I've always been uncomfortable featuring KiA comments. I don't like mocking them individually because both the absurd comments and the people that upvote them are mostly immature teens who will grow up eventually. It doesn't feel right to mock children here when they are at the point in their life where they need guidance the most.
However, their hateful comments should not be ignored and I do understand SRS is not here to educate others but to highlight bigotry.
I feel like with both KiA and the_donald, perhaps raising the vote score limit from 20 to 100 would be an improvement.
While I think highlighting the_donald will be good in the end, I think care should be taken to highlight the WORST comments with the most votes, and to not chase the trolls.
As illustrated with yesterday's meme battle with
/r/sweden, the_donald loves the attention, loves to troll, and loves to brigade. If SRS reacts to every troll comment they make, then we all just end up swimming in filth.
So what do, brds? We burned Reddit down (at least the Reddit brand), now what?
Unfortunately, it seems that several bigots are following every SRS thread and using it to find and recruit other bigots. There has been an increasing number of racists on Reddit over the past year and they are starting to act more public and push back harder.
At this point, it must be assumed that many of the administrators of this site are racists. Perhaps a year ago, I could have been convinced Reddit just wanted the income from the racists' traffic. However, the new quarantine system gives violent racists and nazis an ad-free private space to ferment their hate.
Reddit has potential and many parts of it are great, but if Reddit wants to try to advertise all the good it can do, then it has a serious responsibility. The "front page of the internet" is a powerful place today. Reddit is not only allowing but encouraging and providing private spaces for violent racists and their kind. It is harmful to Reddit, it is harmful to the internet, it is harmful to the people targeted by hate, and it is harmful to society in general.
Reddit does seem to respond to media attention but considering that the site must be run by racists, I'm not sure if Reddit can be improved. If they had a total change in staff or if they faced some kind of legal action, perhaps it would change for the better.
The work needed to bring attention to people that matter, is outside the scope of this subreddit and I would say it's dangerous.
However, if people did want to do it, what could be done?
- media attention seems to help sometimes.
- Legal attention definitely helps. Every jurisdiction that has laws against hate speech needs to know what Reddit is allowing and encouraging. Quarantines need to be brought up because it's not something the public will find on their own.
- Individual businesses should be aware their employees might be visiting white supremacist subreddits on their lunch break.
Alright this got long. I might pick it up later.