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Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Violent, hateful, disgusting speech has no place in civil discourse but it's irreplaceable in public discourse.

That's kinda the problem. As a species, our entire communications spectrum can't be forced into either bucket. It has to exist in both.

The kind of things I wouldn't tolerate at all around my family I'm fine tolerating around my friends. And the kind of things I wouldn't tolerate from a friend I'm fine tolerating as part of the public discourse. In fact, the last thing we want to do is use either minority or majority power to silence what folks consider "intolerable" speech. That way lies dragons.

It's a difficult if not impossible spot for social networks to be in.

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The commenter you replied to may have a point. Just because vile speech has a place in public discourse, doesn't mean it is good to present that speech in a very public way.

Reddit is among the most widely-used websites in the world -- 7th, by Alexa's rankings. Reddit lives up to its motto of being the front page of the internet.

Imagine one of the top-10 newspapers in the United States were occasionally publishing stuff from /r/The_Donald on its front page, and had content from various hateful sub-reddits a few pages back. You could argue that this imaginary publication harms society.

Of course, Reddit is not the New York Times. So different standards apply. But the argument that Reddit -- and thus its administrators policies -- may be harming society, seems to hold some weight.

If 20 people were to stand up on a soapbox with a megaphone in times square screaming about /r/redpill, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc concepts they would be removed if legal, and if not legal a huge countermovement would appear to try to force them out. On Reddit you get both the megaphone and the safe space, but are still just as easily accessible to the public as anywhere.

Its "real" freedom of information, without many of the mechanisms that larger society uses to fight back against it. Instead it is just ignored and left to fester and grow until it pops into the public forum at the point where huge efforts are required to fight it. I feel like the internet is a great way to get differing views out, but not a great way to build any cultural agreement.

this is a great perspective and post, thanks

>Imagine one of the top-10 newspapers in the United States were occasionally publishing stuff from /r/The_Donald on its front page, and had content from various hateful sub-reddits a few pages back. You could argue that this imaginary publication harms society.

CNN and Infowars have the same number of subscribers on Youtube. Now, I'm no fan of CNN, but Infowars is a unique kind of gross in my opinion. To the extent that subscribing to a youtube channel connotes social value, apparently the world has decided that Infowars is approximately equal in value to CNN.

YouTube subscribers is not a good measure of the reach, nor the social value, of a publication. YouTube is rife with crazy, conspiratorial, and provocative stuff, so you'd expect fringe outlets like InfoWars to do well there; people who like InfoWars are more likely to be active on YouTube than fans of CNN.

Most people view CNN through TV or CNN.com; I suspect a much greater proportion of InfoWars's content is viewed through YouTube.

The number 1 most popular newspaper in the UK basically is publishing stuff you'd see on The Donald. As are many of the tabloids.

And let's not forget that it used to be quite common in many major cities for porn and prostitution providers to publish their own "newspapers" for street vendors to peddle.

It's a difficult spot because social networks try to maintain a fiction that they're a public forum where free speech must be respected. As far as I know there is no legal precedent that this is so, and they're free to ban users/cull posts from their web sites as they see fit. Additionally, I'd say they have a responsibility to prevent their site from being used for certain purposes, though the boundaries of what's acceptable are tough to define.

Reddit is not like an ISP, who can (until recently) claim that they're not responsible for traffic passing through their network, as reddit has no reasonable claim to be a "dumb pipe".

though the boundaries of what's acceptable are tough to define.

After denying it, you just explained why it's a difficult spot.

By the way, website are in fact not legally responsible for that traffic, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act[1], which the courts have upheld against sites like eBay, Google, Craigslist, Backpage and MySpace.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

Thanks for the link!

I only know as much about Section 230 as I just read at that link, but it seems that this doesn't provide protection for things like calling for violence against a religious/sexual/race group. I concede that the exact boundary of what is a call for violence is hard to pin down, but I don't think that makes it OK to throw up your hands and say "Anything goes on my site!"

> it seems that this doesn't provide protection for things like calling for violence against a religious/sexual/race group.

That's the job of the Constitution, as the SCOTUS made clear in Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which an actual KKK leader was being charged after participating in an armed rally and talked about getting revenge on various races and on those who supported them, like the President and Congress:

"(..) the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

I think there's plenty of middle ground between "Providing a platform for hate speech is A-Okay!" and "We must silence those bigots at any cost!" At the moment, I'd say reddit is too permissive of hate speech. I acknowledge that this is a personal opinion, but I assert that it is a valid opinion.

They're a public forum with none of the traditional social controls, because people can say anything behind a screen of anonymity. Its a public forum with almost 0 institutional memory, and true arguments can be avoided with the click of a mouse that wouldn't be possible in person.

I'm very frustrated that this is getting downvoted. If you are going to downvote, please at least post a counter-point or something!

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