939 upvotes, 15 direct replies (showing 15)
Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and ask my questions regards to the current state of Reddit. As I see it, there are a few issues that need to be addressed publicly ans specifically. These are all based on the userbase "perceptions." Not being in any loop to the recent drama, these are all just what I'm getting based on they hype going on. I'd love your response to the following issues:
1. **Censorship** - There's a fine line between making Reddit a "safe" place and making Reddit a place where you dare not ever offend. Part of Reddit's appeal is that here is a place where you can voice your opinions and hopefully find others to discuss topics with. Currently fatpeoplehate is banned, but what if someday there's an "up in arms" issue between (as only an example) the atheist and religious subreddits. Do we start banning groups because SOMEONE might take offense to the existence of specific subreddits. When do we start banning, when do we just ignore? I don't have an answer on when it is and isn't appropriate to remove groups, but I'd think it's better to put things in the hands of the individual users / groups than censoring anything site-wide. If I don't want to see fatpeoplehate, give me tools to block it completely...
2. **Trust** - There's definitely a trust issue going on. As you've stated, the person who asked the offensive Jesse Jackson comment wasn't shadowbanned, but in fact deleted the account. Perception was that Reddit Admins could and would shadowban people who offend/bother them. This tells me that you have a trust issue with your userbase as we're starting to see the Admins as the enemy, not the great folks who give us this cool place to hang out. I'd love to know how you plan to repair the users' trust issues. My opinion here is that there should be a lot more transparency on what Admins have and haven't done with regards to bans, censorship, and frontpage manipulations.
3. **Evil Reddit Management** - There's also a perception out there that Reddit's Management (not the day-to-day Admins exactly) aren't good people. Victoria's firing has highlighted this, as have apparently other Admin firings that have come to light. I agree with your policy of not speaking to specifics about personnel issues, but Reddit and you very specifically have come across as heartless with the immediateness of these firings. The "nice" people that Reddit users tend to be really don't like the idea that Reddit might not be a great place to work and we don't want to support a place that mistreats their employees. We actually want the Admins and Users to all get along and make Reddit something special. Axing a high profile, well-liked Admin like Victoria without some sort of press release is a mistake as "we" want to make sure all her hard work and kindness to "us" wasn't just completely disregarded in this decision. In short, the Admins in general seem like nice people and we want them to make sure they're treated nicely, even when a parting of ways happens.
Those are my concerns moving forward and I'd love to see responses.
Comment by ErisC at 07/07/2015 at 00:07 UTC
17 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Censorship - There's a fine line between making Reddit a "safe" place and making Reddit a place where you dare not ever offend. Part of Reddit's appeal is that here is a place where you can voice your opinions and hopefully find others to discuss topics with. Currently fatpeoplehate is banned, but what if someday there's an "up in arms" issue between (as only an example) the atheist and religious subreddits. Do we start banning groups because SOMEONE might take offense to the existence of specific subreddits. When do we start banning, when do we just ignore? I don't have an answer on when it is and isn't appropriate to remove groups, but I'd think it's better to put things in the hands of the individual users / groups than censoring anything site-wide. If I don't want to see fatpeoplehate, give me tools to block it completely...
Regarding Censorship, here's the thing. I'm a mod over on /r/asktransgender and as you can imagine, we get a LOT of harassment from trolls and anti-trans folks. In fact, while everyone was drama-ing about fatpeoplehate getting shut down, nobody noticed that a trans harassment subreddit was also shut down.
That subreddit (which I won't mention, but you'll find it), was dedicated towards harassing our members: either over PM, by posting photoshopped photos of them and ridiculing them on their subreddit and other related sites, by spamming our subreddit, etc.
They were harassing users, who've previously posted that they're suicidal on /r/asktransgender and other subreddits, over PM, posting shit about them publicly, finding images our users posted in the past on their progress and plastering them on their hate subreddit, and more shit. But apparently shutting down their launching area and banning all of their members is "censorship".
Thing is, a subreddit ban only goes so far, and users have ways of easily circumventing them, plus they don't end harassment via PM. When it comes to that, the ability for admins to shadowban them (and any new accounts they create), and shut down harassment subreddits, is invaluable.
What tools could they possibly give us that would have the same effect?
We hardly hear from their lot anymore. So that's great.
Comment by [deleted] at 06/07/2015 at 22:50 UTC
252 upvotes, 16 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by Waldhorn at 06/07/2015 at 20:49 UTC
75 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Well said, While I also would like to see a return of the friendly reddit. I feel that Pao has already moved in 'safety crews' of admins to prevent offense thus making Reddit a more marketable commodity at the expense of tolerant community.
Comment by roadrunnermeepbeep3 at 06/07/2015 at 22:11 UTC*
31 upvotes, 5 direct replies
There's also a perception out there that Reddit's Management (not the day-to-day Admins exactly) aren't good people.
That's not a perception, it's the reality. Reddit's management are not good people. There's simply no reasonable debate to be had about that.
