37
votes
Reddit has banned the misogynistic "Men Going Their Own Way" subreddits r/MGTOW and r/MGTOW2
AHS: 🦀. 🦀. 🦀. MGTOW and MGTOW2 are banned 🦀. 🦀. 🦀.
SRD: r/MGTOW has been banned
r/MGTOW was quarantined back in January 2020 after being cited in an FBI prosecution brief during the sentencing of a U.S. Coast Guard officer planning a domestic terrorist attack.
Side note: they weren't just misogynist.
I introduced myself in /r/MGTOW (on an alternate account) as a gay man who was going my own way: I was devoted to singledom, and independence, and all the things the MGTOW says it's about. They banned me - and explicitly told me it was because I'm gay, and gay men don't belong in the MGTOW movement.
Admittedly, I knew I was poking the bear. ☺️ I didn't expect them to welcome me with open arms. I just wanted to expose some hypocrisy.
So, good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.
Oh yeah, MGTOW was basically any other altright forum with just a slightly more misogynistic focus.
Here is a big post I put together 6 months ago documenting dozens of instances of anti-semitism on the subreddit.
As you noted, they were extremely homophobic, as well as transphobic. This often was in conjunction with antisemitism where they would regularly rail about cultural marxism, "degeneracy", and "globohomo"
They were also extremely racist, often calling black men "Tyrones" and often referring to them in fetishized ways. They regularly referred to black women they hated as men or worse.
Some other more general highlights to give an idea of what the subreddit typically featured
A study of Reddit's 'Manosphere', including r/MGTOW, r/theredpill, and r/mensrights, found these forums overwhelmingly dehumanize and sexually objectify women, and used to justify harm to them, including rape
The Guardian writes an article on MGTOW, MGTOW responds "an article wrote by one post wall hoe" "Fuck that cunt. She’s so pissy trump is going to win" "Wow her profile pic has them crazy eyes" "No shit, written by a woman. She can't use men for resources as much so she's crying like a bitch"
MGTOW laments women today with picture of Nazi League of German Women "At least we don't speak German, my goy friend" "The worst thing about women today are the penises" "The nazi knew that decent women are better than INdecent women and they were the Nazis" "I know this uniform, good posting dude"
Misogynistic hatesub r/MGTOW is indoctrinating children "I'm a 15 yr old somewhat newly redpilled guy, and I need stuff this to keep my mind away from my dick... Fuck my generation and fuck feminism. Fuck all the sluts and bitches and hoes. The mediocre pussy corrupts you, and we mustn't forget it."
16 yo on MGTOW believes all his highschool classmates are "thots and whores" - MGTOW responds "You should think of them as lesser creatures" "What differences do you see between women and primary apes?" "It's in a female's nature to act like a whore" "Feminism turned women into whores of Babylon"
MGTOW calls for Right Wing Death Squads to shoot either single mothers or the men who date them.
Women-hating r/MGTOW says "this will never change until men step up and put women in their place... they will always envy and fear the male (biological) superiority... never hope for empathy and reason from women"
MGTOW: "When I look at pictures of naked women now, I see a vampiric devil wrapped up in a pretty exterior" "They are whores and they are manipulators" "I know that what I'm looking at is a facade, decoration to make something bad seem good"
I really can't state how long overdue this was.
Jesus Christ.... I was wrong about MGTOW being less egregious than other manosphere subs that are still up.
Some of these comments make me feel like I stepped into a Voat or Poal thread.
Yuuup. It was really bad and only got worse over the last year since the enactment of Reddit's new hate policy. I have been focusing my efforts to get them banned since the admins finally did away with r/the_donald last Spring as it was basically the next largest hate sub on the site.
If you want to see any more high(low)lights, you can take a look at tons more documentation on them here - https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/search/?q=mgtow&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=top
Word in the comment sections is that reddit finally took action on this subreddit after yet another incel planning mass murder was linked to it.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ohio-man-who-identified-incel-charged-with-planning-mass-shooting-women-2021-07-21/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ohio-incel-charged-hate-crime-plotting-sorority-mass-shooting-officials-n1274673
EDIT: A disclaimer: I never knew just how hateful the MGTOW subreddit was until reading some of the other comments in this thread...
