Reddit CEO Actively Altered/Censored User Comments

[Prysin]

34 minutes ago, eLucid said:

 

 

I think you misunderstood. Regardless, reddit (generally) is a cesspool that's full of censorship. Don't believe me? Go into any topic with an unpopular opinion and see for yourself, kiddo.

 

 

 

Do you think that because it is prevalent,  it isn't an issue?

 

1 hour ago, potoooooooo said:

How can you be so blissfully unaware of how dramatic you're being? Changing "Fuck spez" to "fuck trumpshaker" isn't silencing someone's opinion, it's not censorship, it's a misguided joke.

 

These things don't change societies because it's just some site on the internet that people shouldn't take too seriously anyway. You're proof of why websites shouldn't be taken seriously.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years. You should be well aware of how easily the Internet can change even national policies.  

 

 If you still don't understand why censorship is an issue,  regardless of where it originated from, then perhaps @dalekphalmor @Misanthrope. Can explain it better 

[Misanthrope]

52 minutes ago, Prysin said:

 If you still don't understand why censorship is an issue,  regardless of where it originated from, then perhaps @dalekphalmor @Misanthrope. Can explain it better 

You don't understand how suppressing opposing ideas without even discussing them or refuting them is an issue? Or you mean on this particular instance though? In this particular instance is because a site like Reddit is so big there's no realistic way for anybody to compete and offer a right wing bent to have those opinions out there.

 

Let's go back to my TV example: Say a major news network, CNN, runs with the story of "All white people are racist, no exceptions" This is a fairly political, social justice stance and in my opinion is divorced from reality.

 

Now let's say that Fox news does not exist. Under the free market mentality my only option to refute their idea of "all white people are racist" would be to create my own TV network and offer a different point of view. Only realistically speaking, the chances of me creating a competing news network of the scale of CNN to challenge their idea are lesser than the chances of a meteorite striking me in the head right about....now...

 

Not gonna happen, here's the thing: A truly free market is a terrible way to afford people free speech because a truly free market will always rapidly trend towards consolidation and monopolies, to constant growth and utilizing limited resources nobody else will have access to like capturing the public's attention and corporate sponsorship through marketing and adds.

 

We have a lot of anti trust laws because we recognize that a true free market just doesn't works. Free speech left to the whim of a free market is basically the best way to kill free speech. This is why, to a certain degree, large telecommunication services should be compelled to afford free speech to their large-beyond-any-realistic-competition user base.

[Guest Kloaked]

2 hours ago, Hawx said:

There's an announcement now if no one has seen it: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/

That's a non-apology, just like Hillary Clinton making a non-apology for literally everything wrong she's done. That kind of thing seems to be popular with the leftist crowd.

 

2 hours ago, Hawx said:

the_donald is essentially toxic trash. The other conservative subreddits keep to themselves, yet the_donald feels like ruining the rest of reddit. 

 

2 hours ago, Hawx said:

It should've been quarantined back when they were abusing the /r/all algorithm to constantly get themselves to the top. 

 

They weren't abusing the algorithm. You're only calling it abuse since they got a lot of their stuff voted up to the top of /r/all, just like how people are all of a sudden saying Clinton should have won the election based on popular vote and not electoral college; now there's a childish movement to get the electoral college abolished. You're just like the kid who brings the ball to a ball game, but since he's losing he decides to take the ball home instead of getting good.

 

None of that was an issue when Obama won two terms. Now it's an issue when someone who is heavily disliked by sissy people ends up winning the White House based on the rules of the game.

[ChineseChef]

1 hour ago, Jorgen297 said:

Regardless if you're a libertarian or a conservative or hate TD more than anything, this behavior should scare you as a redditor. If this was done by a conservative engineer of the site towards ideologically appealing subreddits, everyone would lose their minds, but they don't because the end justifies the means against the big bad bullies which is TD, right? 

This is the biggest issue to me, and its both sides if we are going to be honest.  But this situation happens to be a more left leaning issue/website.  The more you suppress the views of a group, the more they just pull back from discussion.  This is why the polls were so incredibly wrong.  This is why the left still doesn't understand why they lost the senate, the house, and the presidency.  They still think they can bully other people into believing the way they do.  They think they can shame people into supporting their cause.

