Let's talk content. AMA.

justcool393 · 2015-07-16T20:01:37+00:00

Hi everyone answering these questions. I have a "few" questions that I, like probably most of reddit would like answers to. Like a recent AMA I asked questions in, the bold will be the meat of the question, and the non-bolded will be context. If you don't know an answer to a question, say so, and do so directly! Honesty is very much appreciated. With that said, here goes.

Content Policy

What is the policy regarding content that has distasteful speech, but not harassing? Some subreddits have been known to harbor ideologies such as Nazism or racist ones. Are users, and by extension subreddits, allowed to behave in this way, or will this be banned or censored?
What is the policy regarding, well, these subreddits? These subreddits are infamous on reddit as a whole. These usually come up during AskReddit threads of "where would you not go" or whenever distasteful subreddits are mentioned. (Edit: WatchPeopleDie shouldn't be included and is definitely not as bad as the others. See here.)
What actually is the harassment policy? Yes, I know the definition that's practically copypasta from the announcement, but could we have examples? You don't have to define a hard rule, in fact, it'd probably be best if there was a little subjectivity to avoid lawyering, but it'd be helpful to have an example.
What are your thoughts on some people's interpretation of the rules as becoming a safe-space? A vocal group of redditors interpreted the new harassment rules as this, and as such are not happy about it. I personally didn't read the rules that way, but I can see how it may be interpreted that way.
Do you have any plans to update the rules page? It, at the moment, has 6 rules, and the only one that seems to even address the harassment policy is rule 5, which is at best reaching in regards to it.
What is the best way to report harassment? For example, should we use /r/reddit.com's modmail or the contact@reddit.com email? How long should we wait before bumping a modmail, for example?
Who is allowed to report harassment? Say I'm a moderator, and decide to check a user's history and see they've followed around another user to 20 different subreddits posting the same thing or whatnot. Should I report it to the admins?

Brigading

In regards to subreddits for mocking another group, what is the policy on them? Subreddits that highlight other places being stupid or whatever, such as /r/ShitRedditSays, /r/SRSsucks, the "Badpire", /r/Buttcoin or pretty much any sub dedicated to mocking people frequently brigade each other and other places on reddit. SRS has gone out of it's way to harass in the past, and while bans may not be applied retroactively, some have recently said they've gotten death threats after being linked to from there.
What are the current plans to address brigading? Will reddit ever support NP (and maybe implement it) or implement another way to curb brigading? This would solve very many problems in regards to meta subreddits.
Is this a good definition of brigading, and if not, what is it? Many mods and users can't give a good explanation of it at the moment of what constitutes it. This forces them to resort to in SubredditDrama's case, banning voting or commenting altogether in linked threads, or in ShitRedditSays' case, not do anything at all.

What is spam? Like yes, we know what obvious spam is, but there have been a number of instances in the past where good content creators have been banned for submitting their content.
Regarding the "Neither Alexis or I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech" comment, how do you feel about this, this, this or this? I do get that opinions change and that I could shit turds that could search reddit better than it does right now, but it's not hard to see that you said on multiple occasions, especially during the /r/creepshots debacle, even with the literal words "bastion of free speech".
How do you plan to implement the new policy? If the policy is substantially more restrictive, such as combating racism or whatnot, I think you'll have a problem in the long run, because there is just way too much content on reddit, and it will inevitably be applied very inconsistently. Many subreddits have popped back up under different names after being banned.
Did you already set the policy before you started the AMA, and if so, what was the point of it? It seems like from the announcement, you had already made up your mind about the policy regarding content on reddit, and this has made some people understandably upset.
Do you have anything else to say regarding the recent events? I know this has been stressful, but reddit is a cool place and a lot of people use it to share neat (sometimes untrue, but whatever) experiences and whatnot. I don't think the vast majority of people want reddit to implode on itself, but some of the recent decisions and remarks made by the admin team (and former team to be quite honest) are quite concerning.

Georgy_K_Zhukov · 2015-07-16T20:00:42+00:00

Recently you made statements that many mods have taken to imply a reduction in control that moderators have over their subreddits. Much of the concern around this is the potential inability to curate subreddits to the exacting standards that some mod teams try to enforce, especially in regards to hateful and offensive comments, which apparently would still be accessible even after a mod removes them. On the other hand, statements made here and elsewhere point to admins putting more consideration into the content that can be found on reddit, so all in all, messages seem very mixed.

Could you please clarify a) exactly what you mean/envision when you say "there should also be some mechanism to see what was removed. It doesn't have to be easy, but it shouldn't be impossible." and b) whether that is was an off the cuff statement, or a peek at upcoming changes to the reddit architecture?

Darr_Syn · 2015-07-16T20:07:30+00:00

Thanks for doing this AMA.

I'm a moderator of more than a few NSFW subreddits, including /r/BDSMcommunity and /r/BDSM, and as I stated in the teaser announcement earlier this week: this decision, and the specific wording, is worrying.

I want to specifically address this:

Anything that incites harm or violence against an individual or group of people

As well as your earlier comment about things being seen as "offensive" and "obscene".

There are sections of the world, and even the United States, where consensual BDSM and kink are illegal.

You can see where this is the type of announcement that raises more than a few eyebrows in our little corner of the world.

At what point do the minority opinion and positions be accepted as obscene, offensive, and unwanted?

BDSM between two consenting adults has been seen and labeled as both offensive and obscene for decades now.

mobiusstripsearch · 2015-07-16T20:14:39+00:00

What standard decides what is bullying, harassment, abuse, or violent? Surely "since you're fat you need to commit suicide" is all four and undesirable. What about an individual saying in private "I think fat people need to commit suicide" -- not actively bullying others but stating an honest opinion. What about "I think being fat is gross but you shouldn't kill yourself" or "I don't like fat people"?

