[klabb3]

> There's no way around this.

Uhm, yes there is.

> If you try to "keep them around", then you have to say that these are reasonable ideas.

No, you don't.

Apologies for the terseness, but there are solutions here. It's a problem of signal-to-noise ratio, not an issue of principles and tolerance. Reddit has done a lot by looking at user behavior, as opposed to content, and it's the best system so far for any public, global social media with plenty of bad actors. They've also federated human moderation, which is a step in the right direction.

[joshuamorton]

> No, you don't.

But your actions are doing that. You can say "I think these are unconscionable words" until you're blue in the face, but who are people going to believe, you, the person who lets people say those words, or someone else who bans people who say them?

Part of influencing user behavior is controlling which ideas can be discussed. Subreddits very aggressively do this by, like, having rules about what content can be discussed. More than a banlist of unacceptable topics and ideas, they only allow discussion of very particular topics. You can't post about politics on /r/pets. That is influencing user behavior by influencing content. What it feels acceptable to post (user behavior) is influenced by what you see (content). The two are inseparable. The difference between /r/science and /b/ is what content is allowed, because content creates community.

[phailhaus]

Reddit is my go-to example for effective moderation. Here's how they do it: every so often, they straight up ban entire communities from the platform.

[klabb3]

Yeah they do that too, but that's what I don't like, because I don't think opinions should be regulated by corporations. Also I can't tell if you're sarcastic. In case not, what is it effective at? Silencing people with bad opinions?

[ekidd]

I've moderated a number of internet forums. And at the end of the day, you have a choice:

1. You can keep the deliberate assholes, the abusers, the white supremacists, the people with actual swastikas in their profile photos, etc. (Some of these people are much worse than others, obviously.)

2. Or you can keep the nice, pleasant people you want to hang out with.

If you choose to keep (1), you'll eventually lose a significant fraction of (2).

I have zero desire to participate in unmoderated internet communities. Social spaces require some basic norms of behavior, and there has to be some mechanism for kicking people out.

If you want to encourage successful communities, people need to have the freedom of association.

[phailhaus]

Banning hate groups has been provably effective at reducing toxicity on the platform, [1] so the idea that bans will just cause the toxicity to spread to other subreddits turned out to be false. Analogously, there's no obligation for us to bend over backwards to avoid ostracizing hate groups and fringe conspiracy theorists. They are not interested in good-faith debate.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-12-reddit-hate-subreddits-b...