This gawker quote sums it up for me:

The Reddit admin's defense of the pedophile sections has always been mind boggling. Erik Martin, Reddit general manager: "There's stuff on there that's extremely offensive and reprehensible. but we're not an editorial site. If something's legal we don't touch it."

...but there are other legal things that Reddit forbids: posting your own personal information, posting advice about eating disorders or suicide, offensive language, being under 13 years of age, having multiple accounts, bullying, commercial posts, letting someone else use your account, impersonating someone, duplicate posts, and, I kid you not, sexually suggestive images.

Suppressing child pornography promotes child rape.

"And in other news today, NAMBLA is reporting a 215% surge in new membership applications."

Good idea. The whole slippery slope thing, when applied to everything, is stupid.

I think that as a society we just have to have some extreme things that we just will not tolerate no matter how much you're into free speech and libertarianism. Child pornography is one area like that, as would be, I hope, videos of murdering people for pleasure/amusement.

If there is anyone who is honestly bemoaning this move, and thinking that their particular quirk is next in line, maybe question your particular quirk, because if it's anywhere near child pornography you're a pretty scary member of society.

I agree, slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but is Reddit making this move based on the recent legal problems with other sites that host content like Megaupload? (I know, I know, just hear me out) If the only reason that Reddit's efforts to bust child pornographers are now "unsustainable" is that they're afraid of complicated legal actions against their own site, then I would say it's sad news. If child pornographers were using the site and getting busted, then we would've lost a great tool for catching them, even if we only got one out of a hundred. People won't stop trading in child porn just because they can't do it on Reddit anymore. They'll just go somewhere else and call it something different. However, if less people are trading in child porn because they don't have easy access to it on Reddit, then it might switch back to being a positive situation.

Either way, Reddit has the right to do whatever they want, it's not a Government site. If people really reach a consensus that Reddit overstepped its bounds, which I doubt, people will start using another site. Digg is already obsolete, Reddit could easily go that way as well.

reddit has a serious darkside. I was a little shocked to find this bit of nastiness http://www.reddit.com/r/niggers deep in the bowels of the subreddits.

A "darkside"? A darkSIDE?! Sugar-lips, saying "reddit has a serious darkside" is like saying "Whitney Houston is seriously sleeping". It's an understatement.

I think it's important to remember that people like that exist. I urge you to lurk and become familiar with the type that think those ways. Hell, it might make you feel better about yourself and your friends and family, too.>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

reddit has a serious darkside. I was a little shocked to find this bit of nastiness http://www.reddit.com/r/niggers deep in the bowels of the subreddits.

Today we are adding another rule: No suggestive or sexual content featuring minors.
we have banned all subreddits that focus on sexualization of children ...
We're concerned about the slippery slope from banning one specific type of content to banning other types of content.

The problem isn't the slippery slope leading to banning some other type of content, but rather how do they define what they're banning now? How many debates have we had here about different posts that may or may not be considered pornographic. Now throw in another variable about the age of the people in the video. Are they kids? Do they look like kids? Are they acting childish? And those are the easy ones.

Do they prohibit certain Calvin Klein ads? Or movies like Hard Candy, Lolita, and Kids? What about novels like Shardik, or even clinical textbooks on how to deal with issues of child molestation? All of the examples I mention in this paragraph probably fall under the ban they've described, though it's hard to say because they are fairly vague about defining the proscribed content ("suggestive"? wtf does that mean?).

I'm definitely not suggesting that Reddit allow itself to be a network hub for child pornographers. They claim that they did not "make this policy change lightly or without careful deliberation." I imagine they did struggle with the decision, but it doesn't seem they spent much time figuring out just what it was they were banning.

Eh, I never noticed them. If it's kiddie porn then obviously it should be removed. Lolicon does not belong though, if it was actually lolicons.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

reddit has a serious darkside. I was a little shocked to find this bit of nastiness http://www.reddit.com/r/niggers deep in the bowels of the subreddits.


www.reddit.com/r/spacedicks

NSFW, NSFL.

Edit: Seriously, though, your link is way more reprehensible and disgusting. Which is interesting to me, because spacedicks is EXTREMELY disgusting (albeit in a different manner).