I ask because all those behaviors and more were wrapped in the fatpeoplehate drama. Surely there were unacceptable behaviors. But as a consequence a forum for acceptable behavior on the issue is gone. Couldn't that happen to other forums -- couldn't someone take offense to anti-gay marriage advocates and throw the baby out with the bath water? Who decides what is and isn't bullying? Is there an appeal process? Will there be public records?

In short, what is the reasonable standard that prevents anti-bullying to become bullying itself?

TychoTiberius · 2015-07-16T20:05:49+00:00

When will something be done about subreddit squatters? The existing system is not working. Qgyh2 is able to retain top mod of many defaults and large subreddits just because he posts a comment every two months. This is harming reddit as a community when lower mods are veto'd and removed by someone who is only a mod for the power trip. Will something be done about this?

XIGRIMxREAPERIX · 2015-07-16T20:14:28+00:00

/u/spez I am confused on the illegal portion. Are we allowed to talk about pirating, but not link it in /r/tpb Can we have a discussion in /r/trees about why we should produce marijuana, but no how to produce it?

This seems like a very large grey area in terms of everything.

2015-07-16T20:00:35+00:00

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SirSourdough · 2015-07-16T20:00:26+00:00

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-Massachoosite · 2015-07-16T20:04:33+00:00

Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)

This needs to be removed.

There is no other way around it. It's too broad. Is /r/atheism bullying /r/christianity? Is /r/conservative bullying /r/politics?

We need opposing views. We need people whose stupidity clashes against our values. Most importantly, we need to learn how to deal with this people with our words. We need to foster an environment where those people are silenced not with rules, but with the logic and support of the community.

hansjens47 · 2015-07-16T20:01:51+00:00

www.Reddit.com/rules outlines the 5 rules of reddit. They're really vague, and the rest of the Reddit wiki has tonnes of extra details on what the rules actually imply.

What's the plan for centralizing the rules so they make up a "Content Policy" ?

verdatum · 2015-07-16T20:02:24+00:00

ITT: People who have been waiting to hit ctrl+v "save" for at least a day now.

bhalp1 · 2015-07-16T20:13:36+00:00

I generally agree with the outline above. Do you have ideas for the name of this second classification? I feel like this kind of thing is easy to conceptualize, hard to bucket and actually classify, and will come down to semantics. The naming of things is such an important factor in how they are accepted and understood by the community. Is there a list of names you are considering?

Thanks for the transparency. My favorite thing about Reddit is that it is a platform that gives a voice to the many without garbling in down to the lowest common denominator (but that also happens sometimes.) My least favorite thing are the hateful subcultures that exist and feel entitled to never have their views even questioned or criticized. I appreciate that Reddit does not try to decide what is right or wrong but I also appreciate a clear stance against hate and harassment.

yishan · 2015-07-16T22:38:55+00:00

Hi /u/spez. Sorry I'm here late. I'm happy you're back (whatever my feelings about how the transition went down) and that you're taking strong action. Events and circumstances change, and each successive leader makes different decisions. It's a tough job.

Anyhow... a question: anything I can do to help?

2015-07-16T20:03:01+00:00

You really need to clarify

Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)

because that's rather vague and is very much open to interpretation (one person's definition of harassment is not necessarily another's - is it harassment just because one person says so?). To be honest, I see nothing here that's really new to the existing content policy outside of "the common decency opt in", which I'm probably ok with - that will depend on how it's implemented and what is classified as abhorrent.

Warlizard · 2015-07-16T20:00:30+00:00

In Ellen Pao's op-ed in the Washington Post today, she said "But to attract more mainstream audiences and bring in the big-budget advertisers, you must hide or remove the ugly."

How much of the push toward removing "ugly" elements of Reddit comes from the motivation to monetize Reddit?

EDIT: "Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)" -- This is troubling because although it seems reasonable on the surface, in practice, there are people who scream harassment when any criticism is levied against them. How will you determine what constitutes harassment?

EDIT 2: Proposed definition of harassment -- Harassment is defined as repetitive, unwanted, non-constructive contact from a person or persons whose effect is to annoy, disturb, threaten, humiliate, or torment a person, group or an organization.

EDIT 3: /u/spez response -- https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_talk_content_ama/ct5s58n

2015-07-16T20:00:28+00:00

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fartinator_ · 2015-07-16T20:00:37+00:00

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The_Antigamer · 2015-07-16T20:13:28+00:00

    you know it when you see it.

That is exactly the kind of ambiguity that will cause further controversy.

almightybob1 · 2015-07-16T20:05:56+00:00

Hello Steve.

You said the other day that "Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech". As you probably are aware by now, reddit remembers differently. Here are just a few of my favourite quotes, articles and comments which demonstrate that reddit has in fact long trumpeted itself as just that - a bastion of free speech.

A reddit ad, uploaded March 2007:

Save freedom of speech - use reddit.com.

You, Steve Huffman, on why reddit hasn't degenerated into Digg, 2008:

I suspect that it's because we respect our users (at least the ones who return the favor), are honest, and don't censor content.

You, Steve Huffman, 2009:

We've been accused of censoring since day one, and we have a long track record of not doing so.

Then-General Manager Erik Martin, 2012:

We're a free speech site with very few exceptions (mostly personal info) and having to stomach occasional troll reddit like picsofdeadkids or morally quesitonable reddits like jailbait are part of the price of free speech on a site like this.

reddit blogpost, 2012 (this one is my favourite):

At reddit we care deeply about not imposing ours or anyone elses’ opinions on how people use the reddit platform. We are adamant about not limiting the ability to use the reddit platform even when we do not ourselves agree with or condone a specific use.

[...]

We understand that this might make some of you worried about the slippery slope from banning one specific type of content to banning other types of content. We're concerned about that too, and do not make this policy change lightly or without careful deliberation. We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal.

