Props to Reddit for not caving to this. I really do not understand anyone that calls for this kind of heavy-handed moderation. I certainly understand the impulse to want it, but upon thinking for like, 30 seconds about the precedent it sets and what the long term effects might be I realize it’s a pretty bad idea. Next time around, it might be the speech that they DO agree with that other people are wanting to clamp down on, and I don’t think they’ll just roll over and take it. That tells me a shocking number of people are not doing the basic due diligence of thinking through an idea even a little bit before jumping to support it.
I 100% agree, while it drives me nuts seeing vaccine disinformation, I think banning people only solidifies their views. It's best to keep the debate open so people can point out why they're incorrect.
Personally I just want this Pandemic to be over as soon as possible, thus I want vaccination rates to go as high as possible, but I don't think banning disinformation will achieve that, it will only put fuel to the fire. Plus I remember when discussing the possibility of a lab leak was considered misinformation. Banning people who don't support the narrative or excepted wisdom could be abused to suppress people blowing the whistle on actual conspiracies.
There was a point in the pandemic (very early) where saying people should be wearing masks would have been considered misinformation compared to official statements from the CDC. That should be the only argument against this required.
Also early on, for way too long, human to human transmission was officially not happening per the WHO.
"We won't stop people from spreading known misinformation because if we did maybe in the future we might possibly stop people from spreading known factual information" is such a terrible argument.
The fact that a slippery slope can be identified within a premise does not mean that it exists, and straining at flies while you let a camel pass is an issue that has plagued humanity for thousands of years, and still we are no closer to recognizing it or solving it than we were back then.
Reddit has already implemented mass arbitrary censorship of subreddits for no good reasons. Stuff like gun subs, r/shoplifting (which I mention not because I like shoplifting, but because it was legitimately informative to learn what they do and why they do it), all sorts of politics subs, plenty of satire subs, and even r/wateriniggas just for the soft nword. They’re ridiculously strict and while it’s good to not ban one, let’s not act like they’re good faith actors here.
>I certainly understand the impulse to want it, but upon thinking for like, 30 seconds about the precedent it sets and what the long term effects might be I realize it’s a pretty bad idea.
Unfortunately, I'm sure the powermoderators behind this would love to set the precedent that they can use their leverage to demand censorship and other changes to site policies. The pendulum will never actually swing the other way on Reddit, which is really the territory that they care about.
What props they made a pretty obviously wrong choice here.
Banning antivax nonsense during a pandemic is no brainer. It is light moderation not heavy. I assume you have no objection to spam or troll moderation, how is this any heavier.
If you think about it for a couple more minutes the weakness of your position may become more clear to you
> On an entirely unrelated note, I'm starting a subreddit dedicated to telling people seatbelts and speed limits are a violation of their civil liberties, because apparently I can.
Yes, that's a point of view. Considering the sarcasm; I assume that the author will actually be advocating for society wide, extra legal penalties for known speeders; perhaps insisting on a public registry of those known to have had traffic citations, so those people can be denied services at restaurants etc...
These people aren't even really calling for censorship; they just want there to be no one that disagrees with them. Whatever their position is today.
> I assume that the author will actually be advocating for society wide, extra legal penalties for known speeders; perhaps insisting on a public registry of those known to have had traffic citations, so those people can be denied services at restaurants etc...
You're so close and yet so far.
There is a registry of traffic citations, too many and you can't drive. Too many and you are forced to take classes.
The reason the penalties don't apply to restaurants is because your reckless driving has nothing to do with restaurants, it doesn't affect others in restaurants. It does affect others on public roads which is where the restrictions are placed.
Conversely, I don't expect anti-vaxxers to be denied driving licenses because their driving doesn't affect me. Their behavior does affect me in a restaurant because of an insanely contagious disease and one would imagine restrictions ought to be applied there instead.
>perhaps insisting on a public registry of those known to have had traffic citations, so those people can be denied services at restaurants etc...
Speeding isn't infectious. If you get a traffic ticket I don't magically start getting them if we sit next to each other at a restaurant. "These people" are tired of "my opinion is just as valid as your science", and I don't blame them.
This is going to be a controversial opinion, but I agree with the mods who wrote the petition. The 'fire in a crowded theater' analogy is overused, but it seems applicable here.
Additionally, those who moderate these subs (nnn especially) have repeatedly, and seemingly intentionally, failed to enforce site wide content policies. One needs look no further than r/covidvaccinated for proof of vote brigading.
I have no problem with reasonable discussion, but Reddit is not where it happens anymore. Not with the gish-gallop it has become inundated with.
That said fire in a crowded analogy is terrible, it refers to a legal standard that was overturned and was about jailing people for pacifist literature during WW1
>Additionally, those who moderate these subs (nnn especially) have repeatedly, and seemingly intentionally, failed to enforce site wide content policies.
Let's not pretend that "we just want NNN to enforce these policies and we're fine" is going to satisfy the critics here. This seems to be a boilerplate complaint that is lodged against any sub that is attacked for obvious political reasons.
At some point personal responsibility has to come into play, right? I certainly don't want everything curated for me by someone else before it hits my senses.
Yeah. But Reddit already censors the shit out of its communities, both with thousands unnecessary subreddit bans and a comically incompetent “Anti-Evil Operations” site wide censorship team staffed by barely literate Zambians or something that randomly removes benign comments and suspends people for ridiculous reasons.
