Reddit was a "bastion of free speech" but they had to include censorship into this bastion of free speech because they need to get more popular to increase revenue. My problem with the censorship is where does it stop?
Reddit has never been a bastion of free speech, not even in the beginning. Try posting about Tesla in /r/technology. Or post a link to a concert in r/seattle. Or link that John Oliver skit in r/nfl. Moderators enforce their own standards and censor others all the time, the only reason people are angry is this is coming from an admin. Doesn't make much difference to me, either way it's never been a haven for uncensored conversation.
Moderator curation of individual subreddits is completely different from admin banning of entire subreddits and categories of content. If you don't like the way a particular community is governed, you can start your own. The admins are now removing that fundamental feature of the site for certain entire classes of speech that are considered offensive.
/r/seattle's had an ongoing problem with moderation that can be described most nicely as "inconsistent", and often is mostly conducive to a hostile community environment. It's repeatedly been broached and challenged with varying degrees of diplomacy by members, and always met with total denial that there's any sort of problem. That reddit's policy is to refuse to intervene has created more problems on the website than it has solved. I would almost prefer the admins take a hard line on abusive content and demand consistent enforcement regarding harassment both on the site and with any promotion of off-site harassment. In a better world, reddit admins would have intervened on /r/seattle's moderation team a long time ago. It's clearly a broken situation.
Yep. The mod team there is downright toxic and utterly paranoid. Anyone who attempts to suggest change is assumed to be part of some secret group out to brigade and harass. The community can't move, r/seattle is too big and most people just want their sunset pictures. So we are just stuck this way indefinitely. Front page today: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/3eeye3/met_the_best_seattle_rapper_tonight/cteesgg
Well, when things were heating around the /r/creepshots thing and people were calling for its banning, I wrote to him to ask for advice. The very interesting thing he wrote back was “back when I was running things, if there was anything racist, sexist, or homophobic I’d ban it right away. I don’t think there’s a place for such things on reddit. Of course, now that reddit is much bigger, I understand if maybe things are different.” I’ve always remembered that email when I read the occasional posting here where people say “the founders of reddit intended this to be a place for free speech.” Human minds love originalism, e.g. “we’re in trouble, so surely if we go back to the original intentions, we can make things good again.” Sorry to tell you guys but NO, that wasn’t their intention at all ever. Sucks to be you, /r/coontown - I hope you enjoy voat! - Yishan WongBack around the time of the /r/creepshots debacle, I wrote to /u/spez for advice. I had met him shortly after I had taken the job, and found him to be a great guy. Back in the day when reddit was small, the areas he oversaw were engineering, product, and the business aspects - those are the same things I tend to focus on in a company (each CEO has certain areas of natural focus, and hires others to oversee the rest). As a result, we were able to connect really well and have a lot of great conversations - talking to him was really valuable.