That's incredibly naive.

Pretty much everybody likes "freedom." But everybody has a different idea of what "freedom" means. A conservative businessman might argue environmental regulations impinge on his freedom to dump soot from his factory into the air. Hippies downwind might argue allowing the businessman to dump soot into the air is impinging on their right to breathe.

The Communist Party of the USSR defined "freedom" as "absence of opposition to world socialism." Some Muslim clerics believe freedom (or peace, at least) is found in "submission to the will of Allah."

I do not want a news service that promotes "freedom." I want a news service that provides facts, and promotes nothing.

And claiming to be unbiased, when in fact presenting a bias sabotages the arguments. Liberals have such a distrust of Fox News that Fox could say "the sky is blue" and liberals will question their accuracy and motives. Truth, reported from a news agency founded by somebody who founded a political party (that is seen by many as radical, and these very people we're trying to convince to change their minds) will be seen as suspect, and rejected.

There's a cognitive bias for this. I can't remember the name of it, perhaps one of you can, wherein truthful arguments presented by someone you don't like reinforces your adherence to your own false beliefs.

Intent. The same way we judge whether someone has criminal culpability for lots of other crimes.

"Hey can you pick me up at the corner of 1st and Main and give me a lift home?" -- No intent for wrongdoing. No crime.

"Hey I just robbed the bank at 1st and Main and need to get out of here. Can you pick me up and give me a lift home?" -- Knowledge of wrongdoing, intent to aid. Crime.

And the way you determine whether intent existed or not is evidence presented to a jury.

From the facts presented, this guy clearly intended to help swell the ranks and bank accounts of the worst group of bloodthirsty fanatics on the planet. If that's the case...justice boner.

I don't deny the same thought went through my mind when the leaks happened, but after two years, I just don't buy it. I think Snowden's on the level.

So what's the greater truth hidden by the limited hangout?

1) It removed the government's plausible deniability with regards to the rules of engagement (Manning) or the use of surveillance against Americans (Snowden).

2) The government's reaction to the leaks demonstrated that they are not incompetent, but evil.

These discussions would not have happened otherwise. Manning and Snowden did not sacrifice themselves for nothing. Tides will eventually turn, and history will eventually vindicate them (well, vindicate Snowden. Perhaps "Understand and excuse" Manning).

Exactly. Whenever the issue of "damage from leaks" comes up, somebody will say "Ya know, people died because of Manning." And I'll concede that Manning's leaks were far less discriminate than Snowden's, with a much greater potential to compromise a solider in the field.

But name one. Do you honestly believe that if brave, brave Private Schmuckatelli had died to some nefarious sneak attack by The Enemy, betrayed by Manning, it would not be plastered all over Fox and CNN? We'd have tributes, pictures of his wife and kids and dog, interviews with his parents and everybody who ever knew him, lamenting over the loss of Private Schmuckatelli, press conferences, talking heads discussing whether Manning should get death or merely life in prison for his criminal responsibility in this matter. There is zero chance the government would not have exploited that death for maximum political gain.

But it never happened. Not once. Because nobody, nobody, not one person, died because of Manning's or Snowden's leaks. Won't stop them from claiming people did, though.

I'm concerned too about the "politically motivated" part.

For instance, I agree that there is a problem with excessive use of force by police in America. Reddit, however, has a massive boner for any kind of story that depicts police as bloodthirsty maniacs. So you'll see a front page story with a headline like "Man Shot 47 Times by Police Just For Asking For Directions." And you open it up and find out the guy was raging on PCP, firing at cops yelling "Which way to hell pigs?! 'Cause that's where I'm sending you!" The authors of such titles are far more concerned with pushing their narrative than informing people.

It's bad journalism to assign motives to people that they didn't tell you and you can't back up with facts. Just report the facts, and leave the opinions to the comments section.

I support the Pirate Party, but I'm wary of any "news service" run specifically by any political party.

I am monstrously offended by your use of the "r-word," which is disparaging and degrading to those with intellectual disabilities. Your comment is insulting and offensive, and has no place here. I DEMAND the Slashdot admins remove your post, and ban you, so you can never inflict your bile upon anyone else here.

Good day, sir. Good day.

Almost. I think this is different because the official reason the subs were deleted is because they were platforms for brigading/harassment/doxxing, which are not "protected speech." In some cases legally, and in others via the reddit TOS. So, they were not banning places of merely offensive speech, but places of illegal or otherwise prohibited action.

That's not unreasonable. What IS unreasonable is to leave /r/shitredditsays up while claiming you're cracking down on brigading/harassment/doxxing. That place is designed for it and does it gleefully. I'm waiting and watching to see what happens. If SRS gets the banhammer in the next few weeks, fine, I can believe this whole thing is a legitimate effort to curb unacceptable action. If they don't...then yeah it's just disguised censorship. Selective enforcement.

