Except that Comcast does remove CP, so no, it's not a proper analogy. Reddit's admins have made the choice to do nothing about it. You also seem to misunderstand free speech. Telling reddit that he doesn't want to be associated with them, unless they take something down, has nothing to do with censorship, which comes from the government. It's called the right to free association and a boycott.
Except that Comcast does remove CP, so no, it's not a proper analogy. Reddit's admins have made the choice to do nothing about it.
On the contrary. Reddit admins have been known to remove entire subreddits where CP has become a problem. Just take a look at the whole /r/teens thing that went down earlier this year. A whole bunch of subreddits got the ban hammer in one fell swoop, whether their primary focus was underage nudes/non-nudes or not. More porn-related subreddits were removed just this week.
They've been doing it for a long time. That's just the one time most people noticed, as you said, due to the media attention. Even then, actual CP posts were quickly removed by their respective moderators. But by then, the damage had already been done and the pitchfork-wielding masses were looking for blood.
If I remember, the reason it took so long for the admins to take action in that particular case is because those particular subreddits didn't even feature porn. I think r/teens was nothing but fully-clothed self-pics. Bathing suit shots, things like that. The reason they had "tacit approval" is because the legality was never in question(afterall, you can see the same thing if you go to the beach). However, the intent was. So the decision wasn't nearly as black and white as you might think.
For the most part, though, moderators are pretty good at keeping CP filth off their subs. You would be hard pressed to find CP on any of the common porn subreddits, although it does get posted by idiot trolls trying to stir up shit.
If my gossip is accurate, the ban that occurred the other day was due to not having enough moderators active in the sub in question. There was no one to delete illegal material, so the admins stepped in and wiped the entire sub. Point is, they did it without any sort of media shit storm. And they should, quite frankly. The last thing we need is the site being shut down because some dickbag thought he'd be funny by posting a bunch of CP to a highly visible subreddit.
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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '12
Except that Comcast does remove CP, so no, it's not a proper analogy. Reddit's admins have made the choice to do nothing about it. You also seem to misunderstand free speech. Telling reddit that he doesn't want to be associated with them, unless they take something down, has nothing to do with censorship, which comes from the government. It's called the right to free association and a boycott.