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Comment by girlvinyl | Hacker News Reader

Re: Freespeech. No one is asking the government to censor reddit. Users are taking things into their own hands because the private company that owns reddit refuses to moderate completely inappropriate material. The system is working just as it should.

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This is a fairly typical position - i.e. private corporations are under no obligation to protect free speech, therefore censorship in a private context is okay.

Which is an argument that flies legally, but not morally depending on what you believe.

If you believe in free speech, then using the fact that your website is private to censor others is not a violation of the law, but it certainly seems like a violation of your own declared ideology. Which is to say, you would support free speech until it got inconvenient.

Reddit as a community seems to place a high value on free speech, so while they're under no legal obligation to keep things open, it would be a violation of its own declared ideology if they started censoring.

Note that I don't miss the creepy subreddits at all, but if you're one of the people on /r/politics, /r/atheism, or whatever who are quoting Voltaire all the time, it seems hypocritical to call for censorship.

The speech of these users is still free, but there are consequences to what they say. For example, the consequence here is that their creepshots results in others naming them and exercising their own right to speech as well. I'm also not at all calling for censorship. As I said, the creeps want their free speech and are getting it, as well as others exercising their rights too. I do think it is quite unfair that the tumblr with names was deleted, but again, Tumblr has a right to police their site as they see fit.

Ultimately, I think it is exploitative of the reddit corporation and their masters to allow completely disgusting and clearly immoral content. This is 2012. The internet isn't the wild west anymore.

It's Reddit mods (volunteers) who started the banning only on their SubReddits. The admin and real staff haven't done anything (except ban /r/jailbait I suppose).

>If you believe in free speech, then using the fact that your website is private to censor others is not a violation of the law, but it certainly seems like a violation of your own declared ideology.

I support free speech but I certainly wouldn't allow the KKK to march through my backyard.

> Which is an argument that flies legally, but not morally depending on what you believe.

Exactly like all the pro-/r/CreepShots/ arguments.

Actually, I don't think the contents of /r/creepshots are actually legal - or at least, not a large portion of it.

Upskirts, panty shots, and the such are not legally protected, even if they are done in public. As a street photographer myself I'm quite familiar with the difference.

Which is to say, much of the content on /r/creepshots wouldn't pass legal muster, let alone the morality test.

One of the great things about the internet is that you can pretty easily and cheaply start your own website if you don't like how the one you're using is being run.

Free speech is meaningless if anyone sufficiently unpopular can be unmasked. This guy's life would probably be in danger over thoughtcrime.

It wasn't about censorship by the government, it was about censorship within reddit.

For better or worse, the reddit admins want free speech, in which the admins don't prohibit anything that isn't illegal in the US. The one exception, which they apply in a viewpoint-neutral basis, is doxxing. The policy is "no doxxing," not "no doxxing unless you really really hate someone."

Now, you can say that the doxxers were doing their version of protest. Civil disobedience, I guess, because they think that reddit's approach to free speech is wrong. We now have two mutually exclusive philosophies in conflict, and reddit will need to choose one of them.

While we are at it, lets also unmask people with blogs about living a closeted gay life, conservative profs trying to become tenured, girl geeks blogging about sexism in their workplace, and other such inappropriate material.

It worries me that you see these people as analogous to violentacrez.

The point isn't that they're analogous, the point is once you start drawing lines where it's ok to doxx people, you're on a slippery slope.

Oh, it's ok to do it to violentacrez, but not to someone slightly less creepy? Are you in favor of the slightly less creepy guy? What about someone talking about drugs online? Hacking?

I'm not usually a 'principle-above-the-particulars' kind of guy but when it comes to free speech and privacy online, you've gotta keep it absolute.

The point is that getting upset at being doxxed is hypocritical when you're invading the privacy of multiple women. The fact that people who post there feel that they have the 'right' to have a safe haven for posting disgusting and degrading photos is craziness.

Sure, the guy's an asshole and can't really expect better. But doxxing is vigilantism. In your own words, would you agree with everyone else's definition of "disgusting and degrading photos", and endorse any vigilantism against such?

Direct action is always a product of anarchy. If Reddit wants to run an anarchistic community, why shouldn't it be "policed" by vigilantes? What right-protecting organization is out there now to moderate subreddits? IMO this situation is different from the other hypotheticals out there due to the fact that the moderators were knowingly encouraging the violation of privacy of others.

The point is when you get to decide who deserves anonymity online, other people with different opinions than yourself do too. There are plenty of people out there who would consider being gay just as morally damaging.

lets also unmask people with blogs about living a closeted gay life

Actually if that person is publically and actively opposing gay rights (e.g. political who blathers on about how bad gay people are and shouldn't have rights, and then is caught with a prostitute of the same gender), then yes, those people should be doxxes.

Neal Stephenson has a great quote on this (from the Diamond Age):

"You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices. It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others--after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism?

"Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others' shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices..."

http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2006/03/21/hypocrisy_is_the_gre...

Yes that's a good point. However consider it from the perspective of a LGB community member. LGB people are broadly of the belief that one should come out when one's ready, and no-one should out someone without their permission. However that shouldn't apply to people who are actively working against the LGB community, the people who get up on stage and say "These people (LGB) are not full human beings" (as the Pope said recently). Those people should be outed.

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