Reddit banning users for sharing Julie Bindel article

The modern “public square” is social media and online discussion forums - none of which are actually public, they’re owned and controlled by private individuals and corporations, and most of which seem to be beyond a lot of jurisdiction. We rely on the benevolence of whoever is running these sites for free some of speech and association in many ways. When they choose to discriminate against a particular group - how do you combat that?

I guess it’s just sunlight, more sunlight needed.

I’m really quite chilled by this. Not that I held any level of respect for Reddit previously. But seriously....next level. Is there no one in control at Reddit that thinks this is just not cricket?

I can’t get over who thinks that threatening to ban people from a politics discussion group for mentioning events on the public record is a good look? Seriously who thinks like that? Are there no grown ups over there?

And the narcissim..... that article was not about any one particular individual until someone/their employer made it about them.

Next level stuff

Here’s what the ukpolitics subreddit mods posted

As you will have noticed, the moderators set the subreddit to private last night. This is not a decision we took lightly, but one that was made to protect both the users and moderators of /r/ukpolitics.

A moderator posted an article from the Spectator - which contained a three-word mention, in passing, of a minor British public figure (expelled from both the Liberal Democrats and Green Party) - and was permanently suspended from Reddit (and later reinstated after we contacted the admins) for "doxxing" as a result.

As we had no idea what had happened, or why posting this article resulted in a permanent suspension, we took the emergency step of making the subreddit private and immediately contacting the admins for clarification. We took this step to protect both the users of the subreddit, and ourselves, from further action by the Reddit admin staff. It later became apparent that Reddit has hired this individual as an Reddit admin, and were banning people from discussing her past to protect their employee from harassment.

We would ask the following:

Please do not name this individual, at all. Doing so may result in your account being banned by the admins.
Please do not ask further questions about this, as doing so may result in your account being banned by the admins.
Please do not discuss this incident on Reddit publicly or privately (e.g. on private subreddits and/or in private messages, chat etc.), as doing so may result in your account being banned by the admins.
We are obviously extremely concerned by these developments, but cannot express our full dissatisfaction with Reddit on the platform at this time.

~the r/ukpolitics mods

This is really, really sinister stuff. Censoring to that extent....in a political discussion forum....wowza.