The reason I and many others left Reddit was because of the increasing levels of censorship that were being implemented. So while I may not agree with the attitudes of the FPH group, I still support their rights to express their opinions would like to see that right respected on this site as well. If we're all going to start a new and help Snapzu grow then we need to learn to accept the bad that comes along with all of the good.
If you threw a party tomorrow and invited 100 people to your house where everyone can bring a +1 and 10 of those people were racist or threatening going around verbally abusing your other guests would you let this keep going, given that it's your house and all? Or would you want to take the initiative to protect your guests and the party by asking those 10 people to leave for perfectly acceptable reasons? We're not talking about protecting the fundamental freedom of speech here where the government cannot arrest you, hold you or imprison you for the things you say, we are talking about keeping the party going and assuring we do what we can as hosts to eliminate any abusive behaviour that may stem from people wanting to be abusive. Having said that... like a private party at someone's house, we too are a private run website that has a specific set of rules to govern our platform, and those rules need to be followed so that we can keep the party going. We all see the effects of that abusive behaviour on other social networks, we won't let it happen here, and we believe the community wont either.
Well said. I don't mind if the community is a little protected from transforming into a site that projectss hate and allows trolling. I joined SNAPZU not because we need to change it to be more reddit like but because of what it offers that is unique.
Very well said. I'm happy that Snapzu has this strong opinion on "free speech". It will lead to a much healthier website and community. If people want to be hateful and give their honest opinion in a offensive way, they've got the choice to go other places if it's not accepted here.
To further clarify. Opinions can be offensive, and we wouldn't be surprised if unpopular ones offended people on Snapzu at times, because after all nothing is more subjective than an opinion and how it is received. We however have problems with "abuse" and "hate speech", there is a clear difference between that type of content and behaviour.
I'm in no way advocating that anyone be allowed to go around threatening or verbally abusing others throughout the site or to the entire "party" as you so put it. But that is where I think the whole party anology just doesn't fit. This is a private site or party, yes, and ultimately what is and is not allowed here is completely up to the hosts of said party. While I may not agree with some of the rules, I still respect that they are in place. However, this house party is not just occuring in one large convention center area. It has many rooms. I may not like what's occuring in one room down the hall, but if that's the case, i'll just stay out of there. I'll advise others to stay away too through downvotes of any room material that moves its way on up, as i'm sure many others will as well. In this way, things are self regulating. I never saw FPH material on the front page of reddit as it would have never recieved enough upvotes. Hell, I didn't even know it was a thing until after it was shutdown, which shows just how much of an effect its' existance had during its' heyday. What i'm getting at is that personally, even though I may not care for the ideas or opinions of those types of people, I don't see anything wrong with allowing them to create a place of their own to go and speak to other ignorant but like minded individuals.
I never saw FPH material on the front page of reddit
That's because you've never been on /r/all. A lot of posts reached it, because the fph community was pretty big and that not a lot of people who despised the community would go there just to dislike their posts. The problem noticed with fph is that they would annoy a lot of redditors. There are several stories where they would take pics posted on Reddit and post them in /r/fapeoplehate and then link the user who posted the pic to the fph thread. If we're going with the party analogy, it's like having fph in one room, but an unlocked room. People can come and go and spill the hate, which is not what this community wants. Yes, by having these rules, Snapzu are closing their doors to a lot of people. Although, I think the creators of this site would rather have a site who runs just fine with a great community than generating a lot of money while having a somewhat toxic community.
I apologize then, as you're right, I don't often visit /r/all, just the main reddit.com page. You're analogy with the unlocked room makes alot of sense and I can see how that would be problematic and definatley something that this site would want to avoid. I suppose I just wish that the community could figure out some sort of way to allow all mindsets here while at the same time keeping some of the harsher areas quarantined. Also, and I say this with no sarcasm whatsoever, thank you for enlightening me on some of the FPH history. I'd rather be shown to be wrong on an issue and aquire correct information that to continue on misinformed.
I totally understand that point. However, there are some things that can be done to allow these negative groups without hurting others. When I browse censor-ship free forums, whenever I saw some hatepost (which was allowed) it would be met with harsh criticism, and the person would be negative repped into oblivion. Whenever this person commented on anything, people noticed his terrible reputation and never replied to his comments. We can learn something from this. In reddit, these hate groups ran rampant without any punishment, because there is no punishment. If we employ an effective way of the users punishing other users for hateposts, I think we can have a hate-free AND censhorship-free snapzu.
