Item — HN Reader

The issue is that individual subreddit moderators each control hundreds of subreddits with millions of users. If 10% of the top subreddits ban anyone that participates in /r/Judaism or /r/Israel, that's a much bigger impact than a ban happy Discord mod.

If one friend group is racist and you can't eat dinner at their house, that's qualitatively different than systemic discrimination by the restaurant industry.

In this case, Reddit's platform has enough systemic discrimination that you have to choose between full participation in front-page posts or participation in Jewish communities.

1 comments

If you're talking about what your opinion of is morally right, or a healthy social media ecosystem I'm not really disagreeing with you - I don't think it's good for the subreddit mods to do this. But as per your comments, it does sound like you're making the claim that this activity is running afoul of nondiscrimination laws. This is incorrect.

> If 10% of the top subreddits ban anyone that participates in /r/Judaism or /r/Israel, that's a much bigger impact than a ban happy Discord mod.

The impact is not what matters. What matters is that the banning is done by users, not by the company. Non-discrimination laws prohibit businesses from denying business to customers on the basis of protected class. It doesn't dictate what users of internet platforms do with their block button.

> that's qualitatively different than systemic discrimination by the restaurant industry.

Right, but a restaurant refusing a customer is a business denying a customer. If Discord or Reddit put "We don't do business with X race" in their ToS that's direct discrimination by Reddit. If subreddit moderators ban people because they do or don't belong to a protected class, that's an action taken by users. You're free to create your own /r/interestingasfuckforall that doesn't discriminate.

A bar can't turn away a customer for being Catholic. If a Catholic sits down at the bar, and the people next to him say "I don't want to sit next to a Catholic", and change seats to move way from a Catholic patron that's their prerogative. Subreddit bans are analogous to the latter.

> But as per your comments, it does sound like you're making the claim that this activity is running afoul of nondiscrimination laws.

I edited my original comment because others have pointed out it doesn't run afoul of antidiscrimination laws. You acknowledge that this behaviour is morally wrong, but don't say whether or not a platform should have a responsibility to prevent this behaviour. I believe they should

While the mechanism by which systemic discrimination occurs is different because it's individual users instead of the business, the impact is the same as businesses/public spaces discriminating against individuals.

This is because common social spaces are barred off to people of certain ethnicities and that means they can't fully engage in civic life.

Here's another question. Let's say a mall is composed entirely of pop up stores that close at the end of every month. These stores invariably ban visible minorities from using their services. Attempts to sue the stores fail, because the store no longer exists by the time you gather the information necessary to sue it. While the mall itself does not promote racial discrimination, it is impossible for visible minorities to shop at the mall.

Should the mall have an obligation to prevent discrimination by its tenants?

I would say "yes". In your bar example, it is still possible for a Catholic to get a drink at the bar. In the mall example, it is impossible for a minority to shop.

On Reddit, if it is impossible for someone to be Jewish or Israeli because they are banned on sight from most subreddits, that should be illegal.

> Here's another question. Let's say a mall is composed entirely of pop up stores that close at the end of every month. These stores invariably ban visible minorities from using their service

Again, this is already illegal because the stores are businesses and they can't deny service on the basis of protected class.

The issue at hand is that the government cannot compel individual users to interact with other users. How would this work? You try to mute someone on Xbox Live and you get a popup, "Sorry, you've muted too many Catholics in the last month, you can't mute this player." Likewise, would Reddit force the moderators to allow posts and comments from previously banned users? And what would prevent their content from just getting downvoted to oblivion and being automatically hidden anyways?

It's a similar situation because the laws aren't enforceable against the pop-up stores in the same way you can't sue an anonymous subreddit moderator from being discriminatory.

> Likewise, would Reddit force the moderators to allow posts and comments from previously banned users?

In Reddit's case, moderators are using tools that automatically ban users that have activity in specific subreddits. It's not like it's hidden bias, the bans are obviously because of a person's religion.

Correct, and what's to keep users of the subreddit from tagging posters who've posted in the Israel subreddit and down voting them until they're hidden? There's no effective way to force users to interact with other users they don't want to interact with.

Reddit can (and sometimes does) control who can be, and who is a moderator.

So your distinction doesn't exist: This is effectively the business Reddit engaged in discrimination.

Plus when I read Reddit I'm not interacting with a moderator, I'm interacting with a business.

An actual analogous example would be if individual people use a tool to block anyone Jewish from seeing their comments and replying to them. It would be pretty racist of course, but not illegal. A subreddit though, is not the personal playing area of a moderator.

Reddit bans subreddits whose moderators do not remove content that breaks the ToS. They do not require that communities refrain from banning certain people or content. Basically, you can only get sanctioned by reddit as a moderator for not banning and removing content from your subreddit.

> A subreddit though, is not the personal playing area of a moderator.

Oh, yes. Yes it is.

Many of the better communities have well organized moderation teams. But plenty do not. And the worst offenders display the blunt reality that a subreddit is indeed the play thing of the top mod.