Reddit Bans Subreddits about Making Fun of Fat People, Neogaf, and others.

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Can anyone please just answer each other's questions without going into analogies and snark that the Escapist has become known for? Can we just honestly talk without talking about one another's political leanings being the forefront of the discussion and not the event itself? Do you think it deserves to be banned? Why? Also do you think that the wording should match the reasoning behind it? Or does the wording not need to match the reasoning behind it?

this is going a little bit off-topic but I just want to point something out. A revelation I've kind of had reading this thread and your post in particular.

most forums are echo chambers even though most people don't realize it. Reddit and even 8chan have this problem of separating people into different clicks by giving them each a section you can stay in. The escapists is what happens when you completely remove it. it's kind of fascinating, it kind of shows us how self-righteous and arrogant we really are. I remember when a bunch of 8chan members decided to come into the escapist to "destroyed echo chamber" why they were talking in an echo chamber. Some of them learned the ways of the forums (some of them who are probably talking about this issue here) and others got suspended or banned and nothing really changed.

anyway the point I'm trying to make here is that the reason the escapist is so self-righteous is because a lot of people in there political beliefs don't see the people who they disagree with as people but more strawman they talk to behind their backs. The escapist is what happens when you have to face another reasonable human being with a different political beliefs. We don't like to be wrong and it kind of turned us into Dicks.

I'm sorry if this sounded pretentious or stupid just something on my mind.

p.s sorry for poor grammar.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Is chairman pao by any chance really really fat?

Yeah she's enormous.

She's 110 pounds if she's an ounce.

 

[Redryhno]

Can anyone please just answer each other's questions without going into analogies and snark that the Escapist has become known for? Can we just honestly talk without talking about one another's political leanings being the forefront of the discussion and not the event itself? Do you think it deserves to be banned? Why? Also do you think that the wording should match the reasoning behind it? Or does the wording not need to match the reasoning behind it?

this is going a little bit off-topic but I just want to point something out. A revelation I've kind of had reading this thread and your post in particular.

most forums are echo chambers even though most people don't realize it. Reddit and even 8chan have this problem of separating people into different clicks by giving them each a section you can stay in. The escapists is what happens when you completely remove it. it's kind of fascinating, it kind of shows us how self-righteous and arrogant we really are. I remember when a bunch of 8chan members decided to come into the escapist to "destroyed echo chamber" why they were talking in an echo chamber. Some of them learned the ways of the forums (some of them who are probably talking about this issue here) and others got suspended or banned and nothing really changed.

anyway the point I'm trying to make here is that the reason the escapist is so self-righteous is because a lot of people in there political beliefs don't see the people who they disagree with as people but more strawman they talk to behind their backs. The escapist is what happens when you have to face another reasonable human being with a different political beliefs. We don't like to be wrong and it kind of turned us into Dicks.

I'm sorry if this sounded pretentious or stupid just something on my mind.

p.s sorry for poor grammar.

Dicks I can handle, I'd honestly use the chans because you get a much wider array of opinions than you're thinking for honestly the very tiny price of maybe getting a few expletives thrown at your being, but I despise the format too much. It's not people calling names that bother me, it's people acting above one another and refusing to answer questions posed without going "I'm not like that, so you're wasting time asking ME that, maybe you should ask YOURSELF that."

And it sorta used to be like that around here, people would answer questions at one point(and if I'm being honest, it seems to have stopped somewhere between the EC leaving fiasco and the Sarkeesian train started rolling) and there's still a handful of people around that at the very least try, but the majority of it has so many people refusing to actually confront themselves. Strengthening convictions is great and all, but when the way you're doing it is by not challenging yourself with someone with a differing viewpoint, but by acting like you have, you're not doing much other than sticking your fingers in your ears and playing out a child's fantasy.