I think the general idea of censorship on a social website such as this is misunderstood. Let me try and explain.
Let's go back to the house party scenario. Let's say as the host I sent out invites to everyone, and with with each invite I left a short note. The note would say that we have a special room in the house specifically set aside to host the sharing and ridiculing the photographs of overweight individuals so that those who want access can all laugh and hate them together. But that's not all, after we have gone through every photo, we then glue the most popular one onto a stick and parade it around the house party all proud of ourselves for being different and better. I'm not done yet... lets say one of those individuals is there, quietly chatting it up with a drink in their hand having a good time, hurting no one, and they see this. Now lets remember, of course this scenario wouldn't happen, because no one in their right mind would show up to a house party where the note says there is a special room set aside for the ridicule and abuse of other people.
Lets think about actual censorship vs removing abusive content and how completely different those two things are. It isn't our role as the host of the party to go around listening-in on conversations and then kicking people out for their legitimate opinions, be it politics or whatever other subject. But if people shack up in the bedroom and start a 10 person hate group to ridicule other people, we are going to put a stop to it. It's really that simple. It's a case by case basis because we're not about to send everyone a 200 page contract on how to behave at a party, it's impossible to foresee every situation, and frankly it isn't our business to try.
I used reddit for around three years and never one saw a fat people hate comment on my feed. Your analogy was going very well until the part about about gluing the photo to the stick and forcing it in everyone's face. The most I ever heard about fph was boogie talking about it on his YouTube channel, or the meta about it being banned.
Edit- someone mentioned r/all below but it's clear that a lot of people here don't get how reddit works. R/all was merely there to show you the highest rated content of the entire website. If you wanted the best party for you, you wouldn't go into r/all because it shows you what is going on in every room in the house... Including the kids room where for year olds are laughing at fart noises and the sex dungeon in the basement. You would use the FrontPage because it is the party you want to be at.
I've seen lots of fat-shaming on reddit, and I wasn't looking for it, not even browsing the /r/all. But it invaded large subs, like AskReddit, and sometimes even in smaller subs people complained aboit being ridiculed. So, no, it wasn't very well contained at all, large parts of the site were affected.
As soon as hate speech is allowed anywhere on a site, the same users that gather there will be browsing the rest of the site, posting and commenting, and the whole site's standards of behaviour and courtesy will be slipping. Why would we want it? There are so many forums on the internet; setting up your own forum takes minutes. Nobody stops haters of any kind from creating their own place, so why let them ruin a perfectly pleasant community?
I've seen fat shaming in that people promoting unhealthy lifestyle choices have been called out on it. People promoting obesity as a good thing should be called on it. I have also seen smoker shaming in that people saying smoking isn't really that bad have been called out on it. I've seen random comments like 'omg you are so fat' come out of nowhere and hate seem those comments downvoted to oblivion. I don't know why you think your user experience is more definitive than mine and think typing "so, no, it's not" is going to convince me otherwise.
Edit: Annnnnd I get downvoted for having a different opinion.
I don't know why you think your user experience is more definitive than mine
I do not think so. You were describing your experience, and I told you about mine, which is different from yours. Which is understandable, reddit is a big and diverse place.
And, for what it's worth, it wasn't me downvoting you.
Except the rules on snapzu explicitly state that hate and trolling tribes are not allowed. This community is not new, and their philosophy is completely different than reddits or voats, and the least all of us new people can do is respect that and adapt to it.
I respect it, I just don't agree with it. I'm not going out of my way to create any such tribe or get others to do so, but at the same time I believe that they should have the right to and that the rules should be changed to allow that. From what i've seen thus far, this site seems very well done and the community pretty pleasant. However, that doesn't mean I think it's perfect and if it's going to grow than with growth comes change. The direction this all takes remains to be seen, but personally I think this place would benefit in the long run if the rules we're discussing were altered.
I personally think these rules are what we sign up for. If we want different rules and a different experience we go elsewhere. Perhaps it is the very rules that ban hate and trolling that appeal to people who choose to sign up. it is a welcome relief and we should not have to give this up because another site can't manage itself.