 

They just can't seem to accept that this has completely backfired on them.  By suppressing all those who don't 100% agree with them, they have given the right power.  The right says "we are victims", and they weren't, they were just whining at first.  But then the left went and made them actual victims by suppressing speech, by preventing speakers at universities, by attacking trump supporters.  When the trump supporters said they were being attacked and suppressed, the left responded by attacking and suppressing them.  This also made it easy for the right to gain support, all they had to do was not be the left.

 

Which on a related note, is likely why T_D hasn't been outright banned from Reddit.  If it was banned right away, they maybe could have gone under the radar with it.  But if it was done now, after Trump has won the election and will now be president.  The news media would go crazy with it, "300+K supports of the next president have their voices silenced".  The right leaning news media would eat it up and sell it so hard it would make your head spin.  Plus, I wouldn't put it past trump to do something with his new presidential power to get revenge on the left leaning media groups, and Reddit is likely trying to stay out of the cross-hairs on that one.

[Prysin]

@Misanthrope you should probably have quoted the person I quoted

[Prysin]

8 hours ago, Kloaked said:

snip

i agree.

 

 

unrelated. here is your dream come true

https://versions.killscreen.com/nicolas-cage-gonna-vr-baby/

[Trik'Stari]

19 hours ago, Swatson said:

No, it's still a slippery slope fallacy. Saying X will happen because Y happened is all that is required to invoke that fallacy.

 

A lawsuit for saying fuck "insert users name here"? Again, stop assuming hypotheticals are going to happen and work with the facts.

 

It's pretty funny that people are singling out reddit as if admins on pretty much every forum or community dont have the same power (and use it too!)

 

I should probably make it clear that I strongly disagree with editing of users posts, but I also live in the real world and realize that this isnt the end of the world.

It's not a slippery slope fallacy when it's a well documented mechanism/process by which human rights and human lives are obliterated, this has happened time and time again throughout human history. This sort of behavior is pervasive, and has been well documented.

 

But by all means, continue covering your ears and shouting "NO, YOU'RE WRONG!". Just because someone calls it a fallacy, doesn't mean that it is. Go look at cults for an example of this type of behavior. The silencing of dissent, the banning of "wrong ideas" etc.

 

I'm not saying X will lead to Y, I'm saying, in this instance, X HAS ALWAYS LEAD TO Y, as in historical fact. Silencing dissent, and banning "wrong ideas" have only one ultimate goal, and can lead to no other outcome if left unchecked.

[potoooooooo]

16 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

It's not a slippery slope fallacy when it's a well documented mechanism/process by which human rights and human lives are obliterated, this has happened time and time again throughout human history. This sort of behavior is pervasive, and has been well documented.

 

But by all means, continue covering your ears and shouting "NO, YOU'RE WRONG!". Just because someone calls it a fallacy, doesn't mean that it is. Go look at cults for an example of this type of behavior. The silencing of dissent, the banning of "wrong ideas" etc.

 

I'm not saying X will lead to Y, I'm saying, in this instance, X HAS ALWAYS LEAD TO Y, as in historical fact. Silencing dissent, and banning "wrong ideas" have only one ultimate goal, and can lead to no other outcome if left unchecked.

Are you delusional or what?

 

Spez isn't silencing dissent or banning "wrong ideas"

 

The CEO of reddit playing jokes on assholes won't obliterate human rights or lives.

[VerticalDiscussions]

Wat

[Trik'Stari]

2 hours ago, potoooooooo said:

Are you delusional or what?

 

Spez isn't silencing dissent or banning "wrong ideas"

 

The CEO of reddit playing jokes on assholes won't obliterate human rights or lives.

Normalizing this behavior, by simply playing it off as a joke, is exactly what I mean when I say this kind of behavior is pervasive. This guy should lose his job over this, it's unacceptable. If @LinusTech did this something like this, even legitimately as a joke, he would lose a significant portion of his followers quite quickly. As a result, he would also probably lose a large number of contacts and opportunities in the business world as well.

 

Simply calling me delusional isn't an argument at all. Either come up with a reasonable, logical argument based on historical fact and sound reasoning, or don't bother commenting.

