Difficulty can be okay

For today’s class you’ll likely encounter people and ideas that you find unpalatable or offensive.

Difficult feelings are okay: we can recognize them and skillfully share how we feel without becoming ensnared in them.

Disagreement can be okay

Today we discuss a complex and contentious issue, but we should be able to do so:

• civilly (without attacking others) and
• productively, by:
  • prioritizing why and how we come to beliefs over what we believe.
  • assessing our confidence in beliefs (e.g., ~80%),
  • modifying beliefs when appropriate, and
  • appreciating beliefs are based on valid differences in values, experiences, and positions.

r/TheDonald was moderated

[Williams was] part of a team that removed 3,500 problematic posts and comments on an average day, helped keep the worst stuff at bay — while also helping Trump. (TimbergHarwell 2021)

He saw QAnon, extremism and recruitment, Holocaust denial, racism, images of child sexual exploitation

Williams was an extremist

In since-deleted tweets, he said that Democratic “communists” were screaming “for war,” and he defended a post on TheDonald showing a box of bullets as a response to the “rigged ballot box.” Days before Jan. 6, Williams tweeted that Trump supporters going to D.C. should “siege the corrupt Federal Apparatus that seeks to chain you all up,” including the hashtag “#DCMustFall” (TimbergHarwell 2021)

Oops

Williams, who deleted his Twitter account and other social media after questions about them from The Washington Post, said he was urging political action, not violence, and persistence in challenging what he saw as an entrenched, geographically concentrated ruling class. (TimbergHarwell 2021)

Why?

• COVID lockdowns
• BLM riots
• Trump’s impeachments and lost election

What happened?

“After the migration, users became more toxic and more radicalized,” said one of the researchers, Savvas Zannettou, of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany. “These users were more active, were sharing more toxic posts, and only got more toxic over time.” (TimbergHarwell 2021)

A case of r/LeopardsAteMyFace?

What’s going on now??

• Assess how https://patriots.win/ rules are different from Reddiquette.
• Assess how https://truth.social/ rules are different from Xitter

Might moderation practice differ from the stated rules?

• Bailey: There is no such thing as objective morality; right and wrong do not exist.
• Motte: Our beliefs about right and wrong are shaped by society.

What is The Motte

The Motte is a website for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don’t all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

Leaving Reddit

Reddit has become increasingly hostile – we just had a comment removed for discussing the meaning of various types of parenthesis, I’m not making that up, I’m not exaggerating, that’s a thing that happened – and if the community is to survive, we need to disengage from Reddit.

… We have our own site, we have our own servers, we are no longer under the immediate thumb of anyone with less power than an actual government. (ZorbaTHut 2022)

PUA

Jargon

“Pickmeishas” are women who are desperate or who “degrade” themselves for men. This behaviour can lead to “Cockholm Syndrome”.

In order to “level up” … and achieve “queen” or “dreamgirl” status, women have to build their self-esteem and avoid “scrotes” (dickheads, otherwise known as most men). They can do this [by] focusing on their career or having a few men in “scrotation” (dating rotation). (Sisley 2021)

Bans for activities in other subs?

she was swiftly banned when she contributed to a discussion about male sexual assault in another unrelated subreddit. “Someone was alluding to the possibility that men couldn’t be sexually assaulted, and I replied saying that was ridiculous,” she remembers. “And then the notification came through that I had been banned from FDS automatically.” (Sisley 2021)

“If you’ve got an XY, don’t reply.” (quoted in Sisley 2021)

Why did they leave Reddit?

1. The mostly male reddit userbase overreports female subs, users and posts creating unsustainable amounts of work for female mods
2. Reddit admins don’t respond to serious and repeated reports of harassment and abuse of female users, mods, and subs.
3. Reddit bans lesbians and lesbian subs for their same sex attraction and paints them as transphobic but not men who fetishize lesbians via porn, who are allowed to be cis only. (Astria 2022)

4. They allow violent female mutilating sexual content (documented partially in r/BanFemaleHateSubs)
5. Most of the subs for women are squatted on by men, fetishists, Men’s Rights Activists, or TRA Extremists including necessary info like r/Abortion, r/Feminism
6. They knowingly hire and enable pedophile admins and power mods (i.e. Aimee Challenor, Nathaniel Knight, and others we won’t name) (Astria 2022)

7. The amount of exposure to depraved content the subreddit mods dealt with is traumatizing.
8. Men are coordinating offsite to report brigade and spam female oriented subreddits with bannable content (even tiny ones) – resulting in the banning of many female oriented communities for no reason.
9. Reddit Admins continue to allow the manosphere to have a presence on their website, resulting in real world abuse, rape, and acts of terrorism. (Astria 2022)

10. Quality posters have been [harassed] into deleting their content off the subreddit and have no copyright protection.
11. FDS subreddit as one of the last female-only subs has been targeted by admins with unfairly applied rules with the intent to eventually ban the sub, incentivizing FDS to pre-emptively move the community. (Astria 2022)

What’s going on now??

• Assess if https://www.thefemaledatingstrategy.com/ has rules that are different from Reddiquette.

On July 29, one month after the ban of r/GenderCritical from Reddit, moderators of the former subreddit launched Ovarit, a new feminist alternative site for link-sharing, discussion, and memes. The site, which is still invitation-only, has already gathered over 1,600 users, 2,000 posts, and nearly 15,000 comments in the weeks since its launch. (Fain 2020)

What’s going on now??

• Assess if https://ovarit.com/ has rules that are different from Reddiquette.
• Assess how https://www.saidit.net/ rules are different from Reddiquette.

“Ovarit is Closing” 2025-Apr-27

Wrap up

Consider:

• Is Reddit better without these subs?
• Is society better now that they are somewhere else?

Consider:

• Is Reddit better without these subs?
• Is society better now that they are somewhere else?