Willfully Blind
How Reddit’s Moderators Place Feelings Over Truth — and Hurt Homeland Security
Reddit has long been a microsm of the internet itself; a repository for the wildest collection of communities of interest (called subreddits) since… since… well since ever. Or at least that’s the way it was until last June.
It was last June when Reddit banned five subreddits and waded full bore into the online culture wars, and it sent entire swaths of the user community into a virtual meltdown. It should be noted that the five shuttered subreddits were pretty deplorable to begin with, but many concerned Redditor’s argued that this raised a larger question concerning free speech on the web and the way it was being stifled by corporate interests. After several weeks of turmoil the more militant free speech activists gravitated towards Voat and other Reddit alternatives, but for the most part Redditors eventually settled down.
That is, until this June (what is it about the month of June Reddit?) when Reddit found itself enmeshed in a far more disturbing form of censorship concerning the Orlando mass shooting. The censorship came to light when the unpaid volunteers (known as moderators) who manage the r/news subreddit suddenly started banning users from making any comments referencing the shooters connection to Islamic extremism.
The end result of all this self censorship is one of the most bewildering shifts in Reddit’s history, a wholesale exodus of Reddit users from r/news to r/The_Donald. And in case you are wondering the “Donald” in r/The_Donald is indeed a reference to the Reddit campaign headquarters for the Republican Presumptive Nominee, Donald Trump. Which raises the question of what the hell is going on at Reddit?
Although the moderators of r/news are backpedaling and praying the sudden light of scrutiny shift away, the one thing they aren’t doing is explaining their blatant censorship. The likely reason they aren’t explaining their decision is simple, they can’t. Now don’t get me wrong, I suspect that the moderators are well intentioned and thoughtful people. But that just might be the problem. If the moderators refused to discuss important facets of the story (ie that the attacker had sworn his allegiance to Isis) because they were concerned of how it might shape perceptions of the American Muslim community they are guilty of the worst form of censorship — the censorship of the true believer.
The censorship of the true believer is rooted in an vain attempt at ignoring the ugly aspects of reality by pretending they simply aren’t there, and it almost always backfires in ugly ways. In this case it resulted in a large and growing group of Redditors who feel that they can receive more accurate information from a political candidate then from the actual news. That is not a great turn of events.
Homeland Security is incredibly hard in a nation as diverse as the United States. It is made all the more complicated by the deep political divisions that color the lenses through which well informed citizens digest their daily news. When that news is censored because it doesn’t fit into a moderators personal narrative those divides are deepened and progress becomes all but impossible. In the real world, away from campus “safe spaces”, we have to accept that for a democracy to function we need to remember Daniel Patrick Moynihan famous quote: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts”.
It takes an enormous amount of moral courage to speak openly about difficult events, even if we think it will lead to hand wringing and emotional turmoil. When we take the low road and varnish over the facts we turn the truth into a political sideshow and empower the extremists on all sides. While Reddit is a small little corner of the web we should see it for what it is — a wake up call to the dangers posed by self-censorship.
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