheer scale.

If it managed to stay entirely within the subreddit then the admins would never need to be concerned with it and none of this would've happened.

Brigading is a pretty meaningless term when the whole site is build upon linking to other sites. It's pointless to make a distinction between a link to an external site and to reddit itself.

Well it's a good thing you are not on the reddit administration.

You did not address my previous post in any way.

Ok, have a more serious post: I disagree with you strongly, but lack the drive to explain in detail.

I suppose this is what Trump's supporters call "low energy".

/r/srs can covertly brigade because they are pro pc tolerance.

/r/t_d cannot brigade because they are anti-pc obscenity.

it has turned into speech policing. and trying to squash it, with half assed attempts, is making things worse.

Because TheDonald is a mix of racism, sexism , it's not a political view and it's affecting the whole site now.

Absolute free speech can have real consequences, here's a sad example from the Rwandan Genocide (copied from Wikipedia):

> The Power groups also believed that the national radio station, Radio Rwanda, had become too liberal and supportive of the opposition; they founded a new radio station, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLMC), which broadcast racist propaganda, obscene jokes and music, becoming very popular throughout the country.[89] One study finds that approximately 10% of the overall violence during the Rwandan genocide can be attributed to this new radio station.

But the same can be said about the infamous "SRS" and yet the admins have taken zero actions against it.

SRS isn't on r/All 24/7. SRS doesn't fill up 90% of /rising. SRS is only "infamous" for being a deflector for criticism of far right subreddits. No one has heard from that subreddit for years.

There are much more active subreddits that side with SRS if you want to go there, like circlebroke. There are also much more extreme subreddits than the_donald, like TheNewRight. Nobody is talking about banning those subreddits. This isn't a partisan argument. The_Donald is (purposely) interrupting how reddit works. I'm not an American and I have no dog in this fight, but the_donald is ruining reddit for a lot of us.

SRS users are actively undermining and destroying other subreddits, either by infiltrating the mod team and gaining their trust, or abusing reddit's bureaucratic process and having the existing mods removed for inactivity.

This has been happening for years, and the admins are complicit in it. As far as 'ruining reddit' goes, SRS/SRD are among the worst offenders for sure.

Don't go to r/All?! (Or maybe adminst could "ban" it from r/all without banning it completely.)

They drastically reduced the amount of articles from the same subreddit that can be on /r/all at the same time. The page used to be >90% Trump before the change (and >90% Sanders or >90% Obama during their respective campaigns, but of course the admins never bothered doing anything to stop that)

and >90% ron paul before Obamas rise

Ah, but SRS is hate speech for a cause the reddit staff believe in, while other subreddits are hate speech for a cause the reddit staff don't believe in. Huge difference.

SRS also migrated to SRD, so they can stealth brigade subs with little backlash

SRS is reddit's favourite bogeyman, but it is, and always has been, just a place that pokes fun at the rest of the site.

The admins aren't even on their side (their political leanings are assuredly different); SRS were just never as bad as people claim, and so the admins never had a reason to ban it.

There is no racism on the_donald. In fact, the sub prides itself on it's non-racist attitude.

Then they must be disillusioned because the sub is indeed racist.

A small extract from r/The_Donald:

> There are already loud voices saying Paris isn't Paris anymore, with more african/middle eastern faces than french ones, it's not surprising. (+124 points)

> So much cultural enrichment, how would our nation ever survive with out such multiculturalism and diversity? (+44 points)

> No mention of race or religion? Guess that only means one thing.

on another one:

> Arabic? Don't you mean Swedish?

I just took a random thread, there's probably 100s of others.

A trivial search finds this thread: https://m.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5dtubi/fuck_actua...

Even if you think whining about how liberals are treating Blacks laxly with affirmative action isn't racist, there's someone saying he favors people creating racially homogenous communities in the US.

it's not hard to selectively represent a group.

look at them cheer for a samoan hindi woman, and openly mock the idea they are racist and sexist - https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/search?q=tulsi&sort=top&...

(if you are looking at this post months in the future, you will probably need to remove the 'month' search restriction.)

hindu? hindi is the language

r/TheDonald should be banned for stupidity. It's not "politics". It's not "the other valid point of view". They did not choose stupid, stupid chose them.

/r/AynRandIsGod would also be wrong, but it would be legitimately wrong. Same for r/PracticalCommunism.

Let's maybe not ban opinions because somebody declares them as stupid. There are lots of stupid satire magazines for instance.

We're not. Stupid things can go make their own websites. Reddit isn't a public service.

I'll start worrying if server hosts were doing this, but if Reddit doesn't want a reputation of "slightly better than 4chan", it should try cleaning up a bit.

Reddit is where you meet people. Reddit has bigger power in directing attention than most advertising networks. Directing attention for private communication is definitely censorship.

I actually think legislation has to be brought up to date here. We seem to favor communicating on privately owned websites, but people still seem to have an expectation of freedom of speech. Law should definitely reflect this common expectation.

