How Reddit Became a Worse Black Hole of Violent Racism than Stormfront

[n2doc]

One section of the Web forum is dedicated to watching black men die, while another is called "CoonTown" and features users wondering if there are any states left that are "nigger free." One conversation focuses on the state of being "Negro Free," while another is about how best to bring attention to the assertion that black people are more prone to commit sexual assaults than whites.

But these discussions aren't happening on Stormfront, which since its founding in 1995 by a former Alabama Klan leader has been the largest hate forum on the Web. They're taking place on Reddit, a huge online bulletin board. Reddit was recently spun off into its own independent entity from Advance Publications, the parent company of mass media giant Condé Nast, which also owns Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and 20 other print and online publications that reach an estimated 95 million consumers. (Advance Publications is still a majority shareholder in Reddit.) Reddit has been hailed as the last bastion of free speech on the Internet, an unregulated and vibrant community of users who post whatever they want and rely on the community around them to police their content.

The world of online hate, long dominated by website forums like Stormfront and its smaller neo-Nazi rival Vanguard News Network (VNN), has found a new — and wildly popular — home on the Internet. Reddit boasts the 9th highest Alexa Internet traffic ranking in the United States and the 36th worldwide. Many of Reddit's racist subreddits are among its most popular.


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http://gawker.com/how-reddit-became-a-worse-black-hole-of-violent-racism-1690505395

[stevenleser]

1. I don't know about anyone else, but this strikes me as a warning re: Community Policed Forums

and how they can go down the rabbit hole deeply and quickly and re-raises (for me) the question of whether such a forum is a bastion of grass roots, progressive freedom, or simply mob rule with all the ugliness that entails.

[Sunlei]

2. Condé Nast should really pay those posters. wonder how much they make from infomation sales.

[closeupready]

3. Members there must be so proud of this achievement.

[FLPanhandle]

4. Reddit has some great groups but there are some subreddits I wouldn't go near.

Unfortunately, it's a mirror of the human population.

Most of the folks are great, but, like real life, there are dark alleys filled with the worst of humanity.

[mucifer]

5. I agree. I stay mostly in the vegan and vegetarian subreddits.

Last edited Wed Mar 11, 2015, 11:26 AM - Edit history (1)

If you go to the general political page it's almost all liberal democratic threads with mostly liberal democratic arguments. Not much different than here.

Here is the r/politics thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/

I have heard about weird scary subreddits. I haven't checked them out and won't.

[FLPanhandle]

6. There is definitely a liberal bent to the place in total

I made the mistake of looking at one infamous subreddit that was referenced quite a bit. Never again.

[Xyzse]

7. Reddit is massive, and has many subsets spanning different generations, cultures and world views.

I don't think it is fair to blanket call it as just Reddit.

There are many areas there that are scary to go to, some which would make my mouth hang open and just what they post in there.

I guess it does show that distinction in the body of the article, but it would have been hard to tell from the title.

[AngryAmish]

8. Having gawker criticize reddit is like Chairman Mao saying Stalin was cruel.

Can't we hate both of them?