I disagree. Even flagging notcensorship's personal attack (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9870590) is a form of censorship. It's certainly not First Amendment protected, and you're absolutely correct that he retains the right to call me out anywhere else on the internet (or world). It might even be morally justifiable. But that doesn't mean it's not censorship. Wikipedia adds:

> Governments, private organizations and individuals may engage in censorship. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is called self-censorship. Censorship may be direct or it may be indirect, in which case it is called soft censorship. It occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, and hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel.

> Direct censorship may or may not be legal, depending on the type, place, and content. Many countries provide strong protections against censorship by law, but none of these protections are absolute and frequently a claim of necessity to balance conflicting rights is made, in order to determine what can and cannot be censored. There are no laws against self-censorship.

Let me be clear. I do not support the offensive behavior on reddit. I just think censorship and moderation is not an effective or desirable solution.

The only good bits of Reddit are heavily censored by reddit users, not admins. Admins have not censored unpleasant subs; admins have removed subs that engaged in active harassment of people in other subs, in other forums, or AFK.

EDIT: also, parent comment being downvoted and flagged is ironic.

Sure, but the article is talking about the stuff on reddit that wasn't removed. Doesn't calling it "out of control" imply a desire to start controlling it?

(grandparent was edited after flag, even more ironically by a mod I think)

EDIT: In fact, let's all just take a second to appreciate the irony here. A guy made a throwaway account, called me an idiot, and (lamely) doxxed me – all in order to argue for restricting lowbrow content on internet forums. Love it.

Now that it's edited to somewhat more than just calling me out personally (and yes I'm a white guy, I currently live in Virginia and my startup is linked on my profile), there's a couple points to respond to.

(I'd argue that your post just underwent self- or moderator censorship, of the justified sort.)

> It's incredibly disingenuous to claim that having some guidelines on a private forum (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html) counts as "Internet Censorship".

> You are actively supporting hatred by making that argument.

> It is not censorship or suppression of speech to tell a bigot that they can no longer borrow your megaphone. The bigot remains free to buy, build, or borrow another megaphone, a fact demonstrated clearly by the rise of voat.

> It is morally reprehensible to argue that taking away a privately owned megaphone is equivalent to censorship. It diminishes the meaning of the word, and boils it down to nothing. You should be ashamed of yourself for making such a truly insane and asinine argument.

Let's call a spade a spade. It's absolutely censorship by the definition of the word. You believe it's justified censorship.

"It" is somewhat unclear - but let's call it moderation beyond what is currently exercised by reddit, in order to remove the unpleasant content we saw in the wake of the FPH and Victoria incidents and is excoriated by this article.

I argue against it for precisely the same reason you think it's justified. The range of human opinion on every topic is incredibly broad. That means that there's a tiny minority of people who hold truly outrageous and objectionable views. If you simply hide those people with deletions and shadowbans, you relegate them to their tiny corner of the internet where they're free to reinforce each other's insane ideals. One of the greatest things about reddit is that though it's divided into subreddits, it's one big place - and any given user's reddit lineup will have slightly different posts than another's, whether cat photos or racism. That means you get cross-pollination (or -contamination), which offers a chance to change those people's minds. Yes, the crazies will show up in big community threads. But that means the sanes get a chance to teach them why they're wrong, whether by shaming them like sama, convincing them with reasoned argument (lol), or just downvoting them into oblivion and sending some irrational flames back (your choice!).

When you destroy the centrality of reddit, even if by cutting out really bad stuff, you encourage the sharding of the web into isolated echo chambers.

EDIT: No, I think you're absolutely right that reddit has zero obligation to allow any content. I'm merely arguing that though the content may be reprehensible and censorship is legal and even justifiable, it would not improve reddit to remove it.

> The range of human opinion on every topic is incredibly broad. That means that there's a tiny minority of people who hold truly outrageous and objectionable views. If you simply hide those people with deletions and shadowbans, you relegate them to their tiny corner of the internet where they're free to reinforce each other's insane ideals.

Let's take antisemitism as the truly outrageous & objectional view. Say that a tiny minority of users of reddit are vehemently antisemitic. Sure, they can hang out on their own subreddits and talk about how great antisemitism is, and they do. But they also post in popular subs, bringing their vitriol along with them. The community doesn't care, because censorship is bad. Sound about right so far?

Say you're Jewish. You wander in to a thread on some popular sub and you find a bunch of antisemitic comments. What is your reaction? Do you dig in and try to convince the antisemites that they're wrong? Or do you say fuck it and leave? How many times does this have to happen before you write off reddit all together?

Now let's say reddit is full of antisemites, homophobes, xenophobes, racists, fascists, and sexists. If you're jewish, gay, from another country, black, aren't a fascist, or a woman, why would you want to keep visiting the site?

Let's say you're none of those things, but you think that antisemites et al. are terrible people. Why would you want to spend time on a site that is full of those kinds of people?

Why would you want to visit a site where terrible people aren't told to get the fuck out but rather defended because telling them that they are not welcome in a community is censorship?

Good example, I am a Jew. Me, I'd probably toss some downvotes around and get out - maybe once in a blue moon if I'm drunk I'll write a response to one of the dumber/ridiculous comments. But there's more vocal people than me.

>Now let's say reddit is full of antisemites, homophobes, xenophobes, racists, fascists, and sexists. Do you say fuck it and leave?

Absolutely I'd leave a place like that. See, that's the great thing about reddit. It's not full of those people. 95% of people are not in the category of the "racist sexist 5%." So those people get drowned out, or downvoted to oblivion, or very occasionally rebuked by an authority figure to positive response. And yeah, those assholes who write the worst shit probably aren't going to change their mind. But maybe we can reach the guy who just browses, and make him think twice before hitting the upvote button.

> Why would you want to visit a site where terrible people aren't told to get the fuck out

I just want them to be told to shut the fuck up, not get the fuck out. And I limit this opinion to reddit generally, since I see it as the central place for internet discourse. Subreddits and non-reddit fora should absolutely censor content to create the desired community attitude.