[HNthrow22]

> Reddit is another example a company that has recently scrubbed itself of most controversial content,

I agree with you on most points however reddit takes no action against extremists and fringe groups proliferating on their platform until substantial pressure is applied from either advertisers or journalists. They go as far as shadowbanning users who bring up their lack of action to shine a light on their culpability, presumably to keep it off of mainstream journalists radar, thankfully it's now too late and enough good journalists have picked up the scent. Expect to see many great pieces about this in the near future.

Reddit also scrubs the profiles and post history of mass shooters who were indoctrinated on their platform, one example is Elliot Rodgers the incel and Santa Barbara shooter from several years ago, truly disgusting and frightening behavior that denies researchers and journalists from understanding the reach and impact of the spread of ideologies and hatred on these platforms.

Just last week in the wake of the Poway synagogue shooting the #1 post on /r/conspiracy was a holocaust denial post, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6HG_LMUUAEXYJy.png:large that received 2x reddit gold.

[freeflight]

Reddit has banned Russian [0] and Iranian [1] "propaganda accounts", now lots of people over there are calling to ban "Chinese propaganda" [2] aka anybody who gets tired of anti-Chinese submissions constantly being pushed on the front-page.

Gee, one might wonder where that might be coming from? [3] That's the absurdity of the situation: Russian, Iranian and Chinese "propaganda" gets banned, while US propaganda [4] isn't even recognized as such because being pro "democracy, freedom US" is considered the default "good" position and anything not in line with it must be evil or at least bad.

[0] https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/04/russia-spam-account-prob...

[1] https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/reddit-accounts-iranian-infl...

[2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/reddit-c...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...

[tepidandroid]

Reddit has been a declining trash heap for quite some time now. It definitely has to do with its emergence into mainstream popularity (the problem gets worse the larger the subreddit). It's the perfect platform for every armchair expert with a bigoted view to gain admiration and affirmation of their views from other uninformed bigots. It happens to be much easier to be a loud and belligerent bigot than to express an informed and nuanced opinion.

The only thing stopping HN from completely morphing into that cesspool is the diligent and fair moderation and the diversity and quality of opinions expressed. For the most part, hackers tend to be more critical and suspicious of authoritative sources than other groups.

[ourlordcaffeine]

>anybody who gets tired of anti-Chinese submissions constantly being pushed on the front-page

It's not really anyone who gets tired, it's the accounts that revert to whataboutism whenever the communist party is criticised, flat out deny things like the Tienanmen Massacre, and spread a lot of hate when something happens that the CCP doesn't like, such as a Tibetan woman being elected president of a student union.

>anti-Chinese submissions

Anti-CCP. It is important to note that criticism of a government does not constitute hate speech towards the citizens. This is another tactic used by propagandists.

[freeflight]

> flat out deny things like the Tienanmen Massacre

I'm fairly active on Reddit and I've literally never seen that happen. That's because the Chinese people so deep in historic revisionism often don't even care to begin with and can't even access Reddit in the first place, at least not "easily".

It's usually people with a "anti-China" position who bring up Tienamen square, to conflate it with whatever a given submission is about. As in: "Huweai must be spying because the Chinese government is authoritarian evil because Tienamen square".

> This is another tactic used by propagandists.

Just like conflating issues to give the impression to fight for the only "just cause" [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time#Receptio...

[tepidandroid]

I've never seen it happen either.

Redditors will gleefully jump on (by voting to the front page) anything even remotely critical of China. I suppose it fulfills some deeply-rooted sense of 'defiance' in them and gives them some sense of satisfaction. It's basically the childish game of "oh, you don't want me to touch this? I'm going to touch this over and over because of that".

The net effect is that they will judiciously post, for example, the anniversary of Tienanmen Square every year without fail, but fail to mark the dates of equally tragic, but unpatriotic or unflattering events. When was the last time the anniversary of the Mai Lai Massacre or No Gun Ri was upvoted to the front page? How about the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq?

Hint: Never.

It's ironic (and very telling of their motives) that the events they have complete freedom to discuss never receive equal attention or criticism.

[raxxorrax]

> They go as far as shadowbanning users

Nevermind these users really don't do anything constructive since the problem at hand censorship.

Holocaust denial got worse because of efforts to silence some crazy people who did. Not slightly worse, it is really shit you have to think about it again. And people complaining aren't even jews or age above 50.

The self-righteousness, while the incentive might be good, really doesn't help at all.

And yes, denial of the holocaust is a form of censorship, so adjust your talking points correctly.

[dsfyu404ed]

> agree with you on most points however reddit takes no action against extremists and fringe groups proliferating on their platform until substantial pressure is applied from either advertisers or journalists.

They banned IRA_memes because IRA I guess and quarantined waterniggas because it had "niggas" in the title even though the whole sub was just about drinking water. They're definitely taking an approach of culling anything that advertisers might not like.

[HNthrow22]

> They're definitely taking an approach of culling anything that advertisers might not like.

This could not be further from reality, see https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/a3q6... to get a small preview of the attitudes of their executive team and the kind of content they allow to proliferate and spread on their platform.