I laugh when people complain about removal of /r/fatpeoplehate being censorship. The only reason that subreddit was such a problem is because of aggressive moderation and banning of users - i.e. censorship at the moderator level rather than the admin level.
It's a cognitive bias. The assertion from the admins was pretty clear regarding the harassment of individuals and threats of violence, but rather than acknowledge their prejudice, some have tried to make it into a first amendment issue. On a privately owned website.
Part of the problem was that there was no transparency and almost anything can count as "harassment" - for example, I've seen journalists accuse people of harassment because they've searched their name on Twitter and found people mocking some of their more ill thought-out articles. If you actually dug into the details it was obvious why the admins banned /r/fatpeoplehate, but few did and those details didn't make the news either.
Key distinction for sure, but how would transparency impact the people affected by the prejudice?
If you had evidence of harassment and violent threats against individuals and factored it into your decision to close a 150,000 community, would you release the information about the evidence?
There is no public ground on the Internet. Everything is owned by someone or some corporation. Our ideas about free speech will have to adapt to that reality, or they will be lost entirely.
Just because the Amendment doesn't apply doesn't mean the ideals behind it are irrelevant. I could choose to exclude all individuals of a certain race from my home. No law could prevent me from doing that. But people would still be against me for the same reasons that there exists laws that prevent discrimination by government or businesses. It just seems most people do not articulate the difference between 'wrong because I like the First Amendment' from 'wrong because I like the ideals behind the First Amendment'.
Yes it does. If you banned vandals and violent people from your private property for their malicious behavior, people would not band against you or cry about first amendment "ideals". Ignoring select information, such as the reasoning behind the bans, is exactly what cognitive bias is.
If you honestly think that what Reddit did is the equivalent of racism, then that is very clear proof that you have a bias.
>If you banned vandals and violent people from your private property for their malicious behavior, people would not band against you or cry about first amendment "ideals".
The government is allowed to ban such people from its premises as well. You choose a poor example.
As for the reasoning behind the bans, you are ignoring the unequal application of those bans which shows such claimed reasons to have been lies.
>If you honestly think that what Reddit did is the equivalent of racism
I never called it the equivalent of racism. I used racism as an example of where the ideals that ban the government, while not banning the individual, can be used to cast moral judgment upon the individual. That you could confuse these gives evidence to your own strong bias.
It's a perfect good example because it's analagous to what Reddit did, and you're splitting hairs because it doesn't fit your own narrative on racism and moral judgement that you crafted for your own personal reality.
You even admit that you don't think that what reddit did is the equivalent of racism, so you admit your analogy isn't even relevant to the situation. Just as if you gave the analogy of "people judge a bar that doesn't let you bear arms because of second amendment ideals!", it's still moot, because while yes, they do pass moral judgement, it's completely irrelevant from people selectively ignoring safety reasons behind the firearm ban.
Passing moral judgement that resulted from a bias is still a bias.
One of the point of subreddits is to let people create their own rules (whatever those rules might be) and enforce them at their own discretion. As long as people aren't breaking reddit's global rules then subreddits should have the right to implement whatever rules they see fit, including heavy moderation. What the parent post was complaining about was censorship performed at the admin level (reddit's management), not the moderator level. Stuff like shadowbans (which have been increasing a lot lately), removing posts from /r/all and so on.