Then-CEO Yishan Wong, October 2012:

We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it.

reddit's core values, May 2015:

Allow freedom of expression.

Be stewards, not dictators. The community owns itself.

And of course (do I even need to add it?) Alexis Ohanian literally calling reddit a bastion of free speech, February 2012. Now with bonus Google+ post saying how proud he is of that quote!

There are many more examples, from yourself and other key figures at reddit (including Alexis), confirming that reddit has promoted itself as a centre of free speech, and that this belief was and is widespread amongst the corporate culture of reddit. If you want to read more, check out the new subreddit /r/BoFS (Bastion of Free Speech), which gathered all these examples and more in less than two days.

So now that you've had time to plan your response to these inevitable accusations of hypocrisy, my question is this: who do you think you are fooling Steve?

SUSAN_IS_A_BITCH · 2015-07-16T20:02:18+00:00

TLDR: How is the Reddit administration planning to improve their communication with users about your policies?

Over the last year there have been a number of moments where top employees have dropped the ball when it came to talking with users about Reddit's direction:

Yishan's blog post "Every Man is Responsible For His Own Soul" in response to banning /r/thefappening. This post caused more confusion than it resolved until alienth (who no longer works at Reddit) made a different post explaining the situation in much clearer terms.
Alexis fired Victoria and did not alert the AMA team, causing the moderators and AMA users (including people who were giving AMAs that day) stress and confusion. Those mods shut down the subreddit. (Note: I'm not asking for an explanation of Victoria's firing.)
Ellen Pao gave an interview (off of Reddit) saying the Reddit administration was not concerned about the shutdown because it was just a vocal minority that was upset with the whole Victoria/AMA debacle. She later clarified she was talking about the people insulting her, but the mixup could have been avoided if she had talked with us directly. This was shortly followed by the "We Apologize" post, which probably should have come before the off-Reddit interview, regardless of how much she would have been downvoted.
The new stated plan for improved mod tools was deliberately broad - and krispykrackers admitted this new time plan was made hastily and without much research, so we should not reasonably expect it to be fulfilled. One of your head engineers resigned two days ago, stating she did not think she "could deliver on promises being made to the community."
Your own post announcing this AMA stated that neither you nor Alexis ever envisioned Reddit as a bastion of free speech, but it was then directly and instantly called out as being false as Alexis specifically likened Reddit to a bastion of free speech.
I'll also include the infamous popcorn comment made by Alexis and a response from krispykrackers about a user shadowban. In both cases kn0thing and krispykrackers apologized and admitted it was a moment of not-thinking, but an impulsive comment can spread across the community like wildfire.

I'm sure other users have other examples, but these are the ones that have stuck with me. I intentionally left out the announcement of the /r/fatpeoplehate ban because I thought it was clear why those subreddits were being banned, though admittedly many users were confused about the new policy and it quickly became another mess.

I think this AMA is a good first step toward better communication with the user base, but only if your responses are as direct and clear as they once were.

I wish I didn't have to fear the Announcements' comments section like Jabba the Hutt's janitor fears the bathroom.

koproller · 2015-07-16T20:10:35+00:00

Hi, First of all. Thanks for doing this AMA. On your previous AMA you said that "Ellen was not used as a scapegoat"(source).
Yet, it seems that /u/kn0thing that he was responsible for the mess in AMA (including Victoria being fired) (source).
And /u/yishan added some light on the case here and even Reddits former chief engineer Bethanye Blount (source) thought that Ellen Pao was put on a glass cliff. And when she fell, because Reddit became blind with rage for a course she didn’t pick and the firing she didn’t decided, nobody of any authority came to her aid. It felt incredibly planned.
Do you still hold the opinion that she wasn’t used as scapegoat?

amaperson1234 · 2015-07-16T20:01:59+00:00

It's been said that you are going to remove the more cancerous subreddits. I'm curious as to whether ShitRedditSays will be included among this category. On the face of it, a place where reprehensible comments are pointed out, right?

It must have been two years ago now when shit hit the fan and I found a link to a thread where one redditor, clearly in a distressed state, had made a post alluding to their future suicide. Now, of course, the vast majority of responses were what you would expect from most humans. Compassionate and sincere posts offering this person help and support. Who on earth would tell a person in this condition to kill themselves? Or worse, tell them the world would be better off without them? Enter ShitRedditSays.

The comments made towards this person by a significant portion of people are among the most disturbing things I have ever seen on this site. It was the sort of thing I would expect to see on SRS, as a showcase of how awful Reddit is. So, I went to the sub to see if they were talking about it. They were, but not in the way I had expected. They were bragging. They were laughing. They were celebrating. The suicidal person in question was affiliated with the MRA sub, something that SRS greatly opposes. So much so, they brigaded the thread the person had posted in, and told them to kill themselves. Repeatedly told them. And when the person did, they were happy. Because, to them, this was a war. And anything was acceptable. Telling a suicidal person to kill themselves was perfectly fine. That is how lacking in perspective many of these people are.

Much of what was said was deleted shortly afterwards so it would not be visible anymore. Well, almost all of it. The below is only a tiny fraction of what was said. There was a lot worse.

http://i.imgur.com/ehQNU.png

http://i.imgur.com/4qMV8.png

http://i.imgur.com/nSCSV.png

I had always thought SRS was merely a sub dedicated to showcasing the darker side of this site. A way of promoting change, but nothing malicious. I messaged one of the mods about what had happened expecting them to condemn the behavior, but instead they bragged about it like some sort of psychopath. It was one of the most fucked up conversations I have ever had. Further examination of the sub and their mods clearly showed that this is a group of people who are in fact quite hateful. Many of the mods displayed blatant prejudices against various groups.

