The majority of online hate speech (of any variety) is driven by groupthink. If you make it harder to find the hate groups, you de facto reduce the groupthink.
This will not end well.
What this ultimately accomplishes is that the public gets to be blissfully ignorant about the blemishes, but these people are operating in the same capacity as before without brushing up to challenges as much
The reason I feels strongly about it is open discussion with racists have led to conversion away from white supremacy that would not have otherwise occurred e.g. Davis - https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinc...
The fear of power of racists operating on a platform like reddit is overblown by virtue that racists seem stronger without it; strongest with echo chambers.
EDIT: since I can't reply to you, yes, by definition, it's seeking it out.
I've seen plenty racists on reddit, they're still around post-censorship.
Putting racists on open platforms stops the second, and if you're so interested in changing their minds, nothing is stopping you from searching them out to do so.
Daryl Davis went I to people's homes and met them in person to befriend and sometimes "convert" them. It wasn't accidental cross pollination. He explicitly reached out.
What if said "on-the-fence" individual visits stormfront? Who's to argue against it there? No one.
> nothing is stopping you from searching them out to do so.
Except there is. Racist forums are walled gardens. They're safe-spaces for white supremacists. They don't invite dissent.
> Daryl Davis went I to people's homes and met them in person to befriend and sometimes "convert" them. It wasn't accidental cross pollination. He explicitly reached out.
In person, correct. If this is to be analogous to the real world, other users on a popular social media platform like reddit are your neighbors. And obscure radical forums are like impenetrable cult compounds. You can reach them out online, when in plain view, but this isn't as easily accomplished in every medium.
More importantly, you're framing racism as an infectious view that could plague just about any innocent bystander. It's more fragile than that, in terms of logical merit (there is none). I think the exposure makes it more vulnerable.
This applies equally to a subreddit. Except now the walled garden has a funnel, since people can accidentally get exposed, but can't see any dissent.
> It's more fragile than that, in terms of logical merit (there is none). I think the exposure makes it more vulnerable.
You're assuming racists will play fair. That's naive. To frame this a different way, I assume that racists will act in their own self interest. If Reddit wasn't useful to them, they wouldn't use it. But here they are (were). Clearly they think it ads value. They've put a lot more time and energy into analyzing their best path forward, and it apparently involved Reddit. Why should we freely give them that ammo.
> What if said "on-the-fence" individual visits stormfront? Who's to argue against it there? No one.
But getting to stormfront is much, much harder than getting to /r/ conspiracy (which has almost a million subs), hanging out for a while, and seeing someone go off about gassing the Jews or the censorship of data on human skull size comparisons, clicking on their profile, and seeing that they also post to /r/sig_heilo_there or greatapes or whatever it is.
And that person was already subscribed to conspiracy, so the ideas that the man is keeping the truth about Jews/affirmative action/the imminent subjugation of white people. It is infectious, despite your disbelief. And then as you are more radicalized, you get invited to a private discord, or to hang out with the cooler people on stormfront. So now this person who, on their own would never have ventured onto stormfront (because who does that) is a member. Radicalization is a process. And if you ever run in to try and stop it, you'll be banned, because they control the subreddit.
Let me rephrase what you're advocating for: allowing white supremacists to freely propagandize will make it easier to prevent the spread of white supremacy. Do you believe that to be true in general (say for extremist religions, or even for nonextremism?)
Like terrorism, so hate.