[Zak]

Suppressing an automated service disruption or preventing the spread of spam is different from policing content on topical or ideological grounds.

Looking at reddit as an example, I don't like where this is headed. First they came for pedos and creepers, and I said nothing because ewww. Then they came for assholes and trolls, and I said nothing because good riddance. Now they've come for gun coupons, and I don't want to flee to Voat because it's dominated by assholes and trolls.

[intopieces]

>I don't want to flee to Voat because it's dominated by assholes and trolls.

It’s exactly this sentiment that prompts services like Reddit to censor. They need users; it’s no use being a bastion of free speech if you are hemorrhaging ad dollars because assholes and trolls ruin your platform.

[otakucode]

That's always struck me as weird. Do you avoid using a telephone because pedophiles and terrorists use them? Of course not. It's a part of infrastructure that facilitates communication, nothing more. If you go to Reddit and hang out on r/python or something you're not going to accidentally slip, trip, and fall right into r/the_donald or something. I just think modern people have this feeling that if we can reach out and screw with other people not by talking to them but through underhanded technological means, we should do so. Which seems a basic social/philosophical problem that technology has no real capacity to address.

[surge]

Yeah, but they're dangerously close to having their Digg exodus moment. The problem is they ban guns, the gun community leaves, but the gun community also frequents other sub-reddit's, its kind of a venn diagram. Each time they ban one controversial community, and they move somewhere, that community usually also participated in the mainstream sub-reddits, and that eventually bleeds off. Especially since Reddit is very selective about which sub-reddit's to apply ToS on which is very obviously effected by the politics of the places their offices are in.

It might be paper cuts, or it might be a redesign, or the rumored shift to being social media, but I honestly feel like Reddit is past its eternal September moment and kind of on the cusp of going the way of MySpace and Digg in the next few years.

[Zak]

Indeed, but now they've moved beyond that. While the latest round of content restrictions seem to be motivated by FOSTA, they go significantly beyond what is necessary to avoid liability.