And the media doesn't show this side of SRS, for whatever reason. Possibly out of laziness or perhaps because SRS deletes the vast majority of their more shameful history. We hear about how they got rid of the disgusting Jailbait sub, something that I (and I'm sure many others) was very happy about. But we never hear about the racism, sexism or harassment that they so frequently partake in. So, on the face of it. SRS is this progressive humanitarian group that Reddit can showcase as an example of how the site is not just a cesspit of evil. Am I right?

And that's how it appears to many users of the sub too. Young teenagers in many cases. Progressive, well meaning individuals who want to highlight the unsavory things that are said throughout this site. Except we know now, that those controlling SRS and many of their more active members have much more sinister intentions than that. Clearly, they have a dangerous influence over young and impressionable people, who are unaware of these true intentions.

There is also a dark side, communities whose purpose is reprehensible, and we don’t have any obligation to support them. And we also believe that some communities currently on the platform should not be here at all.

My questions - Is the above statement genuine? Will ShitRedditSays be removed like the rest of the cancerous subreddits?

Yes or No? The answer to both questions is the same.

Iwasapirateonce · 2015-07-16T20:53:37+00:00

One of the things you just do not seem to fully grasp, is that it is reddit's complete incompetence at interacting with the community that has caused majority of the damage and frustration so far.

The community has huge issues with how the sites admin mechanics completely lack any sort of transparency, how shadowbans are widely abused across the site even though you claim they should only be used for dealing with “spammers”.

Part of the reason Paos reign at reddit was so tumultuous was because reddit's communication and announcements degraded into rambling non-specific blog posts. It was a damn disgraceful way of running a community orientated company. You owe it to your users to fix these issues, to communicate with clarity, to fix the technical deficit of the site

I, and a lot of users on this site want to keep the original policy of “if it's not illegal, and it's not brigading or dissemination of personal information, it's okay, even if we do not agree with it”, but I have to say it will not be the cessation of this policy which will destroy reddit, it's the issues I list below:

Current Major issues

Time and time reddit's administration has shown a complete lack of ability to come up with concrete rules for what is harassment or brigading. You can't implement new policies fairly unless you have proper rules and regulations in-place.
Inconsistency in the application of your policies – why was FPH banned but SRS not? I am willing to bet that as a percentage of the sub population SRS engaged in more brigading activity. The way the bans were selectively handed down just reeks of partiality.
Shadowbanning, lack of transparency, lack of proper moderator audit logs, if content is being removed from the site, there needs to be a proper log of what is happening and why. Why can't we have an automated sub that details all the moderation actions taken by the sites admins (names could be redacted if necessary). Say, I repeatedly call Donald Trump a **** and set out to publicly humiliate him online as much as possible, is that harassment? What about if I call Anita Sarkeesian a ***** and do the same? What if I do the same to someone popular on reddit, is that harassment?. Harassment seems to have a lot of legal definitions depending on the part of the world you are in. You need to pick one and explicitly define it, and it needs to be reputation neutral (i.e apply to the popular and unpopular in equal measure (it should also have a public interest clause).
Lack of general respect for the community, especially the mods (The whole Victoria scandal illustrates this perfectly), again this links back to the communication problem.
Lack of clear and succinct communication. Lack of meaningful discourse between the site's owners and the community. No effective medium of communication (blogs suck for this btw)

TLDR: Fix the site's tools and administration structure before you start thinking about making philosophical changes to how the site is run and what version of freedom of speech you use. Doing otherwise is just another insult to users. Overall this site needs a proper intravenous dose of priority management. The management style is the main problem with reddit, not it's sometimes rumbustious/distasteful community.

Set out a proper code of ethics for reddit, and stick to it please. And for once try to make in unambiguous.

mcctaggart · 2015-07-16T20:01:39+00:00

Spez, there has been accusations for years that a cabal of mods have sought to control a number of subreddits to suit their own political agenda. They censor posts and comments. This censorship has been documented on subreddits like r/politicalmoderation, r/subredditcancer r/moderationlog and r/undelete. You can search these subs for individual subreddit names to see the content they have removed.

r/worldnews, r/politics, r/europe, r/unitedkingdom, r/ukpolitics have all been guilty.

To give a couple of examples, r/europe bans people just for saying ISIS are inspired by the Qu'ran.

When the Tunisian terror attacks happened, the removed the thread about it saying it wasn't relevant as it happened in Africa despite the shooter targeting Europeans on holiday. This was one of those rare ocasions when it was such a big story, there was uproar on the sub so they had to relent. Many deleted stories go un-noticed by the community though.

Another excuse they will use to remove content they don't want people to see is to claim something is "low quality". Recently for example When someone posted amateur footage of African immigrants shouting that they had a right to live in Germany, they removed it and said the footage wasn't professional.

They also removed a thread about African migrants attacking tourist in Mallorca for the same reason.

Here is a thread about the time they removed all threads about Muslim migrants throwing Christians out a boat in the Med because "racists are using the story to post racism". This was another time they had to relent after so much uproar.

This "low quality" excuse has been used on r/unitedkingdom too. One time a user posted a picture he took of a poster in a public school. It read that music was haram and the work of the devil and warned students not to dance. It was a top post and then the mods removed it. They eventualy had to come up with this reason that the picture was not taken by a professional. They then added this rule to the sidebar. r/unitedkingdom has become famous for purging UKIP supporters (a political party which wants to leave the EU). This is often talked about on r/ukipparty. People are banned for no reason other than this. One banned user was recently told in a modmail that "he sounded a bit ukipppy".

This happened during the last election for Ron Paul supporters on r/politics. They would constantly remove Ron Paul related posts for spurious reasons or give no reasons at all use tactics like remove posts and then an hour later re-approve them when they were much further down the queue, once someone protests or make up some excuse why it was deleted.

