Reddit banned some subreddits & pissed off hundreds of thousands of people

[Ipquarx]

Today, Reddit has banned a whole bunch of subreddits including /r/FatPeopleHate and others like /r/publichealthawareness
According to most people I've talked to the subreddit was about fighting against the laziness and mentality that being unhealthy is OK. Of course, like in all societies there were radicals in the group. More info here: http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/39bzdf/why_was_rfatpeoplehate_along_with_several_other/

All of the subreddits that were banned had in total over 150,000 subscribers to them, and reddit is having a huge fit over this.

/discuss I guess? I'm not sure what to make of this. Apparently a new employee that's really high up is causing all of this and a lot of people want her out.

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[Dreams_Of_Cheese]

yeah okay
r/watchpeopledie, cutefemalecorpses, deadkids
et cetera et cetera still exist. but fatpeoplehate? how terrible. get rid of all of them or get rid of none of them

[Gojira]

This "new employee" is the new CEO. And her name's Ellen Pao, and apparently she does not intend for Reddit to be a completely free speech platform.

[ZombiLoin]

It's because they put the personal information of Imgur administrators in the sidebars and encouraged people to investigate/harass them.

It turns out that when you break the rules you get banned. Surprising, right?

also, lol, free speech on a private website - "they're infringing on my right to harass people! what a travesty!"

[Gojira]

that's a good point

[Ipquarx]

It's because they put the personal information of Imgur administrators in the sidebars and encouraged people to investigate/harass them.

I never saw this anywhere, mind providing a source?

[SeventhSandwich]

I don't think we should set a precedent for banning/censoring stuff on the basis of content, but the point of those subreddits was obviously to bully fat people. Any kind of explanation involving 'encouraging health practices' and 'fighting laziness' is bullstuff.

[John Freeman]

/r/all is really fun right now

Also, Boogie's two cents

[crunk²]

not being able to stuff-talk fat people on one out of 5000 websites where you can isn't that big of a deal

[crunk²]

I don't think we should set a precedent for banning/censoring stuff on the basis of content, but the point of those subreddits was obviously to bully fat people. Any kind of explanation involving 'encouraging health practices' and 'fighting laziness' is bullstuff.

this, also.
i mean it was literally "bullies: the subreddit"

[Donro98]

I'm going to document my thoughts on the issue.

1. FPH was a horrible loving place and wouldn't have been protected anyway because it bordered on loving hate speech.

Many of the users used the excuse of "We are motivating people to get fit!" but the unfortunate fact is that what they do has three possibilities.

 A. They are actually motivated to get fit, and somehow understand the constant bullying and abuse, even when trying to improve their bodies (FPH would post pictures of fat people at the gym and laugh at them.)

 B. They aren't motivated. Nothing changes in their life as they don't care one way or another.

C. The bullying makes them feel really stuffty and instead of pushing them to work out, they do what probably caused them to get fat in the first place and eat due to depression.

C presents some problems, as it fuels more fat people to hate, and the result is counter intuitive to their motives.


2. The excuse of banning for actions not ideas is a good one, but they haven't followed through. They claim to be against brigades but then don't ban places that brigade. Say what you will about r/fatpeoplehate, but it didn't brigade.

The raises the issue of: if they banned for brigading, why didn't subreddits such as r/stuffredditsays or r/subredditdrama get banned? They are constantly brigading, as the entire point of the subreddits is to stuff on other people.

This in turn means they can't use either the excuse of banning for brigading, as they banned  a subreddit which didn't brigade and didn't ban a popular subreddit that did, and they can't use the excuse that they banned for hate speech, because then r/coontown would be banned, which they have said that they won't as long as it doesn't brigade.

It doesn't help that reddit admins were already distrusted.

[Epicduke]

I lthink its more of a final straw then anything as people already saw her as an anti-free speech person

[ZombiLoin]

that's a good point

It's not a good point, it's the point. Reddit jumps to the conclusion that apparently it was some ess jay dawble you conspiracy and you get a majority of reddit up in arms without caring about the full story. Now you get stuff like this-



where she's the star of punchable faces now.

Truly reddit has died. A majority of the people on that website are, at best, a pack of malicious starfishs, and at worst, the stupidest and most irrational people possible.

I never saw this anywhere, mind providing a source?

Wish I could get the front page of r/fatpeoplehate, but since wayback machine isn't working for that page, the wayback machine for the new subreddit (r/fatpersonhate) would have to do. There were lots of post calling for harassment and private investigating - the sidebar is only a part of it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150610213942/https://www.reddit.com/r/fatpersonhate/

2. The excuse of banning for actions not ideas is a good one, but they haven't followed through. They claim to be against brigades but then don't ban places that brigade. Say what you will about r/fatpeoplehate, but it didn't brigade.

The raises the issue of: if they banned for brigading, why didn't subreddits such as r/stuffredditsays or r/subredditdrama get banned? They are constantly brigading, as the entire point of the subreddits is to stuff on other people.

This in turn means they can't use either the excuse of banning for brigading, as they banned  a subreddit which didn't brigade and didn't ban a popular subreddit that did, and they can't use the excuse that they banned for hate speech, because then r/coontown would be banned, which they have said that they won't as long as it doesn't brigade.

The banning was for harassment and brigading.

1) SRS does not, in any way, condone or encourage brigading. SRD doesn't either. In fact, if you vote on a thread linked from SRD, you get banned from SRD automatically. Doesn't seem like brigading to me at all. Brigading is a very specific thing, just because a subreddit is dedicated to "stuffting on people" does not mean it takes part in brigading. If that was the case, FPH would be a brigade subreddit too.

2) Putting pictures and info of imgur staff in the sidebar and posting about it is harassment by FPH. There is literally no way you can defend this.

[crunk²]

I lthink its more of a final straw then anything as people already saw her as an anti-free speech person

"you're not letting me stuff talk people i don't like!! THOSE ARE MY FREE SPEECH RIGHTS!!1!"

[Donro98]

i never ever tried to defend fph so don't even lol. I might've been mistaken with the brigading, though i haven't seen any come from it. Regardless, it still doesn't explain why the measure wasn't more complete

regardless of whether or not srs condones it, it consistently happens whenever a thread is linked onto it.