It's not completely independent - after Reddit started banning subreddits like "Fat People Hate" and anti-trans hategroups, the amount of hate posts decreased on the whole platform, even in completely unrelated groups. This might point to a perception of decreased tolerance of such posts, or be simply a function of the banned subreddits being used to coordinate attacks.
Either way, reddit is unlike twitter and more like a network of networks, so the same result might not occur there.
Fun fact. They banned r/fatpeoplehate over a year before banning explicitly racist subreddits like r/coontown. Really shows where their priorities are.
You mean when reddit stopped being reddit, pushed out their original techy userbase, and invited in the flood of Facebook refugees becoming Facebook 2.0? Yeah, entirely changing your platform's userbase will do that.
I don't know if and when reddit stopped being reddit, but I can guarantee that the "techy userbase", whoever that was, did not leave because a few thousand people where told to fantasize about mass-murdering minorities elsewhere.
I don't have to guess. I was there since 2008. The 2013-2015 time on reddit there was huge uproar and discontent due to the corporate VC money being accepted and immediate changes in policy thereafter. If you don't remember this I'm not sure anything you say about reddit can be taken at face value. The CEO literally resigned after weeks of protest.
> At the same time, Reddit has been trying to increase monetization. In the aftermath of Taylor's firing, reports surfaced that the company was planning to add more video interviews and other sponsored content to generate more money with popular features on the site, something that Taylor apparently advised against.
You're talking about the obvious in your face censorship and bans that were going on at the same time as these other changes to become attractive to advertisers (and their target demographic) fleeing facebook. But these changes all happened at once and they came from the same source. They cannot be separated.
>there was huge uproar and discontent due to the corporate VC money being accepted and immediate changes in policy thereafter.
I remember that, and just like most other times there is a mass protest on a social media site about social media itself, the uproar and discontent was largely weak, reactionary, and disturbingly out-of-touch with the business realities of the company. There's a very good reason the complainers didn't get what they wanted.
I was also there. I belonged to the group of people who begged the reddit admins to do something about all the hate posts, because I didn't want to read about Donald Trump and how bad fat people and Ellen Pao are all day. I wanted to get back to the tech discussion. We could fix /r/theDonald hogging all space on /r/all by not using /r/all, but the people advocating the murder of obese people, trans people and jews were a constant nuisance and invaded every subreddit, and that certainly didn't help to attract or retain a techy audience for the subs I frequented.
My perspective isn't more valid than yours, but I think you might underestimate how many people literally fled reddit due to the deluge of hate and highly antagonistic posts about US politics.
> My perspective isn't more valid than yours, but I think you might underestimate how many people literally fled reddit due to the deluge of hate and highly antagonistic posts about US politics.
Indeed, if Elon Musk takes Twitter private and uses his power to force 'free speech' on the rest of us, and I start seeing references to kikes and fags and such in every casual tech discussion, I'll just close my Twitter account and walk away.
I want a moderated forum. I like what dang does for HN. I don't want a free speech heaven, because it reliably turns into hell. I used to run my own BBS back in the 80s, and even then it was obvious. If you don't put in guardrails, the assholes take over and suck all the oxygen out of the room.
There's a big difference between moderation on HN and sites like Reddit. Reddit completely shadowbans, filters, or bans anyone who doesn't post with the hivemind. This makes it so you can't have a fair contrarian view and it completely pushes out people and makes an echo chamber. I would say that Reddit takes it to the level of the Soviet Union in wrongthink.
While HN is moderated, you can have pretty much any fair view as long as it contributes to the discussion. Which is nice and the ideal middle ground. Although I will say, I never have any issues with Twitter and the moderation is just fine besides some high profile cases I disagree with. I would say it's even to lax.
This further confirms my suspicion that the reason conservatives are censored on social media is because if they were given equal opportunity then they would DOMINATE every conversation and every election.
Either way, reddit is unlike twitter and more like a network of networks, so the same result might not occur there.