[Acrobatic_Road]

It is coordinated. Remember when Alex Jones got banned from literally everything on the same day?

The reddit bans wave was leaked in advance. The more actors involved in a coordinated action the harder it is to keep a secret.

Original leak: https://old.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/redd...

[roenxi]

This sort of multiple-headlines-in-one-day undermines the argument for bans. In the Alex Jones case in particular it appeared he was being selected for a broader community image rather than actions on specific platforms.

Private companies can't (mechanically, not legally) determine who has a moral right to speak. If we had a magic method for figuring that out it'd have been a feature of politics since at least the Roman Empire. Instead we ended up with things like Robert's Rules of Order where the process is controlled as best as possible to let wildly contradictory opinions get aired.

[dwaltrip]

> Private companies can't (mechanically, not legally) determine who has a moral right to speak.

Of course not, no one is claiming they are the ultimate arbiters of morality.

But they do have the right to decide who can use their platform (as long as they don’t discriminate against protected groups). The broader public can then judge them positively or negatively for these decisions.

[stx]

The thing is are these companies platforms like a phone company or are they publishers? Social media companies have argued that they cant be held liable for things posted to their platforms in the past and have tried to position themselves at neutral platforms. When they start to become the arbitrators of what is and is not to be posted they are no longer neutral platforms like the phone company. I do not recall a time when a phone company would cut your service because they found it to be distasteful or controversial.

That said I don't really know what these users were actually banned for saying. It could have been pretty bad and although I might not agree with what they said I hope that people are free to express their thoughts and ideas even though I might find them personally offensive.

[AgentME]

>Social media companies have argued that they cant be held liable for things posted to their platforms in the past and have tried to position themselves at neutral platforms. When they start to become the arbitrators of what is and is not to be posted they are no longer neutral platforms like the phone company.

Social media companies don't become more liable just because they moderate. They all do that already. There's no sudden legal line between moderation involving messages with spam or bigotry.

I think anyone amplifying messages on a large-scale in a one-to-many manner, between people that aren't equally engaged in a conversation together, should be considered to start accruing responsibilities over the content of what they're participating in amplifying, in a way that a phone companies largely don't have. I think social media companies have been largely shirking that responsibility by phrasing it as a free speech issue and letting anything go.

[stx]

It is a gray area and social media platforms sit somewhere in-between being a common carrier and a being a publisher. Your right there is no hard legal line but the more they decide what is allowed and what is not allowed the more they move farther away from being a common carrier.

> Social media companies don't become more liable just because they moderate.

Actually they do:

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/1997-....

And also: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/1997-...

[amanaplanacanal]

It appears that those links describe the conditions before passage of the communications decency act of 1996. That was all overturned by section 230 of the CDA.

[dwaltrip]

My limited understanding is that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which is apparently one of the most important laws for this topic), passed in 1996, provides very broad protections to web platforms:

1) They can't be held liable for user-generated content, e.g. Facebook can't be sued for a defamatory statement that I make in a post on their platform.

A newspaper that authors and publishes an article making a similar defamatory statement could be held liable. I believe that Facebook could be held liable if the company itself authored and published the defamatory statement, instead of merely distributing my defamatory statement.

2) They can moderate user-generated content visible on their platform as they see fit, without trying to be "neutral" and without losing their liability protections (item 1 above).

Apparently, before this law, internet companies were worried about being held liable for what users said if they did any moderation (and some companies were sued for this).

---

This article seems to be a decent overview: https://www.minclaw.com/legal-resource-center/what-is-sectio...

This longer video (33 mins) from Legal Eagle is nice as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUWIi-Ppe5k. It's been a few weeks since I watched it so hopefully I didn't miss too many important details.

[dublin]

Section 230 protection should not exist. When this was enacted, nothing like Facebook, YouTube,Twitter, etc. existed, and InfoSeek and AltaVista were the leading search engines...

[pw201]

Where does this "publisher/platform" meme come from? It's completely incorrect (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...) but I keep seeing it.

Suggest you give less credence to whoever you contracted it from.

[neylonbill]

I love Robert's Rules of Order! I'd love to see someone build video meeting software that implemented it somehow. Or does that exist? A brief search was fruitless.

[a9h74j]

The last copy I owned had a great introductory essay, describing the principles a rule of order could help realize: e.g. 1) to focus on potential concrete actions rather than some interminable search for agreement on beliefs; 2) to allow even minority/fringe opinions to get some hearing

[humaniania]

That's a great idea.

[tptacek]

Alex Jones lent a camera crew to Wolfgang Halbig when he travelled to Newtown, CT to harass the parents of the first graders murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting. Years and years from now those sites you're referring to will still bear the shame of not having banned him earlier.