 

Simply playing this kind of thing off as a joke, normalizes the behavior (silencing, or tampering with ideas, distorting reality, etc.), and thus makes it seem like it isn't a serious thing. It should be taken seriously, and never be tolerated. If you disagree with an idea, refute it with logic and facts, don't just dismiss it as a joke, or attempt to silence the person expressing said idea (calling them a racist/bigot/etc.), doing so only seeks to end the discussion, and does nothing for anyone, except maybe give the person you are dismissing or silencing ground to stand on. It makes them look like the victim. This is exactly why the democrats lost this election. They've insulted, silenced, and pissed off too many people and made themselves a minority as a result.

[S w a t s o n]

3 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

But by all means, continue covering your ears and shouting "NO, YOU'RE WRONG!". Just because someone calls it a fallacy, doesn't mean that it is.

I'm not saying X will lead to Y, I'm saying, in this instance, X HAS ALWAYS LEAD TO Y,

I really think you don't understand, let me help you.

 

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope

 

And no, you dont know of every single time in human history that this has happened.

[MrDynamicMan]

12 hours ago, ChineseChef said:

This is the biggest issue to me, and its both sides if we are going to be honest.  But this situation happens to be a more left leaning issue/website.  The more you suppress the views of a group, the more they just pull back from discussion.  This is why the polls were so incredibly wrong.  This is why the left still doesn't understand why they lost the senate, the house, and the presidency.  They still think they can bully other people into believing the way they do.  They think they can shame people into supporting their cause.

 

They just can't seem to accept that this has completely backfired on them.  By suppressing all those who don't 100% agree with them, they have given the right power.  The right says "we are victims", and they weren't, they were just whining at first.  But then the left went and made them actual victims by suppressing speech, by preventing speakers at universities, by attacking trump supporters.  When the trump supporters said they were being attacked and suppressed, the left responded by attacking and suppressing them.  This also made it easy for the right to gain support, all they had to do was not be the left.

 

Which on a related note, is likely why T_D hasn't been outright banned from Reddit.  If it was banned right away, they maybe could have gone under the radar with it.  But if it was done now, after Trump has won the election and will now be president.  The news media would go crazy with it, "300+K supports of the next president have their voices silenced".  The right leaning news media would eat it up and sell it so hard it would make your head spin.  Plus, I wouldn't put it past trump to do something with his new presidential power to get revenge on the left leaning media groups, and Reddit is likely trying to stay out of the cross-hairs on that one.

Very well put, and I agree with you, almost wholeheartedly. My one conservation is that TD has become a ban-happy sub that blocks anyone who disagrees with them, even slightly. I can tolerate the other end of the political spectrum, even talk to them and become friends and have constructive arguments, but I cannot stand of censored safe spaces, on either end of the spectrum. TD lost their right to the front page when they blocked all forms of criticism. 

[MrDynamicMan]

6 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

It's not a slippery slope fallacy when it's a well documented mechanism/process by which human rights and human lives are obliterated, this has happened time and time again throughout human history. This sort of behavior is pervasive, and has been well documented.

 

But by all means, continue covering your ears and shouting "NO, YOU'RE WRONG!". Just because someone calls it a fallacy, doesn't mean that it is. Go look at cults for an example of this type of behavior. The silencing of dissent, the banning of "wrong ideas" etc.

 

I'm not saying X will lead to Y, I'm saying, in this instance, X HAS ALWAYS LEAD TO Y, as in historical fact. Silencing dissent, and banning "wrong ideas" have only one ultimate goal, and can lead to no other outcome if left unchecked.

The thing is, this applies far, far more to TD than it does to Spez. Rule 3, I believe, says Dissent is a bannable offence, and they are willing to act on that. Even trying to cordially discuss Trump's policies you don't agree with gets you perma-banned.

[MrDynamicMan]

15 hours ago, Kloaked said:

That's a non-apology, just like Hillary Clinton making a non-apology for literally everything wrong she's done. That kind of thing seems to be popular with the leftist crowd.

 

 

 

They weren't abusing the algorithm. You're only calling it abuse since they got a lot of their stuff voted up to the top of /r/all, just like how people are all of a sudden saying Clinton should have won the election based on popular vote and not electoral college; now there's a childish movement to get the electoral college abolished. You're just like the kid who brings the ball to a ball game, but since he's losing he decides to take the ball home instead of getting good.

