I’m trying to transition off of reddit completely and I dislike what they have done. But that being said, I thought it was quite honorable of them to not censor the ‘fuck spez’, be it comments throughout the site or on /r/Place. They even left the giant fuck spez ending in the official time lapse of /r/Place and the highest ranked post is a screen shot of the same.
They have many reasonable sounding excuses available to censor excessive use of the word ‘fuck’, and I don’t see how they benefit by leaving it up there. It’s not like censoring swear words is beyond the pale compared to other things they have done. They didn’t even need to do /r/Place, they knew full well what was going to happen but they did it anyways.
I know many people think this is some 4D chess move or a fear of the Streisand effect. They are not that clever.
I just wanted to point out that it does in fact look like they have a line that they won’t cross and they are holding to it.
Also, fuck spez.
I think leaving it up is just the path of least resistance to them. Censoring such an ever-present message is going to have more catastrophic consequences for their PR. Think of all the media talking about how Reddit’s violent censorship is supressing what users have to say?
Plus, they’re not honorable at all. They definitely have been deleting dissenting comments and deploying bots to astroturf all conversations about their new policies. The only reason why they’re leaving the “fuck spez” messages is because it’s purely symbolic while users feel vindicated and don’t make a bigger stink.
Interesting point, that they are actually censoring dissent, it’s just that they are focusing on what can actually harm them and they have deemed fuck spez to be a good vent. So in effect it looks like they are giving free range to words/text protests, but really that is the only they leave up.