Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump”

Re:Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump” by lukifer on Friday January 08, 2021 @02:23PM (#25688977)

T_D === /r/The_Donald. It's since migrated to thedonald dot win; however vile the content, one of the virtues of the censorship-resistant open web is that we're able to keep tabs on what they're discussing. They were extremely unsubtle regarding their plans for the 6th; if anything, we're lucky that it didn't result in even more violence.

I agree, that it's unfair to (a-priori) castigate free-speech-absolutist platforms; there are good-faith, civil-libertarian reasons for them to exist. Nonetheless, they inherently act as a moth-flame to specifically those people that are banned from more mainstream platforms; after all, what motivation would non-controversial communities have to migrate? I absolutely the right of such platforms to exist, but from Voat, to Gab, to now Parler, in practice they quickly skew towards conspiracies and "hate speech" and the like.

I consider SSC's heterodox "Culture War Thread" [0] to be the canonical case study in this pattern: "It's very easy to remove spam, bots, racial slurs, low-effort trolls, and abuse... But once you remove all those things, you're left with people honestly and civilly arguing for their opinions. And that's the scariest thing of all."

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...

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Re:Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump” by blisterpeanuts on Friday January 08, 2021 @03:00PM (#25689569)

Ah, okay, thedonald.win. I have read some of their stuff and I didn't see anything "vile", nor did I see anyone calling for violence, but I haven't read the site in the last few weeks.

I will agree that "Voat" is a nasty place, but I'm not comfortable with shutting them down either, or cutting them off from pay processors and certificate authorities. This kind of game tends to come back and bite one in the ass. It's the old "First they came for xxx and I said nothing".

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Re:Reddit bans subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump” by lukifer on Friday January 08, 2021 @04:52PM (#25691011)

I recommend digging back into TD.W posts from the 4th and 5th; while most content wouldn't pass a strict test of an explicit threat, their clear intent was not to protest or express dissent, but to prevent vote certification from taking place, along with the usual invectives about "helicopter rides" and "Day of the Rope", etc.

The line is very tricky, as to what constitutes colorful metaphor, vs. explicit calls to violence. (My favorite satire on this dilemma: https://youtu.be/eg3_kUaYFJA) Regardless, the emotional energy and goals of that community on Jan 6th was extremely clear: to alter the due process of law by threat of force.

All that said, I'm quasi-absolutist on free speech issues, for the slippery-slope reasons you describe. Free speech doesn't end at 1A: it's a cultural value as well. Yet, it's also a tall order to enforce that value proactively: if a newspaper is not obligated to print every letter, should Twitter be obligated to let everyone have an account? There's a good argument for a "digital commons", and regulating tech giants as utilities; but the balance between an individual's freedom to share offensive views, and the freedom of service providers to choose to whom they offer service, is extremely murky.

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