Fun fact: Reddit (& the main culture) is a big fan of "Free Speech" (in the US sense), however reddit bans one form of protected speech: doxxing.
Actually, Reddit doesn't have free speech. Reddit moderators are famous for enforcing their personal views by banning, or threatening to ban, people who express dissenting views. The level of censorship is so high that one wonders whether those doing the censoring even understand what free speech refers to.
Example: http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html
If you mean the moderators, yes, I agree to some extent. I think it's bad form to contact someone privately and threaten banning if they don't stop dissenting from popular views, but it's not an earthshaking issue either.
> Too many flaming liberals.
Too many flaming whatever. Too much heat, not enough light.
Because Reddit sometimes expels moderators and subReddits it doesn't approve of, this implies that it either approves of, or tolerates, the rest. They're not under any legal obligations to monitor content, but they do, and they sometimes act in their own interest.
Not to make too much out of this. Reddit has the right to run their business any way they please and that their stockholders will tolerate. My point is that it's a business, not a soapbox.
Your argument is lousy, because you're pretending something that isn't true - that subreddits lack owners. Subreddits go to the first person who creates them. It's a land-grab. If you don't like the rules in someone's subreddit, you're free to create your own. Yes, the global site admins have their own rules, but they're nowhere near as restrictive, as what you're talking about.
Yes, it does. It has severe restrictions on what kinds of speech the government is capable of punishing you for expressing. That's what free speech is.
Free speech does not mean that you have the right to come into my house and scream obscenities at me. Nobody, nowhere has that right, regardless of where they're from.
Actually, Reddit doesn't have free speech. Reddit moderators are famous for enforcing their personal views by banning, or threatening to ban, people who express dissenting views. The level of censorship is so high that one wonders whether those doing the censoring even understand what free speech refers to.
I sometimes find myself unable to detect a satirical or ironic intent in someone's writing, one that may seem obvious to other people. Then someone charitably points out what I've missed, and I slap my forehead.
This was once described as a symptom of Asperger Syndrome, but that supposed mental illness has been reluctantly abandoned recently because of its dubious foundation and widespread abuse by opportunistic psychologists, which leaves the more likely explanation -- a variety of nerdy intelligence that makes subtle ironies essentially opaque, but that hardly merits a mental illness diagnosis.
In other words, a little smart, not a little sick.
That doesn't make it excusable, but it's not at all reddit's fault that it happens.
That's true. Most of the time.
> Outside of a few subreddits, reddit moderators are just random people, not reddit employees.
You're missing the point. If a moderator censors content, and if Reddit doesn't have a policy against censorship, the fact that the moderators aren't Reddit employees is irrelevant. Neglect shapes policy.
There are only a few things that Reddit (Note: edited the following) will aggressively prevent as a matter of public relations, among which are threats against people, the dispensing of medical advice, and libelous remarks. Those are aggressively acted against. And a few others -- for example, Reddit just today banned a subReddit that planned to try to locate a Washington shipyard shooter that allegedly escaped. Reddit got a black eye over a similar subReddit that searched for the Boston bomber suspects and wrongly accused someone innocent, so they're not going to allow that to happen again.
The Reddit moderator who censored me made that argument also -- he wasn't a Reddit employee, so it was wrong to call it a Reddit problem. There are some ways in which that's true, but there's no impenetrable fence between Reddit policymakers and subReddit moderators who aren't employees of anything. I had to explain this to the moderator using Galileo as an example -- Galileo wasn't ever tried by the Inquisition, he was just walked through a room full of torture equipment and told to shut up (greatly simplifying a complex story).
But the moderator wasn't very bright and I don't think he ever got it -- he just wouldn't tolerate any criticism of psychologists or psychology, and if I criticized psychology again, I was out. I'm familiar with the typical intellectual gifts of those who think psychology is a science, and I realized nothing could be be done. And that was the last time I ever posted to Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/user/lutusp
http://arachnoid.com/psychology/reddit_psychology.html
> ... but it's not at all reddit's fault that it happens.
In fact, in fairness and in the eyes of the law, it is. If Reddit doesn't have a policy against it and doesn't act against it, it becomes corporate policy de facto. There are any number of examples in case law where benign neglect turns out not to be so benign.
The reason I haven't tried to do anything about this is that the moderator has speech rights also, and the fact that he doesn't know anything about the topic is not a meaningful argument against his right to express ignorance -- that's a right he certainly has.
There are only a few things that Reddit really must prevent, among which are threats against people, the dispensing of medical advice, and libelous remarks
I agree, I should have said they aggressively act against those things as matter of public relations, not because of legal requirements. I edited the original post to reflect this.
> A "reasonable" interpretation of advice given from an unauthenticated source (ie. not a real, living breathing doctor with their MD behind them) is that you shouldn't follow it.
True, but it seems many people don't know this. Interestingly, outside of a book (protected by freedom of the press), if a non-MD dispenses, or appears to be dispensing, medical advice, in most times and places he can be prosecuted.
The corporation known as 'Reddit' has free speech, which means they have the right to ban people from using their forum in ways they disapprove of. I'm pretty sure that's what the poster you replied to meant.
Reddit has property rights, which allows them to control their service. The also have free speech rights, but that isn't what is being excercised in this case. IMHO.