I pretty much agree with the post you linked. You can check out Soylent News. Doesn't have the traffic and membership, though.

Oh and while we're bitching, what the fuck /., how do you still not have HTTPS?!??

I've always wondered, but never bothered to check the source code, about whether or not the karma that you can lose from a single comment is capped. I used to have a troll account here (funny trolls, not malicious trolls) and a moderation history of a given comment might go something like +5: Insightful (because it would appear to be a coherent argument, but was really a mess) until somebody would take the bait and call me out on my bullshit, mods would notice and it would sit at 0: Troll or something, then people would realize it was an intentionally funny joke and it would go up to +5: Funny. But some people still wouldn't like it and would mod it troll. So the comment would ping-pong between Troll and Funny mod.

I know you don't get points for funny, but you do lose them for troll. So does a comment with ten +1 Funny mods and ten -1 Troll mods lose 10 karma for the poster?

But they will become versed in them, and new cryptocurrencies are under development all the time, and some of those will address these issues in ways that make it transparent for users. Even grandmas. Government trying to regulate them will be playing whackamole. It will be interesting.

It's not necessarily slashdot's fault the, for lack of a better word, "quality" of the commentariat has diminished. Basically, /. in the late 90s/early 2000s occupied a unique place in time that won't really happen again. Today, the experts have naturally dispersed and the noobs have naturally shuffled in. I don't think there's any place really "better" because the world is flat. Some blame Dice, but it's really just the fact that the landscape of the internet has changed. Knowledgeable people who wanted to discuss tech, free software, science, etc have many more options for places to call "home" these days. It's the same as the Eternal September on Usenet, except that change was dramatic, but this has been slow.

I started reading /. in I think 1999 or so but didn't make this account for quite awhile. Back then...discussion websites didn't really exist much. The concept of an open "community" was just not very common. Yes, there were forums and things. But not content aggregators with lively discussion in comments to articles. And what was awesome about /. was you would be reading comments about an article about particle physics, and just organically one of the people in the discussion was a particle physicist. It wasn't like they "brought one in to answer our questions" or something. He was just...a regular /. reader.

And the self-selected population would naturally have a more than passing familiarity with physics to make the discussions worthwhile and to make the questions they asked the particle physicist meaningful and worth his time to answer. These people were on /. because there were not many other places to go. Back then not everybody was on a computer all the time. If you were on a computer, on the internet, during the day, often enough to regularly read and post on /., you are likely to be some kind of a technical person, probably with a technical job.

So since everybody likely had a technical background, people who asked stupid questions or didn't understand what was under discussion and posted stupid shit like "LOL I don't know what any of this science stuff means!" didn't get their hands held. They got told to STFU, RTFM, or GTFO. Is that appropriate everywhere? Of course not. But it's nice to have SOMEPLACE like that.

Today you can go to reddit and discuss physics on /r/physics. Or Linux on any of the myriad other Linux discussion websites. Today, everybody's on the internet all the time, so it's noobs, far as the eye can see. There will likely never be another year 2000 /., just like there will never be another 1992 Usenet.

That was a rambling bunch of nonsense, but there you go.

We'll just have to wait and see. I find some value in reddit, but will certainly find less if they proceed as you fear. I recently had my highest-rated comment, which got gold and was pretty damn funny if I say so myself, deleted because of a no-no word I used (jokingly) in an edit. It has left a sour taste in my mouth.

The point of reddit, to me, is free and open discussion where I will find people with other points of view and life experiences. I learn a lot and perhaps change my perspective. But if there's outright censorship, or even a significant chilling effect that leads me to believe I'm not reading what someone really thinks, or missing valuable points that someone is choosing not to make for fear of banning/censorship, then there's no point.

I do not ever want to visit /r/CoonTown, and I find their views repugnant. But I also don't want to post and read on a forum for "free and open discussion" where things like /r/CoonTown are banned.

On /., the GNAA just gets moderated to -1, but it's still there.

I was thinking email, not texting.

Agreed. And that's what causes subreddit drama. But it's part of the platform. Like I said, I think they're in the process of making new tools to manage these issues better. Give moderators more options to deal with comments and posters that they think are problems, and then it's up to a subreddit and its community to figure out which rules to apply to meet their own standards.

I rather prefer the /. model, where you can say anything you want (that isn't literally illegal) and everybody takes turn moderating, and judging the moderation of others. It's organic and allows standards of behavior to emerge and shift over time instead of being statically declared and then potentially arbitrarily or strategically enforced.