I strongly agree with this. The "anything goes" attitude at reddit may have been a built-in characteristic of the site, and I understand why it appeals to some, but it was never the reason I joined. What drew me to reddit was the civil, fascinating discussions between redditors, and that's mostly gone because of the toxicity.
If keeping Snapzu in this wonderful state means an ongoing enforcement of anti-trolling behavior, then I'm all for it. I realize it will not draw the "freedom of speech" crowd from reddit, but I really don't care if they just go elsewhere like Voat.co, which have clearly stated FoS as a core value.
Exactly; it's not as if the "free speech above all else" crowd looking to leave reddit doesn't have any alternative, since Voat.co pretty clearly prioritizes what they're looking for. They have a place with Voat, so let those of us who really want to steer clear of the toxicity have place as well.
Coming into someone else's home and telling them that you want them to let you wear shoes indoors even when its been the rule for years that you take them off at the door is just plain rude.
I have a membership here, just as you do. So is this not my home now as well? I may not be head of the household, but I do reside here now, do I not? Therefore, should I not be allowed to express my opinion and say when I agree or disagree with rule or regulation that is in place so that I may then try to help shape the future of my new home? You see you can't say that all the former redditors are welcome here and then claim that we're in your house and need to show some respect. We are all members here, and thus should all be listened to and treated equally.
It is neither my nor your home. It is the admin's home, we are just house guests. We live by their rules or we get evicted. Its this sense of self-entitlement that led to so many of the problems at reddit, and we should do our best to avoid it taking root here.
I agree that self-entitlement was an issue on reddit, however I must disagree with you on this not being "our home" so to speak. As I said before, we certainly don't own or lead this "household", and thus don't get to make the rules that come along with it. However, as members of the community, we do "live" within the confines of this "home" and thus should have the right to express our opinions on what is and is not allowed here, and thus the directions in which the "heads of the household" take us. After all, that's why many of us are here today, because we didn't care for the direction that previous leaders were taking us.
This is not correct. Those are rules of etiquette, but on the What is Snapzu? page, it says this:
No censorship: We strongly believe that transparency and freedom of speech is vital to any community, especially online. For this reason, submitted content belongs to users and thus can never be removed. As the community grows and expands, we will continue keeping our censorship-free ideology as a top priority to uphold.
Threatening - Don't threaten people, you wouldn't threaten someone at your birthday party. Don't PM threats and don't post any type of threats in snaps / text posts or comments.
Harmful - Whatever you wouldn't do to yourself because your brain instinctively tells you "its bad", don't do to other people. Unless you're a psychopath, then, just, use the code that your father taught you on how not to hurt others.
Unlawful - Illegal stuff gets everyone in trouble, so lets not do illegal stuff. Don't post illegal downloads, music, pictures or anything else that would otherwise land you in jail if engaged in on another medium (like a bazaar).
Abusive - Don't partake in abusive behaviour either by yourself or in a group. No witch hunts, no bullying, no posting of personal information, anything that you would dread happening to you, DON'T do it to others.
Harassment - It's alright to have a heated discussion on whatever topic comes to mind, but don't continue to repetitively PM someone after they have given you obvious signs that they have concluded their discussion with you. By obvious we mean obvious, harassment will not be tolerated in any form.
Libellous - Don't post personal information, don't post defamatory content about other individuals. I'm sure everyone of us hates negative untrue rumors going around about ourselves, this is even worse.
Because some of us think the problem was not the rules but the lack of transparency, consistency and communication? As long as the admins make an effort to be fair, communicate clearly what they are doing and where do they want the community to go, I've no problems with it. As a bonus the snapzu community seems more positive than the reddit community so I intend to stay even if reddit admins get back on track.
I feel like most people who left Reddit (myself included), didn't leave solely because of censorship issues, but left because of the negativity that that site brought on. Even in smaller, nicer, niche subreddits there was a continuing circlejerk and all around shitty people. That doesn't exist here. Everyone is pretty civilized and will gladly share interesting content or even fun discussions. The overall atmosphere is much friendlier and more inclusive than Reddit was or ever will be.
It's not about accepting bad or good ones, it's more just about being a decent, civilized fucking person.
