HN is also penalising threads that discuss this. This post has 74 upvotes in 27 minutes and 11 comments at time of writing. Ordinarily it would significantly outrank most of the other posts on the front page, but it doesn't seem to be able to break past #15. Either this is because HN users are flagging it, or because something else is going on. As Reddit is a YC company it'd be really nice to hear an explanation.
This exact same thing happened with the previous threads
Users are flagging them. The only thing moderators have done is decline to turn off the flags. We turn off flags sometimes when (a) the article contains significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) and (b) it can support a substantive HN discussion. Neither of those seems true here so I don't think it's a hard call.
There have been countless threads on the generic topic here (free speech online, let's call it) and the details of this particular story seem very specific to Reddit drama, indeed (not that I've looked closely) to some specific subreddit. If so, that's neither an interesting new phenomenon nor gratifying of intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), so it's not on topic for HN and users have been right to flag these.
if there's an interesting conversation to be had it's about governance and transparency in how online spaces are moderated, given the depth of their influence, the broadness of their reach and the relative power wielded by those who control the platform (hello there!). Unfortunately that conversation is mostly absent from these threads.
That conversation in general has been and continues to be had over and over again on HN, so even if this is a good occasion for substantive discussion (which I doubt), it's not as if there won't be countless opportunities in the future.
The fact that this is being done to cover up the past of a specific person who's an employee of reddit strikes me as novel, weren't the previous examples about much more general topics like covid denial?
It may be novel but I don't see that it's interesting in HN's sense of the word (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). There's a difference between the intensely-interesting quality of sensational, exciting stories, and the intellectually-interesting quality of deeper, more substantive stories. The latter are what HN is supposed to be for.
When I looked in on the discussions that were going on about this last night, they were shockingly bad flamewars about all the expected generic issues, so precisely the kind of thing we don't want here. Everything I've seen so far confirms that this story is an intense drama involving specific individuals (not just the one who shall or shall not be named, but whoever made the decisions that stirred up the outrage) that doesn't have much to teach us in general. Its primary value to HN seems to me as a good example for calibrating where to draw the ontopicness line. A teachable moment, as they used to say.
I think many people don't care about Reddit at all and perceive these discussions as off topic and uninteresting. There are better spaces to discuss those, such as /r/SubredditDrama/.
If this were a new article on the subject, it might fit. But links to Reddit threads while the drama is happening live? To me, that's gossip.
Edit: Disclaimer because that's how it is on the internet, I am transgender. Yet I have never heard of this person before and only learned their gender identity in the comments here. I don't care about Reddit or UK Politics.
Perhaps, but I'm surprised given the level of influence Reddit has these days. Reddit reaches about 500 million people per month, probably more. It's not "just a silly message board" anymore.
They have a comparatively tiny number of employees and those people have a very real power to control narratives. We're seeing just the tiniest glimpse of that here because the employee in question has done so in an incredibly egregious manner. The question this whole incident should raise is "what else is going on, that we haven't yet seen?". The specifics of this particular example are uninteresting.
The Reddit admins have since then issued a statement saying that the auto-moderator was set too broadly. They have since corrected the issue are are investigating the bans.
Looking at the "other conversations" tab on the linked post displays 12 active conversations. The "rules" as presented on the /r/ukpolitics were speculation by its moderators.
As I said elsewhere, it was pretty much gossip at that point. This is Reddit drama and it should stay there (or at least, until another website reports about it). Linking to live threads is just asking for confusion.
Some threads, before I log out of Reddit until the next drama:
HN penalises threads that are "too active", as potential flame wars and downranks them automatically. There's also user flagging. I don't think it indicates that HN is specifically taking action against this thread because of who it's about, just the usual automated mechanisms.
Perhaps HN should look into the weight of flagging, judging by #votes, seems like their ranking is not working or perhaps it is and they are happy this is not the top post.
Quite ironical, regardless as Reddit is a YC startup, none the less Paul Graham is the ideator and the post is about paid Reddit staff silencing users.
If you're trying to create a discussion community where the least desirable outcome is controversial discussions/flame wars, high weight on flagging seems to be a good way to do it.
Of course, people flagging it might be thinking all kinds of things like "Why would a topic about what Reddit does be important here?"
Isn't this orthogonal to anything about that persons gender status? It should be possible to have a discuss and ban any comments that would normally be banned around gender status or more specific around this persons gender status?
Are we not capable of having a reasonable discussion around a person and their actions just because of this?
Yeah it's nothing to do with their gender status, but someone reading those threads now might draw the conclusion that the stories were flagged or penalised due to the transphobia, which is not the case - the penalty came before the hate.
HN appears to do some shady stuff too... sometimes it is users flagging post (like a mega-downvote) and sometimes it is the admins controlling the speech.
I'm not sure why HN needs flagging and down-votes... because flagging is being abused all the time (and I think that some users get super-heavy-flagging-powers, a bit like low level admins).
I’ve always wanted to see on HN a public audit trail of all moderator modified, or removed posts and comments. That would give greater transparency and might prevent moderators enforcing their own beliefs and norms. Then again the counter argument, or point, is that HN won’t do that because it could open mods to greater pressure, unless it’s actually corporate policy to control the narrative.
Any other reasons why HN wouldn’t publish a public audit trail?
Without all the information you're still left with a lot of mystery. I might ban an account, for seemingly nothing, because I can see they've created 15 accounts in the last two days to troll and stir shit up. Partial information seems to create as many, if not more, conspiracies than no information.
I think any action done can be noted to that effect, but a step towards transparency should be a goal, because over time and interaction that “mystery” cold be solved. Wikipedia records all changes for review, with such an erudite crowd behind HN, it would seem trivial to establish such a system.
It's automatic. If enough users flag a post, it gets "killed" and will only show up (with the tag "[flagged][dead]") if you have the "showdead" option enabled in your profile.
I don't think it's an awful system but I don't think it's exactly right for HN - in normal operations it works fairly well but when combined with some less desirable HN stereotypes it can just involve shutting down discussion one disagrees with (e.g. merely mentioning Donald Trump by name was an insta flag during the election, but you could always get away with worse if you talked about democrats because the average user is further right than most forums)
I think most of us automatically downvote or flag anything political regardless of personal politics. Especially US presidential politics, because that's what the uninteresting parts of the internet are for.
HN's moderation system is rather susceptible to brigading. Downvotes will flow like water to certain topics, regardless of the quality of the original post or the discussion therein.
I mean, just look at how emotionally charged the top comment threads have become after this got posted. It isn't exactly a topic that can be discussed when so many people can't hold themselves to the basic rules (be nice and polite, attack the idea not the person, etc.) and things devolve to "you're a bigot! / no, I'm not a bigot!".
The irony is that I almost certainly would have zero idea who this person was or the existence of this controversy were it not for this crackdown.
On one hand I can empathize with people seeing someone they know have negative press about them shared on a site they run and wanting to do something. But I thought the point of professionalism was refraining from this kind of behavior and applying rules consistently even when there is a personal connection. This kind of special-case behavior in favor of people with ties to the site is likely counter productive.
> The Streisand effect is a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing that information
Oh dear... I assume you're being sincere, so no shade or anything like that. I just realized exactly how old I am relative to you and the other person who posted the same sentiment. ;)
Both. She was a big big name of my parent's generation (think Rhianna version 2, Rhianna is version 3 or 4 or 5... if you go back to Maria Callas or Josephine Baker being version 1)
I've said many times on here, people seem to not believe it. Banning literally achieves the opposite of what it intends to do... hell, if I was a marketer I would use banning and censorship as a kind of promotion/campaign tool. But nooo, people think with feelings, and the word that needs banning just sounds so horrible and is so offensive, so lets iron fist everyone into forgetting it... lol.
