I agree that nothing is too extreme that it shall be completely purged from all discussion. Is that what we are talking about here though? It's not like r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown were communities of academic discourse regarding obesity and race. These were communities where people (probably mostly teenagers) spewed hatred for overweight or black people 24/7. Together I think these contrasting ideas... (1) hate speech should be mitigated, but (2) retaining free speech is paramount... engender a few interesting points:
1. Purging these communities from reddit does nothing to remove the underlying fact that given an anonymous social forum, some people will readily participate in hateful discussions targeting overweight people and minorities.
2. When removed from reddit, do these people find different alternative social outlets to share their hate (i.e. after the ban, did 4chan etc. experience a measureable increase in fat/racist posting).
3. If #2 is yes, is it better or worse (and in what ways) that these people and their discussions are forced to move into forums that more readily accept, or even champion hate-speech.
4. Is there a net benefit or net detriment to keeping these shithead communities within an ecosystem like reddit where they, on one hand, can recruit more moderate minds, but on the other hand, are subject to the ridicule of more moderate minds.
I think it's entirely possibly that there may be a net benefit to segregating problematic groups now, but it may not necessarily remain that way in the future. We are undergoing growing pains in our society stemming from a vast easing of the cost of self publication along with massive siloing of opinions such that people are not always presented with credible alternatives to their own point of view (or credible alternatives are rendered less credible through lack of trust).
In the same way that I think those being born now will have different views on privacy, spreading personal information and identity than those in their teens now, and those have different views on those topics than those in their thirties (the pendulum swings slowly, but I'm confident we'll settle on being more private than early adopters of social media have been, but less private than those that lived without it), I think future generations will come up with their own solutions to the problems of credibility, fake news, and the other myriad problems insular social network sub-groups have exacerbated.
Put another way, these hate groups are using tactics that are proven, but have wider reach and more effectiveness given our current reality, so the only way to effectively fight that virality of that in the short term (until people learn to mitigate the worst effects on themselves) might well be to isolate the behavior. It's like any other virulent disease in that respect.
From my experience, many of the people that inhabit these hate groups often browse subs like r/incel (involuntarily celibate). It may be the case that simply quarantining these groups may work to drop their numbers because members of these groups will simply not reproduce and not spread their toxic ideologies onto their kids.
While funny, that's actually an interesting point. If the main spread of the ideology is through viral memetics to the point that spread through cultural familial indoctrination is very low, quarantining the the practitioners in some manner is double effective. This works even without them having problems procreating, as the same outcome would be observed if offspring are less likely to have similar beliefs (which I'm not sure is true).
I suspect if there is high overlap between the involuntarily celibate sub and the fat shaming sub, there is perhaps something deeper going on in the psyche of these people related to their own body-related issues.
Regarding 3: it is very easy to create an echo-chamber on reddit. Readers on /r/the_donald can stay on that subreddit, or on a multireddit, and completely ignore mainstream subs. They also rigidly enforce the echo chamber by banning outside perspectives.
There is a very deep irony in these subreddits and their champions holding high the banner of free speech while simultaneously exercising their right to censor any dissenting opinions from the purulent conglomeration of hatred.
The sad thing is that when people say they champion free speech for even the most violent and malicious groups of people that means they tacitly support those same groups clamping down on speech they dislike. Because ultimately that is their end goal and you can see it through their actions and speech. A fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes freedom of speech has led down it being used as a weapon against free speech.
> 2. When removed from reddit, do these people find different alternative social outlets to share their hate (i.e. after the ban, did 4chan etc. experience a measureable increase in fat/racist posting).
Yes. See Voat.
> 3. If #2 is yes, is it better or worse (and in what ways) that these people and their discussions are forced to move into forums that more readily accept, or even champion hate-speech.
Not really. I think echo chambers are good for peace of mind and general contentment. I think they also tend to accelerate extreme viewpoints and further entrench the balkanzation of the Internet. It's like watching the Tower of Babel live.
> 4. Is there a net benefit or net detriment to keeping these shithead communities within an ecosystem like reddit where they, on one hand, can recruit more moderate minds, but on the other hand, are subject to the ridicule of more moderate minds.
Something new can only be birthed from the meeting of two or more different things. If we value free speech and a common identity/norms, then it is required for us to be able to reconcile our differences in some manner.
1. Purging these communities from reddit does nothing to remove the underlying fact that given an anonymous social forum, some people will readily participate in hateful discussions targeting overweight people and minorities.
2. When removed from reddit, do these people find different alternative social outlets to share their hate (i.e. after the ban, did 4chan etc. experience a measureable increase in fat/racist posting).
3. If #2 is yes, is it better or worse (and in what ways) that these people and their discussions are forced to move into forums that more readily accept, or even champion hate-speech.
4. Is there a net benefit or net detriment to keeping these shithead communities within an ecosystem like reddit where they, on one hand, can recruit more moderate minds, but on the other hand, are subject to the ridicule of more moderate minds.