Personally I think not having karma limits is nice currently! I understand why they were used but grinding karma as a lurker on reddit was frustrating.
Even having a polite disagreement about, for example, anything to do with “trans,” is grounds for being banned.
A subreddit I moderate, /r/moderatepolitics, has had to do a delicate balancing act around this. There are site-wide rules banning many statements around trans people, and the red lines are not well defined. Reddit’s “Anti-Evil Operations” (site-wide moderation team) frequently swoops in and deletes comments that are offensive to trans people, but well within current political discourse in the US. That has undermined our mission of being a forum for diverse voices to hold productive but difficult discussions. At a certain point, we entirely banned the discussion of trans issues because one side was able to speak freely and the other side was walking on egg shells. I’m solidly pro-trans, but that’s no way to have a conversation.
This likely was done to try to keep Reddit from becoming a cesspool like the “free speech” sites like Gab, but it has turned out to be a lazy way that short circuits necessary conversations.
There is only one necessary converation around trans people, in which trans people say, Let us exist without being harassed or persecuted, and everyone else says, OK. Anything else is just allowing bigots a platform.
I wish the world worked that way, but in practice there are just too many ignorant people out there. They can walk out their front door and talk to their neighbors who are more than willing to pass on the latest slander about trans people. Our sub’s mission is to provide a space where they can try to pass on something resembling the latest slander and get push back. As-is, too much of the US is so segregated by ideology that people may not ever meet an out trans person. We want to foster those human-to-human connections instead of letting them rely on Tucker Carlson’s latest Very Concerned mouth diarrhea.
Edit: I value safe spaces for their function as a reprieve for trans people, and I don’t think every platform should provide a space for unrestricted speech. But at the same time, I think it’s beneficial to have some spaces that require a bare minimum of good behavior so that society can talk about these topics and move forward into a better future. There’s too much ignorance of trans people as-is.
a bare minimum of good behavior
See, the correct definition for this here is “no transphobia”
It’s cute that you think you can fight back against reactionary BS by arguing with it, but history does not bear this out. What you end up doing is creating another space where people can post Tucker Carlson’s latest Very Concerned mouth diarrhea, only distilled into a more toxic form that even Tucker couldn’t get away with, as long as they say it politely. Your way has led us here, to a political situation where people are actively trying to eradicate trans people in law.
