This is an automated archive.

The original was posted on /r/privacyguides by /u/JonahAragon on 2023-10-24 19:56:09+00:00.

This is perhaps best described as a bit of a social experiment…

r/Privacy recently switched posts in their subreddit to “links only” in an effort to clear up moderation issues, which is on the one hand understandable…

On the other hand, I think many people agree that this change wasn’t the start of r/Privacy’s problems. To pull a few choice quotes from a recent discussion over there…

  • “Personally I wish this sub was text only to remove the karma farming and perhaps have real discussions. Most of the links are already posted in other major tech subs.”
  • “There is literally zero reason why someone shouldn’t be able to talk about veepeens and custom roms on a privacy subreddit. Slim down your rules and you’ll have less issues.”
  • “If you have a service or software, start vetting it elsewhere first before bringing it [to r/privacy] basically.”
    • To this I might ask, where are people supposed to vet things if not a community forum?
  • “Just let people be people and have discussions. It’s ok if it goes slightly off topic sometimes. we’re all like minded people so let’s have conversations about topics we care about without being militant about the rules”
  • “We can’t talk about that one android phone rom because… the makers of it don’t want it to be discussed outside of their own forum? Who cares what they want? You don’t get to decide who can talk about your product on the internet.”

We clearly have some different viewpoints on how privacy discussions on Reddit should be handled, and I agree with a lot of the commenters here. If I want to discuss an Android ROM, why should I do so on the creator’s forum where their feelings might be easily hurt? If I want to ask a question about a new thing I found, where else am I supposed to do it?

So, long story short, this subreddit is going to take a very opposite approach to r/privacy: text-only posts, no links to generic news articles you’ll see in r/privacy or r/technology or whatever; and a very hands-off approach to moderation and “rules”: keep things civil and you can discuss anything privacy-related that you want.

I do have a lot of respect for the r/Privacy group, and I think these communities can co-exist. Let’s see?

Your pal,Marsha~