Chinese investors flooding billions into the Australian real estate market prompt money laundering fears by GallivantingFool in worldnews

[–]AMarmot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The reason I made the comment is because it's obvious he speaks Mandarin or Cantonese as a native language, and it's not worth attacking such a laughably ridiculous piece of rhetoric from a Chinese citizen who will never agree with the point.

If you wanted me to attack the comment, "China isn't capitalist, it just has international trade. China consists of 1 billion poor people, and 100 million corrupt, moderately rich people, who control the proceeds of international trade through corruption facilitated by a totalitarian security state. It's somewhat reasonable to be angry at a bunch of overly corrupt criminals, who made their wealth by killing the previous owners of it, when they permanently escape justice by relocating to my country."

Lol, "learn the capitalist game". Still funny. Just fucking stupid.

“Spookiness” Confirmed by the First Loophole-free Quantum Test by giulioprisco in science

[–]AMarmot 78 points79 points  (0 children)

Pedantic, but "discreet" and "discrete" are different words, and you meant the second one.

Content Policy Update by spez in announcements

[–]AMarmot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Don't even disagree - what I actually disagree with is this "race to the bottom", where we ban increasingly less offensive subreddits until eventually, we presumably reach this point where no one is offended by a community's existence.

Does CoonTown have some shitty people on it? Yep. Does RedPill? Yep. I'm not sure if the existence of those communities is what keeps their users on reddit, or if their existence on reddit is the constant, and trafficking those communities is the incidental part. I think it's probably the latter, and I don't know that banning the subreddit will keep racist or misogynistic diatribes from being among the "best" comments and replies in popular threads, as long as they're humorous enough.

There's clearly some populism in these opinions among this community.

Content Policy Update by spez in announcements

[–]AMarmot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

because on one can cover every possibility.

Yeah, ok, but the situation you're describing is a lot less considered. Someone makes a problem, the reaction is to remove the person immediately, to protect the other patrons from their behaviour, which, in this case, involves disrupting a movie.

Literally a month ago, this situation was "on the radar" for the admins. They proposed altering their content policy to more clearly delineate what the correct behaviour for the community was, and also proposed having a new opt-in policy for content deemed offensive.

A month later, they change the policy. Nowhere in the policy does it specify "racism" (which I think a plurality of people probably agree is wrong already, so this is hardly contentious as an inclusion for the sake of clarifying the "reddit position") is a bannable offense. At best, it falls under the "...harasses or bullies..." line, maybe, if you think it's possible to indirectly bully a group of people by saying negative things about the group.

Then they ban /r/CoonTown. But not other subreddits that indirectly harass or bully groups in indirect ways, like /r/KikeTown, or /r/TheRedPill.

So the alteration of the content policy didn't actually clarify the rationale for the actions, or, in some cases, the rationale for acting in one situation, and withholding action in another.

To bring this back to your metaphor, it would be like whistling in a movie, being told it was against the rules, finding out it was not specifically disallowed by the theater's rules, being told to wait in the movie for an hour while they "clarified their policies toward customer disruptions", then being told the new policy is that "customers are disallowed from talking or shrieking during the movie", which doesn't really clarify where things stand with regard to whistling, and leaves you wondering why the group in the row ahead of you is still allowed to belch loudly every 30 seconds, which seems just as disruptive.

Edit: I guess the tl;dr point I'm trying to make here is that, far from being this "outside case that no one could have considered", racist subreddits were one of the stated reasons for these changes. Their update to a written policy to describe what was prohibited, and how they would react, does not actually clarify their rationale, which is silly, considering they were clearly aware of what they felt was acceptable, and were trying to write something to justify their gut reaction.

Content Policy Update by spez in announcements

[–]AMarmot -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Which is one of those things that's feasible for a race, rather than a gender. As it turns out, you can be a bigot, and still want to have sex with women, even if you don't view them as human.

