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timsquirrell's profile
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@timsquirrell

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tim

@timsquirrell

PhD @Edinburgh_Uni. write on online communities, expertise, extremism. bylines @qz @Independent podcast #PhDigital patreon https://www.patreon.com/timsquirrell 

Edinburgh, Scotland
timsquirrell.com
Joined July 2010

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    1. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      It wasn't until mid-2015, when reddit had a female, progressive CEO in the form of @ekp that they took *some* action to mitigate the culture of hate speech that was festering on the site.

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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    2. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      They banned r/FatPeopleHate (150,000 subscribers), along with four other hate speech subs. Outraged "free speech" fans spammed the site with images of fat people, as well as orchestrating a site-wide misogynist hate campaign against Ellen Pao.

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    3. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      But again, this only happened when reddit was in the media spotlight because of GamerGate and the hate it was bringing. Pao was made into a patsy - brought in to pass really unpopular reforms, and then pushed off the glass cliff into the baying mob below.

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    4. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      It took another couple of months for reddit to ban r/Coontown, a racist subreddit descended from r/n***ers (banned in 2013 for - you guessed it - doxxing).

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    5. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      I should clarify, this was under a new policy that banned harassment. This was meant to apply to *individuals*, not to entire groups, but the boundaries of what constitutes harassment (according to the admins) have shifted when pragmatism mandates it.

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    6. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      For example, the fires of those who claimed a "left wing bias" to the admins were stoked by the banning of Coontown but not ShitRedditSays, a sub devoted to calling out problematic discourse, which many claimed orchestrated harassment.

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    7. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      The same controversy continues today: whenever a new set of subs is banned, the resounding question is "why not The_Donald?" The answer is probably because it's one of the biggest subs on the site, and it brings in a huge amount of ad revenue.

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    8. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      The official line is that The_Donald's mods work closely with the reddit admins and are cooperative whenever bad things happen, so the sub isn't breaking any rules. But reddit hasn't always made this exception for subs that follow the letter but not the spirit of the law.

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    9. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      Ex. Steve Huffman, reddit CEO, saying in 2015 that Coontown was banned because it violated "the spirit of the policy": https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3fx2au/content_policy_update/ctsqobs/ …

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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    10. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      Physical_Removal: fetishised anti-left violence. Banned in August 2017 for inciting violence - the first instance of this kind of ban. *Again*, only banned after media attn - for posts mocking Heather Heyer after Charlottesville.

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      tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

      r/Incels: banned in late 2017 after an Incel user went to r/LegalAdvice and literally asked them for information on how he could get away with rape. The ensuing attention from the media meant that it had to go. r/Braincels, its successor, is still going strong.

      6:53 AM - 24 Mar 2018
      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

          Deepfakes: superimposing famous female actresses onto porn. Banned 7 Feb 2018, the day after Pornhub banned the practice. Again, after media attention.

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        3. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

          And now, r/GunsForSale, r/DarkNetMarkets, r/Shoplifting. These were large subs with developed communities. My theory: it's about sanitising the site for advertisers. Others think that reddit is trying to transition to a "social network" model: https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/863xcj/new_addition_to_sitewide_rules_regarding_the_use/dw2rwy1/?context=3 …

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        4. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

          Even if reddit isn't moving towards a closed, social network model, they're increasingly beholden to the whims of advertisers and media scrutiny. They're getting too big to keep hosting the kinds of extreme communities that get them attention. r/WatchPeopleDie might well be next.

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        5. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

          We all *knew* that Facebook was collecting our data and selling it. The only surprise was just how much of it had been collected & what it was used for. Zuckerberg's protestations of innocence aren't fooling anyone.

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        6. tim‏ @timsquirrell Mar 24

          Just like reddit, Facebook only makes changes when it's financially expedient to do so. They moved to the "friends and family" algorithm probably anticipating this scandal or something like it. Web platforms are businesses first. They always will be. /thread

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        7. End of conversation

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