I just got warned for "threatening violence" because I told a racist to choke on shit. I then received a message informing me that the racist had not violated any site rules. Fuck you, reddit.
I don't see how politely suggesting what a racist should do with their time is "threatening violence," but even if it were, we should at least both have received warnings.
Not sure I'd characterize telling someone to choke on shit as "politely suggesting what they should do with their time," but I probably wouldn't call it a threat either.
As for the other part, one aspect of freedom of speech is that people are free to express racist views, as long as they don't violate other policies. And you're not going to argue a racist out of racism. I personally just downvote and move on.
Tell me about it. I recently reported an anti-trans post (during Pride Month, no less) on the Playstation subreddit (someone venting about how the [undesirables] are ruining their online experience, in not nearly so nice language) and received a message back that it did not violate any of Reddit's rules on hate speech. The subreddit mods were fairly quick to scrub it, but apparently I'm allowed to walk around calling people tr--ny fa--ots without fear of being banned from the site.
Reddit is such a clown show. Somehow other people are allowed to harras you all fucking day but the moment you speak up to defend yourself it's more harrasment and maybe a ban or two. Probably the most ridiculous instance of this is when I got run off of r/lsd one time for supporting recreational drug use. I literally got highroaded by bigots for not supporting the war on drugs. On a subreddit about lsd. The hypocrisy is astounding sometimes.