Eh it's not really a general purpose reddit clone, it was written by users of /r/anarchism as an alternative platform for discussion because they lost faith in the reddit administration. You can see this in the design of the site, with a larger focus on democratic decision making and an intolerance for any bigoted or racist communities. If voat was the alt-right's reddit alternative then raddit is the lefts.
It is worth noting that voat didnt start out as particularly alt right, it's just that's now probably the majority of what is left.
The site is totally committed to free speech, and even the Dark Web will allow paedophiles, hit men, and every type of criminal, but collaborated to push off an alt right page. In other words, it doesn't appear to be any agenda of Voat, it's just a fact that any site which allows free speech is where those people will end up.
How does that make sense? If a culture is tolerant and somewhat smart they can add tolerance to their constitution. By doing so they will both allow tolerance and not have to worry about anyone (tolerant people or not) taking away their "ability" to tolerate.
Because it's hard to unanimously and unequivocally identify those who are intolerant as such. Owing to the beguiling nature of language and rhetoric, the intolerant can thrive and propagate by arguing that they're not in fact intolerant, and appealing to "free speech". This seems to be the MO of this so-called "alt-right" stuff; legal or constitutional barriers are almost impossible to define or enforce.
If you want to ban reactionaries then you are pushing out an entire political category of thought that historically and arguably presently includes a huge portion of the West's intelligentsia. Might as well throw in Socialism or Liberalism while you're at it.
> Because it's hard to unanimously and unequivocally identify those who are intolerant as such.
> This seems to be the MO of this so-called "alt-right" stuff; legal or constitutional barriers are almost impossible to define or enforce.
These are fairly creepy statements. Very difficult to apply a charitable explanation to what you're saying.
> Owing to the beguiling nature of language and rhetoric, the intolerant can thrive and propagate
I don't want to ban anything; I was just explaining how the potential effects of Popper's intolerance paradox cannot easily be solved with legislation.
My English is not so good so I hope that I understood you.
What I am trying to say is that there is no need to identify intolerant people. All that is needed is to make sure that intolerant and tolerant people do not limit free speech. Protecting free speech can be done without worrying that people will misinterpret laws. For example, a law saying that anyone wishing to publish something to their site can do so regardless if they are anarchists, Nazis, conspiracy theorist, or anyone else. No mater how much hate the intolerant write they will not be able to stop other people from writing about how much they hate the intolerant people.
So we have the intolerant people in the government trying to suppress dissent from the tolerant. This is described in the first paragraph from the wiki link.
So wouldn't the best thing be to make sure that no one can restrict others speech? If the law is as simple and broad as possible then we don't have to worry about the "wrong" people gaining control of the government. For example, the right to bear arms is a very simple constitutional right. There are many people who oppose it but since it is simple, so deeply embedded into the laws and a large group of people support it, it has been really hard to restrict.
If there was a law to be created today making a list of speeches that should be suppressed, what topics do you think would be on there? With the current government, probably things like making it illegal to claim that climate change is happening.
If the left really wants to protect themselves during the upcoming 3 years, I would expect them to try to make free speech as protected as possible before it is too late.
The examples I gave show that it doesn't matter what the law is - we probably have the most extreme free speech encoded in the US Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court and it still requires vigilance on the part of those who are not in power, plus a little bit of cooperation of one of the three branches of government - if the judiciary sided with the executive branch interpretation of these laws, it doesn't matter what the US Constitution says, it's whatever the party in power decides.
Let's say in a 100% tolerant society a group that is intolerant of every other group comes into existence. They just operate by the credo - you're either with us, or the enemy, and all enemies must be destroyed. No further logic can be applied (they may even declare all logic as one of the enemies).
Now if as a society you tolerate them without the use of force, they will try to destroy everyone else who is not part of the their group. Effectively, all tolerance will be eliminated.
The only way you could prevent this from happening is if you are prepared to contain such a group one way or the other. Or allow other people to not tolerate them by using force too. Either way you void your tolerance tenet.
This would only work assuming such a group could gain enough power to overthrow local PD and eventually the US military, etc., which is kind of unrealistic for an group that is not supported by a majority of the population.
The wikipedia page on this notes people dispute this idea, sourcing John Rawls as a notable example.
Not really. A little further is this -
"However, Rawls also insists, like Popper, that society has a reasonable right of self-preservation that supersedes the principle of tolerance: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."[2][3]"
I looked and Rawls explicitly says he disagrees with it.
What you have quoted here is saying physical safety is sincerely in danger. To me this is like him saying it's ok to eliminate terrorist groups, if that is what they truly are.
The problem with this paradox is that it's applied to situations that are actually different from what's describe here.
Suppose even we have this group that's intolerant of everyone else. But their intolerance is expressed in speech, not actions. In other words, they're saying, "you're all our enemies, and should be destroyed", but they aren't doing anything about it. Or maybe they are, but it consists of running a political party on that platform, encouraging people to vote them in.
As a society, you can absolutely tolerate them without the use of force, at least until the point where they actually get the majority of votes (but at that point, they are the society, and you're an outgroup in that society).
What about constant verbal abuse? Or - as in this particular case - the right to bombard (or drown) any useful discussion? Should that be tolerated? I don't know.
For some people this kind of online attacking and lack of freedom to communicate (through effective trolling) may be worse than physical abuse. In the end its the brain interpreting signals and outputting pain.
Your comment is precisely the paradox, though. "You can absolutely tolerant them until they get the majority of votes." First of all, it's not every society where a "majority of votes" grants political power. In Greece, the White Supremacist group (Golden Dawn) holds parliament seats even though they are a small (but vocal and politically active) minority. White supremacists now influence policy in Greece despite being a minority.
In the Middle East, this kind of outsize influence might be even worse. I am no expert on Middle East politics, but I think it's fair to say that the most intolerant factions have striven to gain the most political power, in spite of the political leanings of the mass populations over which they rule.
One issue with intolerant groups is that they tend toward violence and oppression of opposing speech. The tolerant and pacifist among us can allow them to gain enough minority power to effect a political coup, which can result in a societal coup, since having political control can grant you some degree of societal control.
In such a society, espousing tolerance might carry with it the risk of violent retribution (since tolerance is viewed by the "in" group as heresy/dissent). This will cause the intolerance to spread, even if seemingly against the will of more tolerant citizens. In this way, certain ideologies can have a "toxic" societal effect. You don't need to look far in modern history to find examples. And, that's the paradox.
> Or maybe they are, but it consists of running a political party on that platform, encouraging people to vote them in.
> As a society, you can absolutely tolerate them without the use of force, at least until the point where they actually get the majority of votes (but at that point, they are the society, and you're an outgroup in that society).