Don't know what to make of this. I'm more surprised that TheRedPill or MensRights weren't next on the chopping block, since they were more egregious subs than MGTOW.
Firstly, I don't particularly like AHS, but that's more because they've labelled subreddits like SubredditCancer, WatchRedditDie and The Cabal as "hate subs" just for cataloguing and calling out power abuse at the moderator level, or because their moderators are ones who openly violate Reddit's moderator guidelines by employing bots to trawl through hate subs and ban anybody from their own communities on sight.
On one hand a ban
probably needed to happen if the mods stopped caring about policing bad behaviour.definitely needed to happen, based on evidence posted in this thread. On the other hand, I'm worried that chasing these communities out of mainstream platforms could force them into echo chambers that not only allow but borderline encourage hateful views, which is already what's happened with incels and the alt-right.I'm saying this as somebody who doesn't particularly agree with the manosphere.
Those communities existed before anyway, so I'm not any more worried than I was about them. I think even if it is as risk, the benefits of removing a dangerous or harmful community from a particular platform outweigh the risks of doing so (although the earlier the better).
Banning the community from Reddit makes women more welcome on Reddit (and thus more likely to congregate and speak up there, preventing an echo chamber in a different way). It causes the group to lose mainstream legitimacy, and reduces the chance of "stumble-upon" recruitment of borderline men who may otherwise have found a healthier way to deal with their negative emotions. It also adds a a bit of friction for people who not fully invested to have to go to some secondary site - even a little bit of additional friction can have a huge influence on someone's behaviour, ask any UX designer.
There's also the psychological phenomenon of the illusory truth effect: the more a person is exposed to a particular idea, the more likely they are to believe it. This is subconscious and happens to many people even when they are aware of the effect. Just seeing ideas can trick a person into believing they are credible out of familiarity. Even more, once an idea becomes entrenched in this way, even refutations can counter-intuitively strengthen a person's conviction in them (so keeping them around for the sake of arguing with them doesn't tend to be all that effective either).
Even if I didn't think all of the above, though, I still think it is justifiable to remove them simply because they are toxic to others. Making these people welcome under the premise of disinfection by sunlight amounts to asking women to be OK with being regularly exposed to misogynistic content for the broader goal of edifying the men who hate them. With no concrete plan to de-radicalize these men and no support for these women in the meantime, it's asking for something from women on Reddit - for the sake of an idea that actually be making things worse for them, who knows - and offering precisely nothing in return.
You're absolutely right that these decisions make women feel more welcome on Reddit.
But I think if that was the admins' main goal or intention with the site, there would have been a far greater purge beyond mere quarantining of offensive and controversial subreddits. From my experience being a user of 10+ years on Reddit the admins tend to be more reactionary, either making decisions based on negative press or major controversy.
And now that word has surfaced that this subreddit ban has been linked to a school shooting plot, I definitely think banning MGTOW was the right call.
While all of this is true, them doing that will still benefit women nonetheless. It's not as much as they should do/have done and I couldn't name someone who disagrees that isn't a free speech absolutist, but it is helpful regardless, or else r/AgainstHateSubreddits wouldn't exist.
This is the essence of Reddit quarantine: there are some problematic
communitiessubreddits that may draw potential users away, so those subreddits are hidden from searches unless explicitly specified. That subreddit had been quarantined, so anyone who had not known about it could not have seen it.Except that r/MGTOW still regularly linked to other posts on reddit (particularly subreddits like twoX) and would brigade those posts en masse to make women feel unsafe on Reddit.
For a very very long time Reddit had a subreddit that was literally called r/N*****s. Even if the users on that subreddit kept to themselves (they didn't) its existence alone was proof that Reddit was not a welcoming space for black people. Hell the Reddit admins allowed r/BlackFathers to stay a racist "joke" subreddit up until a year ago.
So they were basically brigading with mods doing nothing. Well, good to know, and that was explicitly against Reddit's ToS. Also, having looked at the Google Cache of
MGTOW2(mgtow.group) I have to admit that the share of Men Getting Triggered Over Women (as opposed to Men Going Their Own Way) was a bit excessive.Anyway, to get a more objective judgement of those people, I will occasionally look at the place where they have landed (fortunately, not
.win). And I will keep what you posted in this topic in mind.But those subreddits weren't reported in the news.
