This comment was in a post about a guy who openly spilled secrets then got fired.
https://www.reddit.com/r/golf/comments/1dynric/rip_to_the_augusta_ama_guy_yesterday_who_was_not/
I just got a warning and [removed by reddit] because I told a dry cut story about turkish coworkers of mine harassing women and queer people and talking about stuff like “buying wifes” from their home country as an answer to someone posting a similar story. I got warned for “promoting hate and violence against marginalized groups”. I made no generelizations, promoted no violence or hate. I actually got upset because of my coworkers doing exactly that. This is not the internet as I know it. Where you get censored because you talked about something that happened in your life.
As a Turkish person, ooph. Sorry you had to deal with that.
We’ve got some nice coming from Turkey, but also a bunch of shit heels. These days the latter outnumber the former, sadly.
Because there is no discernable difference between you telling an honest story about your Turkish coworkers and a racist using online anonymity to rile people up against minorities.
I think that should be decided by the readers of the comment not by reddit. Unless I actually incite hate or violence. Or maybe if I had a history of leaving comments like that. But it was the first time I talked about it. Or if my account was new or a bot. I don’t like to assume the worst about people just because they criticise something adjacent to a controversial topic. That’s how problems get swept under the rug and never solved.
Except if you leave it solely to the readers of the comment, the communications platform is still flooded by racists and bigots of all stripes. Sure, a lot of their comments are downvoted, but by giving them a platform you’re giving them a way to degrade the quality of the platform they’re on, drive away reasonable users and eventually take over and shit up the place unrestricted. Just like the nazi bar story.
Downvotes are nowhere near as effective as moderation when it comes to keeping hate off of a platform. Sorry if you posted something in good faith and moderation censored you, but that doesn’t make moderation as a concept wrong.
(Also, I kind of agree with you that there should be more signals available to moderators than just “does this comment mention race negatively”. However, I’m not sure you want reddit scoring what kind of person you are and attaching that score to every moderation action.)
Well not if you strip it from all context and the nuance of OPs specific word choice.
Because I could tell a story about my Turkish co-worker that ends like:
“my co-worker of specific race is doing dodgy shit and it’s so harmful for the whole community that he’s doing this, especially with how much anti-ethnic group hate is going around, he’s giving everyone a bad name and I’m worried his behaviour as an individual aashole who happens to be race is going to start a spree of hate crimes against others who aren’t doing anything wrong, because most people aren’t, my co-worker is”
And I would argue that this story is fundamentally different from just leaving it as “my Turkish co-worker is doing dodgy stuff”.