Dicks are everywhere, no matter where you look, so they're honestly just one of those "oh, another one" types of people. It's not about there being dicks, it's about there being slightly too many with the mentality of wanting to feel justified and righteous in some way because for whatever reason they want to feel that, and that's sorta easy to confuse with being a dick.

 

[Somekindofgold]

Beyond whale-watching, which sounds like a pretty hilariously inept admin error, what have you got in terms of continuing banishment? Work is busy, I'm not keeping up atm.

/r/neofag: a subreddit aimed at laughing at neogaf. The subreddit abided by the rules of no harassment/doxxing completely. Deleted most likely due to the fact its banner is a scripted rotation of neogaf pictures put up freely by the users of neogaf and one of those pictures was of a minor that had broken the neogaf rules (only 18+ allowed to make accounts). Instead of going to the mods (who had no idea one of the pictures was under 18) the subreddit was deleted.

/r/neogafinaction: a subreddit aimed at laughing at neogaf. Unlike /r/neofag it didnt have a banner of pictures, and there were no complaints about it. It had an automoderator designed to automatically delete any material that went against the rules. A 6 month old subreddit banned because it shared a similar name to /r/neofag.

/r/fatpersonhate, /r/fatpeoplehate3: Attempts to restart the /r/fatpeoplehate community. Banned for 'ban evasion'. These bans go against the excuse that they are 'banning actions, not ideas'. /r/fatpersonhate and /r/fatpeoplehate3 did nothing against the Reddit rules simply because they were too damn young. If this really was about protecting the community from harassment these new subs wouldnt have been banned.

/r/transfags: an anti-transexual subreddit that has been targetted by other subreddits and communities (including SRS). Subreddit deleted without reason and all 12 mods (even the ones added a day before the ban and had not made a single post) shadowbanned. There has not been any evidence of /r/transfags breaking rules, and the moderators of the subreddit are still incredibly pissed off.

We also have this lovely quote from buzzfeed when they reached out to reddit;

"In response to an inquiry from BuzzFeed News about the negative response from users, a Reddit representative said, ?We did this incrementally so we could manage the response with our limited resources.?
?We knew there was a small but vocal minority of users who might react negatively,? Heather Wilson added."

So yes, this isnt stopping, this is just the start.

Also, what is this weird Marxist/Leftist conflation that's been making the rounds lately? When did that become a thing?

Marxism is an extreme facet of the left wing of politics, its the first thing that came to my head when flipping the sides. You could easily change marxists with hippies or whatever you want.

Are hiring practices not something that should be under a CEO's purview? I'm actually kind of confused about why that would be a point of contention. My business hires and fires people based on a perceived fit inside the "corporate culture". I imagine a vast majority of other businesses are the same. Is it your contention that this is somehow a disreputable practice, rather than a sensible one?

You do know its discrimination to refuse to hire someone based on their political beliefs right?

Well again though, that sounds like you object to the methodology. Is this a methodology issue, or an ideological one? If it's just an ideological rampage, why do we have this one sub that WAS clearly breaking rules? If it's a methodology issue, why not frame the criticism as such? That's a lot easier to swallow than painting Pao as some kind of SJW Godzilla squashing subs randomly when Reddit is still a beehive of some of sub reddits so offensive I couldn't make them up if I tried.

The individuals that broke the rules should receive punishment, the innocent users of these subreddits should NOT be punished by having their community taken away from them, no matter how distasteful people find it. Pao is nuts but shes not an idiot, she knows it would have been a much easier pill to swallow if she deleted the users if stopping harassment is what she really wanted. Instead she destroys these subreddits completely and proceeds to destroy any attempt to restart them even though the people trying to restart them are not harassers and just innocent people who laugh at fat people. Paos ideology is influencing her methodology, so call it whatever you want but what Reddit is doing now is wrong.

 

[Lunar Templar]

I'm pretty sure mocking another user on here while in a user group is against the rules and can get that person moderated if it is reported.

any abusive behavior can be moderated, even privet messaging can get some one banned if you report it.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

I mean it in the sense of "Right now they just brigaded the Planetside2 sub for days, for the crime of banning a user who made a transphobic comment about another poster".