I think you're seeing a bit of survivorship bias here. When you see something that has been banned you can say "ah huh! the ban didn't work, I still saw this". But you're not seeing the banned things you're not seeing.
no one will on here or reddit will remember this situation in a week.the only part of the internet that will care past a week is most likely the sites like gab, and we all know what they think of lgbtq+
banning definitely works, its not like reddit's reputation for mod abuse isn't unknown [1]
You're not wrong. But the person concerned is notoriously litigious, and their employer has a legal duty to protect them from harassment. (Because, AFAIK, they are British and employed in the UK by reddit.) So reddit has no good choice here.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I was fairly certain she left the UK sometimes in 2019 and was employed by Reddit in the US. (But is still a UK citizen and presumably has substantial British interests, so both the UKs notoriously intense libel liability and the USs [and some US state’s] workplace environment laws would both potentially be in play.)
The ELI5 context for those (like me) that were very confused:
Aimee Challenor is a trans (MTF) woman who was very active in UK green party politics. She appointed her father as an official in her election campaign after he had been arrested for rape and torture of a 10yo girl. For which he would subsequently be convicted and sentenced to 22 years.
Adding additional color to the narrative: Aimee Challenor is very active in the furry and infantilism communities. And her farther committed his crimes while wearing wearing baby-doll dresses and nappies.
Aimee Challenor left the green party (accusing it of transphobia) and apparently now works in some capacity for Reddit.
Aren't like 10% of all sysadmins furries? People controlling internet spaces liking weird (legal) porn seems unsurprising and not something anyone should care about.
Is there anything more damning against Aimee besides "she seems to have some unusual sexual preferences"? I find the idea that "this person likes cartoon animals in diapers" leads to the conclusion "and thus is a danger to children" seems like a stretch.
Hiring her dad seems like bad judgement, but she was 21 and it doesn't seem like there is evidence she was procuring victims or anything like that.
Graham Linehan is like the UK Tucker Carlson of hating trans people (note all the confusing misgendering in this article). Accusations from him should be taken with a large grain of salt.
The only thing I would probably say is that this person was in charge of subreddits like /r/teenagers
If you had even some suspicion that this person could be compromised or maybe not be a great option for the ADMINISTRATOR of certain groups that could be easily influenced, wouldn't it be better to just decline them as not a great fit for that role?
This just seems like bad judgement given the fact that she was thrown out of two parties and just the association with her father at 21 (very much an adult mind you) seems like it would immediately disqualify her from working with children (note: nothing against them working for reddit, but in the capacity they were employed it seems incredibly irresponsible of Reddit)
There's a lot going on in this article. The introduction alone provides everything you need to know about the tone used throughout the text.
Instead of listing everything, I prefer to refer to this piece that provides helpful references on how to cover stories about transgender people while remaining neutral on the subject: https://www.glaad.org/reference/covering-trans-community.
You will quickly notice that the text goes out of its way to deliberately break GLAAD's Media Reference Guide and others like it.
That's such an incredibly vile article, it pretty much amounts to cyberstalking. It's pretty disgusting how he morally grandstands after digging out the fetish content of a really troubled 15 year old:
> Whilst we might recognise that Aimee Challenor is a tragic victim in this mess, we must remember the positions of power and influence he held and how quickly and easily he reached them.
The Spectator is equally vile too. It's the best example of how the British class system gives the most mediocre fringe twats a platform to deliver their vitriol with a public school veneer.
> It's pretty disgusting how he morally grandstands after digging out the fetish content of a really troubled 15 year old
Not sure if linking profile archives here would count as doxxing, but the troubling content continues into at least 2018, when she would have been in her 20s.
It seems to me that the author is trying to highlight the person in question's extreme privilege. Were it not for Challenor's father, it seems like this person may not have had the opportunities that they do.
Given that the author is Glinner, a notorious transphobe (who has been banned from pretty much every even somewhat sensible platform for that), I very much doubt he cares at all about anything except that the person in question is a trans woman.
Glinner is awful, and no one should ever read anything by him.
Identity politics has become a shield and weapon for bad behavior - how dare you question me you must be a bigot. Whoever can gain the public’s attention first controls the narrative.
This beavior is super emphasized on reddit nowadays. Every subreddit is vertical, either you agree with what the collective mind thinks or you are out or downvoted to oblivion.
Occasionally you'll see someone step up to question the narrative, and they almost always preface their comments with a bit of moral signaling. It's like a bizarre ritual. They'll disavow, insult, or otherwise distance themselves from whichever 'other' is the target of the mob's ire, and only then will they offer up a contrary opinion.
I suppose they're responding rationally to the 'karmic' incentive.
"The reason why so many extremely woke people turn out to have been bigoted in the past is because bigotry used to be the best way to bully and intimidate people, but now performative anti-bigotry is the best way to bully and intimidate people. An evolving toolset for sociopaths." https://twitter.com/shantmm/status/1364992332064378880
To me, that's one of the best explanation of what we are witnessing at large.
Indeed it is contradictory, but we never expected the social justice crowd to be able to put together coherent logical ideas, most of their ideas are founded in contradictions, and so the entire social justice movement is a mess of contradictions.
Because after she was thrown out of the green party she said ‘transphobia’ was the reason she was being thrown out, presumably in an attempt to deflect from the real reason.
The real reason was that she recruited her father as a campaign manager while knowing he was being charged for sexual offences, and he would eventually be convicted of raping and torturing a 10 year old child which was held captive in the attic of the house she was living in at the time.
So where’s the outrage? Did people believe her? It doesn’t seem like it.
Is this new? Didn’t OJ get off partly by painting the police as racist (accurately or not)? But still didn’t work with the public that believes he’s guilty?
Isn’t there a long history of insulting your oponents using all sorts of reasons? Is the fact that guilty/bad people have always tried to avoid and shift blame mean the shields they try and use are bad things?
It seems like this is just another attempt to hijack the discussion with conservative outrage hobby horses.
Identity, status and standing has always been a shield or weapon for bad behaviour, just look at the kind of abuse scandals the church got and still gets away with. It's more like we've just expanded the grifting privileges to more groups
This is not doxing in any way is it? The person is using their own name, is a public figure, posted about their activities on twitter and can be easily Googled.
Would reddit ban anything about this if the person in question was not an employee?
I understand the concern about harassment, but should anyone be able to get off reddit if they want to? Let's say Roger Stone wants no mention of himself on reddit, should he be able to say please ban anyone that mentions me?
It could be that some discussion of this person was linking to a Substack article with investigative reporting into this person’s kinks and polyamory, using their forum history over the last decade in a way that Reddit might see as doxxing.
This sounds a bit like an extreme form of the EU's "right to be forgotten" law.
The post made it sound like there was a consensus of Reddit admins who were behind the decision, but to me it sounds like this person was hired as an admin and immediately searched their name and banned anyone who appeared in the results.
The worst part is that this may have gone unnoticed except that one of the people was a moderator of a major subreddit. Now it's blown up and gone pure Streisand Effect.
You can request/demand to be forgotten by services, but a reasonable person can’t expect other people to forget them just because they asked services to do the same. Stored data and human memories are not the same thing lol
This degree of censorship used to be noteworthy enough to find the front page of the site. The people who know about this censorship on reddit will be in the minority.
I've got to assume that the bannings are being done by Aimee as the new admin, because I can't imagine that anyone else at reddit would be so unfamiliar with Reddit that they would think this is a good idea. Look how much shit Ellen Pao got, and she was basically doing a decent job. I can't imagine this is going to go much better.
> shit Ellen Pao got, and she was basically doing a decent job.
Those were different times, were the Ellen Pao situation to happen right now again I don't think things would go the same way as they did the first time. This reddit admin person also has the advantage of being a trans, and trans people are the new token individuals (have been for one year and half - two, I guess), I can't see Reddit the company not taking her part 100% (even though she's in the wrong in many instances).
You have to be totally detached from reality to actually believe this. Have you not paid any attention at all to the number of anti-trans laws being brought in a number of US states? There's been over 100 in 2021.
I cannot find any other rational explanation for why a top 10 internet website (in terms of traffic) would take the back of a person who had enabled a baby rapist, I just can’t.
Ellen Pao was the beginning of the large scale decline of reddit. She might've done a decent job according to the owners, but I can't imagine much users agreeing with that assessment.
A lot of the things that Pao got blamed for publicly were decisions made by Ohanian and the board. In fact, her predecessor said that she was opposed to most of the controversial changes but was forced to implement them.