Reddit has never banned a subreddit until that subreddit brought bad publicity to Reddit. Its modus operandi is to turn a blind eye to everything - until some journalist writes an article saying "Reddit allows this evil thing to operate on their website". That besmirches Reddit's reputation, which turns away advertisers and advertisees. Reddit can't have that! So the offending subreddit is banned.
Never expect Reddit to act on principle. They will let people get away with anything on reddit.com, as long as it doesn't get into the news.
That's why I've grown disillusioned with the platform. The more things that the media unearths, the more reactionary Reddit seems to be.
Reddit doesn't just seem to be reactionary, it is reactionary. I got disillusioned with it a few years ago.
Yet I'm still there. "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)."
Give me a fucking break.Sorry, that was needlessly aggressive That may be what those subreddits are supposedly for, but that is not why they are considered "hate subs"... they were labeled as such because that is exactly what they are. The communities that have been allowed to flourish in those subreddits are some of the most openly racist, transphobic, antisemitic (holocaust denying), and toxic still on reddit. And the reason for that is largely to do with their virtually non-existant moderation, and the type of users they have historically attracted (i.e. ones that have been banned elsewhere for being openly bigoted)... which makes your defense of them somewhat ironic considering your statement about "a ban probably needed to happen if the mods stopped caring about policing bad behaviour", since those subreddits are the epitome of exactly that IMO.p.s. Regarding SubredditCancer, even the mods of it realized what a toxic shithole it had become, which is part of the reason they shut it down.
Firstly, thanks for bringing up the examples of highly upvoted problematic comments on these subs. I never noticed these when I briefly browsed these subs.
The problem is that moderators are given rudimentary tools to deal with violations and are expected to uphold the house rules of Reddit, lest face a site-wide ban, when people can just create throwaway accounts and easily hide behind proxies/VPNs. IIRC only admins can see IP addresses.
My brother is a mod of a major (>1 million) sub and he's found that struggle.
Transphobia at least is also still pervasive on Reddit. I spoke out in support of Laurel Hubbard on the Olympics sub and got mass downvoted for suggesting the IOC were in the right for allowing her to compete in women's weightlfiting.
I 100% agree that the mod tools on reddit are inadequate, and that transphobia is still depressingly prevalent there. Those are two of the major reasons I have distanced myself from the site, and rarely visit it anymore.
However, I am personally acquainted with one of the founders and former main mods of WatchRedditDie... and I assure you that the inadequate mod tools have absolutely nothing to do with the racist, transphobic, antisemitic, bigoted bullshit still prevalent on the subreddit. It's no coincidence that one of the usernames he goes by is FreeSpeechWarrior, and it's also no coincidence that they themselves were banned from Tildes for spewing "scientific racism" theories here.
FSW was not one of my favourite users. They would inject themselves into any and every conversation with an admin to push some irrelevant agenda; usually complaining about the lack of public modlogs.
Haven't seem them for a while. I can only assume they've taken to using alts.
I recognise that name... I think it's someone who frequents one of the other Reddit clones, and isn't particularly liked there.
I thought FSW was banned from Reddit and they were getting pretty good at snuffing out alt accounts he made?
FSW was suspended on reddit at some point for harassment, as were all his alts that I knew of. I have no idea what's happened to him or his site since then though. We haven't talked to each other again since he was deservedly banned from here too.
Please take a look at my comment here - https://tildes.net/~tech/xx7/reddit_has_banned_the_misogynistic_men_going_their_own_way_subreddits_r_mgtow_and_r_mgtow2#comment-6o73.
MGTOW was far more egregious, particularly since it was quarantined last January, than TRP or any other manosphere subreddit. It was not just a woman-hating forum, but one rampant with racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. It was essentially any other altright forum with just a sexist twist to it.
r/TheRedPill has been steadily pushing its members to its offsite website for a few years now and its Reddit presence is a shell of what it once was. Their front page has posts going back a month and are a fraction of the size and activity of where MGTOW was. That is not to say that it should absolutely be banned, but its a lot harder to report them when there is nothing left really to report.