Mr. Redryhno's post certainly helped me understand the situation a lot better.

I don't agree with the 'brigading' nonsense in general, as it just seems childish, but, with the proper context, I'm not sure how it makes KiA 'right' anymore than it would make them 'left.' This just confirms my previous assumption that it's a matter of relativism.

West Wing was a good show though. Have ya checked out The Newsroom? Same writer. Can be quite entertaining. A couple of the speeches in it are just downright awesome.

Can anyone please just answer each other's questions without going into analogies and snark that the Escapist has become known for? Can we just honestly talk without talking about one another's political leanings being the forefront of the discussion and not the event itself? Do you think it deserves to be banned? Why? Also do you think that the wording should match the reasoning behind it? Or does the wording not need to match the reasoning behind it?

Wish it weren't the case, but yeah.

We also have this lovely quote from buzzfeed when they reached out to reddit;

"In response to an inquiry from BuzzFeed News about the negative response from users, a Reddit representative said, ?We did this incrementally so we could manage the response with our limited resources.?
?We knew there was a small but vocal minority of users who might react negatively,? Heather Wilson added."

So yes, this isnt stopping, this is just the start.

Well, that's not sinister sounding or anything.

 

[Aerosteam]

I don't care if it's censorship, I personally wouldn't allow people to hate on others based on their weight on my website.

 

[Areloch]

then Whale Watching was done pre-emptively before it turned into a sub for the refugees to do the exact same thing they did on the other two. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.876768-Reddit-Bans-Subreddits-about-Making-Fun-of-Fat-People-Neogaf-and-others?page=7#22062158]

This seems like it should raise questions though, if preemptively blowing out subreddits when the refugees of blown-out subreddits conglomerate there is what was indeed happening.

What if those people mass-flood into a completely innocuous subreddit and the moderators can't keep up? Does the subreddit deserve deletion then?

Even if that's unlikely, if the problem was that the unpleasant subreddits were deleted because they were stepping out of their circle and harassing others, then destroying another subreddit they moved to before they could violate the same rules seems to be a REALLY drastic step. Seems like the more rational move would be to ban the users that are actually causing the harassment, rather than nuke any given subreddit they migrate to?

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

What, effective forum moderation on Reddit?

Well that's neat. They should probably get to the bans on people being idiots with the swastika flags on r/all next.

Not that they're breaking rules, per se, but because nothing of value would be lost.

Uhh... Banning people who have broken no rules? Isn't that kind of... Wrong? Or at the very least, something that can hurt a lot of people if it becomes a precedent.

If "Don't be a dick" isn't a universal rule, it damn well should be.

 

[Areloch]

What if those people mass-flood into a completely innocuous subreddit and the moderators can't keep up? Does the subreddit deserve deletion then?

Well if people are flooding into subreddits where they don't belong and changing the nature of the board at a rate which the moderators can't keep pace, does that not require intervention on behalf of the site administration? Thats essentially one of the reasons why it is there, after all. r/FatPeopleHate wasn't closed because people were violating the subreddit's rules, it was closed because it was violating reddit's rules. r/WhaleWatching will probably return in a few weeks after people have moved on, unless of course there's no legitimate interest in the sub's return in the first place (which is probably the case, as the last post was from two years ago. I'd personally archive it and move on).

Even if that's unlikely, if the problem was that the unpleasant subreddits were deleted because they were stepping out of their circle and harassing others, then destroying another subreddit they moved to before they could violate the same rules seems to be a REALLY drastic step. Seems like the more rational move would be to ban the users that are actually causing the harassment, rather than nuke any given subreddit they migrate to?

Don't have to nuke the subreddit, just have to stop them from posting until they get bored. And again, you set this standard yourself "mass-flood into a completely innocuous subreddit and the moderators can't keep up" - how, in a situation like that, would it be possible to moderate individuals, if by definition its a situation where there's too many people to keep up with?