Did I? You seem to be assuming a causal link between suppressing their speech, and them being able to get the majority of votes. I don't see any evidence to this effect - I mean, even just comparing the size of neo-Nazi rallies in Germany (strong hate speech laws) versus US (no hate speech laws), if anything, one would come to the conclusion that the best way to not allow Nazis to come to power through democratic means is to let them freely express their opinions. When you don't, you get the same people running on "anti-immigration" platform and use other dog whistles, which only broadens their base of support.
My opinion is that if there's a real threat of extreme political forces coming to power through democratic means in your society, then that society is already broken, and restricting hate speech is basically just sweeping the shards under the rug and pretending that nothing's wrong.
Hate speech is a symptom of a problem, not a cause. Trying to treat a disease by suppressing symptoms is a waste of time at best, and actively harmful at first (because it conceals the progression of that disease, until one day you're violently sick).
It's not a paradox at all. You made a completely unjustified leap. You presumed that the 'enemies must be destroyed' portion would somehow be carried out without resistance. That's nonsensical.
The wiki summary is if one lets intolerant people rise to power, they use their power to implement intolerant policies, eliminating the ability of the tolerant to change things back.
One always has to worry even in a democracy, for instance here one party manipulated the voting system so even though they only got 49 percent of the votes in the election, they got 60% of the representation in the state legislature.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/us/politics/prominent-rep...
You can take the absolutist free speech argument that some in the US make from the first amendment (you write later down that English is not your native language) but Germany seems to be going OK banning Nazi speech/symbols.
Huh. I hadn't considered that 4chan, voat, others were petri dish incubators for the alt-right.
I'd really like someone (sociologists) to update Paradox of Tolerance with what we've learned about the Overton Window, the normalization of hate speech (violent rhetoric).
David Neiwert (Orcinus) has deeply influenced (completely changed) my positions on tolerance, free speech. As I've stated else where, I used to be a Chomsky style ultimatist for free speech. Alas, people aren't nice.
Now I know that how we talk changes how we think, that propaganda works, that most people aren't even aware of when they've changed their mind.
While that may be true, it truly gained popularity when Reddit started banning "hate" and other "inappropriate" subreddits, so it became the refugee for those folks
I was on digg but stopped using the site as it was overrun by pedos and not wanting to be associated with child-rapists I was part of the reddit-exodus. Reddit was even worse than digg, still is. I complained about violentacres and his ilk to no avail. I gave up using the site 1009 days ago. I cannot understand how anyone would use a site that does not harshly punish anyone like that or want to be associated with such a site in any way.
> or want to be associated with such a site in any way.
Because I see it the same way as if you replaced Reddit with Usenet or Internet in your comment. Reddit is a platform where I care and am active only in a very small part of it.
Reddit is a business. I don't support businesses that facilitate child rape forums. You do. That's how we are different. Other businesses should not suffer for what Reddit does so I use the internet, on usenet other providers likewise, on reddit you all share the blame because you support the same business. I can't tell myself I'm only using this tiny part and those nasty people aren't anything to do with me because it's bullshit, or to provide an extreme example - I don't think you'd use 'just the comments section' of 'Playpen' and be guilt free (or free outside jail). I think you conveniently ignore the fact that there are inappropriate images of children on the site not because you believe in free speech for pedos, you simply don't care enough. And no I don't think pedo sites are a free speech issue - there are things we will not tolerate nazis, pedos, being two of them. I can't believe I even have to have this conversation. I said HN had not succumbed, I should have said '...yet'.
Do you use toll roads? They're a business. Criminals and even "child rapists" use them too. Can't believe you would further their ability to move about our society and evade law enforcement by willfully funding the infrastructure they use.
Would you tolerate the NYT or other large pre internet print medium publishing opinion pieces in favor of pedophilia? I don't think I would. The argument then becomes why should we tolerate such behavior post internet.
Yes, if it was noteworthy or somehow remarkable and written to the standard of the NYT, I would. There was a fantastic piece that toed this line on This American Life not too long ago (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/522/...). I'm generally in favor of people having a medium to say things I disagree with and even find distasteful. That's what I think of when I hear "free speech". It's a core American value.
I would also "tolerate" the opinion piece, in any medium, that argued against it. I think it's very easy to make a good argument against pedophilia so I'm not at all worried about some random NYT op-ed piece suddenly turning the societal norm. Just like I'm not too worried about someone writing an op-ed that argues for slavery again. Once 'we' thought these things were ~ok, now we know they're not, and we have a long list of very good reasons for that that are nearly impossible to overcome.
I don't understand the fear of ideas that censorship advocates have. What's so scary about someone being wrong and having an opportunity to learn as much? If you stifle every conversation on topics we as a society have long since covered, these ideas will grow and fester in the dark (say, on StormFront or whatever). It's OK to let them in the light every now and then so that we have an opportunity to educate those who might not have learned the lesson.
Note: I disagree with the previous poster's 'guilt by association' ideology for reasons you posted.
To be fair, I bet that Reddit would have an easier time than toll roads in identifying those criminals and banning them. With that said, however, I think that the issue is very foggy in who is guilty, and that Reddit is actually relatively accessible for law enforcement compared to other sites the criminals may be on.
For people who are truly guilty of it, their presence on Reddit may offer law enforcement a greater chance at apprehending them.
Anyway, your point is moot as reddit complies with all applicable child pornography laws just like any other US based internet business AFAIK.
Not really sure what we're talking about here anymore. I'm trying to point out the absurdity of this dystopian future state where a bunch of vigilantes get to decide who is able to participate in society and use its infrastructure.
Voat used to be a "best of Reddit" reposting page with some spicy free speech here and there. Now it seems to be an echo cabinet for the so-called alt-right with the same sermon reposted all day every day.
I don't mean to nitpick, but if you don't think the "alt-right" should be labeled as such then maybe you shouldn't use it in your vocabulary, as it only strengthens the presence of the word in our society regardless of if you say "so-called" before it.
4Chan and 8Chan are similar. Most online communities that lack the kind of heavy-handed censorship you find on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit will naturally end up being right-leaning.
>and even the Dark Web will allow paedophiles, hit men, and every type of criminal
alt-right? Why don't you call them what they are - Nazis and fascists. They are lowest of all these. There is probably strong overlap. Fascists think nobody should have any rights but themselves.
The vigilantism/collaboration was made necessary by the alarming fact that the people who should have been doing something - authorities all the way up and including POTUS were tacitly sanctioning them, facilitating them, normalizing their behavior.
They present a clear and present danger to the country and free speech. They still have their free speech, they can still cry on youtube. Daily Stormer was just one head of that hydra.
If you know of any pedo, hit men or criminals then reach out to law enforcement and failing that publicly shame them so that the same can happen. None of the above should or will be tolerated.
How are they effecting free speech? It seems you are trying to take it away from people, by trying to call them nazis and getting rid of them. This group is probably way more free speech, their main enemy Antifa is specifically against free speech
A central tenent of facism is forcible suppression of opposing views through censorship or violence. What would you say Antifa is doing when they attack people with bike locks, throw bottles of urine on them, etc?
