• wwarped
    +3

    Any online community will have issues. No such website is perfect and the size of the those issues will alter, mostly depending on size of the user base. Also any society will have bad people, its just life we are all different. Plus sometimes the word bad, or terrible can be subjective, or just used to describe people that don't fit into your own philosophy.

    The fact is hate, bigots, and such like do exist in real life. So why shouldn't they exist online as well? They often feel like the online world can provide a platform for their views. Then they come together with other like-minded people that justify these views. In real life they know they have to turn-down or tame their views to fit into society. So is the online world a real measure of how a country may be doomed? No, because the user base of Reddit is worldwide for starters. Yes a majority might be American, but as I said previously it's also people just shouting their mouth off because they can.

    The bigger issue is the way the people in power are acting. We are building societies that are sweeping unpopular things underground by banning them, making them illegal in order to pretend they don't exist. Its been going on your years but more obvious now. It was made very clear how hypocritical governments are when many world leaders met in Paris during the Charlie Hebdo march. They all said how much they want to protect free speech whilst posing for pictures as a PR stunt, but soon as it was over they started making laws and persuading others that the only free speech they were keen on was protecting things they agree with. David Cameron was an ideal example as the minute he arrived back he started talking about banning certain content on the web, banning encryption, harvesting more data, etc... all was done using the keywords paedophile and terrorism. When in reality its eroding freedom of speech and expression. So seeing governments act in such a way, and doing it for so long it's not surprising other...

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