The r/BanThisandThat subreddits are little more than morality police. Many of those posts will take statements out of context or regard any "cis-het" sexual fantasies as threatening to women.
> It's not that discussion has become worse in an Eternal September way, it's that discussion has become openly threatening, with innocent women having their pictures and social media links shared for strangers to discuss rape and murder fantasy, and this gets 10s of 1000s of subscribers and Reddit routinely ignores reports about it.
Firstly, social media accounts aren't secret. Anyone who publishes to a Twitter or FB account cannot claim a retroactive right to privacy. The other contention I have is that Reddit should not punish a written expression of thought merely because it's unpalatable to a certain section of its userbase. Pandering to a moral minority sets up a precedent for the most loudest performing "victims"-of-the-day to decide what everyone else is allowed to say, hear, or think.
Call it morality police if you want but it's targeted sexual violence against minors and women who don't consent. I guess your morality and mine don't align. If I'm in the "morality minority" on this one then that's very sad and I would encourage yourself and other members of "morality majority" to reflect on how women are treated in your society.
Out of interest, would you mind sharing your Facebook or Instagram profile here, so that someone could share you pictures on a subreddit for rape and murder fantasy about you, linking back to the account? It's only fantasy right, would be a shame of the morality police ruined the fun.
I'm all for illegal and non-consensual content subreddits to be banned. That's not all the mentioned "Ban This and That" subs are asking for, so I won't accept their moral opinions beyond the issues of non-consenting and illegal materials. They are prescribing a sexual morality, one which I, and I think many reasonable people, disagree with or at least have qualms with. If you don't believe me, r/BFHS seems to be a hotspot for anti-kink and anti-porn activists who suggest that women with kinks need to "heal"[0]. If that's not moralizing, I'm not sure what is.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/BanFemaleHateSubs/comments/unaa88/c...
The function of the community is to draw attention to outright abuse that is happening on Reddit in the open. That is a broad mission and will definitely attract a range of people. Some may be moralists or however you want to paint them. Does that mean we should turn away from them or what do you suggest?
Maybe you could join the effort and be a voice of the reason you believe in and speak out against what you perceive as unhealthy "kink shaming" and ensure the topic stays on hand against things that are definitely not "edge cases" (which from my experience is the majority of what's posted).
No doubt it's imperfect "at the edges" but what isn't? It seems dangerous to draw attention away from _the huge issue in the middle_.
Some actors will use it as advertising space but I don't think the blame for that should be put onto the shoulders of those fighting it.
Do you have an idea of how this issue could be avoided without turning a blind eye?
Like how r/tumblrinaction got banned recently, the members of the sub didn't report themselves for racism and transphobia.
In my view this is just a symptom of the wider populace gaining access to internet forums and the cultural shift mass internet usage brought. As in, there have always been darker corners of the internet, just that the people who frequented them had to have some level of nerdiness/geekiness and {nerds}∩{violent racists} is smaller than {whole population}∩{violent racists}.
Back in 2010 there would be discussions about places like /r/jailbait, about the tradeoffs between free speech and public safety etc. Now there are subreddits openly sharing child pornography with links to the social media accounts of the children and their families, and Reddit auto responds that these things don't violate their usage policies when reported.
Secondly, they also have large numbers of participants from a range of backgrounds with a range of motivations. The subreddits they are discussing tend to have 10s of 1000s of followers actively engaging in various levels of harassment, I doubt that's a single sock puppet.
Thirdly, do you have a source for anything you're claiming?
Finally, if what you're saying is true then someone is posting child pornography to Reddit. Regardless of his intentions we should be concerned about that.
The user revealed their name in an interview here: https://www.fastcompany.com/3026860/a-brief-rundown-of-the-s...
According to one of the sources linked in a sibling comment, this user was arrested for domestic violence. A quick look at their user profile shows they are the top mod of r/garland, which isn't far from where the arrest occurred.
That's how I read the original comment.
You mean transgender people? Because that's a pretty offensive description
Your second point is simply false. There are plenty of real women active on Reddit, and many active as moderators. Yes I am sure of it.
When I started on Reddit there was already an element of things having changed, a move away from niche technology discussion towards lowest common denominator stuff and discussion by meme.
In general this was fine as you could just move to smaller subreddits, and the bigger pages had fun cultures that permeated the others and gave it all a sense of unity and shared interest even when you were in your bubble.
The difficult change I've seen in the past few years is the rising number of hate and harassment subs, and Reddit tolerating them. If you scroll through the top of /r/BanFemaleHateSubs or /r/AgainstDegenerateSubs you'll see how bad things have become and how unsafe the general environment is.
It's not that discussion has become worse in an Eternal September way, it's that discussion has become openly threatening, with innocent women having their pictures and social media links shared for strangers to discuss rape and murder fantasy, and this gets 10s of 1000s of subscribers and Reddit routinely ignores reports about it.