I agree, this site has a MUCH better feel to it than Reddit ever did for me. The dscussions are civil, the atmosphere is good, it's a great place. And I completely understand why with all of that being said, many people would be very reluctant to allow a FPH type of mentality to have a home here. I just personally hate the idea of any kind of speech being completely censored, regardless of how ignorant it may be, because from what i've seen, once censorship is allowed in even the smallest amounts, it will inevitably grow and expand and become a detriment to the community it was originally setup to protect.
I don't think this is censorship. This is a community defining itself as a hate-free zone. Those who wish to exercise their constitutional right to speak their mind can do so elsewhere.
Strictly speaking, censorship is government control of what can be said without government repercussion. The concept of freedom of speech doesn't strictly apply to private websites; your "right" to say anything doesn't extend to individual websites.
If a website administrator decides to limit what can or cannot be said on their website, this is entirely within their right and in no way is considered a limit on freedom of speech per se.
So, a newspaper can't "censor" a reporter? A network can't "censor" a TV show? Which word would you use? (According to the dictionaries I could find, the verb "censor" does not apply only to governments. It did originally, but the meaning has changed.)
I get what you're saying about the more general meaning of "censorship." I was mostly discussing it in the context of the concept of "freedom of speech," which is how it is usually applied in these discussions. Saying whatever you want on a website is by no means a protected "freedom." It's not censorship in the sense of limiting one's freedom of speech.
It's a classic dilemma: which is more important, your freedom of speech or the site owner's freedom to control their website? As a site owner, of course legally I can censor anything I want. Personally, I would have an ethical issue with censoring any content unless it was clearly illegal or spam.
I don't think this is a matter of conflicting freedoms. The law is clearly on the side of the owner doing whatever they damn please. What they can do—and what reddit did for many years—is state that as part of your service offering you will grant users the freedom to say what they want without repercussion.
But this is not a "freedom"... This is an owner, with full rights to what is said or not on their website, deciding they will be more tolerant of dissenting opinions. If they take this away (as reddit is now doing) this is within their full rights. They're breaking a consumer promise, not taking away a "freedom."
So really, there's no real ethics involved... Just a definition of your product, and whether you remain true to the promise you make your consumers.
I understand what you're saying. I'm saying there's no fundamental "right" to speaking freely in a corporate space. This space exists at the sole discretion of the business entity. The business entity can definitely do so out of a sense of morality, but it's not a fundamental right.
Being able to speak freely is one of the most fundamental of rights. Do you automatically lose all rights when you're in a corporate setting? Or just speech?
You definitely surrender your right to free speech in a corporate setting, yes. There's no legal penalty for Facebook, reddit, or Snapzu to delete what they consider offensive language. They have no legal requirement to justify it to any form of authority. You also lose a slew of other rights when you're in a corporate setting... For instance, when you're in a store you're on private property, and they can evict you (i.e. restrict your freedom of movement) however they damn please. Ditto with the right to bear arms in the U.S.
As much as I respect corporations that wish to grant their users or consumers complete freedom to speak their mind, I don't think it's an ethical imperative for them to do so.
For instance, Facebook clearly believes that creating a "safe environment" for its users is more important in an absolute sense than freedom of speech. That's their decision and I don't see it as unethical per se. If you allow total freedom to speak one's mind, you run into, say, hate speech, which carries its own ethical repercussions.
That being said, saying "freedom of speech is something I believe in and i wish for my business to carry this value" is perfectly fine, even admirable. It's just not an ethical imperative.
While I agree that reddit "censorship" goes against their long-held values, I don't expect Snapzu to make such a stand. They've already stated that they're against "toxic" communities and will not hesitate to ban them... As long as they're consistent with that position, then that's fine by me.
You can have mostly just the good... You just have to filter out the "bad."
I agree... Snapzu can do whatever it wants, just should be consistent. These reddit refugee camps do not need to emulate Reddit. This is the whole reason I favored Snapzu over Voat.
They've already stated that they're against "toxic" communities...
Which is an easy statement to make, but harder to when it comes to actually making the decisions. Are religious communities "toxic" because they can annoy atheists? Are atheist communities "toxic" because they can annoy religious folks?
Regardless, I'm willing to hang out here for a while and see how things progress.
