Two days ago, I shared an article on r/philosophy. After 69 likes and 25 comments, the moderators took it down, banned me, and locked it so that the discussion would not continue. All this without any explanation to the public. Here is a retracing and possible explanation.
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They sent me a message that they do not allow “AI-created or AI-assisted content.” There is not a single word in this post, or any of my posts for that matter, that comes from AI. I asked them, and it turned out it was the picture, which I did in fact create with the help of AI. However, I also spent quite a bit of time in Acorn trying to make the text look as if it’s written on the wall. In any case, the picture had nothing to do with the article and I would be happy to take it down. But I was not asked, and it does not matter. What matters is I broke a rule—their rule.
To inform me, they sent me a fully automated message. I know because I confirmed it. Not partly automated, but fully. At first they denied, but after probing a bit, they agreed. I think the confusion was that they took my use of “automated” to mean “generated ad-hoc by a machine, AI or otherwise.” But, in fact what I meant was even more automated than that. I meant a template. I meant literally the most automated kind of writing you could have; the kind that is more automated than copy-and-paste. So, they decided to report that they are against automatically-created content with an automatically-created message. Hypocrisy: the authoritarian personality owns no mirrors.
But the problem is deeper. It should be obvious that I did read the rules. I missed this particular rule because, at the time of posting, there were a bunch of “PR” (posting-replies) rules, and at some point the “CR” (comments-replies) rules started. Then, it turned out that there were more “PR” rules down the list, one of which was the rule about AI. I missed it because at the time I was trying, for 15 minutes, to figure out whether my “self-post” is acceptable. None of this cancels out my the mistake, but it indicates two things.
First, it explains it was not intentional. I am fairly confident (and no one denied it) that they already knew that. This is precisely what makes this case interesting. In any normal, similar interaction, the gatekeeper would say “AI content is not allowed. Now you know. Please remove the image and if you do it again there will be consequences.”
However, this is not how the authoritarian personality works. Because the more fundamental thing we need to realize is that the point is not that AI content should not appear. In general, the point is not the substance of a rule. Rather, it is all about obedience to the rules; the rules they created. See, this is not a random interpretation. They told me that “we use bans sometimes to make sure our rules are understood.”
Of course this makes no sense. It is obvious their rules would be understood if they sent the message I drafted above; the one that informs the one who made the mistake, removes the objectionable content, keeps any content that can be kept, and only promises consequences in future instances. But this is what you do if you care about liberty. You do not censor, ban, and lock unless you have to. In contrast, in Reddit it works exactly the other way around. They ban, censor, and lock unless they must not. This is the love for authority, the fixation with not the substance of the rules, but the rules as a form, as a notion. Obedience and conformity, this is the goal. This what the authoritarian personality enjoys.
Furthermore, the treatment is uniform. It ignores the individual case, person, and condition. The justification is the load of work, but the root cause is that there is no room for individuality in collective conformity; it is punished. This is how the authoritarian personality reasons.
But it gets worse. You see, as I said, they banned the post a posteriori, after it was qualitatively and quantitatively clear it was beneficial to the community. Yet, that was not enough. They did not just remove it and ban me, they also locked the discussion, in which many other people were involved. Now it is not just the one who erred that gets punished. Now everyone gets disciplined, the collective has to pay. This is how the authoritarian personality expands.
And what’s the justification? “Yeah, if you look at just this specific case it was unreasonable, but this is the general process, these are the rules”. They create many of them rules; complicated; confusing; so that you miss something. This is how the authoritarian personality prepares.
So, I recommended that they read the book The Banality of Evil. They told me to “get a grip mate” and then they muted me. This is how the self-righteous authoritarian personality preserves itself.
Do you know who the moderators are? Those who censor the content you see? Neither do I. This is how the authoritarian personality hides.
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Nobody cares about Reddit and petty morality. The real problem is that the authoritarian personality is everywhere around us. The excuses for discipline, for punishment, for turning a blind eye, are always the same: “he missed a rule”, “she had to understand”, “this is how the process works”. Now you may need to take a look at yourself: are you part of the process?
Revision: This very article you just read was also taken down by r/TheoryOfReddit. I am sorry to say this, but if you think all there is to this article is a complaint about that particular ban in r/philosophy, then you completely missed the point. That ban is just a case study to elucidate a much more general theory of how the authoritarian personality gets incarnated into Reddit moderators, which then helps us understand modern authoritarian personalities in general. It just happens to be a handy case study because it neatly showcases all the problems and dimensions of such a personality.
Let me also clarify one more thing (and it makes me sad I feel I have to clarify it). This article was written in a particular style that may not fit the conventional writing style we usually come across. That was part of the point. In any case, if you want to read more systematic and longer developments of the theories on which my analysis hinges, I recommend the following books—in the following order. They constitute an important lineage on freedom of speech and liberty.
- On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
- Human Liberty & Freedom of Speech, by Charles Edwin Baker
- Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law, by Seana Valentine Shiffrin