[SuoDuanDao]

In my opinion, while a low point even for a high-functioning schizophrenic with a talk show, that is still small potatoes compared to the journalists who repeated the 'WMD's line. And no one is calling for them to be deplatformed.

[pjc50]

Publishing official government statements is bad, including when there is no sane way to independently verify them, but slander you've just made up is fine?

[patrickaljord]

They did a bit more than publishing official statements. They were very vocal about denouncing and shaming anyone doubting those statements including my whole country France was attacked, boycotted and more by these people.

[pjc50]

Which specific people and newspaper articles?

[Unklejoe]

Do you not remember the whole "freedom fries" movement?

[Faark]

Figuring out a widely held opinion is wrong is actually not that easy. As such I have a lot more acceptance for those being wrong while promoting the status quo than those intentionally pushing the overton window. The latter is what should require commitment/conviction, to weed out the bad. And seems to be what is getting axed right now.

Investing into shitty companies will make you loose your investment. Why should this be different with ideas?

[SuoDuanDao]

Funny, I take the opposite conclusion - figuring out a widely held opinion is wrong is not easy, therefore I think we should be slower to condemn people who get contrarian bets wrong.

To extend your metaphor, if I invest in a bad company, sure, my finances will suffer. But if it were that easy to tell which companies were bad there'd be no reason to invest at all. People who bet against the crowd and are right are generally considered heroes. I agree there should be a cost to trying to be a hero, but I don't think we currently have enough of them and I'm leery of making it harder to be one.

[tptacek]

The logic you've provided says nothing about whether we should condemn Alex Jones, so I'm not clear what point you're trying to make. Unless you think we should be slow to condemn people who arrange for the harassment of parents whose children were murdered by a gunman in their elementary school. But that seems like an implausibly villainous thing for anyone on HN to believe.

[SuoDuanDao]

My point is, he seems to be held to a higher standard than 'mainstream' journalists, despite the fact that these mainstream journalists send signals that they should be taken seriously and he does not. That sticks in my craw.

[klyrs]

FWIW, I think that Bush II, Obama and Trump should all be tried for war crimes. Probably Clinton and Bush I, and all the veeps, but I'm not as informed about them.

[SuoDuanDao]

I'm sure we don't know the half of it.

[lowmemcpu]

For someone who has mostly sat on the sidelines of these debates, the coordination is really disturbing. Who is pulling the strings here?

[hailwren]

I'm sure it was done in coordination with the advertisers that pulled their ads. Probably a group coordination between the companies and groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense that spearheaded the original advertising blackout.

[one2know]

https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/

[bobmaxup]

The boogie man, no doubt

[sudosysgen]

I was on ChapoTrapHouse a day before the ban. It was indeed leaked, and the ban happened exactly at the same time that it was leaked. This probably wouldn't have been the case unless it was coordinated.

[dmix]

> Apparently they're going to ban a large number of subs on Monday and frame it as an anti-racism initiative

Has this been announced or was this just speculation?

[jacquesm]

"Apparently they're going to ban a large number of subs on Monday and frame it as an anti-racism initiative"

Frame it? It is an anti-racism initiative. It may have side effects as well but that is the main driver.

[Acrobatic_Road]

They did not ban racist subreddits like /r/blackpeopletwitter and /r/fragilewhiteredditor.

If you don't know, to post on /r/blackpeopletwitter you have to send a photo of your skin color to the moderators. They are literally racially segregating users.

[syntonym2]

According to this post [0] only allowing black people to post was a time limited action. As an Aprils fool joke only black people were allowed to post, which resulted in positive feedback from the community, according to the mods. Now everyone can post again, where as black people can get verified and a special flair (a small visual indication next to their username). Some threads [1] are reserved for verified people, but non-black person can also get verified (but might not get a flair).

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/b93w1j/...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/gumxuy/...

[mcculley]

That special flair thing is amazing. I had no idea. I wonder how long before we see forums using it for other skin colors and genetic types. It's exactly the opposite of the trend of text-oriented interfaces democratizing access.

[john-shaffer]

While this is informative, it leaves out one big thing. Rule number 1 in the sidebar is "Posts from black people only".

> This sub is intended for exceptionally hilarious and insightful social media posts made by black people. To that end, only post social media content from black people.

[Acrobatic_Road]

Your [1] has three standards for three groups of people.

1. black people who can verify and get a flair

2. non-white and non-black people who can verify but don't get a flair

3. white people can ask the moderators for entrance, but it only says they will will "receive further instructions." It's not clear what these further instructions are supposed to be.

This is racist and if a right wing subreddit did it, they would have been banned years ago.

[perl4ever]

I find it odd people aren't bringing up the obvious motivation for this. Simply calling it racism seems obtuse.