Well, I admit, I don't really USE reddit. I peruse a few boards, but I don't personally reddit. So I'm unsure of the relative scale of things. But according to other posters, FPH had something like 5,000 subscribers?

Take this forum, for example. If 5,000 people showed up and started spamming garbage threads and making an utter mess of things, either in an attempt to 'claim it' or out of spite, do you think the moderation staff could keep up in real time?

Now, I hadn't realized they could un-ban the subreddits. I'd associated it more to regular forum moderation, where deleting a forum is...well, pretty permanent.
If they can merely lock it down temporarily, then that doesn't seem as extreme. I wonder if the moderators are the ones to request it, or if the administration step in to do it at their discretion. I'd feel weird about it if the latter was the case, but if it's temporary, it's not quite as bad as I'd figured.

I just dislike the notion of a group of people running a subreddit, with no problems, and then the administration catching whiff that some refugees of FPH or whatever else nuked place wandered into your subreddit and started posting junk, and before you could really do anything about it, reddit itself steps in and bans your entire subreddit.

It just feels like an overstep to me unless the subreddit itself requested it to happen.

 

[Lightspeaker]

*People commenting on a non-government owned site claiming that the owner/creators decision to remove content from site is 'censorship'/'violation of free speech'*

*I cry for the future of humanity again*

I've seen this misconception a couple of times, censorship doesn't have to be the act of a government agency, when a record label releases a "censored" version of an album they have by definition censored their own work, you can also have self censorship, company self censorship, and certainly government censorship among many many other types.

Now the cry of "violation of free speech" is another issue, most definitions define it as "the right of people to express their opinions publicly without governmental interference, subject to the laws against libel, incitement to violence or rebellion, etc.", so by definition you'd have to argue that those who run Reddit community constitute a government, that's a pretty big stretch so this is indeed false.

Now stop crying for the future of humanity, if you're going to base your snarky comments off old Critical Miss comics make sure Gray and Cory got their argument correct.

Pretty much this.

It IS censorship; because it is quite literally censoring things the site doesn't like. People can argue if this is a good or bad things, but it does constitute censorship.

But it is NOT a violation of "freedom of speech"; because you don't actually have the right to freedom of speech there in the first place. Or any other forum as long as it isn't government run. Whenever I've been an admin or mod of a forum I always used to make that explicitly clear in the forum rules: this is our house and it is up to us to run it.

So in short its entirely up to the staff what they do with Reddit. And everyone has the right to support that or hate on it. But it doesn't legally violate anyone's rights to be censored on a forum, even if people think its sucks and is a scummy thing to do.

 

[maninahat]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall

I always found that to be a most agonizingly sanctimonious quote, regardless of how valid it might be. In this case, not valid at all; free speech does not give reddit an obligation to provide a space for assholes to be talk like assholes.

As to the subreddit being closed...well, good? Why those other unpleasant subreddits haven't been closed, I don't know. But complaining about those still being open isn't an argument in favour of re-opening the fat hate thread, its an argument in favour of closing those down too.

 

[Redryhno]

I don't care if it's censorship, I personally wouldn't allow people to hate on others based on their weight on my website.

Ah, but would you allow them to hate on others based on religion, personal politics, being a console or PC main, or even their taste/distaste of certain skin tones for sexual relationships? Because all of those have popped up here...I mean, you can argue that being overly heavy doesn't mean you deserve some sort of ridicule, but neither do any of those other things I've listed. Plus more that I've not listed that still have their subreddits open on that site despite being much more infamous for being a hive of....less than reasonable people that leave others alone.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall

I always found that to be a most agonizingly sanctimonious quote, regardless of how valid it might be. In this case, not valid at all; free speech does not give reddit an obligation to provide a space for assholes to be talk like assholes.

