Historically, before they banned a lot of subreddits. Arguably, to become more attractive to advertisers. I think that was when Voat was set up, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voat (c.2015).
There was a lot of unsavoury content (probably a lot of illegal content), Reddit was more like a -chan site to my recollection. Then it was cleaned up somewhat for the sell off to Conde Nast.
So Reddit (past tense) set themselves up as place for any user content (?), but have moved away from that progressively over the last, what, 15 years.
Maybe it wasn't a conscious thing, maybe it was a startup thing ... Alex O' might yet correct me.
I didn't think it should be illegal to say "I wish X were dead" unless you have the means to make it happen like a rabid audience with a track record of killing people you wish were dead. Even then, I think there needs to be coordination or a wink nod of some kind that needs to be proven to muzzle free speech.
Freedom of speech we don't like is the true litmus test of free speech. It is trivial to say I support free speech when someone says nice things about me.
Freedom of speech is a very nuanced issue. Taking a black and white approach is problematic.
The classic example, is can you shout "Fire!" in a crowded cinema?
Should this be illegal in itself? Probably not. But if this causes a panic that kills people in a crush for the exits, then you are very culpable for these deaths.
But even if nothing bad happens, should there be laws against what you did? Saying no is in my mind similar to saying if you shoot at somebody but miss them, did you break any laws?
FWIW, yes, I do support free speech. Very much. But I also recognize you must be responsible for the consequences of what you say, and this leads to some very tricky ethical situations - Should you be held accountable for what could have happened, even if it did not happen?
> Freedom of speech we don't like is the true litmus test of free speech. It is trivial to say I support free speech when someone says nice things about me.
People are free to say mean things, they just aren't allowed to encourage violence. There is a difference between saying "I hate how Trump runs the country, he is an idiot" and "Can't someone kill Trump already".
I have seen a lot of the second kind on reddit. The first kind gets you arrested in Britain though, they don't have any meaningful free speech there.
But as you say what constitutes "encouraging violence" is not entirely clear, but most agrees that encouraging violence shouldn't be protected by free speech laws.
This all may be well and good but the reality is that Reddit's rules against 'advocating for violence' don't really map out to any laws in the real world.
Like, on Reddit you're technically not allowed to say "Man, I'm so glad that Adolf Hitler guy is dead."
To my knowledge it is not illegal to say something like that (anywhere you want to live anyways)
I think that a world where people are free to talk about how they're glad horrible tyrants are dead is a better world than the one where they aren't free to express those ideas.
You wouldn't want to live in an America where it wasn't legal to condone the death of Osama Bin Laden, would you?
Saying, and indeed wishing, "who will rid me of this troublesome pr..esident", for example, is not anything like "instigating murder". In most democracies people are allowed to think, and express their thoughts. Making plans, or taking other actions relating to those thoughts, that's when things become might become criminal.
Indeed, freedom of conscience is usually considered a human right.
> What country are you from? To "wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there?
This is a strawman. Your quoted text does not come from GP and does not fairly represent any of its argument (which makes your use of italics hard to understand).
Actual incitement to political violence is actually occurring on these platforms. People have screencaps and everything.
Your best example of a "historically efficient way to solve political problems" is a 4 year civil war that killed more than half a million people and, after all that, still left African Americans as second-class citizens for a century after?
The amount of violence to keep the slavery running was huge. You cant pretend that all that violence does not count. That being said, war was more about south wanting war/leave the union, because the north did not wanted to expand the slavery to new territories. That threated the south.
It is not like north would march in there to stop the slavery. There was an anti slavery army - John Brown with his, like, 20 or so people attacking south.
African Americans as second class citizens were in fact much better off then them being slaves.
We can theorize about the non-violent path to emancipation, and the speedy path to legal equality.
But it's counterfactual. It took severe violence plus 100 years to get there. Plus another 60 (yikes) to get to where we are today.
That's horrible! But nothing about that reality suggests to me that there was a less-violent or speedier way to get there. Governments are made of people.
Getting there was a worthwhile goal. I don't think there's a "but at what cost?" debate here.
So it sure doesn't feel "efficient", but it might be the "most efficient possible" in the human world.
If you want to go there, all governments and their laws (and thus politics) are predicated on their monopoly on violence, and civil society and the rule of law cannot exist without violence. Therefore all politics is violence and all political problems are also violence problems.
I do not want to go there. I made comment about huge amount of violence slavery in Americas required daily back then. Slavery was violence in amounts completely incomparable to what you are trying to equate with it.
Moreover, that sentiment was literally expressed by slavery opposition back then. Afaik, the sophistry about "any government is violence therefore, it is the same, que" was not all that much thing back then.
Slavery was just as much a matter of politics as it was violence. Separating the two as if to imply that violence can't or doesn't solve political problems is a specious argument. American politics has normalized a degree of violence in the last few months that would have been unthinkable, and the degree of violence doesn't change the nature of what politics is, only what it permits.
Reddit set itself up as a speakeasy, people speak their minds openly because it appears in some areas to be free of thought policing.
Do you think it is wrong to wish a dictator dead? Over the past decades USA has not only wished it, but made it happen, at the cost of many lives.