>> I'm not at all aware of the details of this but I would like to learn - is this common knowledge?
> Yes, see the 3rd FAQ of the announcement post:

Today we are removing five subreddits that break our reddit rules based on their harassment of individuals. If a subreddit has been banned for harassment, you will see that in the ban notice. The only banned subreddit with more than 5,000 subscribers is r/fatpeoplehate[2].

Harassment vs Brigading:
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...

"When we are using the word "harass", we're not talking about "being annoying" or vote manipulation or anything. We're talking about men and women whose lives are being affected and worry for their safety every day, because people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten them, online and off, every day. When you've had to talk to as many victims of it as we have, you'd understand that a brigade from one subreddit to another is miles away from the harassment we don't want being generated on our site."

"We're talking about men and women whose lives are being affected"
Agreed.

"worry for their safety every day"
Oh please.

"because people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten them, online and off, every day."
Laughably, transparently false. This sounds like the thruthiness that comes from the minds of MBA's and is accepted (in public discourse) on wall street, but it does go over so well on reddit.

Look, if they want to ban "harassment", which I don't argue that fph was at least in some way, then just state the facts and ban it, it's not so hard. It is the completely unnecessary lying that fired up the outrage, imho. Just say "poking fun at fat people is malicious and we're no longer allowing it. Sorry.", and I don't think there would have been a shitstorm.

>> I disagree. srs is infamous for brigading, and this behavior can be easily observed. So, if brigading is grounds for banning, then srs should be banned. If brigading is just one aspect of a complicated formula, then provide some background.

> See the 2nd FAQ

It is not easy to balance these values, especially as the Internet evolves. We are learning and hopefully improving as we move forward. We want to be open about our involvement: We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass[1] individuals when moderators don’t take action. We’re banning behavior, not ideas.

That in no way excuses srs. As far as I understand, brigading is explicitly a bannable offense. srs brigades. srs has not been banned. Once again, inconsistentcy & dishonesty leads to mistrust and anger.

>> the statement that reddit is not intended to be a place for free speech,

> Where did you read that? From the post above, they're trying to carefully balance offsite harassment & free speech and acknowledge that this is hard. Incidentally note that they said it's a change to their management policy, not "haha gotcha we were never free speech".

http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-its-not-...

"It's not our site's goal to be a completely free-speech platform. We want to be a safe platform and we want to be a platform that also protects privacy at the same time."

Now, combine that with some of the interesting commentary on "safe spaces" that we see coming out of our institutions of higher learning on a regular basis, and draw your own conclusions as to whether the uprising was based on pure unsubstantiated paranoia or not.

> Not that you have or should expect free speech on reddit anyway etc.

As I said before: force a culture on your users and observe the result. It's certainly the right of reddit's owners, but I don't think they'll like the result. My opinion seems to be fairly consistent with the actions and words of the new (old) management, at least so far.

EDIT: on SRS specifically:

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...

"May I ask why /r/shitredditsays[1] has not been banned despite being caught multiple times sending death threats and doxing, and even admitting to doing these things? I think most people would be placated if there were just some consistency in how the rules are applied."

"Sure. We did not ban SRS because the behavior you're referring to, while definitely falling into our current definition of "harassment," happened long ago. We don't put policy into place in order to retroactively ban backlogged behavior. If their harassment becomes a problem again, we will revisit that decision, but until that happens this is where we're at."

Which is a blatant lie, as everyone knows. Again, if you want to selectively ban subreddits, just do it and say why you are doing it, I really think the backlash would be relatively minor, why the compulsive lying?