Reddit's censorship goes beyond eliminating threats, justifies GamerGate

In the continuing follies of Reddit, the administrators deleted /r/whalewatching -- a mostly-inactive subreddit dedicated to watching literal cetaceans -- as part of their purge of /r/fatpeoplehate and the apparently dozens of subs which have appeared in response to work around the spirit of the ban. Perhaps the admins felt that the sub for whale watching could be used to hate on fat people, or maybe it was just a fat-fingered mistake.

This points to a "tipping point" at which Reddit is no longer seeking to stop bad behavior, but to corral everyone into "good" behavior (as conveniently defined by the ideology of the admins). At first, Reddit used its power as a method of stopping a specific evil, the ill-defined "harassment," but now, Reddit is using its power to censor as a primary purpose, and as a result is going in search of justifiable reasons to use it.

Ironically, this fits within the classic complaint about police, which is that if you give a man a gun and a badge, he has power to abuse. Reddit now has a gun and badge and is abusing its power by eliminating all who do not fit within the narrow confines of what it accepts. Where it once removed those who were opposites to that ideal, it now forces every user into that channel, which is why Voat.co's servers are overwhelmed.

A user named TheBacklogGamer raises another important point: Reddit's behavior fits within a pattern of events where we have seen similar behavior from SJWs across the board as they change from having a grievance and finding the power to address it, to having power and then going to look for grievances. In short, these people fit the profile of pathological abusers but, because they are "good" because of their "social justice" ideology, no one will criticize them:

As many people on KotakuInAction have learned, this goes far beyond gaming journalism. Some people will argue that GamerGate is only just about that, and this attached culture war is only connected in small ways. However, as GamerGate drew on and on, we saw first hand just how far this network spreads. It woke many of us up.

...Our opposition is corrupt. They are liars. They are opportunists. They have power. They are privileged. They take up the banner of "Social Justice" and make the people who don't have power, believe they are in the situation they're in because of their race, their gender, or their sexual identity. That have them believe that there's a systematic problem that's woven into our very culture that stops them from ever being successful, no matter how hard they might try. So why bother? Instead, take up arms. Become an army. Become their tool.

You thought GamerGate might not effect you. You still play good games. You still have fun. Sure, some games might be shit, and launches fucked up, but there's still those gems out there you love. But this isn't just about video games. And you see it now. You see the tip of the ice berg and you're starting to make all the connections.

The whole message is worth reading, but the above is the core of it: GamerGate, MetalGate, ShirtGate, and thousands of other SJWs-versus-normals events have wracked the dying days of Western civilization. When do we admit that they share a pathology, or mode of thinking/acting that is similar in all cases?

In other words, the same thing happens time and again: nasty people take a nice cause and using that cause as a weapon, because nice people are sympathetic and will not oppose it, use it to seize power. It is like the burning of the Reichstag or the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a method of portraying yourself as attacked when you are in fact attacking. We know they use fake accounts to make GamerGate and now certain Reddit subs look bad, and then complain about those as a means of seizing power. That is in fact their strategy in a microcosm: create problem, complain about "problem," take over.

Reddit believes it can capture enough of these people to make its business model work. That makes it clear that any one who is not an SJW is not what Reddit wants because they could be replaced with an SJW and earn Reddit money instead. This is why Reddit has shifted from free speech, and it reflects more than ideological agreement with SJWs. Reddit intends to use them by providing them with "safe spaces" in exchange for advertising dollars. To that end, everyone who is not an SJW must be removed from Reddit, by driving them off with the fear of censorship, outright banning, ruining of their hangouts, whatever. They must be removed.

While the above seems cynical, it is based in the profit motive of internet sites. They need an audience. If you can find four clueless SJWs to buy "male tears" mugs for every one intelligent user, the intelligent users are a money loser. Get rid of them and replace them with zombies. If the zombies demand a safe space, let them all come in. This will last for a few years, which is long enough to sell the site and retire to the Caymans, then watch Reddit become MySpace II on someone else's dime. That's the Reddit Plan in 2015.