198 upvotes, 10 direct replies (showing 10)
View submission: Let's talk content. AMA.
Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)
There is no language which is going to make this acceptable.
What this says is you are no longer to express negative opinions about any person or group.
Is http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/[1] harassment? It's funny, not hateful, but clearly singles out a single group. Is /r/blackpeopletwitter harassment? It can be pretty funny too (sure there are a minority of racists in there spreading hate)
1: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/
How about berating Sean Hannity for his bullshit about waterboarding? Can we hate on Vladimir Putin?
In an open forum, people need to be able to be called out on their shit. Sometimes for amusement, sometimes for serious purposes. "Harassment" is ill defined. We can all agree that encouraging internet idiots to gather their pitchforks is almost always a bad idea (or maybe not, what about gathering petition signatures?)
There are a lot of fat people who are really full of themselves and spout nonsense about "loving your body" when in reality they're promoting hugely dangerous behaviors. Some of the reactionaries go way overboard as well – you end up trying and ultimately failing to make a line in the sand because there isn't any real distinction you can draw.
You can ban serious hate speech (which is hard to define, but still easy enough to see, like pornography), and you can ban brigading behaviors.
You can't ban "harassment" because there's no definition.
This hyper-sensitive culture that's arising is a real problem, and you're promoting it.
Comment by smeezekitty at 16/07/2015 at 21:33 UTC
9 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Is /r/blackpeopletwitter harassment? It can be pretty funny too (sure there are a minority of racists in there spreading hate)
Even though it is called **black-people-twitter** The people poking fun at the posts aren't really so much because of their skin color but rather the racial stereotypes they follow.
If that is considered harassment, is /r/forwardsfromgrandma harassment of the elderly?
Comment by [deleted] at 17/07/2015 at 04:24 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by DubTeeDub at 16/07/2015 at 23:15 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
As a mod of /r/blackpeopletwitter, if you ever see any racism or hatespeech please report it and it will be removed and the user will be banned.
Comment by Starsy at 16/07/2015 at 22:26 UTC
4 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I don't think you're looking at this objectively. This is actually pretty simple.
You can't harass, bully, or abuse a person or group of people without communicating directly with them. Communicating with them means leaving the bounds of where your discussion is taking place and seeking them out where they are.
Is /r/blackpeopletwitter going out and finding black people to harass? No. Then it's not harassment. This isn't really that complicated.
"Harassment" is ill defined.
It really isn't, though. Harassment is repeatedly going after a group of people and initiating communication with them when it isn't wanted. If you're inside your own subreddit talking to your like-minded friends, you're not harassing anyone. If someone comes into your subreddit with a different view and you tell them they're stupid, you're not harassing them -- they came into the subreddit. Harassment is when you go out and initiate the conversation yourself.
There *is* a definition of harassment, and you're just ignoring it.
Comment by [deleted] at 16/07/2015 at 21:30 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Comment by MadeUAcctButIEatedIt at 17/07/2015 at 14:37 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
You can ban serious hate speech (which is hard to define, but still easy enough to see, like pornography)
I would even disagree with this. You know, a lot of people would call black and white bondage photos "pornography;" lots of people would say it's "erotica," which somehow exempts it.
What, exactly, is serious hate speech? "Stop being a faggot, dude." Not "serious" enough? "Homosexuals are disgusting and will suffer." Hate speech? A threat? Or just someone who believes the Bible literally? Should we ban any Biblical literalists who clash with our modern, pluralistic values? What if they replace the word "homosexuals" with "faggots?"
"That's my nigger." A kid from the 'hood just expressing his affection for a close friend or laudable individual? Or a disgusting racist implying ownership of another human being? How can you know who's behind the screenname? How deep are you going to look into that before lowering the banhammer?
Whatever the policy turns out to be, what galls me is when people pretend there are sharp lines for content *they* don't like, when in fact it's always going to be blurry, and arbitrary.
Comment by DragonDai at 16/07/2015 at 22:06 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This needs so many more upvotes. The harassment line is going to be poorly defined no matter how hard the admins work to actually make it clear and concise. And that's saying they want to make it as clear and concise as possible (which there is no indication they actually want to do that thing). And because it will still be poorly defined no matter how much the admins actually want to make it clear and concise, it will get used as a tool to silence dissent and disagreement FAR more often than it will get used to silence actual harassment, whatever that words actually means.
Comment by passive_fist at 16/07/2015 at 21:51 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
you can't ban harassment because there's no definition>
For the lazy - legal definition: "the act of systematic and/or continued unwanted and annoying actions of one party or a group, including threats and demands"
The examples you give are people posting things which the "victim" can choose to either look at or not look at, obviously not harassment, libel at best. "Harassment, bullying and abuse" are the terms being used, and all are aiming to describe the same thing - going out of your way to make someone else's life miserable. We all have some sense of what cyber-bullying is, and that's probably the best example of what they're trying to prevent. Things like going through someone's post history and making abusive comments, seeking out new posts of theirs and downvoting or commenting on them in a "systematic and continued" way as the definition states. There's always grey areas, but it's not that much more difficult to define than most things.
Comment by Pirate2012 at 17/07/2015 at 02:53 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
you expressed a complex topic rather well.
To paraphrase the US Supreme Court "...I cannot define in precise clear language the shit that should be banned on Reddit, but I sure know it when I see it"
Comment by itsmrstealyogirl at 17/07/2015 at 00:17 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
From what I can tell, those don't harass people. Those have a certain ideology but as long as they don't go and harass people directly than from what I can tell they'd be inside the rules.