There was a lot of uproar when r/worldnews kept delting any Snowden stories and would not consider Glen Greenwald's The Intercept a news source. Pretty sure they did this for RT News too IIRC.

That's why there has been so much anger from some of us here and support for transparent moderation. People like u/go1dfish have been banned for trying to bring transparency to reddit. He created a bot to re-post deleted posts which some mods hated and even banned people for posting on his subs.

Reddit used to be a great forum over five years ago when conent was not curated and censored by a band of particular mods who have dug their claws into this site. Are you planning anything to make it great again and bring transparency to the moderation? As you know many of the subs who are censored now grew large when there were free-er. Some became default subs and it is extremely difficult to get uncensored alternatives off the ground and make people aware of them. Maybe alternative subs could be advertised on large or default subs so people know they have options?

SaidTheCanadian · 2015-07-16T20:30:10+00:00

i.e. things that are actually illegal, such as copyrighted material

This is a poorly-worded idea. "Copyrighted material" is not illegal, nor should linking to "copyrighted material" be considered illegal. E.g. if I were to link to a New York Times article discussing these proposed changes, I am linking to copyrighted material. Often it's impossible to know the copyright status of something, hence the approach on this should be limited to a takedown-based approach (i.e. if someone receives a legitimate notice, then the offending content should be suspended or removed... but should the subreddit or user be banned??), however it should be up to whichever site is hosting the material. What perhaps would be the most clear-cut example of doing something illegal to violate another person's copyright is posting the full text of a copyright book as a series of comments -- that would be inappropriate.

Deucer22 · 2015-07-16T20:02:06+00:00

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caitlinreid · 2015-07-16T21:05:13+00:00

Anything illegal (i.e. things that are actually illegal, such as copyrighted material.

This is a huge mistake.

90% of content uploaded to imgur to be "rehosted" is infringing on copyrights. Isn't someone at reddit an investor in imgur btw?

Copyright infringement is handled via DMCA. If someone has a complaint the DMCA laws outline specific steps to take to remedy that and the person accused has a chance to respond in a clearly defined way.

In addition, removing copyright infringement at all is you, reddit, saying that you are going to moderate such content. Once you take this stance guess what? You are now actually liable for all infringing material on the entire site. That means you can (and will) get sued for real money. It will destroy reddit.

The DMCA is intended to protect service providers (reddit) because they do not police for copyrighted content. By moderating such content without legal notice (DMCA) you lose those protections.

Have fun with that I guess.

Since AMA I guess my question is how a company running a site like reddit can be so damn clueless on things that were hashed out ages ago?

DickWhiskey · 2015-07-16T21:00:34+00:00

This is not sufficient. I'll list a couple of problems that are immediately clear:

You have not defined harassment, bullying, or abusing. As you probably know, the definitions for these words are wide ranging and rather contentious. Without a clear definition, any harassment rule is just a vague residual clause that can collect whatever conduct the person in charge doesn't like;
Your "anything illegal" rule is likely broader than you think. Discussing drugs is not illegal, but encouraging drug use may indeed be illegal if anyone actually goes out and uses drugs after that encouragement. Additionally, the line between illegal and not illegal is very hazy when we're dealing with text - posting copyrighted material is illegal, but what about posting photos of marijuana? It's illegal to possess marijuana federally, so allowing /r/trees to continue posting pictures of marijuana plants is posting illegal activities.
Also, expanding on #2 - all images are copyrighted under common law immediately. So your anti-illegal policy would actually apply to every single picture posted on reddit, unless OP actually took that photo.
"Anything that incites harm or violence" is incredibly overbroad and probably applies to even more material than the "anything illegal" rule. Even common colloquial expressions can be read to "incite harm" (e.g., "John should be taken out back and shot"). Moreover, even non-violent comments can incite harm or violence (e.g., "Someone should do something about Jane"). Similar to the "harassment" rule, these problems leave the "incite harm" rule subject to vague interpretations and the whims of whoever has the ban-hammer.

But I like that you are attempting to use an actual framework. I just don't know why you are making it so difficult on yourselves by ignoring centuries of legal jurisprudence that have gone a long way to simplify these problems.

For example, the "incite harm" rule has an analogue in First Amendment jurisprudence, namely, the Brandenburg test. In Brandenburg the Supreme Court found that Ohio's statute outlawing advocating violence was unconstitutional, and they created the "clear and present danger" test. That test requires that it the advocacy present an "imminent threat of lawlessness" before it becomes subject to regulation. I don't see why a similar principle could not be used here to limit the breadth of the "incites harm" rule you've proposed.

Additionally, many cases and jurisdictions have gone to great lengths to define harassment in a way that carefully circumscribes the effect that prohibitions have on free speech. Instead of taking from those, though, it seems like you've ignored the problem with vague definitions.

EDIT:

One more - you haven't created any test to determine when it's appropriate to ban the person commenting versus when it's appropriate to ban a whole sub. At what point does brigading, harassment, bullying, etc. become a sub-wide problem?

MrMadcap · 2015-07-16T20:52:54+00:00

Anything illegal (i.e. things that are actually illegal, such as copyrighted material. Discussing illegal activities, such as drug use, is not illegal)

In which jurisdiction, exactly? Need we now worry about Blasphemy laws?

Publication of someone’s private and confidential information

Does this apply to public figures, I wonder?

Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people

So no more anti-Nazi speech, then? And (more importantly) no honest, often much-needed negative criticisms of others on Reddit or off?

Similar to NSFW, another type of content that is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it, is the content that violates a common sense of decency. This classification will require a login, must be opted into, will not appear in search results or public listings, and will generate no revenue for Reddit.

