(no subject)
Heard about this from 
dr_teng:
http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/pmj7f/a_necessary_change_in_policy/
Apparently, reddit's admins put their foot down and said "no more depictions/discussions of sexuality and minors". Predictably, a small but vocal subset of redditors are now super-pissed, screaming foul, censorship, blah blah blah. I guess there was also a campaign from Somethingawful to harass Reddit about it, so it's turned into a nerdgroup-vs-nerdgroup thing as well. But yeah, it sounds kind of similar to when Livejournal shut down certain Harry Potter communities on the grounds that they were slash/lemon fanfic of underage kids. People got pissed, a lot of people ended up going to dreamwidth, and of course complaints of foul, censorship, etc.
One of the big pet peeves I have is how frequently people on the internet yell that they're being censored or having their free speech restricted. It's just an example of how pisspoor Americans are at Civics/Government. As a reminder of the text of the First Amendment...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Yup, it's "Congress shall make no law". It's not "reddit shall not", it's not "LJ shall not", etc. etc. There is no group on the internet that is obligated to protect your free speech. If reddit wants to censor what you post on reddit's servers, tough luck! If twitter wants to delete your tweet, they're 100% within their rights to do so. The whole argument about "It's not child porn/it's not illegal" is completely moot. FB/twitter/reddit/LJ/whoever could censor you talking about corn growing if they wanted to, it makes no difference. If dreamwidth wanted to delete this post, would I be pissed? Yeah, cause I would think it's not warranted. But I wouldn't go crying that my rights were being trampled on.
Originally posted at http://doctorfaust.dreamwidth.org/2705.html.
dr_teng:
http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/pmj7f/a_necessary_change_in_policy/
Apparently, reddit's admins put their foot down and said "no more depictions/discussions of sexuality and minors". Predictably, a small but vocal subset of redditors are now super-pissed, screaming foul, censorship, blah blah blah. I guess there was also a campaign from Somethingawful to harass Reddit about it, so it's turned into a nerdgroup-vs-nerdgroup thing as well. But yeah, it sounds kind of similar to when Livejournal shut down certain Harry Potter communities on the grounds that they were slash/lemon fanfic of underage kids. People got pissed, a lot of people ended up going to dreamwidth, and of course complaints of foul, censorship, etc.
One of the big pet peeves I have is how frequently people on the internet yell that they're being censored or having their free speech restricted. It's just an example of how pisspoor Americans are at Civics/Government. As a reminder of the text of the First Amendment...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Yup, it's "Congress shall make no law". It's not "reddit shall not", it's not "LJ shall not", etc. etc. There is no group on the internet that is obligated to protect your free speech. If reddit wants to censor what you post on reddit's servers, tough luck! If twitter wants to delete your tweet, they're 100% within their rights to do so. The whole argument about "It's not child porn/it's not illegal" is completely moot. FB/twitter/reddit/LJ/whoever could censor you talking about corn growing if they wanted to, it makes no difference. If dreamwidth wanted to delete this post, would I be pissed? Yeah, cause I would think it's not warranted. But I wouldn't go crying that my rights were being trampled on.
Originally posted at http://doctorfaust.dreamwidth.org/2705.html.