Listen, there are so many legitimate criticisms of Reddit, no one needs to make things up. This happens every year in June. Somebody posts about Tiananmen, some automod or real mod removes it, someone screams “Reddit” is censoring things.
There are tons of posts about Tiananmen that are still up after years. Tencent owns a small minority stake in Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/gvwu6h/megathread_tiananmen_square_massacre/
https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/gw2y6b/the_real_picture_of_tiananmen_square_massacre/
You did the work, this deserves to be higher in the comments
Had no idea! Thanks for informing me. I will keep this post up because I think it is an interesting discussion to have
So edit your post title, otherwise you’re spreading misinformation.
spreading misinformation is what he’s here for and so the post stays. why else would one wait 3 weeks to dig up a comment, get all the facts wrong, and use it as clickbait to stir up fake drama over absolutely nothing and make reddit critics look stupid. while plenty of real things are going on where the critics are right. “I will keep this post up because I think it is an interesting discussion to have” my ass and that’s a dead giveaway of the guy’s bad faith agenda. straight from the cointelpro playbook for online misinformation
Hold on, I am not here to spread misinformation! Like I said before, I genuinely had no idea about the trend of Tiananmen square posts since I don’t browse r/all. As for why I haven’t retitled it yet…didn’t know you could!
Also the 3 week old twitter post, I got from a discord friend.
How many people will read the title without the comments and leave with the wrong idea?
Not that I think you should take the post down, but the title is quite definitive, and confirms existing biases, so people are unlikely to research further.
You can edit titles here.
Something I love about the fediverse!
It’s also just silly to think CPP would bother censoring Tiananmen square on /western/ websites.
Maybe within the firewall, and maybe try to influence coverage on contemporary issues, but I don’t think they actually care about redditors sharing images from their history textbook,
I’m grateful this platform is beginning to have fact checkers.
Great sources, great awareness. Reddit is still shit, but for other reasons, not this.
This makes a lot more sense. Thank you for your service sir!
You are obviously correct, and I’m not arguing at all, just genuinely curious why it would happen in june specifically?
That’s the month it happened, so that’s the month people post about it, meaning it’s also the month it’s removed and people cry foul.
Tiananmen Massacre anniversary is June 4, so there are multiple posts about it (which is great), and a couple of those posts get removed (usually for really obvious violations of sub-specific rules), and someone sees that and cries “Reddit is censoring! CCP shills!”
It’s a damn Reddit tradition at this point
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Thank you, this has to be one of the more annoying Reddit conspiracy theories, especially because every year multiple posts with clickbait titles would hit the front page.
Also tencent doesn’t have “massive” investments in reddit, they invested 150 million USD when reddit was valued at a worth of 2-3 billion. So they have a less than 10% stake.
This is the sort of comment I used to go to Reddit for. Quality.
This sort of comment is why my 5yr Reddit account has > 200K karma. I was very active on Reddit via Boost app, and I’m happy to nuke the whole thing and start over after the way they’ve been acting. I really don’t think they have any idea what they’ve done.
Nice to see you here!
It would be a shame if subreddits changed their rules to make photos of Tiennamen Square mandatory in all posts.
Great IDEA, Tugs!
Real shame.
At this point are we surprised with how bad Reddit blows
The inevitable outcome of for-profit social media. All social media that has a big obsession with profits will end up like this.
It is also why it won’t suddenly get better. Even if we fire spez, the motivations are still there. The pressure to make the experience worse will always be there.
The CCP is explicitly communist, and they are the ones responsible for this specific act of censorship.
Before you go spouting off about stuff you realistically don’t understand, you should know that Reddit is not censoring T-square posts. This post was misinformation and you fell for it. You should learn to fact check things before making statements. Now you look like a silly person with a silly metal hat on.
How are they not in violation of Section 230 at this point? They are clearly moderating for a specific political point of view…
…how is that a violation of section 230?
IANAL but there’s suppose to be a blurb in there about not exercising too much control over the content. The more moderating decisions the admins get involved in, the greater the risk in going afoul of this. Once the company has editorial control, they lose the Section 230 protections.
