Hi /u/davidreiss666,

I'm a military veteran of the Iraq war. I deployed to a combat zone with a diverse group of people. Some of those people didn't share the same skin color as me or the same cultural heritage. They were great people and I would have given my life for any one of them (even though some of them I didn't agree with all the time)

I also support the subreddit /r/KotakuInAction

I support it because it's a place aimed at keeping journalists ethical. You should rethink this prepared post that you've just given to everyone and including KiA in the list of subreddits you think are racist and vitriolic. And while I don't support racism in any way or sexism and I am for the equal treatment of all, I also cannot support you claiming that we should simply eradicate all the things we disagree with when it comes to speech because I've seen first hand what happens when people try and exercise their right to speak their minds in a country run by theocratic dictators; they cut off their hands and rape their women.

Just because you don't like something that conflicts with your world view doesn't justify removing those places' ability to exercise speech. I see you've linked a url to an XKCD comic about free speech and government. I like XKCD. They put out some really great stuff. But they're wrong in this instance. Censorship doesn't cease to be censorship if it's a private citizen doing it. We tell governments that they don't have the right to censor most things because we have natural rights to speech and generally governments are institutions with the largest amount of force able to affect speech at any given time. I doubt you're an ignorant person and actually judging by your post you're quite well articulated. So maybe you just haven't thought about it much.

Reddit is a private company, however, and at the end of the day they're free to do what they'd like. Of course I'm free to go somewhere else if I don't agree with what they're doing. But I like reddit. I like that it once stood for a place that understood the concept that to be considered a place that stands for open discussion sometimes we have to voluntarily expose ourselves to criticism and speech we don't agree with. That's a core foundation to and the first codified right of our country. It's what separates us as a society from countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt where they jail journalists and bloggers for expressing dissenting opinions. We don't get to choose the dissenting opinions we like to hear. It's either all or none. That's what free speech is all about. It's up to me and you and everyone else to muster up compelling and well sourced arguments based in hard sciences to combat those speech that we know are wrong. That's the mark that makes us different from groups like ISIS. And if a private company doesn't uphold that ideal then why should a government.

You're a smart person and I'm sure you have the best interests of reddit at heart. But don't confuse good intentions with terrible implementations. You and I can come together and publicly criticize places like /r/CoonTown because that's what intellectually honest and strong people do. What we don't do is stomp our foots down and simply declare things to be a way because that's what makes us feel good. Five year olds do that. Not adults.

Proof of my veteran status:

pre-deployment

post service

Edit: removed an apostrophe