News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by jules on Friday July 22, 2016 @05:40AM (#12142597)
The problem with reddit isn't the admins, but that people who have managed to become moderators of prominent subreddits censor posts and thousands of rather innocent comments. For example the Orlando terrorist attack was censored from /r/news, and when they later allowed the posts to go through they deleted most of the comments, including all comments talking about the censorship of the previous posts. They even deleted comments giving info about where to donate blood for the victims. This strategy backfired immensely when the Donald Trump subreddit ended up being the only one reporting on the news.
Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by deadowl on Friday July 22, 2016 @10:00AM (#12143509)
The problems would be portrayed differently depending on different subsets of the userbase. I don't like all of /r/news moderation, but unfortunately it hasn't alienated enough people for another relevant news subreddit to take its place. A lot of the people that are alienated enough end up being people that I don't want to associate with, e.g. the kind of people that post in the Donald Trump subreddit, where I was banned for commenting on a topic that stated a subscription spike on the Bernie Sanders subreddit was a result of paid actors. All I said was "Isn't that when he held an AMA?"

So yea, I question authority. I think it's great to question authority. I don't like when others question authority and then will not tolerate when their own authority being questioned. From my POV, the part of Reddit's userbase that conveys that attitude, such as users in the Donald Trump subreddit, is the heart of the problem.

Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by jules on Friday July 22, 2016 @03:08PM (#12145943)
I don't agree that the Donald Trump subreddit is the heart of the problem. It's a symptom of the problem. I don't care what goes on in that subreddit. Let them have their echo chamber. The problem is huge default subreddits that purport to be neutral but actually are far from it. This is what pushes users to the extremes, one of which is the Donald Trump subreddit, which got a lot of subscribers because of this fiasco.
Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by ythl on Friday July 22, 2016 @10:16AM (#12143623)
> This strategy backfired immensely when the Donald Trump subreddit ended up being the only one reporting on the news.

Say what you will about republicans, but they often end up being the biggest defenders of constitutional rights.

Democrats on the other hand (aka "progressives") are always looking for ways to limit constitutional rights in order to create a "safer society" and stable "social climate". Just look at Europe - where "hate speech" can get you arrested or your door kicked down, and guns are completely banned.

Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by a_c_s on Friday July 22, 2016 @11:45AM (#12144217)
Depends on which parts of the constitution you look at: freedom of religion (specifically not establishing one over any other), due process, birthright citizenship (14th Amendment) are all things Republicans have attacked lately.
Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by vec on Friday July 22, 2016 @01:03PM (#12144861)
Speaking as a progressive, that's because most of us consider the US Constitution to be a means, rather than an end unto itself. We tend to make a strong distinction between Natural and Legal Rights[1] and to group the Constitution into the latter category. And Legal Rights are useful only insofar as they align with the underlying Natural Rights they support (i.e. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).

Our constitution is extremely useful. It's among the best systems for protecting our rights that we as humans seem to have devised, and we disregard the wisdom it encodes at our own peril. But that doesn't mean it's either perfect or sacred. If a law is actively harming (or negligently failing to protect) the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, then that law is wrong by definition, and I've yet to hear an argument that the Bill of Rights is exempt from that analysis.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by rplst8 on Friday July 22, 2016 @01:27PM (#12145090)
> We tend to make a strong distinction between Natural and Legal Rights[1] and to group the Constitution into the latter category

The framers debated the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution for the simple fact that enumerating the rights made them appear though they were "granted" or in your words "Legal Rights." Furthermore, just by entertaining the idea that they should be explicitly enumerated, called into question whether they were "inalienable". However, they fully believed that those first ten amendments were "Natural Rights". In the end, they felt that enumerating them worthy, and given how the amendments are treated/respected/discussed and the litigous environment today - I'm glad they did.

Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by dragonwriter on Friday July 22, 2016 @03:57PM (#12146330)
> The framers debated the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution for the simple fact that enumerating the rights made them appear though they were "granted" or in your words "Legal Rights."

No, they debated them because any enumeration would fail to be exhaustive, and they wanted to avoid omissions from negating rights. There was no mistake on either side that the rights written into law would be legal rights, even if they were motivated by conceptions of natural rights.

The confusion of the Bill of Rights with a statement of natural rights rather than a set of legal rights designed to achieve goals set by moral principles which include a particular concept of natural rights is a more recent phenomenon.

Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by vec on Friday July 22, 2016 @02:01PM (#12145385)
Yes, the framers did debate whether to include the Bill of Rights, but my understanding is that their fear was that by enumerating some rights it would delegitimize those that were not enumerated. That's why we have a (mostly ignored) tenth amendment.

Plus the Bill of Rights aren't quite Natural rights as I understand them. Half the Bill of Rights (plus the 13th and 14th amendments) are about setting up a Legal Right to a somewhat complex and specific trial by jury system. But you don't actually have a Natural Right to participation in that exact system. You do have a Natural Right to just and fair treatment from your government, even when accused of a crime, and a jury trial is a very good way (though not necessarily the only good way, nor the absolute best way) to formalize that right.

On the other hand, I believe I have a Natural Right to bodily autonomy. If I want to surgically change my gender, or have sex with another consenting adult, or ingest a mind-altering substance with full knowledge of the side effects, then that's my right and the Government should have an extremely high bar to clear in order to prevent me from doing so. However, the fact that these rights are not enumerated in the Constitution has historically been a huge barrier to having them respected, which indicates to me that the framers fears were well founded.

Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by int_19h on Friday July 22, 2016 @08:37PM (#12147767)
Speaking as a liberal who refuses to identify as progressive, this kind of thing - the idea that e.g. freedom of speech is a legal rather than a natural right, and that the only natural right a person have is basically "to be happy" - is one of the reasons why.

To address your specific point, by itself, speech cannot harm the worth and dignity of any human being. Worse yet, what constitutes "worth" and "dignity" is so extremely subjective and culturally relative, that any such analysis would be the same. Because of that, I dare say that it is a poor basis for legal constructs. We should stick to laws that reflect measurable, objective harm, and use other mechanisms to deal with things like these.

For example, hate speech is best dealt with not by fines and prison terms (which tends to create martyrs out of those people, and boost their propaganda - "if they're trying to silence them, they must be saying something important"), but by voluntary boycotts, public shaming and other forms of social ostracism. This makes the definition of "hate speech" fluid, subject only to the social mores of the given era - as it should be. It also means that no idea can be completely silenced solely on account of being offensive, which is important to ensure true political freedom.

Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by setpatchaddress on Friday July 22, 2016 @03:53PM (#12146307)
Speaking as a progressive, you shouldn't buy into Republican framing here. Republicans are adamant about changing, misinterpreting or ignoring the constitution when it suits them.
Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by pyronik on Friday July 22, 2016 @05:21PM (#12146869)
As progressives actively attack the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and totally blown out the 10th.
Re:Reddit is still in turmoil by bshanks on Friday July 22, 2016 @03:02PM (#12145887)
A big problem with Reddit is the first-come, first-serve nature of claiming subreddit names. In theory anyone can start a new subreddit to provide different moderation, but in practice /r/news, /r/bitcoin, /r/programming, /r/haskell etc have a leg-up in being seen as the canonical subreddit for their topics (these are just the first examples of canonical subreddits that came to mind, i'm not taking a position on whether they are well-moderated).

Perhaps subreddits should be required to have numbers after their name, eg /r/news2 (numbers 0 and 1 would be forbidden, eg no /r/news0 or /r/news1).