'Antifa is specifically against free speech' is provably correct. They are intolerant of any views they disagree with to the point of inciting violence to suppress those views.
Look beyond their name standing for "anti-facism" and instead look at their actions.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Would you not use bike locks, bottles of urine, etc. if a known hostile enemy was advocating for the ethnic cleansing of your fellow Americans?
That was just one example. The Berkley professor in that example was arrested for for felony assault of his "hostile enemy" that he picked out of a crowd because the guy had a Trump sign / shirt / hat.
If you feel that everyone who supports the president is a hostile enemy advocating for the ethnic cleansing of your fellow Americans, you should probably start getting your news from some place other than Google News / John Oliver / etc. Attacking people with opposing views is LITERALLY the definition of facism, which they claim to be against.
The views they disagree with are fascist views so yes duh. they are literally anti-fascists. Have you any examples of them opposing any views which aren't fascist, violently or otherwise? We should oppose that.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not at this point. Nothing antifa has protested is actually fascist. Just calling everyone you oppose a facist or nazi to justify your actions doesn't make it true. Look up a definition of facism other than google / wikipedias and you'll see what I mean.
Attacking free speech rallies is terrorism, not "fighting fascism". In fact, the US Dept of Homeland Security already categorized them as a domestic terrorist group in 2016.
The thing is, at the moment if you do not agree with Antifa/SJW crowd you are automatically labeled a Nazi even if you do not wear their symbols or chant any of their slogans. It is strange that on some groups people always say "not all", but with alt-right it is always "they are all Nazis".
I only speak from experience. I've been called a Nazi scum for advocating civil behavior, refraining from violence and doxxing, and siding with free speech for everyone. People have even straight up assumed I was a (poorly hidden) KKK member because my user name has the word "wizard" in it.
You can assume that it's my twitter, but I only have this username here and on reddit.
Then again I don't see why someone can't enjoy games, anime, or 4chan memes or how consuming them disqualifies you from having political opinions or dismissing them.
And I obviously don't google every nickname on HN, but he told us that people were calling him a Nazi without providing evidence. I wanted to look into that.
Frequent Reddit. Try taking just a step to right from your current views. You'll see how fast you'll get banned from all Left subreddits and you'll get called names and labeled as everything bad under the Sun.
This being said I'm also banned from the infamous The_Donald, since I do not belong to the right either.
Your being banned from a subreddit is not the same as your right to free speech being infringed upon. "Free speech" does not equal "permission to post in one or more specific subreddits".
I never said anything about anyone's intelligent, you brought it up.
I do not belong to current Left. I do not agree with their gender politics. I do not agree with their immigration politics. On same vein I do not belong to current Right (or Alt-Right if you must). I do not support their views on homosexuality or their marriage status. I do support gun control. I do think we should help refugees, but again not the same way Left is pushing. I do not believe in White supremacy, on same vein I do not believe in White guilt over what people did over a 100 years ago.
I've always thought myself as being on the Left or at least very left leaning, but currently with all the SJW and Antifa stuff I agree with them less and less. I just want to be me.
The thing is, many people conflate Freedom of Speech with free speech.
The former is the constitutionally protected freedom from government persecution (e.g. imprisonment) based on what you say.
The latter is the misguided belief that you should be allowed to say whatever you want in public without consequence.
I strongly believe it is morally wrong to side with people who support genocide, and whose predecessors have committed genocide. It is morally wrong to suggest they should be allowed (by other members of the public) to continue touting and spreading their hateful, vile ideologies. Siding with such people doesn't make you a Nazi, but it's still pretty bad.
They do have the right, i.e. Freedom of Speech, to demonstrate without government interference. They absolutely do not have the right, morally or otherwise, to demonstrate without interference from public groups.
America fought and defeated the Nazis in World War 2. Can you imagine this "both sides are wrong" argument being pushed forth back then?
Well, actually you don't have to imagine it. In the late 1920s and early 1930s when Nazis were still a relatively fringe extremist group, Antifa was violently opposing them and beating them up in the streets. And many members of the German public, mainly the German middle class, denounced such violence, which only served to empower the Nazis, who could in turn say "See? Violence is wrong! Everyone says so!"
Yet no Nazi symbolism or chants were present in the Alt-Right's ranks before Antifa started to organize Black Blocks and turned protests violent.
Remember this whole cycle started by grown adults wanting special treatment, such as safe spaces and forced usage special pronouns, and people who were against such non-sense.
> Yet no Nazi symbolism or chants were present in the Alt-Right's ranks
You think the identification of someone as a Nazi requires them to be wearing symbolism or chanting? No. The alt-right has been espousing Nazi ideals and philosophy for a long time - well before Spencer coined the cute term for them.
> Remember this whole cycle started by grown adults wanting special treatment
I hardly followed the topic. Refresh my memory, it was about some developer who had slept with some journalist at some point and the journalist gave the game a good review and people thought the game was bad?
All I remember from it was that everyone who played video games was again labeled as misogynist and there were demands from SJW changes bunch of games to have female characters with less revealing clothing.
A ex to a female developer of a game wrote a long blog post, where in part he accused her new romantic partner who worked at Kotaku for writing a favorable review of the game. The New York Times then wrote a article about the blog post, causing a lot of attention both sides of the political spectrum where one side accused the other of sexism and the other side for a lack of journalistic ethics.
The best summery was said by totalbuscuit, which if I recall right concluded that the biggest issue with game journalism ethics is not romantic entanglements between devs and journalist, but rather the standard practice of quid pro quo for exclusive early access to review copies. Romantic entanglements is simply not worth talking about in this context.
In the end no one really cared. All people wanted was to continuing fighting a gender war, ignited for both sides by the New York Times. The romantic drama, ethics, or games for that matters was just the excuse.
I think a lot of people who were - and still are - harassed by GamerGate cared about it.
> Romantic entanglements is simply not worth talking about in this context.
Not least because it was bullshit.
> The best summery was said by totalbuscuit
I'm not sure bringing him up in the context of GamerGate is ever going to come under "best" unless it also involves "apologising for being a dick about it".
Members of the audience perform the Nazi salute at the end of white supremacist Richard Spencer's speech.
I can go on. The fact is that Nazis have always been a part of the alt-right for as long as the alt-right has existed, because their ideology strongly aligns with, and is the logical end result of, alt-rightism. They show up at alt-right rallies because they know they can recruit young, impressionable people to their ranks there by whipping them up into a frenzy.
If you think they started showing up only after Antifa broke a few store windows, you haven't been paying attention.
"alt-right? Why don't you call them what they are - Nazis and fascists. "
Maybe when the media stop putting a lot of people in the alt-right category who are not Nazis nor fascists.