As to the subreddit being closed...well, good? Why those other unpleasant subreddits haven't been closed, I don't know. But complaining about those still being open isn't an argument in favour of re-opening the fat hate thread, its an argument in favour of closing those down too.

I think the argument is in favor of either closing down all, or not doing anything beyond what is already done there. Alot of people think that "freedom of speech" is what is SOLELY written in law, when alot of the Bill of Rights is largely considered more about the spirit of it, with FoS being that you should be allowed to say what you wish without drastic repercussions. Go ahead, ban the stupid shits that go out of their way to badger others solely because of their weight. But this is like someone complaining about people being assholes on their personal corner of the internet about a "friend" of theirs that didn't care enough to bother knowing said assholes exist until the friend began proclaiming victory over the evil oppressors.

In essence, you either use what's working now, or come up with a better plan(preferably both at the same time). This is not the better plan. This is causing the hateful(or trolls as the case may be) to spill into other (relatively) innocent subreddits and taint them by association and getting them closed down as well. Or at the very least has the potential to do so. This plan is like throwing out the bio refuse without paying attention to it landing in the piles of fresh food.

I'm really surprised nobody has linked this here yet honestly...

Spoiler

 

[Aerosteam]

I don't care if it's censorship, I personally wouldn't allow people to hate on others based on their weight on my website.

Ah, but would you allow them to hate on others based on religion, personal politics, being a console or PC main, or even their taste/distaste of certain skin tones for sexual relationships? Because all of those have popped up here...I mean, you can argue that being overly heavy doesn't mean you deserve some sort of ridicule, but neither do any of those other things I've listed. Plus more that I've not listed that still have their subreddits open on that site despite being much more infamous for being a hive of....less than reasonable people that leave others alone.

Uh... no? What?

If I were the CEO who wanted to get rid of all the morally deprived people on Reddit I'd tell them all to fuck off and go somewhere else because that stuff I disapprove of. If they want to be sexist, racist, look at pictures of dead babies or whatever, they don't have to do it on my website.

 

[Redryhno]

I don't care if it's censorship, I personally wouldn't allow people to hate on others based on their weight on my website.

Ah, but would you allow them to hate on others based on religion, personal politics, being a console or PC main, or even their taste/distaste of certain skin tones for sexual relationships? Because all of those have popped up here...I mean, you can argue that being overly heavy doesn't mean you deserve some sort of ridicule, but neither do any of those other things I've listed. Plus more that I've not listed that still have their subreddits open on that site despite being much more infamous for being a hive of....less than reasonable people that leave others alone.

Uh... no? What?

If I were the CEO who wanted to get rid of all the morally deprived people on Reddit I'd tell them all to fuck off and go somewhere else because that stuff I disapprove of. If they want to be sexist, racist, look at pictures of dead babies or whatever, they don't have to do it on my website.

I note that you took what I said to be all about racists and sexists, when I neither mentioned or implied any of that. Good going there...you have found meaning so hidden I didn't even know it was there.

Here's the thing, there's been numerous other CEOs and founders(and if I remember correctly she's just the one they're stuck with until they get an actual CEO) of reddit have said that so long as it's not directly interfereing with someone else's life and that it is legal, go right on ahead. They don't have to like what's on there, but they weren't going to do anything about it unless it actually attacked someone else. And as others have said, there's countless other subreddits that make fun of the right, the left, the poor, the rich, the underprivileged, the over-privileged, the best and worst of humanity, and yet they've been allowed to stay despite having histories of being a bunch of pricks to other subreddits.

You either get them all and say you just don't want that kind of thing on your site at once or within a few hours of each other, and don't hide behind the "harassment" narrative. Or you get rid of the users that break the rules. Or you do one of a hundred different things that could've been a better response. Don't pick and choose who gets to stay based on politics and how you don't want the site to be. Like seriously, all it's done so far is make those asshats invade other subreddits and clog it with their filth/trollshit. It's caused a rival site that was considered irrelevant two weeks ago to blow up and start actually becoming a potential threat. Not seeing the upside so far yet.