Anywhere race is a topic and anyone can join, but there is no verification of identity, trolls can claim anything. How do you think it feels to be a Black member of a forum and see a White person who is taken in by a White troll pretending to be Black? Conversely, how do you think it feels to be Black and be arguing with someone White who is sure you are a White troll pretending to be Black?

It's not a trivial problem, and it's inherent anywhere your online identity isn't linked to your real one.

[YarickR2]

I seem to remember some period in history when people of one race were forced to wear a special flair on them . Yellow six pointed star, on a sleeve, or a chest .

[grenoire]

Damn, I never actually heard this being spoken about on reddit.

It's interesting, I'm not from the US and I find it curious that these situations arise. I can understand and empathise with (as a 'person of colour' as it's called over there) the arguments of both sides, but deep down I find this kind of 'positive segregation' morally wrong.

[Tiltowait--]

>Damn, I never actually heard this being spoken about on reddit.

That's pretty much the whole idea of censorship.

[dogma1138]

“While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.”

https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/acc...

[naasking]

> “While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.”

So according to this rule, a racial minority can call members of a "majority race" sub-human, but not vice-versa. And yet, majority/minority are regional properties. How do you know a redditor's region in order to moderate their comment appropriately? Or are reddit employee regions the only ones that matter?

It's clearly a farce. Majority/minority status is a red herring. It's used only to enable reddit and mods to selectively apply the rules for their own ends. The fact is, it's unethical to call any race sub-human, regardless of whether the majority shares your views.

[nordsieck]

> So according to this rule, a racial minority can call members of a "majority race" sub-human, but not vice-versa.

According to academia, this is correct: racism only exists in the context of class based oppression.

Of course, many people disagree with this definition.

[vageli]

> “While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.”

The majority where? I can't find any specifics on what the majority qualifier is applied to (ex: the community in which the speech occurs, the geographic community of the user, etc).

[zozbot234]

It's even worse than that. People can honestly disagree about whether the term "racism" accurately describes something or whatever, but that's a far cry from actively condoning ("..this rule does not protect...") the whipping up of hate towards a majority of the population. The internet is full of nihilists and misanthropes who genuinely hate everyone and everything - I'm sure they can't wait to abuse this weakness in every way they can possibly think of. All for teh lulz, of course.

[amanaplanacanal]

I’m guessing the whole thing is very USA centric, and they haven’t really thought through the implications of having users from across the world.

[Darmody]

I've commented about this on HN earlier. Censorship will end up swallowing us all.

Now I guess it's ok to hate me as I'm part of several majorities and people seems to like it.

What am I supposed to do now? Hate myself? Allow others to discriminate me? Make a blind eye to those who think it's ok to hate me?

[castlecrasher2]

Got it, so racism against Asians is the go-to now /s

[ars]

> For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority

Are they serious? So basically racism is OK as long as it's toward people who are the majority?

[Avamander]

Yes. The rule basically says that you can't be racist towards white people.

[rjohnk]

If you look at academic definitions, yes, often they will state racism is from the majority to the minority. It is rather odd.

[syshum]

Reddit adopts the "Prejudice + Power" definition of racism, not the actual definition of racism

[champagneben]

In the majority... in the United States?

[archagon]

> If you don't know, to post on /r/blackpeopletwitter you have to send a photo of your skin color to the moderators.

I think there's a good reason for doing that, given that such a sub can almost trivially become a hate sub for mocking people on Twitter, much like fatpeoplehate. "We want our community to be largely black" seems like a reasonable founding principle.

[Acrobatic_Road]

Let's do a CTRL-H test:

"We want our community to be largely white" seems like a reasonable founding principle.

How do you feel about the statement now?

[archagon]

"White" is a catch-all term for light-skinned ethnic groups with "defaultness" in American society. There is no such thing as "white history," "white heritage," or "white culture," except in opposition to "non-default" ethnic groups.

If you change the founding principle to "we want our community to be largely Russian," that would be totally fine by me.

Additionally, opposition to the "largely black" founding principle implies opposition to women-only spaces and other community groupings that are largely accepted in society.

[mrguyorama]

Are black people not allowed to have their own communities?

[jdkee]

""We want our community to be largely black" seems like a reasonable founding principle."

Freedom of association is a thing. Now, would you agree with the statement, ""We want our community to be largely white" seems like a reasonable founding principle." ?

[archagon]

See comment above.

[anticonformist]

Exactly.

Just because someone claims something is anti-racist doesn't make it so. Almost all organized evil is done in the name of something good. Look at how laws like the The Patriot Act are named.

The people behind these bans are leftist extremists going after their rightist extremist enemies. Their "good intentions" are paving our path towards hell.

[Darmody]

If they do they will be called racists and white supremacists.

And I'm the crazy one when I say social media is only banning right wingers.

[danudey]

Complaining about the /r/fragilewhiteredditor subreddit is kind of just proving their point though.