I'd also like to take the time to link to an old classic which I guess a lot of young Internet users don't know about: Godwin's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law which feel more relevant every day.
Yeah I remember it doesn't apply. This isn't Godwin as we are talking about actual Nazis. The right, the vast majority of decent Republicans want nothing to do with these scum. If you call yourself alt-right then you probably are a fascist. I don't think it is a spectrum.
Wow, it's been a while since I read something that full of propaganda that wasn't at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek (unless this is and I'm missing it). Not that I doubt there's at least a grain of truth to most the statements, but when someone uses "redditcorp" to describe Reddit, and says stuff like "The_Donald completely took over the site and likely propelled Donald Trump into the white house" (emphasis mine), it's hard to take them seriously.
I'm assuming the election was in November? The sub was prominently on front page weeks if not months after the election.
Still if you try and contribute (or perhaps blame) the election on a subreddit you are highly delusional. Both candidates were terrible for very different reasons. Still I thought Clinton would have won.
Here is where it gets fun. You ask any libertarian on reddit and they'll tell you how it is against them. You ask any LGBT and they'll have the same answer. You ask any anarchist and they'll tell you that no, reddit does not love them. You ask t_d and they'll give you examples. You ask MRA, feminists, SJW, anyone and they'll have examples of the reddit hive being against them.
That's what you get when you have multiple echo chambers cohabiting under the same domain. The only things you can go by is which subreddits are removed or not by the admins. Which is an exercise left to the reader.
Are anarchists considererd left wing? Anarchists and especially anarcho-capitalists have a lot of overlap with libertarians. If you talk to a serious anarchist, they sound like they are against big government and other authority structures. The far left is suppsed to be communist, which seems the opposite of anarchy.
All anarchists are left wing, the majority of which are communist (some are mutualist). Anarchism has always been an anti-capitalist movement (I guess it's fairer to say, it's an anti-unjust hierarchy movement), it's only been co-opted by propertarians ("anarcho"capitalist) in the past 50 years. And even then, that's largely localized to America, outside of America libertarians have always been anarchists (communist anarchists that is).
You should read Pyotr Kropotkins "The Conquest of Bread" and Alexander Berkman's "What is Communist Anarchism?" if you'd like to know more about anarcho-communist ideology. Or if you'd like to know more about mutualism (essentially a workers run system with a market), then check out the works of Joseph Proudhon.
I'd also argue that anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarianism are not anarchist in any sense, as they uphold the inherently hierarchical system of capitalism.
I think you have a fairly narrow view of anarchism.
> I'd also argue that anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarianism are not anarchist in any sense, as they uphold the inherently hierarchical system of capitalism.
In what way is capitalism hierarchical, except in an ad hoc way that is constantly redefined based on the current needs of the people interacting?
I'd recommend you check out those books because they explain it far better than I or anyone else could hope to in a single comment, but it essentially comes down to the capitalist/worker divide. The capitalist will always be on top, and the worker will always be subservient to their interests. That is how it is hierarchical, because there will always be the capitalist class imposing it's will on the working class, and so anarchists and communists hope to abolish the class system. However the two groups disagree massively on how to achieve that abolition.
Capitalism is more about a few controlling the means of production than it is about market activity. People tend to think of it as a market economy but it's really about who has power and reaps it's rewards.
Actually what you're describing is just the fact that the word "capitalism" is used to mean markedly different things by different groups of people, which makes it a bad word to use in discussions between people with different perspectives.
Karl Marx's definition of "capitalism" is very different from Ayn Rand's definition of "capitalism". And both of them are very different from the "capitalism" that describes the economy as it actually exists in the present day.
Both the far left and the far right advocate a stronger control of the government over citizens, and in doing so they distance themselves from anarchism.
Marx had big beefs with Proudhon and Kropotkin - they were not imitators or wannabes - exactly because he was willing to prescribe a dictatorship and they were not.
Dude his comment is like a paragraph and a half long. At least finish reading it before disagreeing with it. Like you, I think he's _wrong_ about Ancaps not being "true" anarchist (or Scotsmen...), but it's not like he didn't address them and isn't aware of the concept (he addresses them in literally the next sentence! Jesus). Smugly linking the Wikipedia article is entirely unhelpful for anything except revealing that you didn't bother reading for more than 6 seconds before rushing to reply.
>I think he's _wrong_ about Ancaps not being "true" anarchist
I don't believe they aren't "true anarchists", I believe they aren't anarchist at all. They aren't even in the realm of consideration of what constitutes anarchist. Their ideal society would end up corporate feudalism.
By this metric, one can say that e.g. anarcho-syndicalists aren't anarchist at all, because their ideal society would end up as lots of small but totalitarian communities. Of course, the syndicalists themselves would dispute this, but then ancaps would also dispute your "corporate feudalism" claim.
The real difference here is philosophical. Right-wing anarchists believe that private property is a natural concept that exists independently of power hierarchies. Left-wing anarchists believe that's an artificial concept that requires such a hierarchy to enforce, and doesn't exist without it. Hence ancaps believe that absence of government will result in a capitalist utopia, while traditional anarchists believe that it would result in a socialist utopia. These two viewpoints are irreconcilable, because the fundamental premise is not just different, but literally opposite.
However, insofar as both groups believe that their ideal society is characterized primarily by the lack of a power hierarchy (and all other things, like unrestricted property rights, or complete lack thereof, simply follow naturally from that), both groups are "real" anarchists.
> I don't believe they aren't "true anarchists", I believe they aren't anarchist at all.
Yea, that's what I said. Putting "true" in quote marks was me dismissing the notion that you can redefine words because you don't like their current definitions.
Actually if you look at the history of anarchism you'll find it was the ancaps who tried to redefine the word, not the other way around. Murray Rothbard, one of the founders of anarchocapitalism literally says this almost verbatim.
‘One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, “our side,” had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . “Libertarians” . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over. . .’ [The Betrayal of the American Right, p. 83]
The left/right dichotomy doesn't work with anarchism since it doesn't necessarily have to be on either side of that spectrum - generally based on ideas about economy and not social structures or hierarchies. It can display features usually attributed to left wing ideologies (fight for equality, emancipation, fair society, freedom of speech, freedom of (and from) religion, self organisation, bottom-up communities, etc), as well as right wing ones: small (or no) government in the sense of a state and an establishment, fewer coded laws, no monopoly of power/rights by one group or institution (e.g. right to bear arms), free market, etc.
You might say that anarchism is the left wing on a spectrum where authoritarianism or absolute monarchs are considered the right wing. Anarchism is anti discrimination (pro egalitarianism) and by definition is against racism, sexism, nationalism, fascism, etc. It's not because it's "left" like socialists or (socialist) progressives are, but because of the hierarchies it is ideologically opposed to. Its main objective is a society free from imposed and unnatural hierarchies.
Edit: what I'm trying to say is that no one-dimensional linear scale that goes from left to right on which you can place all ideologies and compare them.