 

[maninahat]

snip

Also, like in any other internet clusterfuck the one thing is lacking. Empathy. Even in this thread it's kind of disgusting. Fuck you, people! You can take this "you, people" any way you want. If you don't think it's not directed towards you, good for you.

The reddit cesspool is quite vast and deep. Oh no! Cutedeadgirls(or something) hurt your... what exactly? Who is that subreddit hurting exactly? I'm not into it, but I can empathize. Why can't you?

Also modern definition of harassment is weird. "Internet harassment" is like rape from feminist(you know the kind I'm talking about) point of view. It's ridiculous. Is this post harassment? If you think so, sor... Fuck you!

All hail safe spaces! All hail Chairman Pao!

Likewise, I find your concept of empathy equally confusing. I would watch your mouth though, the mods tend not to like it when you tell the forums to go fuck themselves.

 

[Aerosteam]

I don't care if it's censorship, I personally wouldn't allow people to hate on others based on their weight on my website.

Ah, but would you allow them to hate on others based on religion, personal politics, being a console or PC main, or even their taste/distaste of certain skin tones for sexual relationships? Because all of those have popped up here...I mean, you can argue that being overly heavy doesn't mean you deserve some sort of ridicule, but neither do any of those other things I've listed. Plus more that I've not listed that still have their subreddits open on that site despite being much more infamous for being a hive of....less than reasonable people that leave others alone.

Uh... no? What?

If I were the CEO who wanted to get rid of all the morally deprived people on Reddit I'd tell them all to fuck off and go somewhere else because that stuff I disapprove of. If they want to be sexist, racist, look at pictures of dead babies or whatever, they don't have to do it on my website.

I note that you took what I said to be all about racists and sexists, when I neither mentioned or implied any of that. Good going there...you have found meaning so hidden I didn't even know it was there.

Here's the thing, there's been numerous other CEOs and founders(and if I remember correctly she's just the one they're stuck with until they get an actual CEO) of reddit have said that so long as it's not directly interfereing with someone else's life and that it is legal, go right on ahead. They don't have to like what's on there, but they weren't going to do anything about it unless it actually attacked someone else. And as others have said, there's countless other subreddits that make fun of the right, the left, the poor, the rich, the underprivileged, the over-privileged, the best and worst of humanity, and yet they've been allowed to stay despite having histories of being a bunch of pricks to other subreddits.

You either get them all and say you just don't want that kind of thing on your site at once or within a few hours of each other, and don't hide behind the "harassment" narrative. Or you get rid of the users that break the rules. Or you do one of a hundred different things that could've been a better response. Don't pick and choose who gets to stay based on politics and how you don't want the site to be. Like seriously, all it's done so far is make those asshats invade other subreddits and clog it with their filth/trollshit. It's caused a rival site that was considered irrelevant two weeks ago to blow up and start actually becoming a potential threat. Not seeing the upside so far yet.

Sorry if I misunderstood the point.

 

[SecondPrize]

Is not liking neogaf a sin now? Yeah, fph is a place most people don't want to go, so they don't go there. But mocking neogaf is the right thing to do.

I was simply name checking one of the banned subs. Likely the one that has people here in a twist, given the content. The "sin" the subs were banned for was apparently "harassment". The conspiracy wonks will tell you that's a lie/excuse meant to start the white-washing of Reddit to make it safe for sale, and/or a targeted SJW campaign. Keep in mind this is still a website that features subs like r/sexyabortions or r/burningchildren or r/rapingwomen, so I'm more like to believe the "harassment" explanation than the "Reddit is safe space/hugbox only now!" explanation.

Mostly I'm just laughing at the assertion that the populace of the banned subs were the only thing making Reddit "worth a damn".

Actual harassment isn't hard to archive when one finds it. Why would you believe it without seeing any?