Re:Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”
by afuchs on Friday January 08, 2021 @01:59PM
(#25688558)
A problem that has demonstrability arisen with even neutral moderation is that, no matter the moderation criteria, a vocal subset of those who are affected by that moderation will still complain loudly about being censored. This applies even to moderators removing death threats and calls to violence. There are many examples of complaints that doing so is censorship even though it is hard to make a good faith argument against the justifications for removing such posts.
Re:Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”
by gpm on Friday January 08, 2021 @02:30PM
(#25689098)
"Don't let perfect be the enemy of good"?
I'm not claiming this is a perfect solution, I'm sure you're right there would be complaints, and I'm also sure that no perfect solution exist. It's just not that easy to deradicalize people, and it's just not that easy to deal with people actively attempting to deceive and radicalize the public. I do think it would probably be a superior solution to what is being done right now, where there are even more complaints, and you get increasingly "strong" filter bubbles.
The second part of that is hard/expensive, but it is a path forwards to some level of discourse between the people using these subreddits and everyone else. Driving these communities to different sites means that people get in much stronger filter bubbles, that's probably not a good thing.
To take the example of /r/conservative on reddit right now, the subreddit currently bans anyone who says anything at all critical of Trump, and mostly only let's people who have a history of saying supportive things talk. That's not good for reddit, or the country as a whole. But if reddit just removed the current batch of moderators and those rules, and had someone enforce some reasonable standards of discourse but not enforce politics, I think it could turn into a force for good.
To put it in your own terms, my preferred solution is to try and make it possible to "have intellectual discourse with people who are fabricating reality or deeply believe in conspiracy theories", instead of just making it so those people go fabricate their reality elsewhere.