I think @cfbarro did a good job explaining these subreddits already, but I will just add that SRC, WRD, and T_C were all created explicitly to harass and witchunt moderators and subreddits that dared to ban users that broke subreddit and site-wide rules. There is no deeper noble purpose behind what they are doing. They are broadly just angry that they can't call people slurs on their favorite subreddits.
Deplatforming works. It stops their ability to recruit gullible teens to their hateful ideologies, it prevents the spread of their messages within their community and outside of it, and deplatforming prevents them from further radicalizing eachother and egging one another on to commit acts of violence. They are already in an echo-chamber and by taking that away from them if they stick around on Reddit they are forced to interact with normal people and either are banned and removed from those communities (or the site as a whole) or they moderate their beliefs.
What the crap does that mean?
Edit: Derp, it is right there in the post...
r/AgainstHateSubbreddits
Well, I am not sure.
It is true that such communities are a bit problematic.
However, are they as problematic as
FatPeopleHateorCoonTown?Now they are most likely to end up as yet other
.wincommunities.This is how
WallStreetBetsended up, and by all means it is not an AuthRight place.A questionable move, to say the least.
Understatement.
Do you think that every subreddit that gets banned needs to be spamming slurs 24/7 in order to be justified?
And they will have a fraction of their activity and reach. Most users don't want to go to the .win or other offshoot equivalents because their whole point is to troll and be seen by Reddit. For many of them there is no point if their hate is not as widely available.
Can you please elaborate what you mean here? r/wallstreetbets is not banned and is still extremely active on Reddit. Hell the admins even made a custom "diamond hands" snoo avatar for them.
It is nice to see that
WallStreetBetshas been reinstated. However, when it was banned (or privated) during that famous short squeeze, the damage was done.The mods temporarily set it to private. It was never banned. Any damage done was self-inflicted.
WSB is confused. It hurt itself in its confusion.
What damage? It has grown considerably in the months since that very, very, very brief window of time. It was definitely still up and active during the biggest thrust of the GME madness too.
At this point, I have to wonder why you're insisting that something happened with WSB to the point that it's some kind of canary for banning other groups on reddit that have led to actual violence and harm. They're completely unrelated to any of this in every way.
The argument about WSB I am making is that that temporary closure lead to a WSB quasi-community in
.win, which had been a pure AuthRight/Alt-Right cesspool before that. And, indeed, WSB is anything but AuthRight.What guarantee is there that that .win group isn't the more right wing fraction of WSB users?
Actually, this seems to be the case. Today's activity in the WSB of
.winis just a small fraction of the WSB activity on Reddit, but in the days of that short squeeze, the.wingroup was their main place, and I find that really disturbing.It was set to private by the moderators, not the reddit admins.
I daresay the quarantine IS the solution. The place may still exist, and occasionally attract more followers by “the word of the mouth,” while not being discoverable by Internet searches, on-site ads, etc.
Even when quarantined, a subreddit benefits a lot from being with reddit's ecosystem. Reddit has put a lot of work into their site so that every subreddit doesn't need to re-invent accounts, comments, posts, messages, moderation, hosting, design, mobile apps, etc... If the subreddit gets banned they have to go build that all over again which is very effective at stopping the growth and activity of the community. MGTOW was not a community that Reddit should have been comfortable with on their site for this long, and I think banning was the right decision.
When they banned
WallStreetBets, that subreddit ended up in.win. There are MANY places that supportAnd, not unexpectedly, it took me less than five minutes to get to a post in
.wincalling for the creation of aMGTOWcommunity there. Another unpleasant surprise was that that place now has generic “communitites” such assports/animals/funny—it used to be just a collection of AltRight places ousted from Reddit.Yes, there are many alternatives, most of which do not have the backing of a company as large as reddit and could disappear at any moment if the developer or maintainer making the site gives up. It has happened many times with places like Voat (or whatever it ended up being called), Imzy, and more. The .win site seems to be primarily the work of a single dev and I don't see source code anywhere, which makes instability even more likely to happen.
My overall point is that it takes a lot of effort to maintain the software, hardware, and social networking backing an online community. Reddit handles most of that. If they ban a subreddit, that community has to either take on that effort itself or find some other party to handle it for them, of which most are either unreliable or filled with the worst people on the internet. That gives the community much less mainstream appeal, which given the types of communities typically banned from reddit is usually a good thing.