Stormfront recruits on Reddit and works to infiltrate then control popular subreddits.
The Reddit admins only banned a couple of token websites recently because media attention was focused upon them. Once the spotlight moves elsewhere, the admins will once again go back to doing nothing.
There's also accusations that CEO Steve Huffman "/u/spez" is a white nationalist supporter. This leads some folks to say that Reddit is not cracking down on hateful content because their leadership approves of it. Spez was also caught directly modifying Reddit's production database to change comments mocking him. That's right, a C level exec had production database access and thought nothing of trolling people by directly modifying their comments.
This calls into question any legal case that has relied on Reddit comments as evidence. For instance: https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/watch-mo...
Reddit's leadership has also been denying that they have done nothing to mitigate the Russian propaganda influence on Reddit. The admins have tried to pass off a few banned accounts as "constant vigilance". This has been shockingly inadequate since the Russian influence of US elections was uncovered.
The best one can say about Reddit's leadership is that they're very, very lazy.
Reddit streamlines the process and provides a one-stop shop reducing the barriers of entry.
Are you shielded from the "bad parts" of reddit if you don't subscribe to that type of sub-reddit? Well, maybe, unless you hit /r/all in your top navigation. It's all right there lurking under the surface. Reddit gets very dark very fast and it is factual that they don't control it nearly as well as they should.
So no, it is not like "complaining about the internet because it contains websites that you have no obligation to ever visit" because the internet has no mechanism to surface bad content on the whim of its users. All it takes on reddit to surface something terrible is coordination and hitting the upvote button.
It can never be factual that something should be, since what should be is subjective.
Don't think this is true, search engines and crawlers can surface anything that users want to find.
>All it takes on reddit to surface something terrible is coordination and hitting the upvote button.
You need never see content from subreddits you are not subscribed to
As someone very much on the other end of the spectrum, it might be interesting that everyone in my circles loathes reddit for the censorship and manipulative propaganda. I hate how well they "control" it, and I despise your euphemistic use of the term.
I am obviously not for censorship of ideas, but reddit goes deep into the worst mankind has to offer. There's a line that each individual will draw on what is acceptable to them or not. I think that reddit often crosses that line for many people (would say most, but I don't know and am trying to avoid bias). I do think they need to stop the proliferation of racism, pedophilia and other societal maladies. You may draw different lines.
But I would love examples (and you have what appears to be a throwaway account here, so I think you can be comfortable sharing) of what you think is reddit's censorship or their manipulative propaganda. I mean this in earnest. I don't see it, but we all have different views of the world.
You are though. What's the point of including this little disclaimer if you're going to render it meaningless in your next breath?:
>I do think they need to stop the proliferation of racism, pedophilia and other societal maladies
I think they have every right to do this, but I condemn them for it.
If the ideas are so terrible, beat them with rational arguments. If you have to ban an idea, it seems inherently evident to me that the idea contains some irrefutable truth that can only be silenced, not defeated. It disgusts me the same way that critical discussion of the holocaust is punishable by imprisonment in some places, in contrast to virtually every other historical incident which we encourage fact-checking and debate and almost invariably acknowledge that there are two sides to every story.
I wonder if I could appeal to you by taking this approach... When you drive people away from relatively mainstream places like reddit, where they are exposed to alternate viewpoints even if sticking predominantly to their politically incorrect echo-chamber subs, you don't magically change their opinion. You don't make the idea go away. All you achieve is creating a persecution complex within these people, reinforcing their belief that they know some inconvenient truth, you create solidarity within that community of exiles, and you drive them into a pure echo chamber of ever-increasing radicalisation without objection.
I personally grew disillusioned with reddit after being banned from all my favourite subs for reasonably tame (and relevant) comments condemning the mass 3rd world invasion of Europe and the West, and the increasing push by socialists and Marxists to manipulate and destroy our culture. My most frequented sub I now haven't visited in, I estimate, over 18 months, because it's infuriating seeing the leftist circlejerk and knowing I'll be rate-limited or banned even if I create a throwaway to offer a reasonable and polite comment in opposition.
Instead, I spend most of my time on voat and a little on 8chan, and in the space of a couple years I've gone from libertarian race realist to full 'gas the kikes' and 'niggers ruin everything'. It's a redpill I can't unswallow now. It's a redpill I maybe never would have known if I hadn't seen subs banned, subs manipulated, inconvenient news censored, algorithms altered, etc and said fuck it, I'm out.
If they were at least honest about it, I could accept it. Perhaps it's the perverse nature of it that frustrates me the most. /r/politics is an egregious example: the name implies neutrality, when in fact it's a cesspool of anti-White, pro-globalist, leftist hysteria and propaganda.
I find quite laughable that some jerks cry about censorship when a private company denies them access to a site, while they propose to use physical force and violence to deny access to other people to a physical place.
It's very offensive to say this is representitive of left wing ideas. It's actually right-wing unless you compare them with literal Nazis like Breitbart-affiliated politicians.
You know you’re talking about the place where GamerGate kept rolling, various neo-Nazi / white supremacist / misogynist groups remained for years, etc. At most I’d say that Reddit is libertarian leaning due to the general preference for a hands-off free for all.
Yes, I always hear this repeated breathlessly. Then I go look at that hive of scum and villainy that is the Gamer Gate sub and find:
"The Metropolitan Police's (Greater London) Orwellian definition of "hate incident" is actually terrifying"
"[Censorship] Lauren Southern talks with Sargon about her Detainment and UK Censorship"
"[Gaming] Violent video games not welcome for Olympic esports consideration"
"London Mayor warns big tech on hate speech."
"[Related Politics] The creator of the world wide web is disappointed that huge platforms "control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared"
Point me to the omnipresent hate please. They seem pretty on point about censorship and free expression.
See, you are free to believe that it's a misogynist and hateful movement all you want, but you should at least be honest with yourself about the kind of argument you are making. Namely:
"Black Lives Matters is about looting."
I assume you don't need me to tell you why that is dumb.
(And every time this gets brought up here, some dedicated flaggers come out of the woodwork)
So are the depths of our very society.
The problem of Reddit is the opposite, that they arbitrarily ban subreddits, like the ones you cited.
The second problem of Reddit is that whoever gets to first register a subreddit gets to arbitrarily censor it, so whoever happened to register, let's say, "javascript" first, now gets to be a dictator of JavaScript discourse, and the Reddit admins in this case, instead, do nothing in response to complaints.
The third problem is that any competitor site is going to be unsuccessful due to network effects except at attracting the banned Reddit communities, so you get a site that is full of trolls and controversial communities without balance from the rest of society.
Reddit just in the last few days banned /r/uncensorednews and /r/european for some of the most racist, xenophobic content you can find on the internet. And the admins allowed this behaviour to persist for months and years.
Or maybe they should spend some time in /r/incel or /r/kotakuinaction to find disturbing sexist and mysognistic communities that again is unparalleled amongst the rest of the internet (4chan included).
The depths of Reddit is truly an horrific and appalling place to be. And no self respecting website should ever follow what Reddit does to stop it (i.e. not very much).