I believe this is a shift in mentality that has occurred ever since smartphones and social media became ubiquitous. before that, in the early-to-mid 00s and earlier, it was assumed that the Web would contain tons of disinformation—possibly moreso than actual information—because anyone could make a website and put whatever they wanted on it, and this was well-understood and acknowledged by basically everyone who used the Web at this time. then smartphones happened and suddenly everyone was on the Web, and social media happened, shunting all these new Web users into walled-garden information silos. thus, it makes sense that these people who mostly began using the Web in earnest in this social media age would expect, nay demand ultra-locked-down content-controlled ideological safe spaces. of course, then, these massive social media corporations are more than happy to acquiesce to these implicit demands, because they can then tout their ultra-locked-down ideological echo-chambers as being a feature of their service compared to the others—don't worry, you won't see anything untoward here, on our service!
this cultural shift in attitude toward the Web was probably inevitable and we probably won't ever go back to the way things were before, which is unfortunate, but here we are.
Working on a little script that determines who the moderators are for the top X subreddits and auto bans all of them because /r/all is ruined for a couple days every single time these mods get uppity.
The default sub mods are capricious and irritable. Check out r/undelete for an updated stream of mod removed posts that top r/all, or r/longtail for less popular removed posts. To say nothing about the literal 100s of thousands of comments they remove to make the site wholesome and nice, or just for abstruse personal vendettas. It’s terrible.
Noam Chomsky advocated for conspiracists to be allowed to talk freely.
Who really cares? I bet plenty of people who believe in those conspiracies vaccinated anyway.
Conspiracy is mostly a illness of belief. It doesn't really matter, it's just kids expressing pointless things, but I'm the end those kids will obey and do the good thing.
[+] [-] md2020|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baja_blast|4 years ago|reply
Personally I just want this Pandemic to be over as soon as possible, thus I want vaccination rates to go as high as possible, but I don't think banning disinformation will achieve that, it will only put fuel to the fire. Plus I remember when discussing the possibility of a lab leak was considered misinformation. Banning people who don't support the narrative or excepted wisdom could be abused to suppress people blowing the whistle on actual conspiracies.
[+] [-] thomaskcr|4 years ago|reply
Also early on, for way too long, human to human transmission was officially not happening per the WHO.
[+] [-] BizarroLand|4 years ago|reply
The fact that a slippery slope can be identified within a premise does not mean that it exists, and straining at flies while you let a camel pass is an issue that has plagued humanity for thousands of years, and still we are no closer to recognizing it or solving it than we were back then.
[+] [-] grapist420|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yanderekko|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, I'm sure the powermoderators behind this would love to set the precedent that they can use their leverage to demand censorship and other changes to site policies. The pendulum will never actually swing the other way on Reddit, which is really the territory that they care about.
[+] [-] rat87|4 years ago|reply
Banning antivax nonsense during a pandemic is no brainer. It is light moderation not heavy. I assume you have no objection to spam or troll moderation, how is this any heavier.
If you think about it for a couple more minutes the weakness of your position may become more clear to you
[+] [-] h2odragon|4 years ago|reply
Yes, that's a point of view. Considering the sarcasm; I assume that the author will actually be advocating for society wide, extra legal penalties for known speeders; perhaps insisting on a public registry of those known to have had traffic citations, so those people can be denied services at restaurants etc...
These people aren't even really calling for censorship; they just want there to be no one that disagrees with them. Whatever their position is today.
[+] [-] bdhe|4 years ago|reply
You're so close and yet so far.
There is a registry of traffic citations, too many and you can't drive. Too many and you are forced to take classes.
The reason the penalties don't apply to restaurants is because your reckless driving has nothing to do with restaurants, it doesn't affect others in restaurants. It does affect others on public roads which is where the restrictions are placed.
Conversely, I don't expect anti-vaxxers to be denied driving licenses because their driving doesn't affect me. Their behavior does affect me in a restaurant because of an insanely contagious disease and one would imagine restrictions ought to be applied there instead.
[+] [-] grapist420|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tw04|4 years ago|reply
Speeding isn't infectious. If you get a traffic ticket I don't magically start getting them if we sit next to each other at a restaurant. "These people" are tired of "my opinion is just as valid as your science", and I don't blame them.
[+] [-] pajamanaut|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grapist420|4 years ago|reply
https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/264449/
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-s...
It’s a bit late to delete these subs anyway it’s been two years of Covid almost.
[+] [-] rat87|4 years ago|reply
That said fire in a crowded analogy is terrible, it refers to a legal standard that was overturned and was about jailing people for pacifist literature during WW1
[+] [-] yanderekko|4 years ago|reply
Let's not pretend that "we just want NNN to enforce these policies and we're fine" is going to satisfy the critics here. This seems to be a boilerplate complaint that is lodged against any sub that is attacked for obvious political reasons.
[+] [-] lolsal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grapist420|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rat87|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamrezich|4 years ago|reply
this cultural shift in attitude toward the Web was probably inevitable and we probably won't ever go back to the way things were before, which is unfortunate, but here we are.
[+] [-] ecf|4 years ago|reply
I’m vaccinated, btw.
[+] [-] grapist420|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nasreddin_Hodja|4 years ago|reply
Such a hypocricy... Vaccine fan communities contain disinformation too.
Even their first sentence contains lie: "Everyone on this planet has been affected by the SARS-Cov-2" ( https://old.reddit.com/r/vaxxhappened/comments/pbe8nj/we_cal... )
Actually not everyone, at least I was affected by covid hystericals only but not by covid.
[+] [-] jokoon|4 years ago|reply
Who really cares? I bet plenty of people who believe in those conspiracies vaccinated anyway.
Conspiracy is mostly a illness of belief. It doesn't really matter, it's just kids expressing pointless things, but I'm the end those kids will obey and do the good thing.
There is nothing that is fixable about this.
[+] [-] throwntoday|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ecf|4 years ago|reply
Could start with yourself but you’re using a throw away account so you obviously aren’t very confident in your opinions.