• JasSmith@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Reddit has been aggressively banning people for many years. People used to cheer it on because it was mostly aimed at conservatives, but they’ve expanded and created what appears to be a first-strike policy with no appeal. Now it’s affecting everyone. I support consistent application of the rules, but their rules are petty, arbitrary, and broad. A famous example is how they ban people for racism, unless it’s racism towards white people. That was literally written into the site rules until recently.

    I think Reddit is a lost cause. They peaked long ago and now they’re coasting on their moat. As other services like Lemmy gain traction, Reddit will continue to decline, and they will continue to aggressively monetise the remaining users. The only thing to lament is the information already stored on the site.

    • HardlightCereal@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I got banned for racism against white people earlier this year, but I appealed it and they unbanned me. That’s because I explained I wasn’t attacking the people who are labelled as white, I was attacking the label of whiteness itself. Whiteness was invented by trans-atlantic slave traders in order to justify what they were doing and create solidarity between europeans in the new world as they oppressed nonwhite people and enjoyed the privileges of oppressing together. It’s perfectly reasonable to attack the idea of whiteness as a big load of baloney. Also, any person who feels attacked by attacks on whiteness obviously considers whiteness part of their identity, which is shitty because, again, whiteness is fake. Whiteness shouldn’t be part of anyone’s self-identity because it’s nonsense.

      • JasSmith@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I’d be okay with your rationalisation if you followed similar logic for “blackness.” Do you? Is it okay for me to attack blackness, and call it dirty and bad?

        • HardlightCereal@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          I would follow a similar logic for blackness if blackness had been created by black slavers who were using it to define themselves as better than everyone else and to justify slavery of nonblack people. However, that isn’t what happened. Black people didn’t choose to be black. They were kidnapped onto boats and told they were black. They were isolated from their native cultures and shoved into plantations with strangers from halfway across Africa who had no language, culture, or religion in common. They sure as shit didn’t want to be black, they wanted to go back to the way things were before. But blackness is the only thing their children grew up knowing.

          Is blackness fake? Yes. Is identifying as black a declaration of supremacy? No.

          • JasSmith@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Since you’ve admitted you accept discrimination on the basis of race, that makes you, quite literally, a racist. I’m sure you think your racism is justified and righteous and good, but all racists think that. You’re not special. You’re just racist.

            Your recount of history is wild. There were absolutely black slaves, but did you know that there have been millions of white slaves too? Slave markets flourished on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, in what is modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and western Libya, between the 15th and middle of the 19th century. The North African slave markets traded in European slaves which were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, and as far afield as the Turkish Abductions in Iceland. Men, women, and children were captured to such a devastating extent that vast numbers of sea coast towns were abandoned. According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries.

            My own Irish ancestors were also the victims of genocide in the Potato Famine. No one has a hereditary claim on suffering. If you go far enough back in anyone’s past you’ll find cruelty and subjugation, no matter their skin colour. That you’d try to make it a competition to justify your racism is, I think, quite awful.

          • Nima@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m starting to think your ban was justified. you’re absolutely obsessed with race.

          • letsgocrazy@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            This is all utter nonsense though.

            The reality is for some reason people they are considered “white” and some people are considered “black”.

            It’s because of the colour of their skin if you skin didn’t notice.

            Why are people like you just falling over yourselves to invent more facile nonsense?

            • HardlightCereal@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              It’s not because of the colour of their skin. Black people don’t literally have black skin, white people don’t literally have white skin, Indians and Latines aren’t black, and Asians aren’t white. If you look at the average black person and see black skin, literally black skin, then your perceptions have been distorted by racism.

      • smellythief@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The fact that people think whiteness and blackness are real, and sometimes treat people differently based on those labels, makes them real. That’s how concepts and words work.

        • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Er, I get where you’re coming from, but white and black people are physiologically different.

          Not in intelligence or any of the other bullshit racists spout, of course. But there are differences in the way people’s bodies handle things like medication and disease which usually correlates with skin color.

          • RussoCanadianSpyVan@mastodon.social
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            11 months ago

            @KairuByte @smellythief In a sense though, from my understanding, it has more to do with ethnicity (where you were born and who your parents are) and its impact on genetics than just skin color by itself, ex: sickle cell anemia (though a case could theoretically made for any conditions/medications that specifically interact with things like melanin).