They deplatformed a president and a company overnight... don't tell me the banning of a bunch of users of some site is something that is going to surprise you? Enjoy distributed censorship.
It would be interesting to know what sort of background checking Reddit did when hiring this person. Just the public information has loads of red flags.
As much as I resent the control-weenies flagging stuff they disagree with, I don't like the title editorialising here which could be read as an attempt to shame and punish rather than discuss.
Please can we merge with the original threads and consider keeping the source titles.
Another example here with a clear and explanatory title:
I posted this and I disagree, a drama subreddit is the least place this should be discussed, this is about silencing Redditors and abuse from admins who are paid Reddit staff.
As per title change, please see my comment at the time of posting.
I saw your comment before posting and see no need for the editorialising for the reason given.
The link I've given also explains what's going on, yours does not (and the sub disappeared previously), people have to trust your interpretation in the title.
If you click the articles linked within the post, you’ll see that there’s a bit of malicious compliance going on on the admin’s part with regards to not naming the individual.
My interaction with reddit is now nearly zero. I turned on ad block some time ago. I will visit /r/todayilearned in the early morning while laying in bed, and I will use subreddits to research purchases.
It is much more satisfying to remove /r/all from the reddit equation. I can't even visit my local subreddit anymore because the amount of censorship by moderators is staggering. The dark marketing, once you can see it, is everywhere. And their comment ranking algorithm is suffocating.
It depends. I have had interactions with some small community moderators that border on the insane. I was banned from AskHistorians for explaining the historical utility of nomadic herding of livestock. The moderator who banned me was also the moderator of a vegan/vegetarian subreddit.
Ah, AskHistorians can be rough. Maybe it's a more technical thing, but on some sports and some computer niche subreddits I feel okay and there's a nice discussion.
But I understand your position and find myself using the site less and less.
What's the alternative? As a Digg v4 refugee, I've always wondered.
Trouble is that deep knowledge of niche communities has taken 15 years - a not-insignificant portion of a lifetime - to accumulate. If the site dies, so much specialised discussion is scattered where it'll be far harder to find.
And this post has been flagged too, presumably by some group that is sharing the link internally, targeting the spread of this information as if it was a threat to them.
There has to be some sociological phenomenon that explains these kinds of events, and the strange group-think hivemind warfare type behavior that is now commonplace on all social media, across the entire political spectrum.
Does anyone have reading recommendations? This kind of thing fascinates me.
Reached out last week by a recruiter from reddit, guess I'll never work there. I refuse to work for a company where this kind of stuff is going on. Vote with your feet, and choose not to work at places like this. Vote with your hands and choose not to browse and be a user of sites like this.
For some reason, there is a fanatical subset of trans people, almost all of them biological men who identify as women, who are extremely prominent on the Internet, and particularly on Reddit. They wield an influence that is out of all proportion to their numbers.
Edit: for this story in particular, there is a pressure of cancel culture on both sides. On one side, a person's husband got doxxed after having admitted online to having pedophilic fantasies. On the other side, there is mass Reddit censorship together with attempts to cancel people for supposedly being "transphobic". The cancelation and doxxing seem unwarranted and unpleasant to me regardless of which side is doing it.
So the gist of it is that when she was running for election, she hired her father as an election agent while he was being investigated for his crimes, and also she lived in the house he performed his crimes in at the same time.
I think that this is worthy of criticism, but the problem here is that the few journalistic pieces that investigate this also push a strong anti-trans theme while also criticizing her at the same time, and at least one of them (the Graham Linehan one) is most definitely against Reddit's hate speech policy. I would not be surprised if this is the source of most of the bans, which is causing more of an uproar amongst the people who align with Graham Linehan's thinking.
There are quite a few critical pieces that I see on Reddit that are remaining up, even her name being mentioned in comments and not being banned, so I don't think this is worth the uproar that is being generated.
> So the gist of it is that when she was running for election, she hired her father as an election agent while he was being investigated for his crimes, and also she lived in the house he performed his crimes in at the same time.
That's where it started, but it seems to have intensified (based on my brief research, I think I've come across some of the earlier stories about Knight/Challenor previously, but it's not too of the mind stuff) because her current spouse is apparently an open (not active, at least openly) pedophile who has publicly posted about (among other things) fantasizing about children being forcibly kidnapped, tortured, and raped.
This, combined with the issues that arose around how much she may have been aware of, involved in, or defensive of her father's crimes would probably bring a firestorm of negative attention to her if she wasn't trans, and the fact that it's natural fit with the anti-LGBTQ propaganda angle that everything that deviates from pure cisgender heterosexuality is barely a step removed from bestiality, child rape, and the general collapse of society makes it the perfect magnet for the absolute worst that the culture wars have to offer.
certainly not accurate. In the sub and nearby subs involved, it was not known that they worked for reddit. The posting of the article was incidental. The person who posted it had no idea why it was removed and they were permabanned
She is not at fault for her fathers actions, but when she continues to surround herself with such people, including her husband, this may indicate a bad pattern of behavior
Or something deep in her psychology, e.g. she was raised by a pedophile and surely there were some dysfunctional family dynamics... That will color your entire life.
reddit is designed for censorship.
It has been a dumpster-fire of group-think since 2018.
Anything against the collective is quarantined and then banned. I stopped going there when they banned every decent meme subreddit bc of 'offensive jokes'
Hopefully it's not against the rules here or anything, but it was identified[0] as /u/bpwpb[1], so Challenor changed[2] profiles to /u/isnottheimposter[3].
Every time I see a topic where one point of view is banned I can't stop thinking of the 1930's Soviet Union when arguing with theory of communism could lead one into a deep trouble.
Despite all the vitriol, I have a degree of sympathy for the Reddit admin in question. I can't imagine how distressing it must be to be turned into a worldwide hate figure overnight; that has to be extremely psychologically damaging. Among the mob will be genuinely hateful and equally vile people who'll probably send a tsunami of death threats.
Reddit is in a bit of a difficult place; perhaps because of the legal duty of care Reddit has to their employee (particularly to someone who can legitimately claim to be marginalised) they can't just toss her to an incensed mob. Especially if that incensed mob was created by the actions of Reddit making clumsy choices.
> Maybe don't hire a known child rapist/torturer if you don't want to be hated.
To manage her political campaign, that's the important part. Being a candidate for a public office _is_ justified reason for discussing a person's employees/employers/companies/taxes/PRs/whatever.
I had no frakking idea on who she was until this, anyway.
We're in agreement that knowingly associating oneself with pedophiles deserves a degree of opprobrium. However that does raise the question, how much opprobrium?
The person in question probably suffers psychologically a great deal. Who wouldn't if they were dealt with the double-hand of gender-dysphoria and a pedophile father? I think it is safe to conclude this person is not well. Does the world really stand to gain much exposing a fringe activist to the opprobrium of the entire world?
I might sound radical in saying this, but I really don't think they do, and I think that societal shame needs to be regulated in proportion with how useful it is.
> The person in question probably suffers psychologically a great deal. Who wouldn't if they were dealt with the double-hand of gender-dysphoria and a pedophile father?
You don't get a pass on hiring your dad while he is being charged for sex crimes just because you are trans.
That's not what I'm trying to address. I said that I agree that deserves opprobrium!
What I have trouble with, is the idea that it's somehow okay for the whole world to deliver it in the form of an ungoverned internet mob.
Societies have limits to how much opprobrium you can receive. The reality is that she's probably getting tens of thousands of death threats. In most places you have an inalienable legal right to protection from such things.
I would say, if you are more than one level removed from the issue then you should be given consideration. If you are two or more levels removed then it should be not even on the RADAR
However given she is directly connected to the person at hand by willful association after knowing the issue she pretty much deserves no exception.
Frankly I could care less about her and more about how Reddit justifies hiring her knowing what they know about her.
Maybe Reddit can sell dispensations in the form of hiring people.
What i mean is, your post seemed to imply that the opprobrium should be less because she is trans. I think it should be equal regardless of your gender identity.
> That is what a conviction means -- we should not punish people before it, nor should we punish people that associate with them
It’s still bad judgement to hire someone who you are aware is being investigated for kidnapping and raping a 10 year old child when you are in a political party trying to get elected.