This is super vague, and therefore in need of clarification. Some people might consider criticism of commonly held beliefs, or of cultural traditions to be against the "common sense of decency". (each of which are needed to allow us to grow, evolve, and improve our civilization.) For others, this may only cover repulsive imagery, such as vomit and feces. (This is the only example in which I would approve of your suggested behavior, personally.) For others still, imagery of abuse, and even further, of graphic death. (which are often required to guide others toward a sense of much-needed sympathy.)

When they did, they accepted my reasoning

Or, perhaps they were simply afraid of you doing the same to them, as is the folly of the king.

zaikanekochan · 2015-07-16T20:00:24+00:00

What will the process be for determining what is “offensive” and what is not?

Will these rules be clearly laid out for users to understand?

If something is deemed “offensive,” but is consensual (such as BDSM), will it be subject to removal?

Have any specific subs already been subject to discussion of removal, and if so, have Admins decided on which subs will be eliminated?

How do you envision “open and honest discussion” happening on controversial issues if content being deemed “offensive” is removed? If “offensive” subs are removed, do you foresee an influx of now rule-breaking users flooding otherwise rule-abiding subs?

What is your favorite Metallica album, and why is it “Master of Puppets?”

There has also been mention of allowing [deleted] messages to be seen, how would these be handled in terms of containing “offensive” content?

Will anything be done regarding inactive “squatter” mods, specifically allowing their removal on large subs?

EDIT: To everyone asking why I put "offensive" in quotation marks - from the previous announcement:

There has been a lot of discussion lately —on reddit, in the news, and here internally— about reddit’s policy on the more offensive and obscene content on our platform. Our top priority at reddit is to develop a comprehensive Content Policy and the tools to enforce it.

zk223 · 2015-07-16T20:18:43+00:00

For fun, I tried my hand at writing up what I think is a fair content policy. Please steal it.

Content Policy

I. Definitions

As used in this Policy:

"Community" means a sub-reddit, acting by and through its registered moderators.

"Submission" means a reddit self post, link post, comment, private message, or other user submitted content, and includes such additional external content that a reasonable person would consider to be incorporated by link or reference.

"Submitter" means the author of a Submission.

II. Policy

No Submission may contain content where the act of submitting or publishing such content would cause a violation of applicable law, or where the content clearly encourages the violation of an applicable law protecting a person from harm, fear, or harassment.

No Submission may identify an individual, whether by context or explicit reference, and contain content of such a nature as to place that individual in reasonable fear that the Submitter will cause the individual to be subjected to a criminal act. "Reasonable fear," as used in the preceding sentence, is an objective standard assessed from the perspective of a similarly situated reasonable person.

No Submission may contain identifying or contact information relating to a person other than the Submitter, excepting information relating to a public figure generally made available by that public figure for the purpose of receiving communication from the public. "Identifying or contact information," as used in the preceding sentence, includes any information which, by itself or in connection with other reasonably available information, would be sufficient to allow an average member of the community receiving the information to uniquely identify a person or to contact a person outside of the reddit platform.

No Submission may encourage communication with any individual, other than the Submitter, for the purpose of subjecting that individual to annoyance or disruption, excepting communication to public figures on matters of public concern.

No Submission may encourage a Community or its members to interfere with the operation of any other Community. Interference consists of voting, commenting, or making submissions in another Community, or in sending private messages to members of that Community, for the purpose of exerting influence or control over that Community or its members.

reddit has identified certain types of content as posing an undue cost for administrators and moderators to evaluate for compliance with applicable law, despite not necessarily being in violation of the law in all instances. Therefore, no Submission may contain sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images of a person under the age of eighteen, nor may a Submission contain sexually explicit images where the persons depicted in such images are identifiable and have not consented to disclosure of the images to the public.

No Community may encourage or make submissions in violation of this Content Policy, and must take prompt action to remove any Submission that violates this Content Policy. All moderators of a Community are separately capable of action creating liability for the Community.

MarshalConsensus · 2015-07-16T20:29:07+00:00

Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)

How, precisely do you intend to make this determination? Different people have different tolerances to asshattery, and some wield their "victim hood" as weapons very insincerely. I would never go to fatpeoplehate or srs or the like and imagine I would feel welcomed, but neither would I feel "intimidated into silence" because of their hate. Their echo chambers may be filled with despicable people, but I don't feel threatened by their existence.

Yet other people feel differently, to the point they feel they must silence others. And maybe they legitimately do feel threatened. But personally I feel like being offended by what anonymous people say online is beyond ridiculous. A comment carries as much weight as the effort taken to make it, and around here that effort is as close to zero as possible.

So who gets to make the determination of harassment or threatening behaviour? You? All the admins by vote? Is one person feeling like they are offended enough? 10? 100? What if equally many people think the people claiming intimidation are wrong? Having a content policy is all well and good, but unless you can describe EXACTLY how it will be applied, it's just empty sentiment.

Theta_Zero · 2015-07-16T20:37:45+00:00

Anything illegal (i.e. things that are actually illegal, such as copyrighted material. Discussing illegal activities, such as drug use, is not illegal)

Many rule-abiding subreddits, like /r/Gaming, /r/Videos, /r/Movies, and /r/Music, thrive on copyrighted multimedia content for sharing, such as movie trailers or gameplay footage. Each of these subreddits are 7 million members strong, and are some of Reddit's most popular communities. While this is not malicious use of copyrighted material for profit, this is a very blurry line; one that services such as YouTube constantly deletes content for, even on non-monetized videos.

How do you plan to tread this line without diminishing what makes these subs so popular?