Well there's a pretty clear difference between a tribes devoted to religion or atheism that annoy each other (for obvious reasons) and tribes devoted to hating a specific subset of people. It's not unintentionally annoying others that makes a tribe or a user toxic, it's about the purpose of the tribe or the motivation of the user. The purpose of /r/FPH was to demonize and hate a subset of people, and the motivation of its users was the same.
This is a privately owned site and they can make rules regarding what content is posted. I feel like this shouldn't be as large an issue as you're arguing for it to be. If the exclusion of certain groups isn't something you like, then snapzu might not be the community for you.
I know voat was created for the sole purpose of being a place where censorship has no place. That's great for that type of community. And there are likely thousands of individual forums with the sole purpose of discriminating against a certain group of people. Also within their right.
The admins of this site have expressed that hate speech isn't wanted. That is their right. It's on the individual to CHOOSE which community best serves their needs.
The reason I and many others left Reddit was because of the increasing levels of censorship that were being implemented. So while I may not agree with the attitudes of the FPH group, I still support their rights to express their opinions would like to see that right respected on this site as well. If we're all going to start a new and help Snapzu grow then we need to learn to accept the bad that comes along with all of the good.
If you threw a party tomorrow and invited 100 people to your house where everyone can bring a +1 and 10 of those people were racist or threatening going around verbally abusing your other guests would you let this keep going, given that it's your house and all? Or would you want to take the initiative to protect your guests and the party by asking those 10 people to leave for perfectly acceptable reasons? We're not talking about protecting the fundamental freedom of speech here where the government cannot arrest you, hold you or imprison you for the things you say, we are talking about keeping the party going and assuring we do what we can as hosts to eliminate any abusive behaviour that may stem from people wanting to be abusive. Having said that... like a private party at someone's house, we too are a private run website that has a specific set of rules to govern our platform, and those rules need to be followed so that we can keep the party going. We all see the effects of that abusive behaviour on other social networks, we won't let it happen here, and we believe the community wont either.
Well said. I don't mind if the community is a little protected from transforming into a site that projectss hate and allows trolling. I joined SNAPZU not because we need to change it to be more reddit like but because of what it offers that is unique.
Very well said. I'm happy that Snapzu has this strong opinion on "free speech". It will lead to a much healthier website and community. If people want to be hateful and give their honest opinion in a offensive way, they've got the choice to go other places if it's not accepted here.
To further clarify. Opinions can be offensive, and we wouldn't be surprised if unpopular ones offended people on Snapzu at times, because after all nothing is more subjective than an opinion and how it is received. We however have problems with "abuse" and "hate speech", there is a clear difference between that type of content and behaviour.
I'm perfectly fine with that :)
It's pretty much the way "Free" speech works in France.
I'm in no way advocating that anyone be allowed to go around threatening or verbally abusing others throughout the site or to the entire "party" as you so put it. But that is where I think the whole party anology just doesn't fit. This is a private site or party, yes, and ultimately what is and is not allowed here is completely up to the hosts of said party. While I may not agree with some of the rules, I still respect that they are in place. However, this house party is not just occuring in one large convention center area. It has many rooms. I may not like what's occuring in one room down the hall, but if that's the case, i'll just stay out of there. I'll advise others to stay away too through downvotes of any room material that moves its way on up, as i'm sure many others will as well. In this way, things are self regulating. I never saw FPH material on the front page of reddit as it would have never recieved enough upvotes. Hell, I didn't even know it was a thing until after it was shutdown, which shows just how much of an effect its' existance had during its' heyday. What i'm getting at is that personally, even though I may not care for the ideas or opinions of those types of people, I don't see anything wrong with allowing them to create a place of their own to go and speak to other ignorant but like minded individuals.
That's because you've never been on /r/all. A lot of posts reached it, because the fph community was pretty big and that not a lot of people who despised the community would go there just to dislike their posts. The problem noticed with fph is that they would annoy a lot of redditors. There are several stories where they would take pics posted on Reddit and post them in /r/fapeoplehate and then link the user who posted the pic to the fph thread. If we're going with the party analogy, it's like having fph in one room, but an unlocked room. People can come and go and spill the hate, which is not what this community wants. Yes, by having these rules, Snapzu are closing their doors to a lot of people. Although, I think the creators of this site would rather have a site who runs just fine with a great community than generating a lot of money while having a somewhat toxic community.