I mean it’s not a good look for a political party to play the “I knew he was being investigated for child rape, but we hired him anyway because innocent until proven guilty, even though he was actually guilty in the end” card.
> Does the world really stand to gain much exposing a fringe activist to the opprobrium of the entire world?
In this case, the person being shamed for endorsing pedophilia was hired to manage a communities of children. She hired a child rapist, married an admitted pedophile, and now (as demonstrated by this incident) has the power to control what media many children are exposed to.
I’ve no problem with her getting a job that doesn’t involve kids.
Technically most Reddit staff would have to say that they were associating with pedophiles if they were around while Ghislaine Maxwell was one of the biggest and most active admins on the site.
This seems like it could also be a "Right to be forgotten" situation? Especially with how the post is worded where it could be a legal team forcing them to comply.
I don't have any context on this, but my 10 seconds of research indicates I'm going to hate everybody on both sides. Gonna stop here and do some actual work.
I am completely lost here. I feel like a Boomer on Snapchat.
Can someone please give a 5 sentence tl;dr of (a) who this person is, (b) what the original controversy was about, and (c) why the Reddit admins care so much?
This is one of those stories that keeps popping up in front of me but I really do not have the will nor the time to engage with it, so I'd really appreciate a concise and unbiased summary if anyone can offer it.
(a) Former UK Green Party equality spokesperson and candidate, current Reddit administrator (read: employee not volunteer).
(b) While a candidate for the UK Green Party, she employed her father as campaign manager ("election agent"). Her mother, who lived with the father, also ran as a candidate and also employed the father as campaign manager. In 2018, her father was charged and convicted of raping and torturing a child in his home.
(c) This person currently works for Reddit, and is allegedly enforcing a line of censorship in order to protect herself from online harassment.
(a) She is a reddit admin that was previously a public figure in both the green party and the liberal democrats.
(b) While in the green party, she recruited her father as a campaign manager while knowing he was being charged for sexual offences, and he would eventually be convicted of raping and torturing a 10 year old child which was held captive in the attic of the house she was living in at the time. This brought disrepute to the party and she was removed. After this she got a position within the liberal democrats, and got suspended from the party after her boyfriend's twitter account was found to have posts admitting to having sexual fantasies involving sex with children.
(c) Reddit admins presumably care because they have now employed her as an admin, but don't want any criticism of her past as referenced in (b). This is presumably to protect her as an employee, but is problematic as they act as a news sharing site to some extent, and she is/was a public figure.
Can someone please give a 5 sentence tl;dr of (a) who this person is, (b) what the original controversy was about, and (c) why the Reddit admins care so much?
This person is a former British political candidate (Green/LibDem) who allegedly concealed from electoral officials the heinous crimes committed by their campaign manager. This person is now employed by Reddit and is abusing their newfound admin access.
Please do not name this individual, at all. Doing so may result in your account being banned by the admins.
Please do not ask further questions about this, as doing so may result in your account being banned by the admins.
Please do not discuss this incident on Reddit publicly or privately (e.g. on private subreddits and/or in private messages, chat etc.), as doing so may result in your account being banned by the admins.
I fully understand and agree that the platform is privately owned, etc. etc., but this is getting strange(r) -- and quite normalized.
I guess they don't understand streisand effect. If you explicitly ban people will follow that rule but what happens when people get around by using some made up name different from original. Are admins going to read every comment on the platform to uphold this rule?
I believe they just don't want it to be talked about on their platform. They're not trying for general censorship. In fact, the person's name is already listed in newspapers.
Pretty obviously what happened is they've had incidents in the past where a blogger would publish an article on one of their employees and then redditors would start spamming that article on reddit to dox them -- in a coordinated action so the blog article was written for the purpose of doxxing the employee.
So they have a bot which bans links to article which mention reddit employees by name which hands out auto-bans to prevent that behavior.
What went wrong was that the code didn't have any allowance for newspaper articles, or somehow incorrectly classified that article.
That problem being made more difficult because the definition of what is a "news site" or "journalist" these days is vague.
This sounds like its the same category of problem that Memphis was with twitter.
And its a bit odd that this technology-oriented site is getting caught up in the political outrage and entirely missing the fact that a bot did the bans and that reddit acted to revert those actions. Do we now think that programming and algorithmic bugs never happen and that the outcomes of algorithms are always deliberately premeditated actions and never unintended consequences?
The problem comes up when you've hired a politician as a reddit employee, and you're written an algorithm that only cares about if someone is a reddit employee.
one that navigates to a linked article and notices a single sentence mentioning this admin's name, vanishes the post and bans the moderator who approved it?
sounds a lot more like 'reddit admin decided to abuse powers in an attempt to hide any link to how she once hired her paedophile father and was removed from a political party'
It's pretty clear now what happened is that a completely innocuous post to an article in The Spectator contained this person's name. They weren't the subject of the article or any of the conversation.
This particular reddit admin then removed it and banned the person who posted it (long standing mod).
I don't think it applies in this case: the rule was already in place and unnoticed until a high-profile incident drew attention to it: they are not trying to suppress mention as a response to newfound notoriety.
It's almost like the people who thought of the first amendment didn't see 99% of speech going through private companies at some point in the future. My snark isn't pointed at you, just at the people whose talking point is "first amendment is about the government!"
Some Reddit employees certainly can see message content. This shows up in /r/redditrequest . Some times the system will flag a request for manual review. In that case, the following message is in the request:
> Thanks for submitting this request! It’s been flagged for manual review (not a bad thing!). This might delay a decision by a couple weeks. In the meantime, please politely message the moderators of r/whatever and reply to this comment with a link to that message. Only you, the mods of r/whatever, and some admins will be able to view the message content. Including a link to this message will help speed the process along.
> Now they are blatantly publicizing that private chats are being read.
no, they aren't: banning the item from private messages doesn't mean that they are enforcing it by reading private messages. It could mean, for instance, that if somebody complains about you including the item in a private message, you would be in contravention of the rules.
also, a robot daemon scanning private messages for the text string would not mean that your private messages were being read in any meaningful way.
Yes of course the platform can read them. Everyone knows that. It's obvious from context that when people talk about private messages they mean messages that other users on the platform cannot see.
It's one thing to prevent people from saying something on a part of your platform anyone can see it but if they want to talk about it one on one with someone else (someone who presumably has a block button at their disposal) then that shouldn't be censored.
It's the difference between a billboard and a letter. Of course a 3rd party can snoop on a letter. But a billboard is content that is intentionally put in public view.
And these employees are deleting subreddits (e.g. gender critical), suppress media they don't like..it's really surprising reddit has not found attention the same way twitter or facebook have. Maybe because of their political leanings.
People have been complaining about reddit's moderation for years, but I think due to the anonymity it's not being looked at the same way as twitter or Facebook. It's closer to a tabloid than a newspaper
It definitely has it's issues but it's not on the level of facebook or twitter just yet. I can kind of see them circling their wagons to protect a staff member given past reddit overreactions that end up with the staff member getting doxed and death threats all over the internet. Mostly because of the pile on mentality of a lot of redditors.
Political/social criticism should not be mislabeled as "hate". Trans-related issues are extremely complex no matter what anyone's personal POV might be, and keeping a critical attitude is entirely legitimate.
The people pushing hatred against trans people dress it up in nice language so useful idiots then go around saying things like "keeping a critical attitude is entirely legitimate".
The gender critical movement is based on antisemitic conspiracy theories (eg Bilek) and unhinged hatred of trans people (eg Glinner).
I’m “Gender Critical”, because like many people born in the 1960s I see women as being a group of individuals primarily discriminated against by virtue of their sex - particularly in regards to contraception and the economic and social consequences of reproduction.
Sex is biological and objectively real. Gender is a social construct relating to imposed standards of masculinity or femininity.
How have we ended up reinventing the idea that sexed identity is the performance of innate gender roles or preferences? Just because we’ve allowed people to opt out by changing gender doesn’t make the idea of linking gender to sex any more acceptable. This is an entirely regressive state of affairs, and pointing that out is in no way hateful.
Sex is biologically and objectively real, but also (most probably) more complicated than you would guess.
