What irks me the most is the spinelessness of a lot of mods. Shadow banning and banning without an explanation just striffling free speech without acountability. Freedom of expression should not be subject to the whims of individuals!
If this gets me banned than you are worse than spez
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Man, did this happen often to you?
Yeah, I'd like to hear exactly what free speech was suppressed. Because the vast majority of these rants have a very interesting post/comment history.
Not exactly free speech violations like OP is stating, since what happened is the same solution as here, i.e. create a new community and use that, so it's not Reddit issue, but the specific mod of the specific community.
In Reddit there were (possibly still are) two large Bitcoin communities,
/r/bitcoinand/r/btc. One of them is extremely censored, and you will get banned for criticising a specific feature that was introduced in Bitcoin a while back. The other one is a lot more open to discussion and doesn't ban people for criticising or approving that (or any other) change. You would see at least once a week someone coming to the newer subreddit because he was banned from the other one, for example I was banned for linking a GitHub page that was in the sidebar as a resource (because in the context of the discussion that page proved a mod wrong).I'm not saying this is common place, but it happens, and because the vast majority of people know about Bitcoin but don't know it's usually abbreviated btc they're likely to find the first community. Again I'm not claiming this is a violation of free speech, not even arguing this is a bad thing (since I agree the solution is to create your own community with blackjack and hookers) I'm just pointing that mods banning people just because happens, so there is a grain of truth there.
Reddit will close subreddits that do not delete Hamas footage, for example. So mods have to choose which way to go.
Hamas are right up there with the Nazis as people we don’t need to include in our discussion about how to run a civil society. I say this as a lifelong supporter of the Palestinian cause. Fuck Hamas. Is anyone complaining that tech companies prevent ISIS from using their platforms? Hamas are no better.
I do not understand. I gave an example of absurd censorship. They censor big, negative names because it costs them money. It has nothing to do with Hamas itself. They did not censor them before the attack. The do not censor many other terrorist groups right now, because they are not in the media. They allow(ed?) ISIS content.
Understanding how terrorists operate, based on their go pro footage, seems pretty useful to me. It is also an excellent way to get a realistic view about what happened. They even remove videos where the terrorists were hunted down if it was from their perspective.
It seems you do not understand. Tech companies do everything they can to ensure that terrorists and hostile regimes do not use their service. When ISIS communicate on Facebook, that puts Facebook in jeopardy with the government. Negligence on this is the best thing Facebook can do to invite Congress in to regulate them. I’m not saying that every company does a perfect job or even a good job but to say that removing Hamas content is new or special in any way… yeah you just haven’t seen the inside of a major company’s trust and safety team. If Hamas is prioritized more than last year, maybe it’s because they’ve removed any ambiguity about whether they are the elected authorities in Gaza or terrorists. They’re also probably waging more intense information campaigns than ever since their attack was designed to stir their supporters and put them in conflict with Israel. Yeah, fuck Hamas. If you want to cry censorship, find someone worth defending.
You really need to stop making straw mans. Read what I said, not what you think I said. I gave a specific example of what was discussed. No more and no less.
You said that disallowing Hamas produced video is an example of suppression of free speech and constitutes “absurd censorship.”
Mate, you must be confusing me with someone else.
Or someone has stolen your account. Yellow is what you replied to. Red is you.
I gave an example (since the original poster did not), I do not care about Hamas, that is just the most recent. It has nothing to do with free speech. It is a corporation that wants to make money.
My reddit account was recently perm banned for messaging a mod who banned me from a sub for mockingly repeating their policy back to them on attribution and OC. Granted, I was perma banned for "harrassment". I am skeptical of the people you are talking about as well as many of them are kinda awful community members but I think its a mistake to dismiss all these guys as people who just want to say racial slurs or something.
It sounds like you were trolling, spamming and harassing?
I wasn't trolling at all. I'm not sure how that could be your take away with the information I gave. I guess you're in favor of moderation that limits discussion and opposing viewpoints. Most authoritarian are though so I can't be suprised.
Arguing with a mod isn't trolling. Disagreeing with a mods decisions isn't spam or harassment. I guess you've found a great way to control speech you don't like though. Anytime someone says something you dislike call it trolling, spam and harrassment and oila, you can effectively control every message board in existence.
Somehow I can't reply to the other reply so i do it here:
No i do not have one of those trouble-maker post histories. Most of the time the people who get banned are the ones who don't follow the hive-mind.
“The ones who don’t follow the hive-mind.” 🚩🚩🚩
So you are saying reddit isn't plagued by behaviour where people basically pile onto diverging (albeit legitimate) opinions?
