gagew

> The range of human opinion on every topic is incredibly broad. That means that there's a tiny minority of people who hold truly outrageous and objectionable views. If you simply hide those people with deletions and shadowbans, you relegate them to their tiny corner of the internet where they're free to reinforce each other's insane ideals.

Let's take antisemitism as the truly outrageous & objectional view. Say that a tiny minority of users of reddit are vehemently antisemitic. Sure, they can hang out on their own subreddits and talk about how great antisemitism is, and they do. But they also post in popular subs, bringing their vitriol along with them. The community doesn't care, because censorship is bad. Sound about right so far?

Say you're Jewish. You wander in to a thread on some popular sub and you find a bunch of antisemitic comments. What is your reaction? Do you dig in and try to convince the antisemites that they're wrong? Or do you say fuck it and leave? How many times does this have to happen before you write off reddit all together?

Now let's say reddit is full of antisemites, homophobes, xenophobes, racists, fascists, and sexists. If you're jewish, gay, from another country, black, aren't a fascist, or a woman, why would you want to keep visiting the site?

Let's say you're none of those things, but you think that antisemites et al. are terrible people. Why would you want to spend time on a site that is full of those kinds of people?

Why would you want to visit a site where terrible people aren't told to get the fuck out but rather defended because telling them that they are not welcome in a community is censorship?