It is really not as hard and fast as "there's men" and "there's women" and "you can tell them apart by a quick genetic test".
There's basically a sliding scale from "definitely male" to "definitely female" (in unmodified body) and a mostly-but-not-always correspondence between said body and the genetic markers (XX and XY).
If the testosterone receptor codons are damaged, the extra testosterone that the XY chromosome normally produce will not get a chance to influence the fetus, so any make characteristics will be under-developed (or not developed at all). Heck, there have even been genetically XY people who have sustained pregnancy and given birth.
I mean, somewhere between 0.02% and 0.05% are born with effectively both make and female sexual characteristics.
So, yes, as long as you insist that "there are two sexes, and it is objectively easy to say which one is which", I would say that it is, if not hateful, at least ignorant and disrespectful.
Too many times ration discussion critical on parts of the trans rights movement is heavily downvoted or banned. The people who otherwise support trans people, but think 'affirmation-only' approaches are the wrong way to go, are forced to forums/subs filled with people who are unapologetically transphobic. The discussion there will often lead the moderate opinions to radicalization.
Of course parts of gay culture can be critized. Older man preying on barely legal teens, drug use, and open relationships are all controversial things that the gay community grapples with. Sure I can get behind not giving a platform to people who think gays should be stoned or trans people don't exist, but the moderates shouldn't be lumped in with them.
> The people who otherwise support trans people, but think 'affirmation-only' approaches are the wrong way to go
This is a contradiction in terms. Supporting trans people means believing that transition is not some sort of "regrettable outcome".
> are forced to forums/subs filled with people who are unapologetically transphobic. The discussion there will often lead the moderate opinions to radicalization.
> This is a contradiction in terms. Supporting trans people means believing that transition is not some sort of "regrettable outcome".
No one is saying transition is a "regrettable outcome".
What people are saying is that some people may think they are trans and then change their minds later. In these cases a watchful-waiting approach is better because it may allow the person to avoid life-altering decisions like surgery or hormone replacement. This is not a hypothetical, there are recorded examples of young adults who, having undergone these therapies, came to regret it later.
> You are the company you keep.
If we extend this logic (which we should under no circumstances do) we could say that Aimee Challenor is guilty of the rape and torture of a 10 year old child.
> No one is saying transition is a "regrettable outcome".
Actually a lot of people say that, cf rhetoric about "a lifetime of hormones and surgery". As someone who has had surgeries and expects to be on hormones for the rest of their life, I think what I did to my body was good, not bad.
> No one is saying transition is a "regrettable outcome".
It's safe to assume it's meant in the context of the ongoing thread. Not as in "No on in the world is ever saying that", but "No one here has said such thing". It's better to direct your arguments to an individual in the thread, not an official representative of the collective internet.
But wouldn't the experiences of an actual trans person be much more relevant to this discussion than our cis asses?
We're never going to have experiences of our own that can inform our judgement on this, so shouldn't we just listen to and trust trans people to work out how to best to make their way in the world?
More relevant than the experience of a single cis person? Quite possible. More relevant than actual hard data reflecting the collective experiences of a large plurality of trans folk, with relevant variation in such factors as e.g. age and social milieus? No way.
An important example of where debate and information can be foreclosed upon is that /r/detrans, a vital support community for detransitioners, has been temporarily banned in the past by overzealous admins, and the mods had to appeal and institute much stricter moderation than most subs have to be able to get it back up.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
> No one is saying transition is a "regrettable outcome".
Please for the love of christ just spend 10 minutes reading some of the gender critical arguments before trying to represent them here, because you're saying stuff that is 1) untrue and 2) very obviously untrue to anyone who's given even cursory attention to what these people are saying.
Transition currently has very low rates of regret; lower than many other forms of surgery. Hip replacement has higher rates of regret and there's not a mainstream movement trying to prevent access to that.
You interpreted my post as a bizarre absolute. I meant "no one here," not "no one period".
Either way, your post is nit-picking. My point was that being against affirmation in all cases is simple not the same thing as viewing all transitions as a "regrettable outcome".
> Transition currently has very low rates of regret; lower than many other forms of surgery. Hip replacement has higher rates of regret and there's not a mainstream movement trying to prevent access to that.
Wonderful. But hip replacement is not elective surgery based on the subjective feelings of the patient. As long as one person regrets it, it is my opinion that we should prefer a watchful-waiting approach and I can say that without "failing to support trans people".
Something like less than 1% of trans people regret transition, and of those half of them regret it because of social costs, i.e., bigotry from transphobes, and another big chunk regret that they transitioned as binary when they were in fact non-binary or vice versa. Fundamental to your argument is the idea that we should not trust trans people about their lives or their feelings. It’s bigotry.
Whether you’re aware of it or not, your argument is disingenuous, unscientific, gaslighting propaganda pushed by bigots, and it has the direct result of harming trans people.
> Something like less than 1% of trans people regret transition
Sure, but most of the contention by far is around kids and teenagers who are kinda sorta thinking that this "trans" thing they keep hearing about in their social milieu might perhaps apply to them, and statistics align with the (eminently reasonable) expectation of higher regret rates in that restricted subgroup. It's not a simple problem, there are very real issues involved.
Could you ping me to where you see those numbers? I know data is tough to come by but the sorts of numbers I see, as someone who doesn’t follow this topic closely, are much higher:
> Such “desistance” appears to be common. At least half a dozen medical studies show that between 61% and 98% of children presenting with gender-related distress were reconciled to their natal sex before adulthood. However, all these studies looked at children with early-onset dysphoria.
I have a perspective you may find interesting. First I don’t support or attack trans people specifically. I just think people should live and let live so in that regard I do support trans. I have and do socialise with trans people on occasion and we get along fine. With that out of the way I would like to highlight that through ignorance I have many questions about trans. These questions stem from purely curious thought though I have identified that some of them may be considered offensive to trans people. There is no forum in the world where I can ask these questions without it devolving into a mud slinging contest. I’ve seen it numerous times on various platforms. I literally don’t know enough about trans to form an opinion and have no way of educating myself but am somehow required to explicitly support trans. It’s an impossible situation. I defer to benefit of the doubt but I could never conclusively get behind trans rights because I’m too uneducated on the topic. This represents a fundamental limit for the movement IMO.
I'd recommend reading Julia Serano's Whipping Girl to start.
I'm also happy to explain transness in detail to the cis people I know and trust in real life. Perhaps get to know a trans person among your friends, family or coworkers, and build enough of a relationship with them that they trust you. I generally don't do it on internet forums because of the range of responses I've gotten in places like this thread.
Not trying to really debate the specifics, just point out there is room for debate in good faith.
> You are the company you keep
Sure, but if someone who is trying to be critical in good faith finds themselves kicked out of every other community, what can you expect? Their unanswered questions will need somewhere to find an answer. Sure the individual has some responsibility, but you just made the path to radicalization much easier for them to stumble upon.
Affirmation-only in the form of behaving as if women and transwomen are indistinguishable is not always productive. For an example, if you write a feature telling people to watch and cheer on women speedrunners but you only include people who were successful male speedrunners before their transition you are not encouraging more women to join the hobby.
Obviously cis and trans women are not completely indistinguishable -- they have overlapping but distinct medical needs, for example. This is a strawman position.
However, GCs tend to believe in an oppositionally sexist view of the world, where your assigned sex at birth puts you in one of two firm categories, and any sort of crossing over or breach between categories is impossible. That's how GCs construct their categories.
The overlap is because they’re both human, not both forms of women.
Sexism is “prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls. It has been linked to stereotypes and gender roles, and may include the belief that one sex or gender is intrinsically superior to another”.
GCs reject sexism. Rejecting sexism doesn’t mean rejecting the reality of men and women being genetically distinct and having different body plans for the purposes of reproduction. Rejecting sexism doesn’t mean refusing to discriminate when discrimination is necessary for the socially just goal of sexual and gender equality.
Sex is recognised at birth, not assigned at birth - it’s determined at fertilisation: XX or XY.
Assuming you’re a transwoman. Your sex is male, and your gender is feminine. Women and transwomen substantially share a gender, given most women choose to be feminine and most transwomen feel compelled to present and be seen as feminine.
