What does this do besides drive them to Whatsapp? Indian Nationalist movement grew to the level it is today in part because of the rapid growth of Nationalist whatsapp echo-chambers.
In the end, the reddit admins aren't responsible for moderating whatsapp. Replacing TD moderators isn't a solution to end white nationalism, it's just about policing a forum which consistently flaunts site rules. If those people want to build their own site, with blackjack and hookers, they're more than welcome to. I mean, that's where Voat came from.
Whatever one's personal views, selective enforcement has been used as a stick with which to beat certain groups and should concern everyone, even if–perhaps especially if–you aren't a member of the group being beaten at the moment:
Really tasteless, given the actual number of Indian Hindu nationalists currently physically using sticks to beat and kill Muslims, given how that's the context of the current thread. Those people should be deplatformed and jailed. They hate other people an plan violence against them. Should be a really simple moderation decision and really simple adminisgrative decision to report them and provide their user data to law enforcement.
If anything, the_donald has gotten preferential treatment compared to everyone else. They've routinely broke rules and ignored warnings from admins. If any other subreddit did what they've done it'd be banned instantly. Instead Reddit keeps giving r/T_D leeway because they don't want to seem biased.
Value to whom? Reddit has decided that they do not value the users being deplatfomed. Any value you receive from the platform as a user is a byproduct.
Pool funds for VMs and fire up phpBB or IRC if unhappy with the platforms available.
Gab did that and was summarily attacked by silicon Valley et al., so I guess you would have to build an entirely separate internet infrastructure instead of just opening up shop with phpBB.
>What does this do besides drive them to Whatsapp?
Whatsapp, etc is not nearly as powerful a recruitment tool as a service designed to create communities, like reddit. Not saying it's not a problem (it is obviously), but it's still limiting compared to reddit.
> “We’ve been running a research project over last year, and when someone relatively famous gets no platformed by Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, there's an initial flashpoint, where some of their audience will move with them” Joan Donovan, Data and Society’s platform accountability research lead, told me on the phone, “but generally the falloff is pretty significant and they don’t gain the same amplification power they had prior to the moment they were taken off these bigger platforms.”
> There’s not a ton of research on this, but the work that has been done so far is promising. A study published by researchers at Georgia Tech last year found that banning the platform's most toxic subreddits resulted in less hate speech elsewhere on the site, and especially from the people who were active on those subreddits.
> There are lots of examples of people who have been deplatformed and have seen their power wane. After he lost his Fox News show, Glenn Beck couldn’t sustain his influence—The Blaze reaches only a fraction of the people he used to. Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart personality, was permanently banned from Twitter for inciting targeted harassment campaigns against actress Leslie Jones, and he resigned from Breitbart over comments he made about pedophilia on a podcast. His general prominence in public discourse has waned ever since.
> What does this do besides drive them to Whatsapp?
The mods of T_D have created a website, thedonald.win, in anticipation of T_D being shut down. Anyone who visits that sub regularly knows that that's "The new T_D"
Which is a good outcome for everyone involved. Reddit wants to contain the blast radius of T/D. T/D wants to be able to post things that aren't considered acceptable on Reddit. People can and should vote with their feet.
Reddit is a public forum, and it wasn't a nice place with T_D on the front page. T_D has mounted a coordinated effort to take over the platform for their needs to the detriment of others.
Reddit admins aren't doing it to stop Trump or his supporters. They are fighting to keep their platform alive for the other 99% who perhaps want to read about knitting and Linux without being called cucks.
I believe this would allow the civilized T_D members to continue having a presence on Reddit. It's for their sake too.
> But according to the Pew Research Center, the number of adults using Facebook plateaued in 2018, and WhatsApp user number decreased: Only 20% of U.S. adults use WhatsApp in 2019, down from 22% in 2018. This is vastly smaller than the 73% who use YouTube, and the 69% who use Facebook. The only social media network that was less popular in the U.S. was Reddit.
Perhaps, but I’d suspect they’re disproportionately concentrated in expat communities - folks who need to communicate with family/friends back home.
It’s not implausible that lots of Americans don’t know someone who uses WhatsApp. I only know one person, and they use it to talk to relatives in South America.
I wonder if any proponents of deplatforming can comment on the parent's point.
edit: why downvote this? I think the parent makes an important point. Is the goal of deplatforming to herd members into their own fortified echo chambers?