I apologize then, as you're right, I don't often visit /r/all, just the main reddit.com page. You're analogy with the unlocked room makes alot of sense and I can see how that would be problematic and definatley something that this site would want to avoid. I suppose I just wish that the community could figure out some sort of way to allow all mindsets here while at the same time keeping some of the harsher areas quarantined. Also, and I say this with no sarcasm whatsoever, thank you for enlightening me on some of the FPH history. I'd rather be shown to be wrong on an issue and aquire correct information that to continue on misinformed.
Wow, it's not on Reddit that I ever had a civilized argument like that. Kudos to you for being able to change your perspective despite the pride.
This is not reddit and it is time to move on.
I totally understand that point. However, there are some things that can be done to allow these negative groups without hurting others. When I browse censor-ship free forums, whenever I saw some hatepost (which was allowed) it would be met with harsh criticism, and the person would be negative repped into oblivion. Whenever this person commented on anything, people noticed his terrible reputation and never replied to his comments. We can learn something from this. In reddit, these hate groups ran rampant without any punishment, because there is no punishment. If we employ an effective way of the users punishing other users for hateposts, I think we can have a hate-free AND censhorship-free snapzu.
I think the general idea of censorship on a social website such as this is misunderstood. Let me try and explain.
Let's go back to the house party scenario. Let's say as the host I sent out invites to everyone, and with with each invite I left a short note. The note would say that we have a special room in the house specifically set aside to host the sharing and ridiculing the photographs of overweight individuals so that those who want access can all laugh and hate them together. But that's not all, after we have gone through every photo, we then glue the most popular one onto a stick and parade it around the house party all proud of ourselves for being different and better. I'm not done yet... lets say one of those individuals is there, quietly chatting it up with a drink in their hand having a good time, hurting no one, and they see this. Now lets remember, of course this scenario wouldn't happen, because no one in their right mind would show up to a house party where the note says there is a special room set aside for the ridicule and abuse of other people.
Lets think about actual censorship vs removing abusive content and how completely different those two things are. It isn't our role as the host of the party to go around listening-in on conversations and then kicking people out for their legitimate opinions, be it politics or whatever other subject. But if people shack up in the bedroom and start a 10 person hate group to ridicule other people, we are going to put a stop to it. It's really that simple. It's a case by case basis because we're not about to send everyone a 200 page contract on how to behave at a party, it's impossible to foresee every situation, and frankly it isn't our business to try.
I used reddit for around three years and never one saw a fat people hate comment on my feed. Your analogy was going very well until the part about about gluing the photo to the stick and forcing it in everyone's face. The most I ever heard about fph was boogie talking about it on his YouTube channel, or the meta about it being banned.
Edit- someone mentioned r/all below but it's clear that a lot of people here don't get how reddit works. R/all was merely there to show you the highest rated content of the entire website. If you wanted the best party for you, you wouldn't go into r/all because it shows you what is going on in every room in the house... Including the kids room where for year olds are laughing at fart noises and the sex dungeon in the basement. You would use the FrontPage because it is the party you want to be at.
I've seen lots of fat-shaming on reddit, and I wasn't looking for it, not even browsing the /r/all. But it invaded large subs, like AskReddit, and sometimes even in smaller subs people complained aboit being ridiculed. So, no, it wasn't very well contained at all, large parts of the site were affected.
As soon as hate speech is allowed anywhere on a site, the same users that gather there will be browsing the rest of the site, posting and commenting, and the whole site's standards of behaviour and courtesy will be slipping. Why would we want it? There are so many forums on the internet; setting up your own forum takes minutes. Nobody stops haters of any kind from creating their own place, so why let them ruin a perfectly pleasant community?
I've seen fat shaming in that people promoting unhealthy lifestyle choices have been called out on it. People promoting obesity as a good thing should be called on it. I have also seen smoker shaming in that people saying smoking isn't really that bad have been called out on it. I've seen random comments like 'omg you are so fat' come out of nowhere and hate seem those comments downvoted to oblivion. I don't know why you think your user experience is more definitive than mine and think typing "so, no, it's not" is going to convince me otherwise.