This is fine, every GC person I know accepts the right of individuals to choose their expressed gender and be free from unreasonable discrimination. What we don’t accept is the refusal to acknowledge that women also have a sex-based component of identity that transwomen don’t share.
I appreciate that this causes psychological stress to people with a dysphoria that is only calmed by affirmation of successfully changed sex - but - the physical reality of the situation can not be changed or rationally denied.
These are all specific constructed definitions of "sex" that do a poor job of modeling the reality of variation in humanity.
There is no fundamental law of the universe which says that sex must be defined through gametes or chromosomes.
In any case, all this definition stuff is secondary to how our actual lives are affected by this nonsense. As a transfeminine person I've been using women's bathrooms for many years without incident, but most GCs would want to make that illegal. Many GCs think I shouldn't have access to healthcare for my breasts. All my friends and coworkers use my pronouns, but many GCs would refuse to. The list goes on.
GCs say they want me to live a life free of discrimination but also want to put me in situations where I'm going to face discrimination, like making it harder for me to update my documents. It's all lies fueled by distrust and hatred.
I'm just a normal person who wants to live my life in a self-respecting manner. I don't ever want to interact with a GC but I'm forced to because their policy recommendations keep getting in my way. I really want to do better things with my life than deal with a bunch of boundary cops.
> I've been using women's bathrooms for many years without incident, but most GCs would want to make that illegal
Doesn't CA have a mandate for single-occupancy, non-gendered bathrooms, which are anyway more inclusive of genderfluid folks and those who do not identify with the gender binary?
> Many GCs think I shouldn't have access to healthcare for my breasts.
Well, that's quite bad. Those GC folks should be made aware that male breast cancer is a thing too.
No, I don't present as a stereotypicallly feminine woman. I don't have long hair, I don't wear dresses, I don't have many interests typically associated with women, I didn't play with dolls (or trucks) as a kid—instead I played with hex editors and DRM protections on software. But my body clearly needs to be estrogen-dominant to work well, and I very strongly prefer they or she pronouns.
"Trans people want to reinforce gender stereotypes" is yet another GC lie based on selection pressure from the medical gatekeeping we've endured for decades. Even today, in parts of Europe and in much of the world you'll be expected to wear a dress and makeup to your doctor's appointments, otherwise you won't get access to the hormones your body needs. (The SF Bay Area where I live doesn't have that as much.)
I want to repeat: Cis people are the ones who reinforce gender stereotypes, not us.
There are many trans women for whom femininity is not an important aspect of their individuality as well. There are trans butch dykes. Of course there are. Once you start looking at us as human you'll see that we have as much variation within our group as anyone else.
> No, I don't present as a stereotypicallly feminine woman. ...But my body clearly needs to be estrogen-dominant to work well
The stated purpose of feminizing/masculinizing hormone therapy is specifically to alter secondary sexual characteristics in a feminizing or masculinizing direction, respectively - so yours seems to be a comparatively uncommon use of such HT. Given that "medical gatekeeping" is merely a fact of life that applies to all sorts of substances and that there are also many arguments for gatekeeping access to steroids specifically, the proactive step forward for people like you would be to get your specific medical need described in the medical research literature so that, in the longer run, policies around access to steroids can be changed to more naturally encompass cases like yours. Blaming GC positions for such issues is just not very sensible.
I'm aware of what hormones do, I did plenty of research before getting on them. I take hormones so that my body is feminized, which I like. But I don't present as a stereotypically feminine woman in terms of long hair, dress or makeup. I'm not sure why that is so hard to understand.
I'm usually perceived as a gender-nonconforming woman, which is how I'd like to be perceived as. The only reason people like me are uncommon is selection pressure due to medical gatekeeping. There are a lot of trans people who have no interest in conforming to gendered expectations, but are coerced to by the threat of losing access to medically necessary healthcare.
Medical gatekeeping is not "a fact of life" that can't be changed. There's less of it where I live and it works out just fine. Informed consent is the modern protocol and the rest of the world should adopt it, but GCs in places like the UK oppose that and want to reinforce silly stereotypes like "if you don't wear a dress you're not a real trans woman".
---
edit to respond: sigh, no, transness does not hinge on gender expression. It hinges on gender identity and subconscious sex, neither of which are the same thing as gender expression. Gender identity is only somewhat related to social conceptions of gender expression.
What a lot of GCs do is deny the existence of gender identity. But that's just empirically false based on the evidence from millions of trans people worldwide, which includes literally me as a human being, writing this comment right now.
It is important to note that this is a contingent fact about Homo sapiens—it is possible that a different species with our level of intelligence doesn't have anything called a gender identity. But humans do.
Please read Whipping Girl. It goes into all this in quite some detail.
> There are a lot of trans people who have no interest in conforming to gendered expectations, but are coerced to by the threat of losing access to medically necessary healthcare. ... GCs in places like the UK ... want to reinforce silly stereotypes like "if you don't wear a dress you're not a real trans woman".
Well, historically, the broad shift from a focus on "transsexual" status and "sex change/reassignment" (focusing on primary and secondary sex characteristics) to one on "transgender" and "gender reassignment" (focusing on some canonical gender expression) was driven by consensus within the trans community.
If anything, the more traditional or "gender critical" POV is that the earlier 'transsexual' focus was in fact appropriate, in which a transfemale person can be transfemale no matter what they express as, whilst "cis", "trans" or "fluid" gender expression is a bit of a red herring.
> puts you in one of two firm categories, and any sort of crossing over or breach between categories is impossible
I find this debate interesting so I try to read a lot of different perspectives. I think the /r/gendercritical position was more nuanced than you make it out. They think that while humans can’t change their sex, rigid ideas of what it is to be a man or woman are one of the things that causes some people to feel like they need to. They would say that society should accept a and encourage a broader range of expressions of femaleness and maleness than it does now.
The GC position, as I understand it, decries the idea that a butch dyke should feel the need to live under a male identity just because she is far outside of the “firm category” of feminine or has many traditional masculine traits. It’s why they use terms like “butch erasure” [1]. It’s something interesting that I learned reading a now-banned subreddit which helped me to have more compassion and understanding for people who haven’t always had the easiest time in life.
> They think that while humans can’t change their sex, rigid ideas of what it is to be a man or woman are one of the things that causes some people to feel like they need to. They would say that society should accept a and encourage a broader range of expressions of femaleness and maleness than it does now.
I can’t speak for all GC people, but for me it’s more a rejection of seeing certain behaviours as gendered at all - rather than things individuals may do.
Current trans ideology makes what sex people identify as vitally important, and something that requires gate keeping by femininity. “Womanhood is for feminine people, being feminine is the most important aspect of who I am”.
The GC position, ironically, sees sex as primarily important for the purposes of reproduction - though, in the context of ongoing sexual inequality also important for social justice. “Womanhood is for female people, being female is a relatively minor aspect of who I am as a unique individual”.
That is absolutely not what I as a trans person or any of the trans people I know believe. Stop strawmanning based on your own stereotypes about trans people.
To repeat: I do not believe what you claim I believe. I do not believe that womanhood is only for feminine people or any such nonsense. I know and love masc cis women and masc trans women.
Indeed. I find myself more and more thinking that gender is a fiction we made up to get people not to harass us for behaving a certain way. Which is fine. It's a handy shortcut. I just think you're allowed to not be an extremist. You don't have to be in favor of bathroom door genital inspections to think it's a little unfair for Fallon Fox to get into the ring with cis women and break their skulls.
People won't let you hold that kind of opinion, though. You'll just get flamed from both sides.
Of course society should accept a broader view of maleness and femaleness. Of course butches should be able to live as women if that's what they are. That is exactly the direction I want the world to go in. Why in the world would you think I or any other trans person would think differently?
My problem with GCs (in their strongest firm) is the policy prescriptions. Making medical transition harder. Making it harder to get updated documents. Opposing anti-harassment laws in our workplaces and schools. Not letting us use the bathroom in peace. GCs do a really slimy shift from policy to philosophy and back that indicates a deep disrespect for our experiences.
