[ditonal]

I can provide two specific examples of "widely held beliefs" that have been mass-banned on Reddit. I also want to note I don't endorse or subscribe to either of these beliefs but I felt neither were deserving of a ban and I was open-minded to hear arguments in their direction.

1) Reddit banned /r/NoNewNormal and "Covid misinformation" after activist moderators started shutting off subreddits. I personally got a Covid vaccine and complied with mask regulations, but I was interested in hearing coherent arguments related to lockdown / mask / vaccine skepticism. Obviously these skeptic views were very widely held beliefs, and some of them like the "lab leak theory" went from "misinformation" to "possibly true"

2) Reddit banned /r/GenderCritical which was a subreddit representing feminists who expressed skepticism over modern transgender ideology in the spirit of JK Rowling. Again, JK Rowling has millions of followers so this qualifies as a widely held belief. While I want to be inclusive and supportive of transgender people, I'm interested in hearing skeptical arguments related to things like whether it's really a good idea to give puberty blocker to teenagers .

I believe both of these bans happened not for good reasons but because of ideological crusades from Reddit power-moderators who skew heavily on certain political and ideological topics.

I'm not trying to start a flamewar or debate on either of these topics, I'm not endorsing either of those subreddits, I'm addressing your critique that specific examples were not provided of "widely held beliefs" that have been unfairly censored.

[bink]

I'm not familiar with the reasons behind those particular subs being banned, but in my experience "toxic communities" are a more common reason for a ban than the subject matter. If a sub wants to discuss gender identity and politics that's one thing. If that same sub then becomes a rallying place for those who brigade and harass other users or subs and the mods don't respond to admin requests to stop it then the sub gets banned. It's not true of all cases, of course, but it is common and something that most users of those subs will probably never be made aware of as the content is controlled by the mods who may or may not support the behavior that got the sub banned.

[mmcwilliams]

In the case of both of the topics you listed, there are still plenty of places online you can go to entertain your curiosity about those views. What I don't understand is the assumption that a corporate product should be compelled to host discussions it deems inappropriate in either topic, tone or corresponding action by users.

Through what mechanism do you believe website owners should be forced to allow users to operate by their own terms? Should anyone who hosts a comment section on a personal website be forced to keep all posted comments in perpetuity?