>Reddit works precisely because they maintain some sort of "net neutrality" ethics, refusing any editorial meddling. Banning a distasteful content provider would break that neutrality; but hiring him would break it just as much.
This is incorrect. They have banned 'distasteful content' and they have banned posts due to pressure from advertisers. Reddit is behaving extremely hypocritical and their PR on this subject is just nonsense. People shouldn't post on subjects on which they don't even have a basic understanding. I don't mean to sound rude, but this post is getting the most votes as of this writing and it's just flat out wrong.
This was for legal matters, not for distastefulness. The same obligations fall on network operators, and wouldn't be cancelled by any net neutrality law.
Yes, we agree. I don't think anyone else would have looked at the facts and come to a different decision than what reddit did, and I'm sure they did not make the decision easily.
Actually, this is untrue. The r/jailbait drama blew up when someone solicited underage pornography there, but at the end of the day it was banned for "threatening the structural integrity of reddit," ie the fallout from the Anderson Cooper story. Legality had little to do with it, just like you see with the ban on dox; it was banned for making the site look bad.
I should add that this is not direct pressure from their advertisers, but from their parent company, Condé Nast. I'm sure that Sears is and advertiser for at least some Condé Nast properties, so it's effectively the same, though with an extra level of indirection.
Some context would be useful here. The post was in relation to a URL exploit on a Sears site, and I can see the justification for a company taking issue with a partner of theirs posting how to exploit their site.
This isn't just "Advertiser gets a post banned they don't like", this is "Advertiser asks partner to pull down an exploit". Framing it as the former makes it sound like a capricious, moralizing decision.
This is incorrect. They have banned 'distasteful content' and they have banned posts due to pressure from advertisers. Reddit is behaving extremely hypocritical and their PR on this subject is just nonsense. People shouldn't post on subjects on which they don't even have a basic understanding. I don't mean to sound rude, but this post is getting the most votes as of this writing and it's just flat out wrong.