I know trans women who present quite masculine while being on estrogen and having changed their name and pronouns. They're butch dykes living as women, not men. They're literally exactly what GCs claim to want. But would GCs think so? No, because their brain is warped by oppositional sexism.
The GC position is absurd, untenable, and simply does not fit with the available evidence about humanity.
Meh. That's completely unobjectionable to me -- fact is that a lot of trans people used video games to escape from society's bullshit when they were younger, which is why we're overrepresented in video game communities. To the extent that a cis woman has trouble being inspired by a trans woman speedrunner, she should probably work on her own internalized transphobia.
Thankfully, this view is vanishing among younger people: they generally take it for granted that the category of womanhood includes cis and trans women.
But for some people, transition is a regrettable outcome, even in the very literal sense that they do regret it. "affirmation-only" would mean affirming even people who actually would end up regretting a transition. The technology does not exist to actually make a man into a woman or a woman into a man.
That's not what affirmation-only means. It means supporting people as they come to terms with whatever the discrepancy between their phenotypical and subconscious sex characteristics.
Ah, got you. But then "affirmation-only" seems like a misleading name. Cause it's not really "affirmation-only", it's more like "be supportive and nice".
Edit: maybe I'm just not being charitable enough to jargon. I guess I can see how "affirmation-only" might be understood to mean "affirmation-only of felt gender identity" in the context of certain communities.
If a young boy wants to play with dolls, an affirming approach would let them. If they later decide they'd like to be perceived in the world as a girl and change their pronouns, you support them through that. If they later decide they want to keep playing with dolls, be perceived in the world as a boy and not change their pronouns, you support that as well. If they want to play with trucks and be perceived as a girl, you support them through that as well.
The point is that how you are perceived, how you look at yourself and what you do are all different but correlated. You just support them through their journey of growing up and discovering themselves.
Personally I've been uncomfortable at my endogenous sex characteristics from the moment puberty hit. That is why I've changed them (many years afterwards), and I couldn't be happier about that.
You might have been downvoted for conflating gay and trans concerns as though they are the same. From what I've observed there are genuine conflicts between those communities and discussion is necessary to resolve them - it's not automatically "criticism".
For example quite a few of the "gender critical" people being referred to here are actually lesbians, and they've been accused of hate or transphobia because they loudly refuse to adjust their sexual preferences to include males who identify as women. It's impossible to satisfy both gay and trans people on this specific topic.
I'm talking about someone I know who has been in precisely this situation.
You don't know anything about me, or that situation, but you are happy to accuse me of:
- Claiming to speak for lesbians
- Spreading propaganda from bigots
- Using "abuser tactics"
- Having unexamined prejudices
- Making prejudicial assumptions
- Having no respect for trans people
- Not engaging in good faith
I'd actually be really happy to discuss this topic in good faith, as it's important to someone I care about, and you clearly have a very different opinion. But I'd want you to read the HN guidelines first and make an effort to follow them.
> If you make blanket statements like “I’m not attracted to people of X group,” you likely have some unexamined prejudice
Does that also apply when the group is men/women (as opposed to AMAB/AFAB folks which would be the 'gender critical' view)? Should we all be pansexual?
What about lesbians who are concerned that some AMAB folks in their community might simply objectify them sexually, in a way that others would be a lot less likely to? Doesn't that seem like a good reason to be a bit warier when interacting with some group of people?
> Considering the heavy presence of Bay Area commenters and the fact that the Bay Area skews more liberal than most places in the US.
But you are failing to consider the heavy presence of Bay Area wantrepreneurs, who skew more heavily right-libertarian than the Bay Area, or even the US as a whole.
"Criticize" is a broad word. The modern concept of trans-ness only exists in the first place because people felt free to think about and question the conventional wisdom in gender politics. (One prominent example of this dynamic is Marsha P. Johnson, who's usually considered a trans woman today, even though she never used the term "transgender" herself and often identified as gay.)
> The modern concept of trans-ness only exists in the first place because people felt free to think about and question the conventional wisdom in gender politics.
BTW, this is just as true of the modern concept of gay. Egalitarian/romantic relationships among men were not typical or well-regarded prior to well into the 19th c., even within the relevant communities.
Gay people don't try to force me to call them something that I don't think they are. Some trans people do. Gay people just want me to not insult them. There is a subset of trans people who think that anyone who deviates even slightly from seeing them as their chosen gender, no matter how politely, is insulting them. They bully people online.
I'm not some sexual bigot. I'm a man and I've experimented with homosexual activity myself. But I don't try to censor or bully people who politely disagree with how I see myself.
> The specific policy and political recommendations of the people on the gender critical subreddit are very transphobic
There's plenty of actual transphobia occurring, out there in the real world - as in, real hateful violence and oppression being done to people who identify as trans or even just behave in non-gender-typical ways. So you're quite factually wrong about this.
Gender-critical feminists do not even register on the radar.
I might disagree with you on one point - Gender critical feminists, whose detractors have kindly labeled "TERFs," threaten the philosophical underpinnings of the trans movement in a way that trans hate does not.
Structural transphobia such as the medical gatekeeping GCs want to preserve, and incidents of violence, are both actual transphobia. Focusing on the latter and ignoring the former is also transphobic.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. “Gender critical” people (they are not feminists) regularly harass trans people, including kids, to the point of suicide. They lobby for discriminatory legislation that makes life-saving medical care difficult or impossible to access for trans people. They are instrumental in spreading bewilderingly unscientific anti-trans propaganda with the deliberate effect of harming and demonizing trans people, with the predictable effect of inspiring more hate crimes. They organize in order to harass and abuse trans people out of employment and housing. They just straight up lie. And if you were to peruse that subreddit, you’d also see them regularly joke about lying to AFAB trans people in order to exploit them for sex because those were the “hot butches” in a way that was incredibly hateful and, honestly, pretty rapey.
These people are abusers and bigots. They’re no different than any other hate group, except that they often use the language of victimhood to cloak their primary mode of social aggression. (This is the mode of aggression that it is most acceptable for AFAB people to express, so they get really, really good at it. It has a lot in common with the dynamics of emotional abuse, and, for lack of a better term, mean girling (which is, especially after adolescence, a particularly effective form of abuse)).
So you have no idea what you’re talking about, but based on your other comments in this thread — you genuinely seem to think homosexuality is a modern invention? And that it came out of some sort of predatory behavior? — it seems this is a willful ignorance that accommodates the hate and disgust you already feel for certain minorities.
Homosexuality and heterosexuality are modern inventions, yes - they first show up in the discourse of 19th c. psychology. And no, rape culture was never the province of "certain minorities", in fact it was quite widespread among those we would now (retrospectively!) identify as heterosexual. The primacy of sexual consent and of romantic, egalitarian relationships are very modern developments.
The words themselves are modern inventions, reflecting the western medicalization of the concepts, which in turn reflected bigotry — declaring something an “illness” is a great way to get people on board with eradicating it. But gay people and gay relationships existed in pretty much every society for which we have records, long before the British decided to coin a new word. (And in fact, so did trans people.)
A rose by any other name smells just as sweet, etc.
> reflected bigotry — declaring something an “illness” is a great way to get people on board with eradicating it
It's quite true that homosexuality used to be viewed like that. And yet, strange as it might seem, even that was a significant step forward from earlier perceptions of MSM which essentially were reminiscent of the Graeco-Roman model. Obviously these perceptions were also colored by bigotry, but we can see parallel changes in the discourse among male gays themselves.
Again, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You keep referencing talking points from ahistorical views of two societies as though they represent the entire world. I suppose to you, they do? You might be better served by reading about the world at large. Off the top of my head, Japan provides an interesting case study in views of homosexuality (and bisexuality) pre- and post- western influence.
Seriously? The older term for homosexuality in Japan literally translates as "the way of nqbyrfprag oblf" (I ROT13'd the last two words as they're IMHO likely to trigger trauma, offense, or both trauma and offense.) Some "case study" indeed! (Needless to say, the modern, Western-informed outlook now common in Japan could not be more different - but that supports my earlier point.)
There are different reference points in history which teach us different things. Restriction of hate speech is not „moral authoritarianism“, it’s a good protection mechanism.