However, since it’s been clarified that the mods did it rather than the admins and it was over the John Oliver rule, that means none of the above applies and it’s not a violation.
You’re wrong about Section 230.
Section 230 isn’t about an amount of editorial control. It’s simply not the case that a business is labelled as either a publisher or a platform. Instead, any individual piece of content on the site might be deemed to have been published by the owners of the platform or not.
Thanks for this. I may have worded the above badly. I never meant to imply that it was the case that a business is labelled as either a publisher or a platform under Section 230, but rather this would be an instance where they lose such protections on this particular piece of content as a consequence of this one decision.
Here is what others on the fediverse have pointed out in regards to editorial control and Section 230:
I don’t think any of us are using the "If you said “Once a company like that starts moderating content, it’s no longer a platform, but a publisher” argument.
Rather, we’re using the "If you said “Section 230 requires all moderation to be in “good faith” and this moderation is “biased” so you don’t get 230 protections” one.
So, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the misunderstanding on the original story was actually the true story. (I.e. admins deleted the content, not mods for the John Oliver rule).
Still IANAL but my layperson’s understanding is would be that (even though no court has gone this way yet) Section ©(1) isn’t as relevant because no one is disputing that reddit is not source of the picture. Obviously it was the OP who was the source - in fact OP could be the party on the other side of this hypothetical court action. But since there’s no dispute to settle through Section ©(1) then we must move on.
Section ©(2)(B) should not apply because reddit removed the picture. It’s not a case of reddit enabling or making that picture available, but the opposite. And providing the technical means for other to remove it (although this actually applies to this example in the real world because they gave the mod the tools to do that and the mod was the one who actually did it) in hypothetical example, reddit did it themselves - through an admin, who is an employee of reddit, who’s actions represent reddit’s own actions here.
So we do seem to have crafted a case where the focus should be on Section ©(2)(A).
It’s interesting though that according to the techdirt article that something like the above has never been tested in court. And the bit about a judge trying to figure out “good faith” and the massive 1st amendment issues therein makes sense. I think the techdirt article goes too far in stating that arguing for a moderation against good faith wouldn’t help - it’s never made it to a court after all so we don’t have any examples on how a court would rule when asked to decide on that point.
But considering how reddit has traditionally operated - unless there was a legal requirement like DMCA compliance or IP violation, they left all moderating decisions to the volunteer mods - to make a special exception in this case to their usual hands-off policy - and specifically to make a decision that even the mods disagreed with - likely would give reddit quite the headache in trying to argue that they acted in good faith.
But again IANAL.
Let me reword what I originally wrote for clarity so we can understand how this part got misinterpreted:
IANAL but there’s suppose to be a blurb in there about
not exercising too much control over the content(actually i was wrong about this, as it was about) [moderating in good faith]. The more moderating decisions the admins get involved in, the greater the [chance] in going afoul of this. Once the companyhas editorial control[is deemed to not be moderating in good faith], they lose the Section 230 protections [for that or those particular moderating decisions].
Sure, take down a post of a Chinese massacre but allow whole communities dedicated to racism, hatred, bigotry, and pedophilia to exist for years unscathed.
It’ll be amusing if Lemmy, a platform created by tankies, becomes better at allowing Tiennamin Square information than Reddit is.
Aside the tankies have no control over third party information on it. And lemmy isn’t even a platform, it’s more akin to your web browser and websites themselves.
Alright, I’ll amend my comment with the words you prefer.
It’ll be amusing if Lemmy, a Fediverse browser created by tankies, becomes a better way to access Tienanmen Square discussion than Reddit is.
Still means the same basic thing, though.
I bookmarked this archived imgur album about the massacre. It’s a sobering read. Content warning, obviously.
That one was removed because it simply didn’t respect this rule, it literally says so in the flair:
The post is 21 days old.
This makes a lot more sense!
Just wait until you hear about Lemmy.ml
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Oh, so totally fuck that. When my suspension from Reddit retires, I’ll show Spez-matic Adjustable Beds a thing or three! Like, how quickly I can delete my account!
(Yeah, real scary.)
(Hey, shut up!)
