Nashville subreddit meltdown

Yesterday was a bit of a cluster on r/Nashville. The mods decided to take the sub hostage demanding something from the Reddit admins.

Despite how hard I pressed, I could not get a specific answer out of the mods other than "something." It's rather infuriating. It's like debating with a 16-year-old.

One thing I asked directly yesterday and I didn't actually get an answer for is "what exactly are you demanding? what subs or users do you want banned?" The wishy-washy "racism" doesn't cut it.

This is a very slippery slope as the answers depend on who is answering. Almost any user or sub that has any level of controversial content is going to have someone wanting to ban them.

There was lots of talk about T_D in the past, but whenever I visited to try to find the violent content I was left empty-handed. There were memes out the wazoo, but honestly, I wasn't finding the content that everyone was claiming to exist there.

Then you have subs that are basically predicated on brigading, like AHS and TMoR, that seem to just fine by the people claiming to want to ban other stuff.

The lack of a consistent stance is quite troubling. What someone wants to ban seems mostly to be an expression of personal politics, an us-vs-them mentality hell-bent on banning opinions and views they don't like.

I'm opposed to that.

What I said yesterday, and what I still stand by is the following:

The solution to problems is not to shuffle things off to where you can't see them -- the problem will still exist, it's just that you can no longer engage with those people you consider to be a problem.

The solution to this problem is more discussion and interaction to change the minds of people who you disagree with. Or perhaps, maybe change your own mind. Claiming infallibility is something few among us can pull off.

Thanks for sharing your perspective. I do wonder how you feel, then, about the Reddit CEO making claims to be against police brutality and racism and not taking any actions in general that would reflect that stance?

I'm still asking what specific actions he personally, or Reddit more broadly, should take?

I disagree that Trump is specifically to blame for police brutality so why should his supporters get singled out and punished as a symbolic gesture?

I'm singling out Trump-related stuff here because that's the only real concrete thing that was mentioned in the article.

In fact, I know of very few people that are for police brutality...

So I still follow Seattle politics since I lived there for a while, have friends there, and still own a house there. Seattle is probably one of the most liberal cities in a very liberal state. They have an avowed socialist on the city council. They have been under a microscope since the WTO riots in the late 90s (to the point of having entered into a consent decree with the DoJ). Their police chief is a black woman.

They are getting raked over the coals, rightly so, for their reaction to the protests. (Check out /r/SeattleWA for the shit-show)

So I ask again, how would banning any subs or users have literally any effect on that? This isn't a rhetorical question.

At best it's a symbolic gesture to placate some people... but if it doesn't have an effect, what's the point?