As a current target of malicious censorship and threats by the admins, I'd have to agree that anyone from the original team would be horrified by what's happening at Reddit right now. Being directly and abusively gaslit by a billion dollar company is a level of Twilight Zone that I'm honestly struggling to cope with.
I think he might care and believes this is the best he can do from a business perspective. It is not easy to remain firm to not censor content when there are thousands of users asking you to do it. That they removed any mention of Swartz from the site was pretty low though. Wonder what their rationalizations were. That he did commit suicide? That he was adamant about free speech and against corporate censorship? Reddit seems to be a bit clumsy here.
It goes far beyond people asking them to do it. They are extremely proactive about their censorship, and most of the time they have zero justification for it.
For one example of many, they permanently banned an autistic live streamer for asking a question about how the Reddit Live algorithm works, claiming it was "harassment toward the admins." In reality, they've been brazenly and repeatedly lying to everyone about how the algorithm works for over a year, including selling ads based on grossly inflated viewership numbers -- and "grossly" is honestly a huge understatement. But folks who mention the algorithm in any negative context tend to get banned permanently, or at the very least censored from using certain words, such as algorithm, admin, mod and ban.
There is no conceivable way that spez is oblivious to all of this, so it's safe to assume that he put his stamp of approval on the behavior, either intentionally or by inaction.
Worse than that there are a large number of people actively calling for the censorship.
Maybe I'm getting old but I don't understand this current generations fervor for censorship of things they disagree with. I've always slanted toward letting better speech battle "incorrect" assumptions. I don't see anything helpful about banning or censoring people and just see it leading to authoritarianism.
I think it’s important to parse what is being censored. Speech that incites violence against an individual or group should be censored in my opinion. Misinformation should also be closely watched as “a lie will travel half way around the world before the truth can put its shoes on.” I’m someone that considers themself to be against the concept of censorship but the realist in me recognizes that the ideas we had about censorship pre-internet may not apply to an age where it is the main source of information. I am honestly surprised to find that I feel this way but the last decade has shown us how the anonymity of the internet has been weaponized to influence the uninformed masses through propaganda and frankly, dark psychological strategy that hijacks our brains reward system.
Propaganda was just as bad before the internet existed except people had no idea it was propaganda because there wasn't an easily accessible open space that allowed them freedom of communication with alternative views and without censorship like the internet.
I trust no one to censor in a neutral way. It's inherently impossible.
>dark psychological strategy that hijacks our brains reward system.
This is fixed by personal responsibility and properly teaching children how to handle the information. It's really not that different than any other addictive tendency. The fix isn't just banning it.
Its pretty otherworldly, I was an active member of a top 25 sub. Although the sub is decidedly non-political, the mod recently decided to post a politic-specific sticky as first post.
I commented in that thread "this sub is probably not the place for these overtly political posts"...the mod responded to me by banning me for "advocating politics / agenda pushing"...its literally orwellian newspeak site.