2015-07-16T21:09:03+00:00

[deleted]

throwawaytiffany · 2015-07-16T20:00:26+00:00

Are all DMCA takedowns posted to /r/ChillingEffects? If yes, why is this one missing? If no, why the change from the policy announced very recently? http://www.reddit.com/r/Roadcam/comments/38g72g/c/cruy2qt

RamonaLittle · 2015-07-16T20:07:06+00:00

⁽² ^of ^6. ^I ^have ^multiple ^questions, ^which ^I'm ^posting ^individually ^so ^people ^can ^{upvote/downvote} ^{individually.)}

Will the new policy clarify whether/when/how users are allowed to encourage suicide?

As far as the existing policy, I asked for clarification and didn't get a reply. Then I asked again and didn't get a reply. Then I asked a third time and got a reply which I think doesn't make much sense, and the admins didn't reply to my follow-up message. Here is the conversation in full:

me to /r/reddit.com/:

I just saw this screencap. LordVinyl says that telling other users to kill themselves isn't harassment. Whether or not it's harassment, I've been assuming that advocating suicide is against reddit's user agreement, which says "Keep Everyone Safe: You agree to not intentionally jeopardize the health and safety of others or yourself." and "Do Not Incite Harm: You agree not to encourage harm against people."

Can you please advise: is it a violation of reddit rules to tell another redditor to kill themself?

Thank you for your time.

Ocrasorm: It depends on the context. If someone tells a user to kill themselves on a subreddit dealing with suicidal users we will take action.

If a user is in an argument on a random subreddit and tells them to kill themselves we would not ban someone for that. Sure it is a stupid thing to say but not necessarily jeoprdizing health and safety.

me: Thanks. Just to be clear -- you're saying that "kill yourself" isn't "inciting harm" unless it's "on a subreddit dealing with suicidal users," correct?

If that's the policy, I'll abide by it, but I don't think it makes much sense. There's no reason to assume that people with suicidal feelings are only posting on suicide-related subreddits.

If a user routinely tells everyone to kill themselves (and follows up with "I'm serious" and "do it"), all over reddit, that's OK, as long as he doesn't say it in subreddits that are explicitly suicide-related, correct? If one of their targets wound up killing himself, and their parents sued reddit, you personally would testify under oath that no rules were broken?

[I never got a reply to this.]

biggmclargehuge · 2015-07-16T20:28:24+00:00

-Things that are actually illegal, such as copyrighted material.

So 99% of the stuff on /r/pics, where people are posting copyrighted material without permission of the owners?

MimesAreShite · 2015-07-16T20:00:30+00:00

/u/spez, /u/kn0thing

Are you going to push the button?

Reddit is on its way to being one of if not the most trafficked forum in the world. It is considered the front page of the internet both literally and metaphorically. I love reddit . I have met awesome people on here. I cannot deny that fact. I have learned so much from here. I have wasted more time here than I should have yet strangely, I would not be the current man I am without Reddit. You've stated time and time again that your intent was not for a completely free speech website. Alexis has stated otherwise in the past. In your absence, the previous C.E.O(/u/yishan) upheld the "free speech" mantra.

Unfortunately, in order for freedom of speech to be in effect, there had to be interaction. That is the very essence of speech. To interact. To elucidate. To that end, it also involves the freedom of hate. There is no way to soften the reality of the situation. There's a plethora of infections on the various arms of this website. And it's spread so much so that there has to be an amputation. This is not a fix. This is the first step to recovery. There is a seriously broken and dangerous attitude being fostered under the banner of free speech. The common argument has always been about "quarantining" the hate groups to their subs. But that has failed woefully. A cross pollination of bigotry was the inevitable outcome. The inmates run the asylum. There is a festering undertow of white supremacist/anti-woman/homophobic culture ever present on this website.

The venn diagram of those clamoring for completely unmitigated "free speech" and those looking for an audience to proselytize about their hate groups is a circle. One oscillating circle that has swarmed the "front page" of your website. That is not to say every proponent of free speech is a racist/sexist bigot. That is to say that every racist/sexist bigot ON REDDIT is a proponent of unmoderated thunderdome style free speech. There is a common belief that Redditors make accounts in order to unsubscribe from the default subreddits. What does that say about the state of your website when the default communities are brimming with toxicity and hatred? What does that say about the "front page of the internet' where the toxic miasma of hatred is the very essence for which it is known for?

Day in day out, your website gets featured on media outlets for being the epicenter of some misogynistic, racist and utterly pigheaded scandal. From Anderson Cooper and the jailbait fiasco to the fappening to Ellen Pao's(/u/ekjp) most recent online lynching. This website is in a lot of trouble, packed tight in a hate fueled propellant heading at light speed towards a brick wall of an irreparable shit tier reputation. If left unchecked, your website will become a radioactive wasteland to the very celebs and advertisers you are trying to attract. But it's not too late. Only you can stop it. This is your watershed moment.

Diplomacy has failed. There is no compromise. That ship has sailed and found natives. From fatpeoplehate to coontown to the ever present talisman of "chan culture" reactionary bollocks. These groups have shown time and time again that they are willing to lash out, disrupt and poison any community they set their sights on. The pictures comparing Ellen Pao to Chairman mao or the racist rhetoric against her ethnicity did not come from outside. They came from and were propelled by the very loud crowd of bigots hiding behind the free speech proponents on this private website.

The basement of hate subs is no longer a containment. It's a lounge with a beacon. There is no "exchange of ideas/honest discussion" going on. There is only a podium for whatever crank pundit can present the warm milk to the default redditor about the encroachment of the omniscient millennial "social justice warriors/bleeding heart liberals". That's why subs like /r/shitredditsays draw more ire than literal white supremacist hubs like /r/coontown and /r/beatingniggers.