Your free market part is where you'll find the clash. Any anarchist would say that a free market is inherently oppressive. The only place a "free" market would work is in a mutualist economy, and even then, that requires worker ownership over the means of production.
The sticking point is not so much free market - mutualists are considered anarchists by other anarchists - but other, major, aspects of capitalism, mainly private ownership of the means of production and the use of waged labour, where owners hire others to work on or with their property - those are outright incompatible with anarchism, outwith the anarchocapitalists whose 'anarcho' credentials are disputed.
And how exactly do you aim to stop a free market existing?
Because I strongly doubt any political change will get everyone to work for 'common interests', and a fair few product creators, service owners, artists and others will try and sell their work anyway.
How do anarchists plan to avoid this? What about the people who don't want to own the means of production and are perfectly fine with working for others for a wage? What would stop people competing with each other to get more money and resources?
Personally I'm a fan of a workers run syndicalist economy. There are other options, like a workers run market economy, or an outright collectivist gift economy.
The question is, how would you enforce that, if some part of the populace just decided to recognize property rights, and structured their part of the economy accordingly?
They never were TBH, capitalism is inherently hierarchical and a system of entirely private enterprise would resemble corporate feudalism, not an anarchist society.
> The left/right dichotomy doesn't work with anarchism
It works the same way with anarchism as it does in general; that is to say, it captures a real and major axis of variation among anarchists but not the only one. It actually works a little better with anarchists then it doesin general, because “anarchism” limits one of the other significant axes of political variation that exist in the wider society.
I truly don't understand why people try so desperately to shove politics into a one-dimensional axis, _even in a comment that's pointing out how inadequate it is!_
Politics is complicated, but the two-axes model is a lot less laughably simplistic: left/right, liberal/authoritarian. To drastically oversimplify:
left-liberal: Bernie Sanders, sort of
left-authoritarian: full communism
right-liberal: libertarian
right-authoritarian: paleocons
This is just off the top of my head, has some issues, and is _still_ oversimplified[1], but you can already see how much less than the one-dimensional model it smushes together fairly-mainstream groups that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Anarchists are very much on the left, and big parts of the left (and the right) these days very much dislike liberals.
[1] For example, anarcho-communism doesn't fit very well into this. Ancaps fit (sort of) on the right-liberal side.
I believe the answer is quite simple - the two major US parties would like to maintain their duopoly and allocate a considerable fraction of their vast resources towards pushing that narrative and smearing anyone who tries to act outside it.
The acceptance of the left-right paradigm by half the US voter base looks like little more than a successful propaganda campaign by the incumbent political parties.
Two dimensions is certainly better than one, although I note that almost nobody would self-identify as "authoritarian" which makes half of the chart a bit useless.
The vast majority of people, at least in western countries, agree with the basic assumption of (classical) liberalism, which is that "people should be allowed to do what they want, except...". For the most part people just differ on what comes after the "except", whether it's "sell harmful drugs" or "exploit workers" or "use hate speech" or "burn coal" or whatever other grab-bag of activities a certain individual has decided are sufficiently harmful to outlaw.
It doesn't fit neatly into the left-right divide. If you look at the political spectrum as a 2 dimensional grid with (0,0) in the center, the limits are -10 and 10, and economics on left/right and authoritarianism and libertarianism as up and down, anarchists would be (x, -10). You can basically plaster any economic system on top. IMO, they do tend to the extremes of communism and full on capitalism because it's not very practical to have a mixed market economy like ours without a government entity to do regulation.
> The far left is suppsed to be communist, which seems the opposite of anarchy.
Communism: weak central government, strong communal (local) democratic decision making - let people make decision that effect them directly (locally).
You may be thinking of the old-fashioned idea of a socialist state as a "tyrrany of the many" as a transition from an armed uprising towards a communist state?
In terms of political theory, communism has always been (a somewhat utopian) theory that shares many ideas with anarchism. I like to think of communism as slightly more pragmatic, in that there's somewhat of an acknowledgement that there needs to be a agency that holds a monopoly on violence (a police force) - as a last resort to mitigate anti-social behaviour.
But if one reads eg Rosa Luxembourg, the lines are very much blurred between the two.
There's a tendency to spend time arguing that the various socialist states that where formed by communist parties were communist, because they were ran by organizations that labeled themselves (and indeed were) communist - I don't think such discussion is much more fruitful than discussing how the US attempted to "liberate" Vietnam, or institute "democracy" in Chile.
Anarchism can be considered either left or right, as its a completely orthogonal ideology to what is typically considered left and right wing ideologies. Libertarianism is just a form of minimal government, but not anarchism.
Left and right are not really well defined ideologies[0]. They're just archaic and lazy ways to generalize political stances.
> Anarchism can be considered either left or right
Nope. It is always socialist/anti-capitalist. The name as been wrongfully appropriated by anarcho-capitalist, a contradictory term. They are merely for no-gov't-capitalism; which it against pretty much every anarchist principle (anti-oppression).
> Libertarianism is just a form of minimal government
Yes.
> Left and right are not really well defined ideologies[0].
Indeed. But pro-private-property-ad-inifinitum and against it are well defined (and largely overlap with true-left and true-right). Problem, nowadays many that subscribe to capitalism may call themselves "social dems", and thus get a little "lefty" vibe going, thereby diluting the term.
I suggest you read at least the start of "An Anarchist FAQ". It is specifically dedicated to explaining why "anarcho-capitalism" is not anarchism.
From Introduction [1]:
"We should also indicate the history of this FAQ. It was started in 1995 when a group of anarchists got together in order to write an FAQ refuting the claims of certain "libertarian" capitalists to being anarchists. Those who were involved in this project had spent many an hour on-line refuting claims by these people that capitalism and anarchism could go together."
It is pretty obvious that so-called "libertarians" (Rothbard et al., who argue for absolute private property) are not anarchist, but now that David Friedman's ideas and "Machinery of Freedom" book becomes popular and he calls himself "anarcho-capitalist" it became necessary to explain why "anarcho-capitalism" is an oxymoron again.
There is a long tradition of market anarchism, and even Agorsim (see Samuel Edward Konkin III) can be considered to be anarchism in my opinion, but "anarcho-capitalism" is not.
Ideology is maybe not scientific or evidence-tested well enough to model the world well enough to take it as seriously as we really do.
There exist libertarian socialists. Libertarian communists. Anarcho-libertarians. You can be whatever you want.
And that may sound silly to you, but the reality is that everything is like this. America is a mix of socialism, capitalism, some new version of authoritarianism, and at least somewhat mercantilist even though we dont admit that we loot resources from weaker countries. In the past we were much more federalist and what would be described today as libertarian, really.
Obama has some quote (that I cant find now) about how ideology isn't as good as pragmatics. He said something like "my ideology is just that everyone should have equal opportunities, dignity and freedoms, and we should try to maximize those, so just ask ourselves what is the best way to do that?"