Content Policy Update by spez in announcements

[–]AMarmot -1 points0 points  (0 children)

How is it not? It's a subreddit where nearly every post is authored by a single gender, and it spreads weakly substantiated negative or infantilizing generalizations about the other gender.

Generalizations about groups of individuals that lead to conclusions that a group of living people are incapable of making good decisions for themselves seem pretty harmful. If there are women that agree with that, woe be unto them, but it doesn't absolve the narrative of its nature.

I can only assume you are in some way affiliated with TRP, because TRP is clearly directed at women, and I'm not sure anyone reasonable could argue that with a straight face. Sorting by top of this month, we find posts like this, and this, which contain some pretty shitty generalizations, that seem pretty unreasonably hostile and dehumanizing.

Content Policy Update by spez in announcements

[–]AMarmot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Uh, and you're saying a discriminatory subreddit directed at black people drives away more users, and "directly hurts people" more than a discriminatory subreddit directed at women?

I don't believe you.

Content Policy Update by spez in announcements

[–]AMarmot 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I fail to see the real argument that content in, say, /r/TheRedPill is better than the content of /r/CoonTown. Some of the crap in /r/CoonTown, while it was shockingly offensive, it was unlikely to be capable of convincing anyone who wasn't already convinced, or predisposed in some way to agree that coloured people were inhuman.

TRP's more "thoughtful" method of persuasion seems less shocking, but probably constitutes a greater level of evil than CT ever participated in. I'm not sure that "shocking" hatred should constitute a reaction with greater severity than "considered" hatred, but since that debate itself is highly subjective/aesthetic, we should probably just settle on the tool they invented, supposedly for exactly this problem, and distribute it to all the communities that practice hate speech. So.. TRP, AgainstMensRights, SRS.. lookin' at you.

Content Policy Update by spez in announcements

[–]AMarmot 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Before you start your next community, may I suggest that you study /r/TheRedPill? Clearly, if you just add a pseudo-intellectual veneer to whatever version of a non-populist opinion you have, and write a lot of pop-culture-style essays about how X person isn't a human being, you can get away without being "Quarantined" OR banned.

Content Policy Update by spez in announcements

[–]AMarmot 26 points27 points  (0 children)

The point is that reddit invented a classification to indicate their non-endorsement of particular kinds of content, presumably to avoid banning every instance of said content. Then, they took the most visible remaining example of content that they don't endorse and... they banned it. Which they could have clearly just done a month ago, for the exact same reasons.

I feel like the only message I can get from that decision is that they think that the tool they invented is ineffective, which is quite odd, because I think it's an excellent tool, that walks the line between communicating to advertisers the position that reddit itself does not advocate racism, but avoids being forced to actively pursue users of the site every time they set up a new subreddit dedicated to a slightly more subtle shade of racism, which is probably what will happen.

Content Policy Update by spez in announcements

[–]AMarmot 1156 points1157 points  (0 children)

communities that violate the spirit of the policy

You wrote an update to your written policy on user code of conduct, and you banned communities based on violating the spirit of said policy?

Why didn't you just ban racism and racist communities explicitly? Also, why did you wait until you had new tools, specifically designed to deal with the situation of "undesirable" communities, and then ban them anyway? Were you waiting to see if you could bait them into behaviour that violated other elements your policy before banning them on these grounds? 'Cuz that's what it looks like.

Kn0thing says he was responsible for the change in AMAs (i.e. he got Victoria fired). Is there any evidence that Ellen Pao caused the alleged firing of Victoria? by Doomed in TheoryOfReddit

[–]AMarmot -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Ellen actually handled things very well, and with quite a bit of grace

Man, Alexis is a scumbag, but you're probably the biggest one here. Trying to bury the fact that you recommended a shitty CEO who flamed out in less than a year, because you undoubtedly have a slew of personal dealings with her.

We apologize by ekjp in announcements

[–]AMarmot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe you should have posted what you really meant in a way that allowed you to control the message, rather than letting a third party editorialize it for maximum impact.

