<story><title>Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign</title><url>http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/10/reddit-bans-five-communities-in-new-anti-harassment-campaign/</url><text>Most notable is &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;fatpeoplehate, which had become an extremely popular &amp;quot;fat-shaming&amp;quot; community.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>teraflop</author><text>This article dramatically understates the magnitude of the shitstorm that is currently unfolding. Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;all&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;all&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; if you feel like seeing all the ugliness.&lt;p&gt;(And if anyone has any doubts that this is ultimately about harassment, count how many of the posts on the front page (and their comments) are made up of personal attacks and&amp;#x2F;or obscenities targeted at CEO Ellen Pao.)&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t fault the Reddit admins for trying to clean things up but I can&amp;#x27;t see any good that will come of this. To paraphrase a comment that I saw earlier today and now can&amp;#x27;t find, it&amp;#x27;s like trying to get rid of an anthill with a leaf-blower; you just end up with pissed-off ants everywhere.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Ah, found it. It was in the &amp;quot;can I sue Reddit for violating my freedom of speech&amp;quot; thread in &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;legaladvice. &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;legaladvice&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;39c58h&amp;#x2F;could_someone_sue_reddit_for_banning_and&amp;#x2F;cs2ch7d?context=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;legaladvice&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;39c58h&amp;#x2F;could_so...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lnanek2</author><text>I think banning the fatpeoplehate subreddit wouldn&amp;#x27;t have gone over so badly if it wasn&amp;#x27;t for the fact that Ellen Pao was already kind of hated on the site for constantly banning and deleting anything disagreeing with her viewpoint about her law suit.&lt;p&gt;Even political cartoons with her driving the tank and the reddit alien with a down vote in front were getting deleted, which were quite funny and appropriate, since she was shadow banning and deleting people basically for down voting her law suit.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s tough to stand up and defend the fatpeoplehate group, but when someone abusing their power and deleting anything they don&amp;#x27;t agree with in a lawsuit does it, well, in this case maybe a villain ruining the site on her managed to do something not terrible, but because she is a villain it comes across a lot worse.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reddit Bans Five Communities In New Anti-Harassment Campaign</title><url>http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/10/reddit-bans-five-communities-in-new-anti-harassment-campaign/</url><text>Most notable is &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;fatpeoplehate, which had become an extremely popular &amp;quot;fat-shaming&amp;quot; community.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>teraflop</author><text>This article dramatically understates the magnitude of the shitstorm that is currently unfolding. Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;all&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;all&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; if you feel like seeing all the ugliness.&lt;p&gt;(And if anyone has any doubts that this is ultimately about harassment, count how many of the posts on the front page (and their comments) are made up of personal attacks and&amp;#x2F;or obscenities targeted at CEO Ellen Pao.)&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t fault the Reddit admins for trying to clean things up but I can&amp;#x27;t see any good that will come of this. To paraphrase a comment that I saw earlier today and now can&amp;#x27;t find, it&amp;#x27;s like trying to get rid of an anthill with a leaf-blower; you just end up with pissed-off ants everywhere.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Ah, found it. It was in the &amp;quot;can I sue Reddit for violating my freedom of speech&amp;quot; thread in &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;legaladvice. &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;legaladvice&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;39c58h&amp;#x2F;could_someone_sue_reddit_for_banning_and&amp;#x2F;cs2ch7d?context=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;legaladvice&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;39c58h&amp;#x2F;could_so...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>baby</author><text>I never understood why reddit was so lenient with its community. There are so many racists and hateful subreddits, that attract more and more people like that, that makes the community as a whole worse.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m really glad that moderation actions like that are taken, and I&amp;#x27;m sad that people reply to that by &amp;quot;harassing&amp;quot; the CEO...&lt;p&gt;Hopefully such people will get frustrated by such events and will eventually leave reddit.&lt;p&gt;Note that it&amp;#x27;s mostly people posting to &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;punchablefaces that are reaching r&amp;#x2F;all right. Another hateful reddit for you...&lt;p&gt;PS: FWIW, &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;all has always been pretty bad. If you want a good reddit experience do like me: unsubscribe from most subreddits and suscribe to smaller subreddits with active moderators.</text></comment>