We all know that Americans are obsessed with the ultimate freedom of speech, but, just like some other provisions in American constitution, it’s a not well-thought idea. At the same time Western Europe, which constrains it more, has more democratic and more fair society (see for example Sweden).
No, they are not. "Moral authoritarianism" is a judgmental label, putting equality sign between a democratic mechanism of protecting human rights and authoritarian rule, which is by definition undemocratic. A logical fallacy hidden behind a There's no place in a constructive discussion for such language, because it is not just untrue, but also offensive.
>Why?
There's plenty of historical evidence on how hate speech supports transition of society to a tyranny. Germany 1930s is the most obvious one (and the reason, why freedom of speech is restricted in modern Germany), but there are many many others. On the other side, there is not much evidence that ultimate freedom of speech results in more prosperous and democratic society.
> There's plenty of historical evidence on how hate speech supports transition of society to a tyranny.
And there’s plenty of tyrannical countries that have no free speech. What’s your point?
Also, democracies can absolutely be authoritarian. Look up the phrase “tyranny of the majority” if you want to see why following a democratic process is not sufficient to avoid authoritarian behavior.
Any big government that regulates all of the minutiae of its citizens’ lives at the expense of minority lifestyles is authoritarian, even if the he majority decided it.
There is even more evidence that countries with less free speech are more authoritarian. For example, consider Nazi Germany, here is an excerpt:
> When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the German constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Through decrees and laws, the Nazis abolished these civil rights and destroyed German democracy. Starting in 1934, it was illegal to criticize the Nazi government. Even telling a joke about Hitler was considered treachery.
Sounds like you are on the side of the nazi's, given that you support abolishing civil rights.
It is hard to understand how you could make such conclusion. I do not support abolishing civil rights and I never said anything close to it. What I was saying is that freedom of speech is not absolute and dogmatic American constitution is wrong about it. Human rights exist only in society and the society not just defines them, but also constrains them. There’s no property rights on uninhabited island or freedom of speech in an empty room where there’s no one to talk to. But where property rights exist because there are people who agreed to recognize them, there are also trespassing laws: the freedom of movement is constrained by the rights and freedoms of others. And property rights themselves are constrained: you cannot use your land to stockpile nuclear waste and sometimes you have to mow your lawn. There’s no reason to assume that freedom of speech should not be constrained in a similar way. The dogma is based on an assumption that any constraint to this freedom may lead to tyranny. The historical evidence, including your example, shows that this protection of freedom is not efficient and quite often can be harmful, enabling extremists to build up the foundation to seize the power.
What did you expect?
People fostered this environment, did you really think it was going to just stop at some arbitrary point?
Now that there's a child abuse coverup involved now we all care about censorship? Give me a break.
The sjw mob created this situation. Reddit is a known hive of ideological extremism.
What i don't get is giving this job to a person i wouldn't hire to wash my car... let alone judge other people's speech and have access to their private DMs and IP addrs. Absolutely questionable behaviour.
If reddit were to become as "regulated" as say facebook (an identical platform from a philosophical perspective) it would be in very deep water right now
This is why I don't & never will have a reddit account. I have heard the mods are very quick to ban people & even whole subreddits for ridiculous reasons. That & security reasons. It's astonishing how much personal information becomes available from being on reddit. See www.redective.com.
Reddit is an Orwellian shitshow. When you are an IRL public figure you lose your expectation of privacy when you are engaged in public controversy that is discussed in the press.
Alright lets go through the Reddit Alternative checklist.
[x] Link to David Duke's article and positive discussion of it.
[x] Bonus points for whites are the real victim of displacing native Americans narrative.
[x] Multiple posts about pissing off the lefties.
[x] Weird anti Bill Gates articles
[x] Multiple GatewayPundit articles on the front page.
[x] Calls for Trump social media.
[x] Random LockdownSceptics.org AMA.
I can see my comments from another account and one of my comment that I made since then have been upvoted... so I appear to not be shadowbanned (shadow banning is another very shady practice).
Oh look! Spooks -- stratfor spooks in this case -- think they're aristocrats who get to use censorship for self-preservation. What a shocking, brand new development.
Reddit is crazy when it comes to anything trans related. Any comment mildly oppositional to the dominant trans agenda and belief system results in a ban. This is what happens when you hire ideological extremists with victim complexes to try to prove you're inclusive.
I don't see the need to say anything negative about trans people, it feels very similar to anti-gay rhetoric and talking points of the past. It's not contributing or helping, and actually causes a lot of harm.
There are legitimate discussions to be had about things like the rates of detransitioning teenagers and mental health in the trans community. But places like Reddit have made such discussion verboten.
Reddit has a real and serious potential liability if they didn't take action on this (now, there is a very good argument that hiring the individual in question in the role in question showed epically poor judgement, but, while a part of the chain of events that got the situation to this point, that's a different issue.)
Which liability? In which juridiction? From what I read in another other website, the affair seems pretty serious: hired murderer pedophile dad and met husband on a furry forum on which that guy wrote about raping children. Since that individual is a political figure (thus public figure) it’s legitimate the people discuss about those facts.
Both workplace environment (and, yes, not protecting from hostile environment on protected characteristics created by customers, suppliers, or other business contacts can be a source of liability) liability where she is currently employed by Reddit (which is in the US; I’m not sure which state, but that’s not super important since gender identity is federally protected within statutory protection of sex under the Bostock v. Clayton County decision), and, as far as anything potentially falls into the realm of defamatory fact claims, libel liability in any jurisdiction in which Knight/Challenor has defensible reputation interests; notably, this includes the UK, which has neither a NY Times v. Sullivan-style high bar for defamation liability when the subject is a public figure nor CDA Section 230-style protection of online platforms from being treated as a publisher of libels submitted by users.
I'm not sure if you are trolling, but the article wasn't "dead naming a trans woman". It was an article in a mainstream uk magazine about a uk political party where her preferred name was mentioned
"Deadnaming" is explicitly using the birth/non-current name of a trans person. The article does that, and also uses "he" throughout. Both of those things are typically seen as quite offensive by trans people.
I don't think a site-wide ban of the person who posted the link is reasonable, but it is a shitty article.
That's true of the articles directly linked in the reddit post, but not the Spectator article (that was not linked to) - https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/aimee-challenor-and-the-... - that one. (Which is the link that apparently led to the banning of the person who posted it)
Mainstream UK press has serious problem with TERFs, so my question was genuine: is my understanding correct, that the issue stems from someone linking to misgendering, dead naming article?
It's not just that, they have banned any mention of her name. You literally cannot even type her name in private messages without the message at least getting deleted, if you aren't banned.
I seriously doubt that. This is a claim I've seen in many places (unsubstantiated) but I find it hard to believe that her name is triggering bans. Dead name? Sure, I can believe that and, again, I have no problem with this.
If I write an article today about someone who transitions next year, am I (and all articles) supposed to spend time updating it? Wikipedia is a different story
You could but you, obviously, don't have to. The problem is not about the content though, it's about linking to it. So someone linking to this old article if there are recent, better sources could very well be doing it maliciously.
Think of it this way: if someone linked to an old article that used some slurs that used to be mainstream-acceptable at some point but aren't any more, would you feel uncomfortable? I hope you would. The reason people don't have this visceral reaction when it comes to trans people has a lot to do with broader lack of understanding of non-cis minorities.
There's an obvious problem with figuring out what the intentions of someone writing are. And we absolutely can't tell if e.g. someone dead naming is doing it on purpose or not. Not knowing and willing to learn is absolutely fine. But since you can't tell oblivious from malicious, you have two options: ignore assuming innocence or ban assuming malice.
Internet discourse is not courtroom, you don't have to assume innocence and it's absolutely fine to have a higher standard for communication on Reddit. Not that I think Reddit does, but it could. ;) So, again, what should you do with misgendering or dead naming? Since I sympathize with minorities and the oppressed, I would ban. But I'm absolutely sure many, many people would find a way to label what I'd considered hate speech "a freedom of speech issue" so I'm not at all surprised that this is causing a stir over on Reddit.
This exact same thing happened with the previous threads
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697
and
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556187
There are some awful transphobic comments in those threads, but they appeared _after_ the threads had been penalised.