A good management would never have fired that girl like that. They would have detected that they had a problem, sought to resolve it, or else then planned for a smooth transition by introducing another employee. They didn't do that. Fuck it, they fired her. Why? Because she had ethical concerns. So they just fucking tossed her in a bin with zero planning or forethought. Those are the actions of an entitled asshole, not a competent managerial team.
And you know what, that's sad. Good people are not that hard to find. Assholes are a dime a dozen. And Reddit is run by a whole bunch of assholes.
Comment by acedis at 06/07/2015 at 22:42 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Regarding censorship, as long as the atheists and religious people don't start organized mod-sanctioned witch hunts or any other kind of actual illegal shit they should be fine. Since that's the kind of stuff FPH and the other banned subs were engaging in. After all, the one thing that was 100% clear with no ambiguity from day 1 is that the banning of subs had nothing to do with what opinions they expressed, but the behavior they engaged in. And if that wasn't hint enough Coontown is still allowed. So I don't get how the slippery slope argument applies to this situation at all...
Comment by [deleted] at 07/07/2015 at 01:10 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Where the FUCK are the admins?!! I thought they wanted to open a dialogue...
Comment by dannighe at 06/07/2015 at 23:32 UTC
6 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Why are people ignoring the massive harassment from fatpeoplehate? They weren't just being assholes in a small area, they were coming together in a small area to come up with ways to hurt people in a larger area. When thir hatred and harassment spilled out from a subreddit into other subreddits and even the real world, then they lost their privilege to meet on Reddit. That's one that I have absolutely no problem about. If /r/atheism were to start harassing people en masse in the real world, with the sub existing solely to do that, I would hope they were banned too.
Comment by [deleted] at 07/07/2015 at 01:26 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
There's a fine line between making Reddit a "safe" place and making Reddit a place where you dare not ever offend.
This is the part of all the drama I just don't get. It's not a fine line. If reddit allows subreddit moderators to abide or encourage doxxing and harassment (which, AFAIK, was the case with all the subreddits that were recently shut down), that not only makes them shitty admins, it could potentially make them liable in a legal sense. Modulo 'hate speech' laws in countries outside the US, reddit is not at legal risk for letting cretins spew racist or misogynist bullshit in the abstract.
Presumably most or all reddit admins and employees think e.g. coontown and redpill are utter garbage, as I do, yet they allow it to continue. To my mind, that makes them far more committed to 'free speech' (more accurately, an open community) than most of the people whining about 'censorship' on a privately-run website.
Comment by robotortoise at 06/07/2015 at 23:07 UTC
4 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Currently fatpeoplehate is banned, but what if someday there's an "up in arms" issue between (as only an example) the atheist and religious subreddits.
If they both are brigading and harassing each other, they'll both be banned.
Comment by Kitsune-Smirk at 06/07/2015 at 23:12 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I actually had no Internet for the past few days and missed all of this. Still, I agree with this, and hope to make Reddit a better place where I can discuss and just have fun.
Comment by darwin2500 at 06/07/2015 at 22:17 UTC
1 upvotes, 3 direct replies
but what if someday there's an "up in arms" issue between (as only an example) the atheist and religious subreddits.
For those who don't know, r/atheism used to be a default sub; it was removed from default status at the same time things like /r/adviceanimals and other 'memey' subs were made defaults, assumedly to make the front page more 'marketable'.
Comment by EmperorSunday at 06/07/2015 at 23:19 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
right on the nail i think. People got so angry that she got fired when in reality we have no idea why, people here are just against big organizations.
When it comes down to it, tools are the most important thing, reddit should have the tools to keep a user safe rather than blocking content.
Comment by Asemco at 06/07/2015 at 22:51 UTC*
-1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I don't think a religious group will be banned unless they're /r/fuckathiests or /r/fuckchristians or something along those lines.
AFAIK, Fatpeoplehate (Just using FPH because i don't remember the other 4 or how ever many were banned) was banned because the sub served a single purpose: Hatred for fat people. There was no discussion to be had about how to manage your body, or how to show off your big beautiful body, it was real people's pictures posted without permission and the sub dwellers swaying "Haha, they're fat! Fuck 'em". Why shouldn't that be banned? Why spread pointless hate unnecessarily? There's so many things in the world to laugh at, and they choose to solely ridicule people with large bodies.
If they do go ahead and ban other subs that aren't hate-driven, then we have a problem on our hands. I also do believe that Reddit will take notice and revert the ban if we can show them why the sub isn't a terrible place. FPH can't do that. What good do they have to show?
That said, tools to make it so you never have to see a hateful groups posts would be nice. They can have their fun as they please, reddit won't lose traffic, we won't have to see it, that's a win-win-win deal!
Comment by mastermind42 at 06/07/2015 at 22:22 UTC
-1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
...Do we start banning groups because SOMEONE...
It wasn't "we", it was them.
Comment by KnowMatter at 06/07/2015 at 23:32 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
What are you talking about?? This about *tools* man. Clearly THAT is what everyone is pissed about.
Tools.