June 14, 2012

"Within the past 24 hours, user-contributed link aggregator reddit.com compiled a 'secret list' of banned domains..."

"... including such reputable news sites as The Atlantic, Business Week, PhysOrg and ScienceDaily."
Reddit is a site that claims to be all for online democracy and transparency. This abrupt act of censorship has triggered a response from users—and the upset is gaining momentum by the second....

One of the reasons behind the censorship is that it isn’t being seen by reddit staff as censorship. The banned domains have been linked to accusations of reddit users “gaming the system,” or having financial ties to the promoted links. 
There was spamming and cheating. Reddit's response to the linked post was: "You can’t have democracy if people can rig the ballot box."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"You can’t have democracy if people can rig the ballot box."

I thought that's exactly what democracy looks like.

Aridog said...

Guess I am not hip. Someone please tell me why what a privately owned social networking site bans or promotes is very important overall? The censor who? Themselves. One step away from obsessive navel pondering.

I'm sure many disagree.

Anonymous said...

The internet is NOT public space. It is a network of privately owned networks. It's really just that simple. If Ann decides that she doesn't like someone or what they're saying, she is well within her rights to ban that person. Similarly, blogspot, the host of Ann's blog, owns the blog. If they decide Ann cannot blog on their systems or do not like any one of the commenters, that's well within their rights also.

If you don't like the way a particular site is run, start your own. The entitlement that others feel towards other people's stuff is astonishing.

Ann Althouse said...

"Similarly, blogspot, the host of Ann's blog, owns the blog."

They own the location, but I have the copyright in my writing.

edutcher said...

As the saying goes, democracy is mob rule.

Astro said...

I thought democracy died last Tuesday. I saw it on CNN. So what's the problem?