 

None of that was an issue when Obama won two terms. Now it's an issue when someone who is heavily disliked by sissy people ends up winning the White House based on the rules of the game.

TD bans users for any form of Dissent, criticism, or wrong think. Please, please stop with your double standards. If there was a left circle-jerk sub that was as aggressive as TD the right would be even more up in arms about it. 

 

I agree with you on the electoral college, though. Is it a little fucked? Yes. Does that still mean Trump won? Absolutely. We don't get to rewrite the rules just because we don't like the outcome. 

[Guest Kloaked]

6 hours ago, MrDynamicMan said:

TD bans users for any form of Dissent, criticism, or wrong think. Please, please stop with your double standards. If there was a left circle-jerk sub that was as aggressive as TD the right would be even more up in arms about it. 

Like I mentioned before I'm not excusing it because it's hypocritical to what they talk about.

 

There is a polar opposite to TD's circlejerk called /r/enoughtrumpspam. Nobody is up in arms about it because conservatives actually like free speech.

 

6 hours ago, MrDynamicMan said:

I agree with you on the electoral college, though. Is it a little fucked? Yes. Does that still mean Trump won? Absolutely. We don't get to rewrite the rules just because we don't like the outcome. 

The only thing wrong with it is how the votes are spread out. The system is good though, and the founding fathers knew what they were doing. They knew a pure democracy would be bad, just like pure capitalism, pure socialism, pure free market, etc. is a bad thing. They actually studied how other governments operated, examined the problems and worked out the best middle-ground as there can be no perfect system since we're not robots.

[ChineseChef]

9 hours ago, MrDynamicMan said:

Very well put, and I agree with you, almost wholeheartedly. My one conservation is that TD has become a ban-happy sub that blocks anyone who disagrees with them, even slightly. I can tolerate the other end of the political spectrum, even talk to them and become friends and have constructive arguments, but I cannot stand of censored safe spaces, on either end of the spectrum. TD lost their right to the front page when they blocked all forms of criticism. 

This is a huge part of the problem to me.  Many people, and most all of the loud ones, on both sides have chosen the "all or nothing" approach.  On most issues it seems that when anything starts getting discussed, it starts at "here is the problem, how do we fix", and almost instantly becomes "we do it my way or we burn this place to the ground".  Then the people in the middle, who both agree there is a problem, can't actually come to any agreement or compromise because both sides view any negative change as a complete failure.  We both have to "give ground" so to speak, but the loud voices that grab the mic won't let us have the reasonable conversations we need to have.

[apm]

11 hours ago, MrDynamicMan said:

TD bans users for any form of Dissent, criticism, or wrong think. Please, please stop with your double standards. If there was a left circle-jerk sub that was as aggressive as TD the right would be even more up in arms about it.

thats literally the rest of reddit, including mods and staff.

everyone hates trump and his supporters and TD is trying to counter that.

they not only want to shut down the subreddit, but even ban every subcriber.

[MrDynamicMan]

15 hours ago, apm said:

thats literally the rest of reddit, including mods and staff.

everyone hates trump and his supporters and TD is trying to counter that.

they not only want to shut down the subreddit, but even ban every subcriber.

You're misrepresenting the point. It's not that people can't stand conservatives, it's because TD has become so aggressive. You don't see calls for banning r/conservative or r/asktrumpsupporters, do you? It's the witch hunting, false information, and censoring that make people hate TD. 

 

Yes, some mods do want to shut down the sub, but that's out of their jurisdiction. Let's not pretend like TD is innocent here. 

[Guest Kloaked]

5 hours ago, MrDynamicMan said:

It's the witch hunting, false information, and censoring that make people hate TD. 

Reminds me of the rest of Reddit who have an irrational bone to pick with TD.

 

You have no argument.

[MrDynamicMan]

1 hour ago, Kloaked said:

Reminds me of the rest of Reddit who have an irrational bone to pick with TD.

 

You have no argument.

