People don't seem to understand that a lot of negative behavior exists in a context, and if you remove the context, the negative behavior can largely disappear. It doesn't necessarily just go elsewhere.

This gets to a Harvard study I now can't find that suggested that anonymity online is a red herring. Anonymous and whatever the opposite is (named? nonymous?) people are equally likely to follow community norms -- anonymous people are actually slightly more likely to. The problem is not the anonymity, the problem is the community norms, which in the banned subs were horrible.

Do you know the title, author or journal by any chance? This sounds interesting, but it seems my google skills are lacking.

Sorry for the delay; it was (ironically) deep in my HN comment history:

https://blog.coralproject.net/the-real-name-fallacy/

> they merely shifted to alternative platforms

That's not the paper's findings:

> Though many subreddits saw an influx of r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown “migrants,” those subreddits saw no significant changes in hate speech usage. In other words, other subreddits did not inherit the problem

They shifted to Voat, not other places on reddit. Although that does solve the problem for reddit, the communities didn't disappear.

Right, but why does Reddit care? Their moderation approach effectively addressed the business problem they faced. Maybe in the long term Voat will grow to become an existential threat to Reddit, and Gab to Twitter. But it sure doesn't look that way right now. A reasonable business manager at a firm like Reddit might look at a new company like Voat as a gift.

It doesn't seem like a reasonable organizational goal for any firm anywhere to eliminate white supremacy from the entire Internet. It's hard to imagine how that might be accomplished. Certainly, Reddit was never in a position to do it. Why would they look to solve any more than the part of the problem they were directly engaged with?

Indeed I'd think that being primarily associated with the communities Reddit found too loathsome to keep around would not encourage a wider user base.

Voat doesn't have a real userbase outside of the hate groups that have made it their home, and they've been in serious financial trouble for a while. They would have gone under by now if not for a recent cash infusion they received from /r/The_Donald, and even that will only last them a few months.

Hate groups were so prevalent on Reddit for one main reason: discovery. Being on Reddit made it easy for them to proselytize and recruit. Hate subs show up in Reddit's search function and in views such as /r/all. If someone posts a dogwhistle or even an outright racist statement on a default, you can click on the poster's username, see their post history, discover any hate subs they post to, and get sucked into their propaganda. Just typing the name of a subreddit creates a direct link to it... so if you tell a racist to "go back to /r/CoonTown", you're inadvertently advertising the sub (which is why AutoModerator has been a godsend, as you can automatically remove posts that contain links to known hate subs).

But if all the hate groups are over on Voat, all of that goes away. Redditors can't randomly stumble on Voat communities, and it's harder to advertise Voat communities on Reddit. Voat is its own tiny, isolated little private island for hate groups, and it's very hard to proselytize from there.

Same user name on Voat for reference if you want to get further into this debate.

I have been on Voat since close to the beginning. 3.2y because I was banned from Reddit for a disagreement with an admin.

Now you claim that Voat is full of racist and hate groups. I won't deny that there is quite a lot. Thing is that it isn't nearly the amount you want to make it seem. A larger base isn't ever going to participate within those groups. They will look into it.

We have also not been kept afloat due to the cash donations from the Donald. We have been kept alive because of the efforts of admin and many good people that want to develop the site in order to make it lower cost to host.

I can't speak for others but I do know that we do not go looking for new members within Reddit. We do however get many people that have been banned from various places within Reddit. That is what it is all about.

You won't understand that because you want to show a side that would make a vast majority knee jerk and react the way you want. Keeping them under your thumb.

By all means come over and see us. Check it out and post your views within /v/whatever because within that subverse your submission will not get deleted unless it is spam.

Keep in mind spam to "US" is when someone is trying to sell something without paying for an ad. I encourage everyone to experience what true freedom is. You may like it.

So either way please start a dialogue.

> get sucked into their propaganda

That's a little alarmist. I don't like the MakeupAddiction group (after all their whole stance on Maybelline is just terrible ;P) ... should I have a podium to punish those who like that sub or those who participate in it? (Note: I'm all for slapping down people who brigade, but guilt by association is terrible)

They might not disappear, but it may be harder for them to continue growing. Hate speech subreddits had the chance to bubble up into the larger community when a funny or popular post gained traction, and maybe help to normalize their behavior for a new audience. Voat on the other hand has transformed into a hard pill to swallow for new users. The front page is daily filled with hate speech targeting black/jewish/fat people along with women and immigrants.

Which considering the relative sizes of each community is a very effective way to marginalize them.

But they are (a) no longer reddit's problem, largely and (b) banished to Voat with the paedophiles and the more obvious Nazis, where they will languish in obscurity, because no-one really goes there. They can no longer propagandise to a wide audience on Reddit; they're stuck with a small, already awful audience on Voat.

That's not an alternative platform. It's just a different group on the same platform.

How good is that corpus of data? Does it show the removed comments of users? (As a non-mod you cannot see the comments that were removed in a sub) Mods use automod to automatically remove posts based on keywords.

This study is hilariously flawed, because most users made Alts for these subs.

There are entire communities on Reddit which pride themselves in only posting to their "bad" sub on accounts strictly for that purpose.