I’m saying that the opinions that people piled onto were generally worth piling onto. If the things you say garner a negative response everywhere you go, maybe it’s not everyone else who’s the problem.
I have no idea if this is/was "generally" the case. Go into any sub that is pro or anti anything and say something reasonable that does not fit that pro or anti sentiment. Good luck. People downvote things usually not based on logical thinking but feelings.
That’s true. But a space that is pro or anti something isn’t a space that’s going to be protected by any semblance of “free speech.” It’s not a fault of the community, it’s by design that they want people of a similar mindset. Wanting to guarantee “free speech” in a space like that defeats the purpose of those spaces.
I fully agree. Free speech is something else entirely.
Both state driven information filtering as well as people letting their emotions loose creates bubbles in which people are misinformed. They think X is a really big problem, while it could actually only seem so because of that bubble. And the other way around too, of course. Anyone pointing errors out is massively outnumbered, no chance.
Thinking about it, I think religion works the same way. Just not with random people on the internet but in the local community, where it is even harder to escape that bubble.
Thats not a very good argument at all. You're literally stating "well since majority agrees with it, it must mean somethings wrong with you." How could possibly think this is healthy or good way to engage with ideas different than the "mainstream"?
Is this the first time the "mainstram" is right?
I’m saying on Reddit in particular, the comments that got downvoted into oblivion were generally of a certain variety, and OP is being very cagey about what they mean. And again, a community forms around common belief, and “free speech” doesn’t protect your inclusivity into a space, it only protects you from government action against your speech.
Anything that broke the "echochamber" is what got downvoted but this was never strictly about downvoting it was about moderation so im not sure why you shifted the focus to downvotes. We know you're trying to essentially say the people who got downvoted or moderated deserved it because they said things so "bad" they deserved to be moderated. I'm not sure that's always true or even mostly true.
You're right that free speech typically means the ability to speak freely without government intervention but I think you're being obtuse if you don't see how those implications could be limited by corporations online and if you're comfortable with censorship online not being democratically decided upon that's cool but I don't trust the corporations as much as you do i guess.
Oh come on you know this isn't true!
On numerous reddit communities there was a very slim overton window and if you say something that is totally a reasonable thing to say you but diverges from the consensus you get downvoted to oblivion and sometimes even mods take action. You know this is true. Don't believe me google it. Otherwise I'm going to assume you are not arguing in good faith.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from consequences for your speech. Your definition of “reasonable” doesn’t sound like it’s reasonable by the consensus of users on Reddit. It seems like you’ve been fairly gun shy about posting what these “legitimate opinions” are. On Reddit, I would get in arguments with liberals a lot, because I consider them entirely too right leaning. But it never resulted in mod action or even downvoting, it was a discussion. There is one kind of opinion that pretty consistently resulted in downvoting, and especially mod action. And those kinds of opinions should be downvoted. The only things I can think of otherwise are people criticizing mods or Reddit itself and getting banned by power hungry admins, but as others have said, go to a different community if you see that.
It is when it comes to the consequence being not being able to speak. if my speech has at its consequence that it pisses off people in power in a group then freedom of speech means that they wont stifle my speech when it threatens their power or is deemed undesirable for other than rule breaking reasons.
https://xkcd.com/1357/
Exactly this. Saved me the trouble. Thank you!
Are you in favor of firing teachers who day things that go against common popular teachings in an area?
Your mocking of this situation makes me feel you'd be in favor of laws that fire teachers for teaching evolution for example.
No? Evolution is a fact. Would I want teachers fired for saying things that are objectively not true? Or teaching opinions as facts? Yeah. More red flags in “go against common teachings,” here.
You need free speech to ensure teachers don't get fired for teaching science. I'd be care about removing that ability from other roles and people just because you disagree with the premise.
Are you complaining about Lemmy or Reddit?
There's ways to "not follow the hive mind" without getting banned. There's a reason why daily wire is able to be on YouTube and reddit for example.
that depends on the community r/conservative gets you banned for even slight deviation from allowed opinions.
In that case (unless it has changed since I stopped using Reddit in July) the rules of the sub explicitly tell you this will happen if you post comments that are not in support of conservative views.
Their house, their rules. (and not censorship)
In that sense, at least they are transparent a put being authoritarian. There are too many "populist left" spaces where those things aren't spelled out and you'll be banned for a vague rule that could be anything and everything. I despise when they don't give transparency to their rules and how they enforce them. It's generally bad too imo. That being said, mods have a hard fucking job admittedly and they aren't paid.