[2015] Was Reddit always about free speech? Yes, and no
[2015] Was Reddit always about free speech? Yes, and no
I'm sharing this old article because it's useful to contrast the situation back then (protests against hate speech) and now (protests due to the APIcalypse).
Here are a few highlights:
- Back then, the admins were already eager to shift their discourse back and forth, depending on the convenience. Reddit was always about free speech, then it never was.
- Former CEO Yishan Wong's "[shutting down subreddits] won't become a regular occurrence"
- If you try to follow the link sourcing the quote above, you'll notice that most Reddit blog official communications towards users are gone. Instead you'll find a blog clearly geared towards investors, vulture capital, and corporate.
Any other old piece of news that you guys feel like sharing, that can be contextualised to show Reddit going downhill?
Aaron Swartz never really cared about an IPO
He probably didn't but I wonder how much of a role he had on the "corporate culture" of Reddit Inc. Probably close to zero, regardless of his contribution to the platform as a whole - let's say that things like "information should be widely available, specially scientific knowledge" aren't exactly too popular with vulture capital.
I dunno... Reddit didn't turn corporate until the Condé Nast sale. Prior to that, things seemed very laissez-faire (for better and worse).
I remember they made a giant deal about hiring a new admin and the office looked like someone's (large) apartment in photos.
Not that jailbait represented the spirit of Aaron Swartz, but the company wrestled with decisions about silencing communities and I appreciate that
I recognize that illustration: https://old.reddit.com/r/Stand/
Peak Reddit
"We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States — because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it — but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on Reddit. Now it's just Reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse."