From u/na85
>Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform.
Look, I've never posted in r/fatpeoplehate and never visited it, but can we drop the charade and everyone just come out and admit that all this is about making reddit's user base more palatable for advertisers?
Coca-cola doesn't want to be associated with r/jailbait or whatever, I get that. Reddit needs to monetize because it's not profitable, I get that too.
But let's stop pretending this is about ivory-tower ideals of community and free speech. Reddit has never been about free speech. Shadow-bans aren't the tool of choice for those who support free speech. And the isolated-island format with moderators having dictatorial control over their potentially-walled gardens hampers an honest exchange of ideas in favour of increased groupthink and radicalized discourse. Free speech and "authentic conversations" (whatever the fuck that means) isn't out there waiting in the wings for r/fatpeoplehate to be banned. Advertisers are. They don't want their ads accidentally popping up on r/ihatejews or something and then a media shitstorm erupting, so the admins need to sanitize.
If this was about cleaning up reddit's act, then r/coontown and r/rapingwomen would be gone, too. But neither of those subs made it to the front page in recent weeks and r/fatpeoplehate did. It's so obviously about what makes them look bad to the media, and Yishan acted in the same way during his tenure.
Ellen Pao is a lawyer and an MBA: you don't bring someone like that on board to create an ideal utopia. You call in the MBA's when you need to turn something that was idealistic into a profit stream. "Authentic conversations" is the most business-school phrase I've heard in quite some time. How about the admins treat us like adults instead of like idiots?
edit: Guys please don't downvote the responses from the admins, they're relevant to the conversation and should be visible. At least make it easier for others to find them.
other edit: kn0thing on free speech
also edit: krispykrackers on SRS
such edit: sporkicide on SRS
other other edit: ekjp on bans
also also edit: 5days on bans