Bard spotting on Bluesky 29 March 2025

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

I may have talked about this before, but it never hurts to repeat it:

The /r/AgainstHateSubreddits overhaul in 2019 happened solely because of research into what Reddit admins actually had said / wanted.

There was & still is an Urban Legend that "Spez is a Nazi / agrees with the Nazis". It's false

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

There was a pervasive "common wisdom" view that the Reddit admins would never take action against hate speech.

Reading through the admins' comments, I found where they had - as far back as 2016 - started interpreting the policy against targeted harassment as prohibiting hate speech.

That was key

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

The bigots who were working hard to control Reddit from the bottom, Mafia style, had platformed & promoted defeatist narratives. Everyone repeated those narratives, everyone believed them, and eventually people got angry when told to let them go.

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

The lessons from that which apply today:

We have to work to find truth, and weed out false defeatist narratives.

The GOP are in a blitz to normalise defeatism, to chill activism and speech.

We have to find — or make — the light at the end of the tunnel.

Because it's necessary it exists