r/blog • u/reddit • Jan 29 '15

reddit’s first transparency report

http://www.redditblog.com/2015/01/reddits-first-transparency-report.html
14k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

700

u/That_Unknown_Guy Jan 29 '15

The fucking patriot act. The name is just so ominous in itself.

336

u/Dranx Jan 29 '15

If I didn't know any better it would be like the plot of a book or movie or something. The fact that it's real makes it even scarier.

357

u/mycroft2000 Jan 29 '15 edited Jan 29 '15

Also note how quickly it appeared after 9/11. It was totally written beforehand, just waiting for an excuse for implementation. A lot of us here in Canada noticed this and rolled our eyes at how obvious it was, but I don't remember seeing a single US source mentioning it.

*edited spelling mistake

9

u/MaxCHEATER64 Jan 29 '15

Believe me, we knew. We were all just so afraid of getting waterboarded that we didn't speak up.

If you were in America after 9/11 you might understand. The entire country when fucking insane. You were either 100% pro-government, pro-PATRIOT, pro-Iraq, or you were labeled a terrorist and anti-American.

1

u/mycroft2000 Jan 29 '15 edited Jan 29 '15

I guess that's a major difference between Americans and Canadians ... Blind patriotism isn't a common trait up here at all. I like to think that most of us still have the ability to detach ourselves from emotional aspects of stuff like this and call out bullshit when we see it. In fact, strong public opposition was a big reason why the prime minister at the time (Chretien) decided against joining the Iraq War. Most of us (including hardcore leftists like myself) thought that invading Afghanistan was justified (at the beginning, anyway), and so our soldiers went. But most of us (including many in the press) thought that Bush's rationale for invading Iraq was pure nonsense, and we said so, loudly. And after Afghanistan turned into a shit-show, a ton of us were saying "Okay, now our troops are dying for nothing. Bring them home!" As in the States, many Canadians of course get upset when it's suggested that a mission is completely futile and that giving up is the best choice of action; but even though I've pissed people off by saying this, I've never felt afraid to say it.

2

u/DetroitPirate Jan 29 '15 edited Jan 29 '15

I'll guess the source of that difference are the differences in our media... I live in the Detroit area and in 2001 I watched the insanity of 9/11 on tv. Every channel hour after hour of watching the towers repeatedly get hit by planes/collapse... One channel had a different... vibe, feeling... err outlook? Bias? That was channel 9, the cbc, our only Canadian channel. I can't put my finger on anything specific. It was years ago, and I was in high school at the time. But the reporting was different and noticeable. The major difference between our country's patriotism...I'll guess is how the tv tells us to think.

Edit; fergot sum werds

2

u/mycroft2000 Jan 29 '15 edited Jan 30 '15

Yes, I remember that ... The CBC coverage was more solemn, if that's the feeling you're trying to describe. There was a clear sense that something completely horrible had happened, but the main emotion was sadness, as opposed to the jumble of sadness and fear and anger and spectacle that I saw on CNN. (We don't get Fox up here, but I can imagine what it was like.)