[antonvs]

I had a reddit account permanently banned for saying something to the effect that a certain out of control billionaire could be dealt with by launching him into space in an electric vehicle that one of his companies manufactures.

Apparently "reddit legal" thought that was a credible threat. I find that strangely encouraging.

[verzali]

Reddit once banned my account for "report abuse". The content I had reported was then removed by them for being against their rules. No amount of appeals could get a response from them.

[lynx97]

Reads like a good decision on the side of Reddit. If you can't see how this type of statement is not OK, even after the fact, shows banning you was the right decision.

[Macha]

I can understand the motivation for acting on death threats like someone claiming they would like to stab another person. Who knows how plausible that is? Without knowing much about the poster, you kind of have to assume the most plausible interpretation in a lot of settings.

Launching someone in a rocket to space is clearly beyond the reach of any single individual. It's also not particularly violent in the scheme of things. It's clearly intended to be hyperbole, and hyperbole against a public figure is common. Musk himself, despite his thin skin, has often said much worse, I guess his ban from Twitter should be coming any day now?

[antonvs]

Thanks, you expressed my position well.

[mschuster91]

Well... getting rid of too powerful people by means of executing them has been a staple of societies across all cultures for millennia.

The fact that people openly cheer on re-introducing this, or on those following through with such plans (Luigi), is just showing how fed up wide masses of society are - and Reddit's admins have been hellbent on quenching even verbal forms of dissatisfaction.

The problem is, all that does is keeping pressure bottling up and eventually, if the issues with inequality and absurd amounts of power grabbing aren't dealt with, the explosion will be much harder than if people had a relatively safe way of voicing their dissent.

[lynx97]

Extremism is bad, no matter if it left or right-sided. I have turned away from the left with a huge amount of disgust since I started to realize how hatred is rampant on both sides. Wanting someone dead, and saying so, it a warning sign. Are we supposed to go back to "an eye for an eye"? I for one are happy this "staple" is a thing from the past. Cheering for it coming back is horryfing behaviour.

[Karsteski]

You're lucky we have the luxury of such opinions like yours. With the way the world is going towards extreme financial inequality, and with the US becoming more hostile to other nations, I suspect that opinion will become harder and harder to justify for many people.

[antonvs]

> You're lucky we have the luxury of such opinions like yours.

“Civility” is the first recourse of the privileged.

[immibis]

Extremism is the historical norm. Democracy was created as a nicer alternative to extremism. Everyone prefers democracy to extremism. If democracy is destroyed, we go back to extremism. Simple as.

[mschuster91]

> Wanting someone dead, and saying so, it a warning sign. Are we supposed to go back to "an eye for an eye"? I for one are happy this "staple" is a thing from the past. Cheering for it coming back is horryfing behaviour.

That's my point. When people see no other way out of resolving the exploding wealth and power inequality crisis than violence, it shows that democracy is on the verge of failure.

It's horrifying, agreed, but it happening is completely understandable IMHO given that democratic systems seem to be completely and thoroughly corrupted by big money.

It's no longer a question if open violence erupts, it's a question of when - and Western governments all seem to ignore the issue and show zero intent to actually do something to ease the life of the wide masses. The system is headed straight for collapse.

[db48x]

No, mostly it just reminds us that ordinary people are mostly evil. At best they’re purely self–interested. There’s no dissent there.

There’s a good book called “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” by Christopher Browning which explores this. The Reserve Police Battalions were created by Germany to police captured territory, but they were seen by ordinary Germans as a way to avoid the war and conscription. The members were not Nazis, and almost to a man they joined because it was an honorable way to avoid participating in the evils happening all around them. They were only trained for ordinary honest police work, but in the end many of them were being used to hunt down and murder Jews. They were sent out into forests to comb them for underground shelters. They rounded up Jews and herded them into mass graves.

Almost none of them complained or tried to avoid participating. No one punished them if they didn’t participate. No one coerced them into participating. A few asked for and received transfers, if I recall correctly. The best that can be said about the rest is that many of them are believed not to have actually fired their weapons. Some of them probably went the whole war without actually killing anyone, technically. They were just assigned the job so they did it.

[antonvs]

You’re cherry-picking, generalizing without any basis, and apparently projecting.

[db48x]

If you say so then it must be true.

[antonvs]

The first paragraph of your previous comment states some conclusions that you've assumed.

Your second paragraph gives a single example which is apparently supposed to support that conclusion. That's a definitional example of cherry-picking and hasty generalization.

The projection comes in because it's difficult to see how you would reach those conclusions from the available evidence, unless you're projecting.

[Cesura]

Do you read French history and find yourself sympathetic to the plight of Marie Antoinette?

[Philpax]

How many people do you think Elon Musk has indirectly killed as a result of his actions, especially through his work with DOGE? I would not make such a threat myself, but I can certainly see why one would be inspired to.

[antonvs]

My comment was not a threat. A threat is a statement of intent.

However, the lawyers reddit employs are apparently similarly confused on that point.

[immibis]

Reddit's been way out of control on this and I'm surprised people still use it at this point. Though the vast majority of Reddit content is posted by bots to manipulate users - so maybe they don't. Reddit is a Dead Internet existing here and now in front of our eyes.

In addition to platform-wide bans most popular subreddits also use subreddit bans to create false impressions of consensus.

Last scandal I heard was they banned people who upvoted memes about Mario's green brother.