crosspost: https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/12243
“Without the freedom to criticize, question and challenge the dominant narrative, [Streisand effect takes a little longer]” someone on censorship, probably
**Disclaimer: **This is a repost from the deleted sub DRSyourGME. Since this sub got deleted by reddit as did related DRS subs without proper warning, one may wonder how deep reddit is into censoring GME.
(Original) Edit #1: I posted the same content to another sub to test what happens. It was removed for tagging other subs / users, which seemed to work with lower traction posts/comments before. I updated the table accordingly.
(Original) Edit #2: You probably read the post of Bibic-Jr. Radmins reached out to the sub and implemented automod code to ban tagging users or subs also here. Updated to table.
Preamble
Okay guys, you all know our favorite company is financially sound. Business is running fine. They got our back and I feel very comfortable with my investment as well as occasional additions.
However, I, as many of you, was rather disappointed by the low DRS numbers. I didn’t put much thought into the rug pull theory and moved away from reddit for a while. Especially since I hated that sstonk banning tagging users or links to other subs. Interestingly, I learned about the heat lamp theory via Twitter (via a link to DRSyourGME). Looking at the bigger GME subs I saw nearly nothing of the theory, and yes the immense trading volume at the reporting date felt really interesting and discussable. So why wasn’t there a discussion running?? Why weren’t people talking about it? THEY WERE! It just got suppressed and deleted. Remembering back early 2021 when I learned so much from this community. FTD, where are the shares, OBV, dark pools, OTC, the big players, payment for order flow, bankruptcy jackpot, cellar boxing, sold but not yet purchased, Chewy, cats with bananas, overvoting, DRS and lots more. Oh man, such a fun time. One where my diamond hands were forged. And I really felt, this free sharing of DD and discussion was what was invaluable for household investors. During the same time it felt like a constant fight of suppression, narrative creation, censoring vs discussion and DD. Subs changed. Some valuable fellow household investors died during this journey. We never sold.
Talking with the community, I feel like everybody knows what’s happening regarding censorship and feeling it really sucks. So there should be a discussion on how household investors freedom of speech, discussion, sharing of DD can be made more resilient against censorship. We are at the event horizon, time may be relative, but there is no way back.
Thanks to all of you, putting so much effort into this community and registering the shares under your name! I salute you!
WTF happened? Censorship the fuk?
I am looking at all this censorship for a while and read some articles about how reddit is supposedly more and more making censorship really easy (shadow banning, removing posts without noticing you). This seems to be the case for every bigger web 2.0 company. (there are many sources, maybe read this: https://medium.com/yardcouch-com/the-fall-of-reddit-why-its-quickly-declining-into-chaos-cb0da61aca56 )
However, still reddit allowed wsb to continue during Jan 21 while others like discord shut down the discussion about GME completely. This could have been either a decision to try to control household investors in one system or genuine reddit standing to household investors. However, looking at what Twitter is currently doing to “uncensor”, Reddit seems to be way behind - but this should be another discussion. Still reddit seems to provide much leeway to subreddit mods.
I want to focus in this part on censorship. I think it is equally important to talk about narratives, but this should also be another post.
So as a start lets pick three elements we define as censorship:
- not allow to mention other subs (with good intentions)
- not allow to tag other users to discuss
- removing posts
The latter is surely a difficult topic to assess, since posts might be removed for various reasons. Debatable but legit reasons might be karma requirements not met, reposting of URLs, other spam or surely things against the law. The lesser debatable is removing discussion about new ideas or a new thesis (like the heat lamp), especially if it casts a narrative in a different light. Also an additional factor could be a narrow focus of a sub, e.g. just DD, all other content being removed. However, at first we will do a quantitative assessment, which results I found interesting enough to share with you.
So thanks to u/6days1week I came across reveddit and played a bit. I was very surprised by the results.
The settings were content: only posts, sort by: new, status: actioned with admin, mod, auto or unknown removed for 1000 items per page, before 2023-04-25.
To get the results yourself, just fill in the sub you want to check in [SUBREDDIT_NAME] without the brackets in the following URL: https://www.reveddit.com/v/[SUBREDDIT_NAME]/?showFilters=true&n=1000&removedby=anti_evil_ops%2Cmod%2Cunknown&rr_sortby=rate&before=1682373600 e.g. https://www.reveddit.com/v/DRSyourGME/?showFilters=true&n=1000&removedby=anti_evil_ops%2Cmod%2Cunknown&rr_sortby=rate&before=1682373600
Furthermore, I checked on whether its allowed to tag subs or users.
As mentioned above, removal may have several reasons and is thus just an indicator for further questions.
Interesting topics to discuss further are:
- what narratives do exist and what happens if we openly discuss them?
- what part of the removal are actually regarding topics like book, dspp, heat lamp?
- how can the censorship resilience of the community be strengthened further?
