I wouldn’t shrug off the worst of Reddit. But I am of the opinion that Reddit’s Problems are Internet Problems. The damage caused by Reddit is a people problem.
I heard a story, probably apocryphal, that once the Hubble space telescope had its technical glitches ironed out the first thing that astronomers noticed was Giant Asteroids on a Collision Course with Earth! Once they began to understand what they were seeing, they realized that near collisions were more common than previously imagined. Gradually, hopefully, we will prepare ourselves for a true threat, now that we can see what’s going on.
Having lived in rural America, I already knew that the world is full of racist f**kwits. The internet is a powerful telescope that is revealing what was always there. I view this as an improvement in humanity’s development. Maybe we can do something about this problem now that we can’t ignore it. But shutting off the telescope is not a good option.
I’m sure some of those same haters are using the same ISP as yourself. How do you handle that? Do you want to have an ISP that interviews each customer to make sure they are good people? Not to mention that it is impossible to objectively define what is objectionable discussion. You might find it obvious that all the objectionable material is from neo-Nazis and Klansmen, but for example, some religious people have tried to argue that public discussion of atheism is objectionable as they feel that their beliefs should not be criticized.
I’m pretty sure that this is what you’d call a false equivalency. Consider: my ISP (sonic.net) is in the business of providing internet access to people, and Reddit is in the business of hosting discussions. Those are different categories entirely. If I found that my ISP were in the business of creating a media monopoly that … wait, I dropped comcast for sonic. Right. Moving on.
There are objective differences between (say) white supremacist discussion boards (which often advocate violent oppression of people) and atheist discussions (which don’t). Once again, I’m pretty sure this is another false equivalence. Those atheistic discussion boards which advocate the violent oppression and bullying of people with whom the atheists disagree: that’s also hate speech and should also be quashed.
It’s pretty simple: does reddit directly make money from hosting hate speech online? Yes.
Are there corner and borderline cases? Sure. I’m sure you could name a dozen. But the existence of borderline cases shouldn’t mean we can’t take action against clear hate speech.
If you want to say, “sure, Reddit is a more active site for white supremacy groups than stormfront, but I don’t care about that”, you’re free to do so. As an issue of conscience, I’m not going to say that.
I spend a lot of time on reddit, but frankly I couldn’t care less about the site or the reddit ‘community’. I never even glance at /r/all, I just log in and read the subreddits dealing with topics that I find interesting. If the admins are able to figure out a way to clean up reddit and it keeps on growing, fine. If it implodes and dies like digg, fine. Either way reddit has never had a dime of my money and never will. If it dies, I’ll find some other way to spend my time surfing on the internet.
“I don’t see what people have against shit cake. Sure, there’s a few turds in there, but the rest is made of wholesome ingredients, and the whole point of slicing the cake is to choose what part you want to eat from.”
For a non-trivial number of people, the bad parts of reddit poison the whole.
Why Reddit though, and not other platforms like Tumblr or Twitter or Facebook? There are huge numbers of actual Nazis on Tumblr, along with vast amounts of gore and violence, but there’s nobody calling for it to be shut down.
There have been several calls for Facebook to deal with the bullshit on it, and it’s not like people slamming Twitter for not dealing with harassment is unheard of. There’s been lots and lots of vocal criticism against both. Tumblr staff has mostly come under fire from its own users, who are pretty open in pointing out how the staff does more to HELP racists, nazis, and the like and takes their side against the victims, but not a lot of people care to listen because it’s so much easier to make fun of “those dumb tumblr kids”, and give into the bigotry themselves.
Right, I probably shouldn’t have said nobody. But those are reactions to specific incidents. It seems that with Reddit the merest mention of the site (“I saw the neatest custom Lego set on Reddit today”) will elicit the strongest reactions (“I don’t do Reddit” or “Burn it and salt the servers.”)
The “Why I deleted my Reddit account” article by a gentleman earlier this week who (rightfully) has an issue with the hate Reddits but (wrongfully) puts all the blame on one site because they host the content, missed the forest for the trees.
He should have unsubscribed from the Internet instead of one site, since its what fuels the resurgence in global hate groups. Trying to point fingers at individual websites won’t help the larger issue. Fuckwit hateful teenagers will just move on to the next forum.
The link you provided doesn’t really talk about this in particular - are hate groups more likely to be Reddit Gold subscribers? I thought there might be some connection there, which would explain yesterday’s announcement from Reddit where they said they won’t be deleting the hate groups, but instead “hiding” them:
Well, it’s your ISP’s decision whether to put a filter in place to prevent you and others from accessing Stormfront, or Reddit. Do you really want to give money to an ISP that earns money by letting people access white supremacist webpages? It would be easy for them to filter out a few domain names and a few IP addresses.
What about the company that allows both you and a white supremacist to host a website of your own? This hosting provider is also in a position to decide what pages should be hosted and what shouldn’t. You might refuse to have your website hosted by the same company that also hosts a racist website. You might even refuse to have your website hosted by someone who also provides hosting services to someone who provides unmoderated discussion forums to everyone.
The racists will have to switch to a different hosting provider that specializes in filthy material. Only then the backbone providers could refuse to do business with those hosting providers that specialize on hate?
How far does the responsibility go?
If everyone feels responsible, we can have censorship that works as well as any state-sanctioned censorship, but people with enough money might get by it.
But as an atheist, I’ve advocated behavior that can lead to the ETERNAL DAMNATION of somebody’s IMMORTAL SOUL!!! Surely that is worse than a little passing violence in this mortal world. Other interesting cases might include boards advocated state-sanctioned murder - death penalty discussions, and discussions about whether to go to war. Others might be contemplating treason by undermining the country’s war effort, or by advocating a change in government when the country is at its most vulnerable.
Many of these kinds of censorship have or had majority support in some place or time. So if we’re going to impose censorship on clear hate speech - or allow censorship to emerge organically from the decisions of individuals following their conscience - we should think hard about checks and balances first.
I’m actually all in favor of basically banning stalkers and harassers from the internet.
You threaten to kill people online, you get banned from using the internet, and if you break the ban you go to jail. Seems right to me.
This isn’t just a case of “These people are off in their corner saying shitty stuff”. They’re violent harassers, stalkers, and abusers. The very instant a Nazi sends a threatening message to somebody, they really ought to just be wiped off of whatever services they’re using.
