Spez comments on banning The_Donald and Russia propaganda
reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/827zqc/in...Posted Mar 5, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC
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Banning them probably won't accomplish what you want. However, letting them fall apart from their own dysfunction probably will. Their engagement is shrinking over time, and that's much more powerful than shutting them down outright.
What a shitty response.
Sure, T_D could move to another subreddit if they're banned, but Spez is still giving them a platform and enabling their hateful rhetoric by letting it stay.
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It would be a real shame if banning T_D caused them to move to Voat or something and shift the controversy away from Reddit. A real shame.
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So much lost popcorn. Presently, they have supplied four of the top ten buttery delicious submissions of all time.
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It’s a good thing when moderates leave a group a senior it radicalizes don’t you know? Nothing bad ever results
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Let's not treat the cancer. If we leave it alone long enough it'll go away. /s
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Did spez just link a SRD thread as an example to help explain why they wont ban Teh_Dolan? Wewlad.
Banning them probably won't accomplish what you want.
Weird, worked pretty well for the most part when they banned the previous shithole subs. Also, new flair?
A few months ago, we expanded our policy around violent speech. Since then, we have removed dozens of communities and actioned thousands of users. When you see violent content, please report it to us.
Yes. Please report them so we can continue to sit around with our thumbs up our asses.
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In this case, you're not talking about some fringe subreddit like fatpeoplehate. Like it or not, T_D represents mainstream American politics now. The viewpoint they represent is supported by roughly half of the American political spectrum.
Removing them amounts to nothing more than a partisan statement. As the American Right's presence continues to grow online, doing so stops making sense from a business perspective.
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When the site admins are so lazy they justify their decisions on fucking SRD threads. 🤣
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I’ve been waiting for the inevitable response to this and now that it’s happened, Spez can just go fuck himself. Seriously how many times do we have to go through with this until they get it? And each time it gets worse, lol.
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I didn't agree with Spez before but I thought there was a bit more nuance to the issue of denying platforms for common US political views than SRD seemed to give.
Then I was reminded by the news that it's a literal Russian propaganda outlet half the time and lost all sympathy for Spez's position. T_D needs to die in a fire.
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Here is the thing though. All of reddit's political subs have massive amounts of foreign influence. About a third of the people participating in American political discussions here aren't American.
So what exactly can be done? Ban all the Canadians?
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Do you not recognize the difference between Canadian citizens posting of their own accord and Russian citizens posting because their government paid them to?
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They would justifyably argue foreign influence in either scenario. However, we also have things like the new BBC article calling out spez on this which is an outlet paid for by the British government attempting to influence American social media for political purposes.
If you take a step back, it becomes clear that even if you don't consider all these influences equivalent from your perspective there is more than enough ammunition for your opposition to believe otherwise. That means that any action taken will have a solid partisan connotation. As the American Right starts to have a larger and larger presence online, that just does not make sense from a business standpoint.
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If people on the other end of the political spectrum want to attempt to be moral relativists and equate "anything the UK or Canadian government does that has a tangential effect on US political forums" and "paid Russian trolling", that's a good sign I should stop attempting to change those people's opinions. For false equivalences of that ridiculousness, the population who would maintain them is not actually that massive.
And it's ridiculous to say that it's a bad business decision. Reddit barely has a working profit model and is entirely valued based off of speculative value, which is where media image plays a huge role. If I have to market my company as "6th most trafficked site" or "5th most trafficked site, but mostly known in broader society as a hate group haven and Russian trolling outlet", it's very reasonable to take the former.
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Reddit has to be getting some kind of money tied to a right wing PAC or think tank or VC or something.
Russian propaganda started the donald. It began as a fascist bullshit meme sub to bring in all the edgy kids and radicalize them and it worked SO GOD DAMNED WELL. It boggles my mind that young people would be voting for that piece of shit, but that is what happened all over the country. The donald was a massive propaganda tool that helped radicalize millions of kids in to an authoritarian fascist ideology, basically, and it's still doing it. He has to know this. Everyone working for reddit must know what happened. Before they had 50k users, they were the 2nd most active sub on reddit. None of that was organic. Holy fuck. There is literally no reason not to ban the donald at this point. I'm generally for free speech as I am an anarchist-socialist, but safe freedom of expression for everyone and freedom from bigoted nazis comes before alt right horrible fascist nonsense. Get that shit off reddit.
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Oh, I just want him to be grilled in a senate hearing so bad.
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He probably will just be an even dumber Martin shkreli.
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What a damn coward. He all but admits they do what they’re accused of, yet refuses to step in because he’d rather not take a stand because of how it would look.
Literally all they would have to do is publish a press release contemporaneously with the banning outlining the reasoning and include some clips from TD.
If I cover my eyes, does the world disappear?
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Banning them probably wouldn't accomplish what you want
But what I want is them banned.
Especially as it would show that the admins actually act.
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Banning them probably won't accomplish what you want.
Actually, yeah it fucking will.
Someone's getting money from something that wants to keep t_d alive. Pretty fucking disgusting. And trying to justify it by claiming laziness will handle everything is window-licking stupidity.
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Keep in mind this is a guy who thinks he'll be in a leadership position if society falls. The problem is, he wouldn't make a great leader since a leader makes decisions not just of his own interests, but for those below him. Instead, he refers to the tangled sets of contradictions in his mind as his core principles. He wouldn't be Immortman Joe, no, he'd be his pocket pussy who couldn't say either way if what he is doing to him is wrong or not.
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I would be okay with T_D if they haven't repeatedly called for violence against those they disagree with.
I'm fine with the obnoxiousness of it all, I can't stand people calling for civil war...
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He actually fucking linked SRD as proof lol. Does he even know what he's doing? He's just picking whether or not to apply the rules on the T_d because it would "look bad." If the subreddit is consistently violating the rules, just ban it.
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Is this the first time that u/spez really acknowlegdes the shitpool called r/the_donald? Usually he ignores or dances around the issue.
Also a guy is talking about a nomorals sub. how the fuck is that shit not instabanned? Does reddit srs not monitor any subreddits at all?
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I don't get how it can be this obvious that political extremists are being radicalized in your domain and you do literally nothing to stop it. Even post-2016 election and Russian meddling (which your domain was in fact used to manipulate people) it makes you wonder if the Charlottesville terrorist or the Parkland shooter kept visiting r/The_Donald and kept getting more and more pissed off by the messages they push until they finally snapped. I just don't get how you can work on something for so long, presumably care for it, and let it be used for this purpose.
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Hey CaptainRTard! Thank you for your submission, unfortunately it has been removed from r/SubredditDrama because:
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Spezs wife needs too kick him directly in the balls.
He wouldn't feel a thing though, he cut them off and let's them take admin questions and queries.
Where is Ohandyman in all of this anyway?