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“ | Reddit wants to be a techno-libertarian's wet dream, but in practice it's a weak feudal system that's actually run by a small group of angry warlords who use "free speech" as a weapon. | ” |
—T.C. Sottek[1] |
Reddit is a controversial and popular social media website for sharing links and text posts. It is organised into "subreddits" (or just "reddits"), meaning a subforum, which are denoted by a "/r/" followed by the subreddit's name, e.g., "/r/SRSFunny".
Contents
Institutional oppression
Reddit is not only made-up of a bigoted user-base, it is systemically racist and cissexist. It has institutional-level oppressive norms. This means the admins themselves ignore organised abusive trolling and hate speech even when it disrupts the normal functioning of subreddits, and even when the mods ask for help from higher-up.[3]
Reddit administrators employ a laissez-faire policy of "government", which predictably devolves into a from of feudal state.[1][4][5] Yishin Wong, the chief executive of Reddit, explicitly states their position in the following blog post extract:
[W]e consider ourselves not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community. The role and responsibility of a government differs from that of a private corporation, in that it exercises restraint in the usage of its powers.
[...] The philosophy behind this stems from the idea that each individual is responsible for his or her moral actions.[6] |
The double standard, doublespeak, and cognitive dissonance here are powerful. Moreover, in the past Reddit has indeed issued site-wide bans on linking to Gawker because they revealed an extremely abusive[7] member's private information.[8] Presumably this double irony is lost on the admins.
Notable controversies
Reddit was the last high-profile website to ban the posting of hacked celebrity photos.[9][10] Reddit's /r/TheFappening after leaking the private photos of celebrities attempted to donate to two charities, Prostate Cancer Foundation and Water.org, making the former issue the statement:
A post appeared on Reddit late Monday afternoon, September 1, 2014. A Reddit user directed other Reddit users to make a donation to the Prostate Cancer Foundation without the Foundation’s knowledge. We would never condone raising funds for cancer research in this manner. Out of respect for everyone involved and in keeping with our own standards, we are returning all donations that resulted from this post.[9] |
Reddit itself however, did make money from this gross infringement of privacy, and have made it clear they will not be giving it back:
Q: You profited on the gold given to users in these deplorable subreddits! Give it back / Give it to charity!
|
See also
External links
- What should social networks do about hate speech? by Mike Wendling
- Black Hole, by Keegan Hankes
- Reddit As A Government, by Sarah Jeong
- Why Reddit sucks: some scientific evidence, by Henry Farrell
- Reddit is a failed state: The "front page of the internet" is run by warlords, by T.C. Sottek
- See the Wikipedia article on Reddit.
- Reddit.txt,[tw] which posts Redditors' quotes to Twitter.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Reddit is a failed state: The "front page of the internet" is run by warlords, by T.C. Sottek
- ↑ The artist, Quietuus, has given consent for their artwork to be used on this wiki.
- ↑ The admins are now banning black women who are too angry about racism. on /r/ShitRedditSays
- ↑ Reddit As A Government, by Sarah Jeong
- ↑ Why Reddit sucks: some scientific evidence, by Henry Farrell
- ↑ Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul
- ↑ Unmasking Reddit's Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web, by Adrian Chen
- ↑ Reddit CEO addresses Violentacrez controversy: 'we will not ban legitimate investigative journalism', by Sean Hollister
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Charities Are Refusing Reddit Donations Inspired By Jennifer Lawrence’s Nude Photos, by Sage Lazzaro
- ↑ The Fappening — Are Naked Jennifer Lawrence Photos Worse For Apple or Feminism?
- ↑ Time to talk, by alienth