"because they're bigoted we get to be bigoted too"

 

The bone to pick with TD is valid. I hate ETS as much as TD

[Guest Kloaked]

5 minutes ago, MrDynamicMan said:

"because they're bigoted we get to be bigoted too"

 

The bone to pick with TD is valid. I hate ETS as much as TD

There's been censorship on Reddit for a long time. TD, a circlejerk subreddit banning people for having a post history of supporting leftist ideologies, trolling, or whatever the case may be, is not a problem. TD getting their shitposts to the front page is not a problem. Every subreddit is able to get their posts to the front page - they're not abusing any kind of system.

 

The issue people have with it is because it's related to Donald Trump in a positive way. You know what subreddits I have an issue with? /r/atheism, /r/politics, /r/worldnews, and many others. You don't see me whining and bitching about them getting their always-left-biased posts to the top of /r/all because number one, they have every right to be there, and two, I filter out the subreddits I don't care for like any normal user would.

[apm]

reddit was build on freedom of speech, that includes bigots, racists etc.

any democracy has to endure them too.

 

people are sick of leftist and their filters bubbles.

the win of trump showed how delusional and devastated they were.

[jakjakattack]

On 11/30/2016 at 9:29 AM, Sampsy said:

Literally nobody outside of r/The_Donald - which is a cesspool of bullshit and hate - was complaining about this at all. It was a harmless joke, which was somewhat funny, not some authoritarian act of censorship they are claiming it to be. 

 

Honestly if I were Spez I wouldn't have been editing comments, I would have quarantined or shut down that sub a long time ago. r_The_Donald literally exists to spam the front page with pro-trump propaganda, with mods that ban anybody who posts or comments anything which isn't strongly pro-trump.

/r/The_Donald wasn't breaking any terms of service. It's not a harmless joke, reddit comments have been used in court. How do we now determine the integrity of those? Also it is pretty laughable that you would shutdown a sub just because it disagreed with your political views. 

[ttam]

There was absolutely nothing wrong with what he did.

 

When you have a group of vile, disgusting people who do nothing but spew hate at you day in day out... they get what they deserve.

 

Just happens to be that the_donald sub is a bunch of pussies and can't take a joke.

[Albatross]

On 11/30/2016 at 8:04 PM, TidaLWaveZ said:

 

You guys better grab a seat because you're in for years of people blaming all their problems on The Donald.

They've been blaming their problems on people like us for 8 years. I've learned to tune out their ignorance.

 

On 12/3/2016 at 4:06 PM, ttam said:

There was absolutely nothing wrong with what he did.

 

When you have a group of vile, disgusting people who do nothing but spew hate at you day in day out... they get what they deserve.

 

Just happens to be that the_donald sub is a bunch of pussies and can't take a joke.

Just because you like what he did doesn't mean he didn't do anything wrong. Get your head out of the sand and back into reality.

 

And it wasn't a "joke". He got pissed off because some people were saying "fuck u/Spez" or called him a pedophile protector (the fuck spez thing was a joke mostly, so who is the pussy now?).  Regardless even if it was a "joke" it does not make it okay, but what else can be expected of anti-Trump people? They're pathetically shallow when it comes to their values/beliefs and have no qualms for the rights, freedoms [etc] of other people simply because they oppose the accepted "narrative".

 

This is also ignoring the fact that reddit comments have gotten people charged with crimes or in trouble, but hey, you hate these people so impersonating them to incite wars is just a-o-kay! /s 

 

 

I bet you never even go to that subreddit. I do to read Trump related news all the time. They aren't all "vile disgusting people who spew hate". There are Muslims, Latinos, women, blacks, gays etc all on that subreddit that are only ever welcomed and loved (even if they aren't Trump supporters) and if you go to Twitter and check out their hashtag, you will see even more. The worst they do is shitpost and get it on r/all but that's only because Spez and the entire staff of the site is against them and they just want to fuck with people for treating them all like shit because of a few racists that unfortunately go into their ranks. But you read something on MSM or on your preferred echo chamber of a media site or subreddit/etc and you believe it because it confirms your bias.

 

I find it disgusting you are so easily able to condemn 300,000+ people on the actions of a very small minority and ignore the mass mistreatment of them. This is why Trump won (twice now). Most sane people are sick of this disgusting behavior and wish for it to change.

 

EDIT

 

Could anyone imagine what conservatives would get if they condemned an entire subreddit off of the actions of a minority? If a conservative CEO of a site like reddit had done something like this to leftist members?

 

People would lose their shit, that's what would happen.