This is a rant.
It stems from the recent Joe Rogan comment about Biden which turned out to be Trump. I’m an indie-leaning “progressive” who found this to be an important moment to call out for everyone.
The video, summarized:
Joe Rogan is proved wrong when claiming Biden said “one of the problems about the Revolutionary War was that we didn’t have enough airports”. Rogan goes on, “If you had any other job, and you were talking like that, they’d go, ‘you’re done’”. “It’s just the media narrative…” Then the actual Biden video is pulled up for him showing that Biden is quoting Trump, “This is the same stable genius who said the biggest problem we had in the Revolutionary War was that we didn’t have enough airports”. “Is that fake?”, Rogan says. Producer, “It’s not fake, here’s the video…” Trump, “our army manned the airports, it ran the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do.” Rogan, “Oh, he fucked up…” His guest, “that’s the thing about the media today, you gotta look into it.”
Is there a sub for instances like this where people say something about “the other side” only to be immediately shown that it was their “side” who said it?
This post is iconic should be pinned to the top of every social site.
Soon after, I received a message from r/JusticeServed (a sub I don’t actively participate in) saying,
Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/JusticeServed because you broke this community’s rules. You won’t be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.
Note from the moderators:
You have been banned for participating in a subreddit that has consistently shown to provide refuge for users to promote hate, violence and misinformation (joerogan).
This fully automated ban has been performed by a bot that cannot determine context. Appeals will be provided for good-faith users upon request. You can reply to this message and ask for an appeal. Any other messages will be ignored. More information on the appeal process here: https://www.reddit.com/r/JusticeServed/wiki/botbanned
My appeal did not include kind words. I called them out for being fascists and being part of the reason why Reddit has become a shithole. My appeal closed with asking not to be un-banned. Then I received this message,
We are willing to reverse the ban only if you plan to stop supporting the target subreddit. Regardless of context, contributions you provide to the target subreddit is a material form of support.
Posting, Commenting, and Voting in a subreddit or on an item is a signal to Reddit and their advertisers that the participant believes that the community or comment or post has a legitimate reason for existing and serves a purpose for them.
There is no place for hate, violence and purposeful disinformation on Reddit. Those sub’s advertisers should not be rewarded for the traffic metrics you and your peers provide to them by showing up and inflating those numbers.
They don’t care what you say. They are just happy to have you continue to show up and refresh the page.
If this is something you can accept, to stop participating in the target subreddit, then please reply. If the bot hits you again for the same subreddit, you will not be unbanned a second time.
If you don’t want to stop helping the target sub and their advertisers, then you can just ignore this message.
I responded, in part, with a full throated ‘you can go fuck yourself’. This lead to a harassment warning from Reddit. I also noted the sub’s ‘motto’ - “Too many times justice fails to prevail. These are not those times.” For fucking real. I had also pointed out that what they’re doing is analogous to DeSantis banning me from entering Florida just because I live in Philadelphia.
Dear JusticeServed, this is called cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I mean, this is the kind of shit that makes people more sympathetic to Musk and Rogan. I am not in support of nationalism or racism or misinformation. What I am in support of is common fucking sense.
It’s very likely that had I maintained my composure I would have had a successful appeal. I didn’t want to appeal to be unbanned though, I wanted to bring attention to their hypocrisy.
With the overturning of Roe v Wade, we saw a couple of subreddits pinning mod endorsed celebration threads. Why anyone would want to celebrate people losing rights is beyond me.
Rights? What rights are you supporting, JusticeServed? Certainly not Freedom of Speech. Spying on people and censoring them for actions they take in other communities sounds a lot like fascism to me.
The take away here is that we shouldn’t put so much emotional weight on stupid shit like this that ultimately doesn’t matter in our real lives. And in our real lives, we should be more cautious with judging people. Your current mood and state of mind can easily cause you to misinterpret someone else’s words and (re)actions. We should all be more mindful to take a breath before reacting to something emotionally triggering. And, of course, fuck Reddit.
Yes, I am aware that “freedom of speech” is a public right that doesn’t apply to private entities. r/JoeRogan has the right to do what they want and r/JusticeServed has “the right” to do what they want in response. This isn’t about “rights”, it’s about what is right. What this sub is doing is hypocritical - which they have “the right” to do.
Agreed. My monkey brain is definitely telling me I should “side” with the rogan sub in retaliation of this event. I’m now a bit more sympathetic to those calling out about censorship.
It’s really not that hard to see how some people can easily become indoctrinated by outsider groups. I think a lot of social issues in this country are due to people being ousted and fearful of losing their privileges then turning to groups that support them while the government seems like they’re working against them. Betrayal leads to resentment, resentment leads to opposition.
Everyone’s focused on the peripheral issues and tangible results without giving much if any attention to the cause of them. You did a thing, you’re banned. But why was the thing done? What were the motivations and intent? Why (rhetorically) are people afraid of immigrants, other races, books, gun regulations, science, etc.? The internet and media are FULL of reaction and reaction to the reaction but where’s the discussion? Where’s the open dialog? Where are the civic leaders trying to bridge the gap between diverse and opposing groups? No one fucking listens any more.
Listening to all the arguments means you’re going to spend a lot of time wasting your time on garbage. Freedom of Speech protects people’s rights to just make stuff up and get everyone else angry about it.
Within this environment, you can’t really expect anyone to just openly listen to everything. It’s just too much.
Yep. I used to see it mostly from that perspective as well. I was more in favor of censorship in places like twitter due to all the mis/disinformation. I’m not so sure though. I mean, ideally, we’d have less stupid and less manipulative people. But our culture rewards emotions more than logic and lies tend to evoke more emotion than facts. I don’t know the solution but censoring questions and punishing people for engaging in conversation isn’t helping anyone. Again, focusing on the people who make things up, I think, may be misplaced. Why are people making things up and why are people believing them?
Because we have Freedom of Speech, and people like convenience more than challenge. Lets take racism. While it should be fairly apparent that trying to lump any entire group of people all together without acknowledging exceptions is silly, its also very convenient to have a scapegoat you can blame your society’s failings on, instead of looking deeper at your own beliefs and how they might be contributing to your problems.
We can’t do away with the freedoms either, as they, alongside our checks and balances, protect us from totalitarianism. People generally consider education in critical thinking, the humanities and the scientific method to be the solution to all of this, long-term. But, others choose to exercise their own freedoms to attack education itself, which they are free to do.
So, it’s complicated. But in classic democratic fashion, the choice will be up to us in the end.