Edit: Annnnnd I get downvoted for having a different opinion.
I do not think so. You were describing your experience, and I told you about mine, which is different from yours. Which is understandable, reddit is a big and diverse place.
And, for what it's worth, it wasn't me downvoting you.
Except the rules on snapzu explicitly state that hate and trolling tribes are not allowed. This community is not new, and their philosophy is completely different than reddits or voats, and the least all of us new people can do is respect that and adapt to it.
I respect it, I just don't agree with it. I'm not going out of my way to create any such tribe or get others to do so, but at the same time I believe that they should have the right to and that the rules should be changed to allow that. From what i've seen thus far, this site seems very well done and the community pretty pleasant. However, that doesn't mean I think it's perfect and if it's going to grow than with growth comes change. The direction this all takes remains to be seen, but personally I think this place would benefit in the long run if the rules we're discussing were altered.
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Coming into someone else's home and telling them that you want them to let you wear shoes indoors even when its been the rule for years that you take them off at the door is just plain rude.
I have a membership here, just as you do. So is this not my home now as well? I may not be head of the household, but I do reside here now, do I not? Therefore, should I not be allowed to express my opinion and say when I agree or disagree with rule or regulation that is in place so that I may then try to help shape the future of my new home? You see you can't say that all the former redditors are welcome here and then claim that we're in your house and need to show some respect. We are all members here, and thus should all be listened to and treated equally.
It is neither my nor your home. It is the admin's home, we are just house guests. We live by their rules or we get evicted. Its this sense of self-entitlement that led to so many of the problems at reddit, and we should do our best to avoid it taking root here.
I agree that self-entitlement was an issue on reddit, however I must disagree with you on this not being "our home" so to speak. As I said before, we certainly don't own or lead this "household", and thus don't get to make the rules that come along with it. However, as members of the community, we do "live" within the confines of this "home" and thus should have the right to express our opinions on what is and is not allowed here, and thus the directions in which the "heads of the household" take us. After all, that's why many of us are here today, because we didn't care for the direction that previous leaders were taking us.
This is not correct. Those are rules of etiquette, but on the What is Snapzu? page, it says this:
From the TOS:
Yup. Same as the rules on reddit. (Which brings up the question... why are so many former redditors here, then?)
Because some of us think the problem was not the rules but the lack of transparency, consistency and communication? As long as the admins make an effort to be fair, communicate clearly what they are doing and where do they want the community to go, I've no problems with it. As a bonus the snapzu community seems more positive than the reddit community so I intend to stay even if reddit admins get back on track.
I feel like most people who left Reddit (myself included), didn't leave solely because of censorship issues, but left because of the negativity that that site brought on. Even in smaller, nicer, niche subreddits there was a continuing circlejerk and all around shitty people. That doesn't exist here. Everyone is pretty civilized and will gladly share interesting content or even fun discussions. The overall atmosphere is much friendlier and more inclusive than Reddit was or ever will be.
It's not about accepting bad or good ones, it's more just about being a decent, civilized fucking person.
I agree, this site has a MUCH better feel to it than Reddit ever did for me. The dscussions are civil, the atmosphere is good, it's a great place. And I completely understand why with all of that being said, many people would be very reluctant to allow a FPH type of mentality to have a home here. I just personally hate the idea of any kind of speech being completely censored, regardless of how ignorant it may be, because from what i've seen, once censorship is allowed in even the smallest amounts, it will inevitably grow and expand and become a detriment to the community it was originally setup to protect.
I don't think this is censorship. This is a community defining itself as a hate-free zone. Those who wish to exercise their constitutional right to speak their mind can do so elsewhere.
What do you think "censorship" is?
Strictly speaking, censorship is government control of what can be said without government repercussion. The concept of freedom of speech doesn't strictly apply to private websites; your "right" to say anything doesn't extend to individual websites.
If a website administrator decides to limit what can or cannot be said on their website, this is entirely within their right and in no way is considered a limit on freedom of speech per se.
So, a newspaper can't "censor" a reporter? A network can't "censor" a TV show? Which word would you use? (According to the dictionaries I could find, the verb "censor" does not apply only to governments. It did originally, but the meaning has changed.)
