OutOfTheLoop asks why does everyone hate Ellen Poa? '..she wants to turn Reddit into a feminist hivemind.'

Isn't the basic idea of being free to communicate ideas and opinions a good thing on its own?

no, because good is not intrinsically human.

yes, in theory, being free to communicate ideas and opinions sounds wonderful. "why, a man from china and a woman in chile used the internet and their own unique experiences to find a solution to poverty in south africa!"

but...what happens in practice? the man from china finds out the woman in chile is actually some dude from Cincinnati who was sending him pictures he stole off /r/gonewild to make him believe he was a sexy woman who just needed a few thousand more dollars to afford to move in with him in china. the article about this event has a comment section full of spambots and people finding a way to blame it all on 9/11 or 0BUMMER. the article gets posted to /r/worldnews where someone fucks up the title and commenters leave over two hundred comments calling OP a bundle of sticks, three hundred blaming SJWs, and two 154-deep chains about joe dimaggio.

meanwhile, the solution to poverty in south africa gets posted to /r/bestof where the top comment is gilded five times for calling the solution bullshit, the first reply to that comment is gilded seven times for pointing out how the first comment is bullshit, and all the rest of the comments are links to that .gif of a judge pounding a gavel while going "ooooOOOOOOOOOooooooooh".

obviously it's subjective whether you or I think the above scenario is good or not. I don't think there's a way to objectively determine the overall worth of what happened.

there's another scenario that plays out frequently which I think might illustrate better the fault in believing free speech is inherently good though:

right now, there's an amorphous blob which exists on twitter solely to insult, stalk, harass, and threaten people they don't like. many of these people have been women. some have been driven from their homes, others have had to cancel speaking engagements or contact police. there have also been multiple men and women that have had their full name, location, telephone number, and other personal information posted onto the internet because they said something the amorphous blob disagreed with or that wasn't ethical enough for their view of games journalism.

now, the common refrain is that "free speech has consequences" but what does it mean when someone received a disproportionate response to their free speech? consequences that are wholly unearned? and more than that, what does it mean when one person's free speech is being restricted by the exercise of someone else's free speech? what does it mean when people are afraid to exercise their non-racist, non-bigoted, wholly inoffensive free speech because they're afraid someone will try to call a swat team to their house or threaten their children if they disagree with what the person said?


I think free speech can be a wonderful concept and idea. the internet sounds, on paper, like such a huge potential for the rapid advancement of humanity as all people have access to information from one another regardless of status, location, race, or gender.

but in practice, the internet is a minefield of hate, treachery, and wasted potential. it's not just reddit, it's not just the chans, it's not just twitter, it's every website where the public is allowed to converse. Soren Bowie had a good experiment, which is to go to any video of two monkeys fighting on youtube and read the comments. you're almost guaranteed to see racist, disgusting bullshit on a video of monkeys doing monkey things. and like I mentioned before, you're almost guaranteed to find terrible shit in every comment section of every article from every site.

the times when you don't see that bad stuff, are almost always the times when the site utilizes heavy moderation, which means that free speech has been restricted. subs like /r/askhistorians are consistently said to be the best thing reddit has to offer, and /r/askhistorians probably has the strictest moderation on the site outside of places like /r/counting or /r/CatsStandingUp.

but, obviously there are times in history and elsewhere that have shown too much infringement of free speech to be a bad thing. Stalin had no problem erasing your existence if you weren't keen on saying what he wanted.

I just think we need to recognize that there are indeed two extremes with regards to free speech, and that truly free speech is a pipe dream that cannot exist in our world because even the rumor of consequence causes hesitation. the consequences don't have to come from the government or a private business; peers can restrict each others' free speech just as easily, and all it takes is a little bit of their own free speech.

/r/SubredditDrama Thread Parent Link - np.reddit.com