Hopefully this is not crossing the line in being too snarky, but the trend in identifying with political ideology looks like it is filling the void that religion left behind. I mean, come on, they're both unscientific, morally pompous doctrines to be a part of and get your heart pumping for.
It's pretty confusing, but it seems to me that the uniting factor between the anarchists and the statist left is a common belief in human freedom from hierarchical structures, but each chooses different method to implement it.
This is very much the truth, anarchists and communists want the same thing, a communist society, they just disagree fundamentally on how to do it. That's why you see them join forces and fight together, like in the Russian Revolution and Spanish civil war
Both left-anarchists and right-anarchists (anarchocapitalists) tend to deny that the others are "true" anarchists.
In my view the main difference is not in their view of what should happen, but rather in their impossibly rosy assumptions of what happens next. Left-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government the world becomes a left-wing utopia, while right-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government then the world becomes a right-wing utopia.
To me, neither of these scenarios seems more likely than the other.
> Left-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government the world becomes a left-wing utopia, while right-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government then the world becomes a right-wing utopia.
I'd say you're strawmanning both sides here, left anarchists know the state grows out of the conflicting class interests of the working class and capitalist class, and that abolition of the state necessarily requires abolition of capitalism. Propertarians believe that if you got rid of the government, the free market will sort things out because it's the gov. interference in private enterprise that causes societies conflicts. Neither believe in a magic switch or anything.
> left anarchists know the state grows out of the conflicting class interests of the working class and capitalist class
> Propertarians believe that if you got rid of the government, the free market will sort things out because it's the gov. interference in private enterprise that causes societies conflicts
I think you've just given a slightly better summary of the magical thinking of each, rather than fundamentally disagreed with me.
Right-anarchists believe that destroying the state will finally allow capitalism to thrive, while left-anarchists believe that destroying the state will destroy capitalism too.
Partially this disagreement is simply about the meaning of the word "capitalism", though, which both sides chuck around unexamined without bothering too much about the fact that they have completely different definitions of this word, and that neither definition really matches what the man in the street means when he uses it.
> Partially this disagreement is simply about the meaning of the word "capitalism"
Does it, though? If you use the classic Marxist definition of capitalism as "private ownership of the means of production", I don't think either ancaps or left anarchists would fundamentally disagree with it. And both would believe, based on their premises on property (natural right vs social construct), that removing the government from the equation would result in their desired endgame wrt capitalism based on this definition. For left-anarchists, if you remove the government, you also remove any and all private property rights, by definition (since they're a creation of the government) - obviously, this would include property rights on the means of production, and such a society would then not be capitalist. Ancaps, OTOH, believe that governments impede natural property rights, and thus a society without a government would have the strongest possible private ownership of the means of production - i.e. capitalism in its purest form.
I'm not sure how left this is: "If there's actual conversation on there, it's probably just a bunch of people with Wonder Woman avatars assuring each other that America is Already Great™."
What do you mean? This is _precisely_ what I'd expect. Hating on (neo)liberals like Hillary Clinton is damn near ubiquitous on left forums these days, as is dismissing what they perceive as shallow identity politics and conflating liberals with the right.
Like, you literally couldn't have picked a better quote to sum up the left's views in 2017, and then you captioned it with "I'm not sure how left this is".
Agreed, I have a comment down below expressing frustration at exactly that. I was just speaking on the terms that the parent comment was: liberals aren't very popular these days on the left _or_ the right, and as such aren't very well-represented in hard-left forums.
That being said, I wouldn't really classify Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as all that leftist. In the two-axis model, they're sort of straight down-the-middle centrist liberals (like me!)
There is nothing centrist about Clinton or Obama or even the Democratic party, they're right of center. That's why Sanders was so incredibly popular, because he espoused true liberal beliefs, and something that hasn't been heard or represented in a long, long time.
Treating left as if it has some inherent, context-free meaning is ridiculous. If you're going to define a spectrum, the context matters, and the context we're currently discussing is American politics.
You may as well say that American politics only contains extreme leftists, when compared to the rest of American history.
Sure it is, leftism occupies a spectrum of economic and social ideals, which the US left (led by the DNC) falls uniformly outside that spectrum. I mean Monarchists are left of fascists, but that doesn't make monarchists leftist just because you compare them to something further right.
Just because your system is dominated by capitalists doesn't make the rest of the spectrum irrelevant, and redefining the conversation to fit into your narrow band is what has led to the frustrations with the American situation.
The American left is not left when considering the entire spectrum of left-right political ideas, and you don't get to suddenly chose to define something as leftist within the context of your narrow window of acceptable thought, it must encompass all ideas.
You're confusing "the American left" with the Democratic Party. The US left exists, it's just terribly unorganized and has little political power. Their opposition has simply done a better job of marginalizing them compared to left movements in other countries.
> Sure it is, leftism occupies a spectrum of economic and social ideals, which the US left (led by the DNC) falls uniformly outside that spectrum
No it doesn't. I mean the single-axis "left" and "right" classification is fairly meaningless to begin with, but you don't get to be the one who decides where is where.
>I mean Monarchists are left of fascists
Not really. I mean, this is another example of where the "left-right spectrum" is completely useless. It's like asking whether Mars is north of Winnipeg. Monarchism and fascism aren't even the same type of idea.
> The American left is not left when considering the entire spectrum of left-right political ideas
What is the "entire spectrum" of ideas? What's the left-most possible idea you can think of? What's the right-most possible idea? What's the exact centre? You can't define these things, because the spectrum is meaningless. But if you're talking in the context of American politics, then you can put "the centre" roughly in the middle of what the general opinion of the population believes, i.e. somewhere between Republicans and Democrats, and work from there.
Trying to compare between different countries is fraught with difficulties, however, because the relevant issues are very different in different countries. Let's compare the US to Australia, for instance. In Australia, both major parties and the majority of the population are in agreement on the idea of universal government-funded medical care, which puts them to the left side of US politics. On the other hand, in Australia both major parties are in agreement that any illegal immigrant found in the country should be deported, which puts them both to the right side of US politics. The Australian position on gun control would be left-wing in the US, while the Australian position on inheritance taxes would be right-wing. It's simply not possible to say one is left or right of the other, because the controversial issues are very different.
Eh, not really, Hillary Clinton is way to the right of most non-US western politicians. It's just that the US skews so heavily to the right to begin with that she seems normal.
It's why confusing the Democrats, a party whose dominant faction is a center-right one with the left is a problem, but its not really a problem with reducing politics to a single axis (that is a problem, in general, though its actually not that inaccurate when it comes to US politics.)
Hillary is center-right by international standards, and the radical left treats her as such. You won't find many leftists praising Clinton, even if some of them voted for her out of desperation.
