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Comment by ucarion | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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