Off Guardian — Sept 30, 2018
On September 27th Reddit went on a surge of what it calls “quarantining”. Quarantining, in Reddit parlance, is putting certain boards behind warning screens, essentially placing a barrier between the public and the information. Some boards affected by this were r/TheRedPill and r/FULLCOMMUNISM (a full list of quarantined boards is available here).
For the most part, the boards are concerning political opinion – whether about gay marriage, religion or gender. Some of these boards are potentially racist (one is called “white pride”). The majority of these boards carry a warning along these lines:
The 9/11 Truth board carries this warning:
Note that:
- The warning is not about offensive speech or possibly disturbing images, but about “misinformation”.
- The warning suggests a government-run website as an alternative.
Reddit is basically admitting, in their own warning, that this information is not offensive and is not hate speech. Their only concern is that it may be “misinformation”. In which case some questions become paramount:
- Who gets to decide what is “misinformation” and what isn’t?
- Is “misinformation” defined simply by whether not you agree with the government or its sponsored spokespeople?
- Is it appropriate to categorize alleged “misinformation” alongside violence or hate speech?
- On a scale of 1-10, how Orwellian does this look?
Feel free to discuss below.