[Acrobatic_Road]

Why should white people tolerate racism against themselves?

[mrguyorama]

/r/fragilewhiteredditor is not racism. Being a "White redditor" is not a race. The sub is not about hating redditors for being white, but for talking about and possibly getting angry at people who are very blind to their prejudice or priviledges

[jchw]

Honest to goodness, it’s a marketing and advertising initiative. I do think some of the subreddits that are being banned deserve it for violating Reddit site wide rules and refusing to stop, among other things. However, Reddit took on the identity of being free speech oriented early on and gradually eroded it over time, and every time they ban a few bad big subs that are indefensible, they usually coincide bans to a large number of other smaller subreddits that are almost ostensibly somehow adjacent but are not really violating any rules in the same fashion. I think this is intentional, because most of the people who would be annoyed by the collateral damage are celebrating because of the headlining bans. This creates quite a conundrum. Maybe this ban wave is truly different, but it would take me by surprise if so. (I didn’t look into exactly what subs were banned yet.)

At this point it feels like Reddit saves the big important bans specifically so they can be announced in ban waves, because by the time they happen the response is always, “how in the world did this take over a year to be done?”

edit: to my point it looks like they banned over 2000 subs this time. I doubt that list hadn’t been growing over time. I checked out one that was apparently for a podcast and the little bit I could view on Wayback Machine looked pretty damn ordinary, with only mildly edgy jokes. Not immediately casting doubt that there is good reason but it sure feels like every other ban wave I’ve seen from Reddit.

[sudosysgen]

Socialist subreddits being banned for glorifying John Brown (who caused an insurrection against slavery in the South) was not an anti-racism initiative. It was probably a PR move calculated to look good to the mainstream media and co., while being able to "both-sides" conservative media.

[dogma1138]

Yes they also released a new policy update:

https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/acc...

[Acrobatic_Road]

https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...

[freehunter]

It actually happened today. Check Reddit‘s /r/announcements for the official thread.

[CyberDildonics]

I don't think it is a matter of keeping it a secret, my guess is that they don't want bleed over to wherever they haven't been banned yet.

[slg]

>It is coordinated.

Is there any evidence of this besides the announcements just happening on the same day? It could be companies waiting to announce these moves on Monday morning after days of seeing Facebook embroiled in controversy for not doing this. Or maybe one company decided to make this move and other companies fast tracked anything they had planned on this so they wouldn't be viewed as ignoring this issue.

We have no indication one way or another whether this is coordinated. We shouldn't just assume it is coordinated because it is happening on the same day.

[dogma1138]

Coordination doesn’t mean collusion, there are plenty of reasons why to coordinate such as to avoid platform hopping and not having to deal with a bunch of angry people flocking to your platform and to share the news cycle.

The likelihood of high profile bans like these not being coordinated is slim.

[Gibbon1]

I'm pretty sure social media platforms all have the same problematic groups set up for one click deletion. If one pulls the trigger it's trivial for the rest to do it too.

It's the same coordination you see in penguins jumping off an ice flow. They'll all bunch up looking for sea lions they know are lurking. Eventually one jumps in or gets pushed and they all jump in right after.

[dogma1138]

Ban waves aren’t that simple they take time to prepare the legal, PR, community relations and tech support etc required.

While it probably isn’t as spontaneous as the penguins I also don’t see it as some smokey or well these days vapey dark room where they sit around the table with a bunch of dossiers laid out in front of them taking a vote.

[slg]

Collusion has an obvious negative connotation, but any coordination that happens in secret is inherently collusion.

Either way, my request still stands. Is there any evidence to suggest these companies are working together instead of us all just assuming that is the case?

[dogma1138]

Define evidence, companies share information all the time including their legal departments.

We have had multiple simultaneous ban waves this is not a new occurrence, at this point one would ask for evidence to show its not the case since the fact that this happening is self evident.

[iratewizard]

There were several posts predicting this exact outcome yesterday on subreddits drama. The people close to the pulse knew.

[slg]

Do you care to point to something that backs up that claim? I can't find any mention on that subreddit about anything relating to Youtube or Twitch bans.

https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+site%3Areddit.com%2F...

https://www.google.com/search?q=twitch+site%3Areddit.com%2Fr...

[zo1]

Posts about it have been flying for about a day or two now. Example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DeclineIntoCensorship/comments/hh1s...

[slg]

That seems to be exclusively about Reddit. How does this show coordination?

[zo1]

You're right. I was more pointing out that "people knew" before hand that a ban was coming, which means other platforms/groups knew about it and so could have prepared for it. If anything that's less of an argument that it's coordinated and more an argument that they're piling on after seeing one platform do it.

[psychometry]

"WatchRedditDie"? Hilarious. Everything reddit's done today makes me want to use the site more.