I get what you're saying about the more general meaning of "censorship." I was mostly discussing it in the context of the concept of "freedom of speech," which is how it is usually applied in these discussions. Saying whatever you want on a website is by no means a protected "freedom." It's not censorship in the sense of limiting one's freedom of speech.
It's a classic dilemma: which is more important, your freedom of speech or the site owner's freedom to control their website? As a site owner, of course legally I can censor anything I want. Personally, I would have an ethical issue with censoring any content unless it was clearly illegal or spam.
I don't think this is a matter of conflicting freedoms. The law is clearly on the side of the owner doing whatever they damn please. What they can do—and what reddit did for many years—is state that as part of your service offering you will grant users the freedom to say what they want without repercussion.
But this is not a "freedom"... This is an owner, with full rights to what is said or not on their website, deciding they will be more tolerant of dissenting opinions. If they take this away (as reddit is now doing) this is within their full rights. They're breaking a consumer promise, not taking away a "freedom."
So really, there's no real ethics involved... Just a definition of your product, and whether you remain true to the promise you make your consumers.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. "Remaining true to a promise" is totally an ethics issue for me.
I understand what you're saying. I'm saying there's no fundamental "right" to speaking freely in a corporate space. This space exists at the sole discretion of the business entity. The business entity can definitely do so out of a sense of morality, but it's not a fundamental right.
Being able to speak freely is one of the most fundamental of rights. Do you automatically lose all rights when you're in a corporate setting? Or just speech?
You definitely surrender your right to free speech in a corporate setting, yes. There's no legal penalty for Facebook, reddit, or Snapzu to delete what they consider offensive language. They have no legal requirement to justify it to any form of authority. You also lose a slew of other rights when you're in a corporate setting... For instance, when you're in a store you're on private property, and they can evict you (i.e. restrict your freedom of movement) however they damn please. Ditto with the right to bear arms in the U.S.
I'm not talking about what's legal, I'm talking about what's ethical.
As much as I respect corporations that wish to grant their users or consumers complete freedom to speak their mind, I don't think it's an ethical imperative for them to do so.
For instance, Facebook clearly believes that creating a "safe environment" for its users is more important in an absolute sense than freedom of speech. That's their decision and I don't see it as unethical per se. If you allow total freedom to speak one's mind, you run into, say, hate speech, which carries its own ethical repercussions.
That being said, saying "freedom of speech is something I believe in and i wish for my business to carry this value" is perfectly fine, even admirable. It's just not an ethical imperative.
You provide a good point. It will be interesting to see how this site tackles it once the community keeps growing.
Agreed. I'm actually really looking forward to seeing where this community goes.
I disagree.
While I agree that reddit "censorship" goes against their long-held values, I don't expect Snapzu to make such a stand. They've already stated that they're against "toxic" communities and will not hesitate to ban them... As long as they're consistent with that position, then that's fine by me.
You can have mostly just the good... You just have to filter out the "bad."
I agree... Snapzu can do whatever it wants, just should be consistent. These reddit refugee camps do not need to emulate Reddit. This is the whole reason I favored Snapzu over Voat.
Which is an easy statement to make, but harder to when it comes to actually making the decisions. Are religious communities "toxic" because they can annoy atheists? Are atheist communities "toxic" because they can annoy religious folks?
Regardless, I'm willing to hang out here for a while and see how things progress.
Well there's a pretty clear difference between a tribes devoted to religion or atheism that annoy each other (for obvious reasons) and tribes devoted to hating a specific subset of people. It's not unintentionally annoying others that makes a tribe or a user toxic, it's about the purpose of the tribe or the motivation of the user. The purpose of /r/FPH was to demonize and hate a subset of people, and the motivation of its users was the same.
Yeah, that's the main concern. How to define toxicity. We will have to draw the lines as time passes.
This is a privately owned site and they can make rules regarding what content is posted. I feel like this shouldn't be as large an issue as you're arguing for it to be. If the exclusion of certain groups isn't something you like, then snapzu might not be the community for you.
I know voat was created for the sole purpose of being a place where censorship has no place. That's great for that type of community. And there are likely thousands of individual forums with the sole purpose of discriminating against a certain group of people. Also within their right.
The admins of this site have expressed that hate speech isn't wanted. That is their right. It's on the individual to CHOOSE which community best serves their needs.