I think that most anarchists and leftists are opposed to the Democrats as well as the Republicans, seeing them as similarly center-right on most meaningful issues.
It does sometimes result in funny moments like this where the critique of American liberal Democrats could easily come from either side.
Reddit just recently announced they're no longer open source [1]. The last source dump could still be used, but I think they choose not to just out of a statement that they're against the Reddit corporation.
The authors of Raddit tried that, but found that actually running Reddit's software, especially on low-end hardware for a smaller community, was a pain in the arse and decided it'd be easier to build their own that fit their purposes.
I've said it in the last post about this site, but I'll say it again here regardless.
This site makes the same mistakes as a lot of other 'alternative' social networks or systems, in that it offers nothing for people who aren't interested in talking about politics or the problems on the original site.
It's entirely a hard left wing community laser focused on discussing American politics. There's virtually no discussion of more everyday topics there (like games, TV, movies, music, sports, etc), especially not in a way that doesn't cram politics into everything.
So people who don't care about political discussions or agree with your political views won't join this. Because there's nothing there that Reddit or independent forums on their favourite subjects don't do much better.
An alternative to reddit would let you make dossiers: related news stories a little like some subreddit megathread do for huge news. So you could follow a developing story for multiple months or years. Have links to aggregate articles by authors, news site, area or protagonists.
A simple example of use: check r/science about old health breakthrough on mice and see if it fizzled or not or how advanced the human trials are.
You know why Reddit and Twitter became some toxic environments? Because they're not designed for healthy community development. And neither is this. It's a mindless clone and it already looks like it's turning toxic.
Hi. I moderate a subreddit you probably haven't heard of, with only a bit over 200k subscribers and ~1M-ish pageviews/day.
I can tell you right now that reddit provides virtually no useful tools to moderators -- we have to turn to browser extensions to get even basic functionality like "remove this comment and its children" or ability to issue a ban while looking at the offending post/comment -- and that for a large or growing subreddit, moderating is essentially an unpaid full-time job.
So when people inevitably point to /r/askhistorians or similar as examples of "good" subreddits, please keep in mind that you are not seeing something reddit itself nurtured or helped or provided tools to do -- you are seeing something that succeeded in spite of the way reddit is built and run.
> Because they're not designed for healthy community development.
How so? Would you expand on this? With Twitter, I agree. But how is Reddit not designed for healthy communities? (I agree that they are not always healthy)
Not rhetorical - how does one design a community for healthy development? I've messed with forum design before and I'm curious how the layout and format influence behavior.
I think this is an interesting topic too. Some ideas I've had on this:
You prevent people from posting terribly toxic comments in the first place, whether that's automatic moderation or warning them that their comment is toxic and to reconsider what they're about to post. I'm gonna plug http://www.getspectrum.io here b/c it's relevant.
Require answering a question related to the topic at hand before allowing comment submissions. I read about this being done by a news site in Europe not too long ago.
Prompt the audience/community with a specific question/prompt that the discussion/comments will be in about. That way every comment is a direct response to the same question. This could help keep things on topic. I think a lot of toxic comments are often from indirect tangents.
What if you could see comments that have been posted only after posting one of your own? That way your primary contribution is an organic thought and not an angered response to what someone else has said.
You're thinking good thoughts as far as being aware of the various effects that software design will have on community. Hacker News, for example, restricts certain actions (like downvoting) until you've crossed a certain participation threshold. Other sites disallow downvoting entirely. Some sites don't allow images or links. Others do. Some require a few bucks payment to join. There are all sorts of technical tricks to help tune a community.
But there's also just non-technical stuff. Which I would argue is actually more important, since any piece of social software can be perverted if a certain subset of users is determined. A non-technical example: setting community norms. Hacker News also does this reasonably well -- the community doesn't respond well to goofy memes, for example. This isn't something you read in the rule book, it's something you experience by reading comments and feeling out the tone of the conversation. And if you do post something that doesn't fit the community, you'll pick up a few downvotes or some-such. Most users understand the nature of the community so it self-polices relatively well (with a little help from moderators). I think large open communities (Twitter, Reddit) that need to maintain a ton of traffic to make money have trouble with this: It's tough to want to service the community needs of the entire planet and tell people "Behavior X isn't something that's appropriate here."
I'm not an expert and before you tear me a new one, remember that this is a Hacker News comment and not a peer reviewed journal article. I'm just tossing out some thoughts.
But my belief is that designing for communities is actually quite a challenge, and the fact of the matter is most people putting communities up online right now don't really put much thought into it. Which is a shame. It allows a small subset of toxic users to really damage what should be a good thing for the rest of us.
Back in the days of yore -- late 90s through 2006-ish -- community design was actually a pretty hotly debated topic. But, like I said, it really seems like these days old fashioned comment threads (like you see on news articles), Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter have established themselves as the blueprint for community design and people just sort of copy those without thinking about how they do and don't work. And then online communities become toxic and some people assume all online communities are toxic and then some people start thinking all people are toxic and -- hey! Look where we are. (I'm stretching a bit at the end, here, of course. ;-) )
Not sure why you think I'd tear you a new one, that was a well thought out reply, which I very much appreciate.
You bring up a great point about the self policing. That's why HackerNews, ProductHunt, and many of the smaller subreddits do quite well.
But what differentiates an old fashion comment thread from a better solution if not the "technical tricks"?
Also, "in the days of yore", when community design was a hotly debated topic, what were the debates about? I'd love to learn more about that discussion.
Again: I'm not an expert. But I feel I've been around the block on this topic.
Some people think it's a naughty word, but: Moderation. Or -- to put it in different terms -- a community manager. That's one way to try to enforce norms. But I'd say that the most powerful way is via intelligent growth. For example, don't just open the floodgates. Grow a community at a rate where newcomers never overwhelm the existing users. Communities that "break" can be hard to "fix" once toxic norms have been established.
The debates would probably seem fairly simplistic to today's ears, but remember that the community design of Twitter (140 chars, public, "following") was a novel idea a dozen-or-so years ago. There was a ton of experimentation with how different communities could be built. Big business at the time!
One place I've found interesting as far as learning about community design is online games. Game designers are trying to design very specific experiences for users, and you can learn a lot by looking at how Overwatch (for example) tunes both gameplay and community to craft that experience. Even when playing with a dozen strangers.
In this vein this talk from Raph Koster from this years GDC is great, it's VR/AR directed but widely applicable beyond as the lessons are drawn from long experience with MMOs and it's really about designing societies:
That's actually not true. A lot of thought has gone into healthy community building -- both on- and offline. But, yes, it can be easy to get wrong. Takes work. Which online communities (especially) oftentimes seem either unwilling or unable to do. (Or they're oblivious that it needs to be done at all.)
If there's one neologism I'd love to get rid of, it's the use of "toxic" to describe speech that you dislike. It's all over this thread.