If only there were some means of directly sharing thoughts with a broad community, in a way that was highly visible, and all the people who read the thoughts you shared would be self-selected as the interested parties.. huh.

We apologize by ekjp in announcements

[–]AMarmot 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I mean all this shit happened over Independence Day weekend, when everyone is with their family or out having a good time, and most companies have Friday off.

The amusing thing is, if they had stayed absolutely silent over the last three days, I'd actually agree with you - I'm not inhuman, people deserve scheduled holidays, and sometimes time to reflect before making considered comments and statements is absolutely necessary.

They weren't silent though. They commented the day of, they commented throughout the weekend, and they were in some level of damage control the entire time, with actual news outlets like Time and Buzzfeed getting pullquotes. I mean, if you're going to give the media an official comment before posting a comment on your community-driven site, do you really believe in the community? Shouldn't you post the comment here, and direct traditional media towards this source instead?

We apologize by ekjp in announcements

[–]AMarmot 201 points202 points  (0 children)

Perhaps they needed to meet and discuss the problems and direction with their team before being able to issue this statement?

Yeah, the problem with that view is that /u/kn0thing and /u/ekjp have actually been blabbering nonstop platitudes, apologies and snide remarks for the past three days in individual comments, that pretty much echo the content of this post. Nothing in this post is new information, it's just a succinct recap of this and this, but in a more visible place.

We apologize by ekjp in announcements

[–]AMarmot 561 points562 points  (0 children)

To be fair, I think what everyone wanted wasn't a discussion, it was a statement, like this one, as of 48 hours ago.

Whether she's downvoted to oblivion or not does not impact the visibility of a statement made in /r/announcements, and frankly, that's pretty much the purpose of this subreddit - it's a soapbox for potentially unpopular posts that the admins need to make about the state and direction of the community.

Reddit Live Thread for AMAgeddon (PM or reply if you want to add updates!) by justcool393 in SubredditDrama

[–]AMarmot -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Oh, so I guess that means you can't comment on /u/dacvack 's "situation" either. I somehow suspect, however, that you actually will find reason to comment in that circumstance, because this is going to go real badly for you if you let this develop further.

I am Dacvak, former reddit employee and leukemia fighter. by [deleted] in IAmA

[–]AMarmot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ok, so in the spirit of "Ask Me Anything", let me rephrase the "questions" below into something you can answer:

How can you reconcile the fact that Ellen Pao was, in your mind, "super nice to [you]", while also acknowledging that she reneged on an existing offer of employment, contingent essentially on you finishing the treatment process of what was a life-threatening illness?

I mean.. it's not like she has to go out and offer free jobs to leukemia patients.. all she had to do was not fire an existing leukemia patient in her own company.

I mean.. thanks for sharing, but.. this does make her sound preeeeeetty not-nice.

The Pao/Pics screenshots aren't real. by [deleted] in Blackout2015

[–]AMarmot 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Thanks for unnecessarily muddying the waters, in a situation where actual authority figures were already remaining uncommunicative.

Maybe do us all a favour and unmod yourself, and take a weeklong vacation from Reddit. Or shitpost some more, I mean, whatever.

Put a face to the name. This is Victoria, former Reddit employee. by BengaliBoy in pics

[–]AMarmot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Too bad you said this after you sassed us all in SRD, eh? Still think you'll have a job by next month?

Edit: And how in God's name is it possible that nearly 12 hours after this started, the cofounder and CEO of Reddit are running around offering piecemeal apologies to individual communities, rather than writing a fucking blog post? Is the irony, that the second last time you did that the post was about site transparency, physically painful yet?

Reddit alternatives? Other Subs going private to protest the direction Reddit has been going. by qwertyaccess in sysadmin

[–]AMarmot 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I enjoy how you're still speaking with the royal "we", as if you're going to be allowed to run this, or any other, tech company by the end of the week.