They clearly and routinely fall outside the bounds of acceptable discourse, which are already wide on a site like Reddit.

Edit: and routinely

What are the bounds of acceptable discourse in Reddit?

Oh, here's a thing you could've googled: https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy/

Thanks for pointing it out.

I was sarcastic to you because your question was answerable in ten seconds of googling, which suggests to me an insincere line of questioning.

Well, acceptable discourse is often used as a vague pretext for censorship. And Googling of "acceptable discourse Reddit" doesn't have much useful result. It's good to clarify the specifics.

They should be same as everywhere, and when your community becomes fixated on a conspiracy involving Hilary Clinton, Podesta, and a pedophile sex ring you should stop and ask:

"How far have I strolled from the herd?"

So basically they have different views, and thus bannable.

This is psychological gamesmanship. I punch you, you punch back, I win. I punch you, you don't punch back, I win. The only way for me to lose is if you punch back with such force that I can't punch again. Open and inclusive only works when there is an underlying good will or mutual benefit.

This really puts China's censorship into perspective.

There's just too many forces that want to make sure China doesn't become a superpower that spreading fake news would be a huge weapon against the government.

Even "real" news would be spun in a way that could hurt the rising stability of the Chinese people so I can see why the government would rather just ban the foreign instigators.

The sad part is he could have punched hard enough that they couldn't punch back, and it probably wouldn't have stirred up that much of a fuss. Simply mass ban instead of find and replace.

Could go one step further and just ban the entire subreddit and move on with his life.

Right, and they pulled the punch in order to appear fair and impartial. You cannot be fair and impartial against people trying to destroy you or take over - something many internet communities and media establishments need to learn.

You would seriously ban a subreddit with bad jokes and a 14-year old's idea of a cult of personality while far, far worse subreddits promoting pedophilia, bestiality, and rampant racism exist?

Since when did terrible jokes and politically incorrect opinion become reason to ban something?

They doxxed and physically harassed reddit moderators of subreddits they didn't like.

The whole sub?

"They"

You're right, that does sound like a poor reason to ban a subreddit. Then again, maybe that's unrelated to why I would lean towards banning them?

Why not ban it all? It's not like these people are contributing good content to the site.

I can't believe I've actually had to defend my anti-censorship stance on HN of all places

Being banned from Reddit is not being banned from the internet. You can setup PHPforum and run your own community. Reddit is a community of people, and a subset is making it worse for almost everyone else.

Places like Something Awful r Digg will ban people for being shitty and bad for the community. The community being, circularly, the set of people willing to use the website with such rules.

What's so special about Reddit that it doesn't need to cultivate the community?

If a group of friends get together all the time and then one of them is being a jerk all the time, that person stops getting invited. It's not censorship, it's unfriending.

reddit has subreddits so conflicting communities can form. if you want a sense of community, dont browse /r/all, and subscribe to the bubble you want.

reddit was founded as a platform that promoted free speech, not a limited subset of liberal speech.

I'm aware of the origins, but this is a prime example of the CAP theorem for communities:

Pick 2:

- little moderation

- low amount of drama (for lack of a better word)

- high diversity of topics

Reddit wants to be all 3 (just like Twitter), but there are reasons even 4chan has a huge amount of "janitors". It's pretty impossible to not have to deal with crap when you've decided white nationalists need a place to talk, and it should be on your site.

i disagree. reddit is a great balance because they have editorial control of the front page, and then they have all. subs have moderators that can choose varying levels of moderation, sort of a "let the states decide" style compromise. high moderation leads to great subs like /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians. reddit can have both high intersubmoderation and low standardization of what ideas are moderated. you can ban subs that have mods who refuse to enforce site rules. but once you start removing subs because their political beliefs dont match consensus, you get an echo chamber.

reddit should take every opportunity to work on the algorithm and make it so the front pages surfaces the best content possible. they can make sure posts they dont like never reach the front. but once they inject editorial control of all, their ideals are compromised.

the drama is caused by mods who want all the other mods to have the same beliefs, so they dont have as much crap to clean up. if you dont want to be a janitor, dont volunteer. alternatively reddit could pay for janitors? reddit could drastically reduce drama if it had better moderation tools, and better community tools. they could take their metareddits so much further. if you read the chat logs, the default mods dont like other people on 'their' site, who think different, and act differently.

I think you'd have to defend an anti-censorship stance pretty much anywhere that's somewhat "liberal" these days. Never before in my life have I seen so much fussing 24/7 over the availability of other people's words. (Note this is subtly different from fussing over the content of other people's words, which is fine.)

But it's not censorship when the "good" guys do it!

Why do you say that? It's quite possible they had a significant impact on the outcome of the presidential elections, which I think is quite an achievement of reddit as a whole and possibly more than any other subreddit has ever done. The toxic content is only a part of it.

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