Think about what the metaphor of "toxicity" does for speech. By all means, you can find speech to be disagreeable, or annoying, or factually or morally wrong. I read all sorts of things that I disagree with, and some that I find actively annoying. But the metaphor of "toxicity" implies something more -- that these ideas are actually dangerous, and some kind of public health hazard. If something is "toxic" then you don't just dislike it, you need to actively protect yourself from being contaminated with it, and it activates your disgust reflexes. After all, better to be safe than sorry when it comes to toxins, right?
Basically, the idea that ideas can be "toxic" seems to be a roundabout way of inviting censors to come in and save us all from the danger of having to read things that we don't like.
Let's ditch the word "toxic" for things that aren't actually harmful chemicals, and learn to deal with the fact that things we don't like on the internet are best dealt with by not reading them.
Toxic means poisonous. Toxicity in communities spoils the community because people place bickering, verbal fighting, and beating other people at insults over communicating ideas, debating, and respecting one another. It damages and will eventually kill a community as people get upset and then tune out and go other places. And if they don't feel they can go elsewhere, they'll feel stuck, wounded, and bitter.
Hate speech is an example of toxic behavior. At least, that's the reason awful people use it: It's a disruption. It distracts people and angers people so they act out in their own possibly negative ways. It's the whole MO of people like Mile and Ann Coulter: Say offensive things, but then attempt take the high road when people get visibly upset. It's a pattern that can quickly convert otherwise healthy communities into group of screaming upset people. That's toxic.
So, yes, "toxic" is a great word. And communities should protect themselves from toxic behavior.
If A is discussing with B their plans for my murder, or creating fictional dossiers of alleged crimes of mine and sending them to police and my employer, or sharing compromising photos without my consent, then ignoring them does not work.
Less hyperbolically, it's only safe to ignore the speech of others against you so long as it has no chance of having an effect. Whether that's through legislation or street violence.
Toxicity is exactly the right word for hate speech, because it can cause hate to spread out in ways that cause real injury or death.
You can't just try and smudge the line between speech integral to criminal conduct and defamation and other speech. The way we avoid sliding down the slope is by requiring an immediate demonstrable harm - any fuzzy argument of the "can cause" variety is too easily applied.
Lets name our product confusingly similar to the original, even though we claim the original is terribly flawed: "Don't eat at Joeys, most of the food contains poisons, eat at Joeez!"
Why is it so difficult for a forum to accommodate different political views? Is this a problem of human nature?
The idea of a uncensored reddit it a good one, but the first thing I see going to the page is an administrator complaining that they apparently cannot effectively ban "nazis".
From the comments I've read here, it definitely seems as though the site has the typical heavy handed administration banning opinions it disagrees with.
Why can't any of these sites just allow people of all political ideologies to post? 4Chan is the only site I can think of which has never had censorship of this sort. Why is this such a difficult thing to accomplish?
They recently States they were no longer going to commit to those repos and were no longer going to be open sources. Those repos you linked are supposed to stay up though
Hey mods can we rename this to "an alternative to reddit" Given the link has nothing to do with hacking or how the site was created or a link to the source
I think his point was that the title indicates it's an open source reddit clone but the content is nothing about the open sourceness of it or how it was created, whereas the articles that you point out are I assume true to their titles.
He wasn't saying it shouldn't be on here because it's not hackery, just it should have it's title renamed
"Why? Some of the reasons are personal but many have to do with reddit. A few months after I finished working on this site, I had what I can only describe as a spiritual awakening. I now see how reddit is just a part of a far-larger deception designed to keep us blind and afraid. I no longer want to play any part in it. If you'd like to know more, I made a vid explaining things further."
I followed the link at the bottom, and checked out the top stickied post on the subreddit it linked to and... wow. This guy seems a bit off his rocker:
>"Can you spell 'buisness' for me?"
>Spell it with me, people. B-U-I-S-N-E-S-S. This word comes from the Dutch root word of 'buis' meaning 'pipe' as in a a process or workflow. "Business" is quite obviously busy-ness. Most demons will never admit this to be true or even entertain the thought.
>You'll hear things like "Doesn't work make you busy?" Yes it does, but that doesn't explain how you could get the pronunciation of 'buis-ness' from 'busi-ness'.
-----
>This is the question I asked when my 'mother' was suddenly at my house back in California. (I was wrong about her being a 'clone' though.) She could not answer 'yes' to the question so I just kept asking it.
>Yes or no, are you my biological mother?
"What? Why would you ask that?"
It's a simple question. Are you my biological mother?
"I don't understand why you'd even ask me that!"
Yes or no--
"YES!!"
You must wait for the question. Are you my biological mother?
I appreciate that they're banning nazis, brigaders, and people spamming bigotry and gore, but they're straight up wishing violence on these people. It's one thing to think "Wow, you're a dick and I hope you die" and another to openly admit it and let it influence your decisions.
Personally, I would love to see something like Lobsters [0] made general purpose. It's very HN like, but I love the ability to tags posts with multiple tags so that a single topic of conversation can belong to multiple subreddit-like communities. I've always wished that HN would co-opt that tagging. It seems like the best of both worlds (general front page and targeted communities) and naturally aides discoverability of interesting communities.
Whoa lobsters is really cool. Probably the best/most promising reddit alternative I've seen because it's not taken over by some kind of extreme faction of some form.
Agreed, it usually takes less than a minute to figure that out.
Albeit, I usually don't ban it unless I find them hopelessly close minded when it comes to debates. For other subreddits, I follow them once I have seen them enough times to like them.
Say we had a Twitter or Reddit but without the folks who eat babies. Wouldn't those still be super useful for the majority who don't eat babies? Or would they be worthless because there is some limit on the content?
A while back, somebody created an Imgur knockoff called Slimgur. He specifically created it because Imgur was enforcing its TOS banning hate speech, and he didn't like that. Imgur threatened to sue, and he was forced to change his site's name, first to Slimgr, and eventually to sli.mg (though the second change was because he lost the domain when the registrar found out he was letting his users upload child porn).
A guideline for determining trademark infringement is "confusingly similar". Also trademarks have scope and so operating in the same business/domain.
Unlike copyrights or patents, if trademarks aren't well protected they can be considered forfeited (Bayer's Aspirin is a pretty common example). So you could imagine Facebook or Reddit reacting pretty swiftly in the case of examples like yours or OP.
Interestingly, right after YouTube became popular a ton of -tube websites popped up, it was before they were bought by Google so they didn't have the money to sue and I'm guessing by the time Google bought them they probably no longer had a good case.
If they did that because they lost trust in the reddit administration then I think that a distributed approach would be much more fitting instead of making yet another reddit clone. In fact, NNTP would be probably exactly what they want.
They're like the opposite of voat, they split because reddit wasn't authoritarian enough for them. They want to dictate what can be said and who can contribute. A distributed approach wouldn't work.