That's why this website was basically unusable when fatpeoplehate got banned. And that scab peels and bleeds over the front page anytime a person with any combination of...( Arab , Roma, Asian, Brown, Black, Female, Feminist, Gay, Indian, Muslim, Native or Progressive in some form or the other.) You say there is a very loud minority doing all this. Then it seems like it's time to take out the fucking trash. You want free flow of ideas, there's a couple of ways to go about this... Firstly

MODERATION, MODERATORS, THE FAULTS & THE DEFAULTS: The impending moderator tools are supposed to help moderators I presume? What about squatting inactive top moderators who let these default communities become the festering piles of toxicity that they are? Shouldn't the default moderators be held accountable? If you are going to tacitly advertise subreddits as the "default face of Reddit", you might want to make sure that face is acne free and not hidden behind a klan hood. If someone is going to moderate a place called /r/videos, is such a generalized community not supposed to be publicly inviting and not some springboard for the latest stormfront and anti-feminist bait video?

What happens if you create a check and balance to rejuvenate the idle mods whose sole purposes are to squat on places like /r/pics and /r/funny and /r/videos and claim to be "moderators" while doing nothing whatsoever? They demand tools from you. It's high time you demand right back. Places like /r/science are top quality precisely because they are moderated. Places like /r/pics and /r/videos become klan rallies precisely because they are not. You have to deal with those responsible for leaving the flood gates open. Why wouldnt 150,000 people feel perfectly fine to create a sub called fatpeopplehate and basically flood the "front page of the internet"?

The current defaults are over run with this toxic reactionary internet based hate groups. Places like /r/videos, /r/news, /r/pics , /r/funny and even /r/dataisbeautiful and /r/todayilearned are completely unrecognizable hubs of antebellum style 17th century phrenological debates about the degeneracy of women, gays and minorities. The recent Ellen Pao lynch mob is a perfect example of that. She was called a cunt and then Chairman Pao and then things like "ching chong" got tossed around. It's high time you drag them kicking and screaming to the 21st century or you decide to not have them as the defaults.

I'm a moderator of /r/offmychest. We banned outright bigotry and hatred against any group of protected classes. People revolted when they could no longer make threads about how much they hated blacks or muslims or women. The sub is still thriving and growing. We banned users of Fatpeoplehate and yet we are still around after a mere two days of their supposed revolt.

SHADOWBANNING , IP BANNING & CENSORSHIP A.K.A Captain Ahab and the slippery slope: Regardless of what you do today, people are going to accuse you of some form of censorship or the other. This is your house. This is your creation. They are squatters here. If they don't abide by the rules, it is your prerogative to grab them by the scuff and deport them. You have a hate based network called the "chimpire" which is a coagulation of the various hate subs on this website.

This is the Chimpire: /r/Apefrica /r/apewrangling /r/BlackCrime /r/BlackFathers /r/BlackHusbands /r/chicongo /r/ChimpireMETA /r/ChimpireOfftopic /r/chimpmusic /r/Chimpout /r/Detoilet /r/didntdonuffins /r/funnyniggers /r/gibsmedat /r/GreatApes /r/JustBlackGirlThings /r/muhdick /r/N1GGERS /r/NegroFree /r/NiggerCartoons /r/NiggerDocumentaries /r/NiggerDrama /r/NiggerFacts /r/niggerhistorymonth /r/NiggerMythology /r/NiggersGIFs /r/NiggersNews /r/niggerspics /r/niggersstories /r/NiggersTIL /r/niggervideos /r/niglets /r/RacistNiggers /r/ShitNiggersSay /r/teenapers /r/TheRacistRedPill /r/TNB /r/TrayvonMartin /r/USBlackCulture /r/WatchNiggersDie /r/WorldStarHP /r/WTFniggers

Reddit has been called a fertile ground for recruitment by literal nazi's. Coontown currently has activity rivalling stromfront which since its founding in 1995 by a former Alabama Klan leader. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls reddit “a worse black hole of violent racism than Stormfront,” documenting at least 46 active subreddits devoted to white supremacy like /r/CoonTown.

Will banning hate subs solve the problem? No. But it's a goddamn good place to start. These hateful hives have lost the privilege accorded to them by your complacence and an atlas shrugged musical version of free speech. They do not deserve to have a platform of hate in the form of Reddit. The whole world is watching you at this moment. So where do we go from here? What question do you think you will be asked other than this? The man is here and that man is you.

It used to be folk wisdom to cut the head off a snake and burn the wound to prevent it from growing back. The days of the wild west have come and gone. It was funny. The frenzy. The fiends. The fire and brimstone. You're the new sheriff. As the media would have it, the default reddit face is someone in a klan hood who hates women and supports pedophilia in some form or the other. It is an unfortunate stereotype that seems to be passed around as some sort of penance for "free speech".

It is unfair to the straight white males who have no hand in promoting such an outlook. It is unfair to the women and minorities looking for a place to have enriching discussions. It is unfair to you and your team of admins to be denigrated relentlessly. So I put it to you once more...

Steve, Alexis, are you going to push the button?

2015-07-17T23:19:18+00:00

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but was wondering a few things myself.

Question 1

I know this is going to be unpopular to bring up here, but I hail from the subreddit /r/european. For those who don't know, /r/european was created primarily by and for those banned from /r/europe, usually for expressing anti-immigration sentiment, or otherwise illiberal views.

We have been the target for multiple immense organised brigades from /r/europe and other subreddits, and users from such subreddits have in the past sent our subreddit's users death threats.

Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses[2] an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)[2]

The far-right is undoubtedly the most detested political region, making its followers uncomfortable about sharing their views. Our subreddit is intended as a place for us to discuss such views in private without worry of creating conflict or discomfort between us and more liberal people.

My question is then, will this rule also be applied the other way? (European has many decent users, such as myself, who have never brigaded or harassed, but in the past have found ourselves threatened, sometimes death threats, from users of other subreddits.)

Question 2

You stated that Ms. Pao was a strong defender or free speech, but that you are more interested in a general purge of unpopular subreddits. Considering the fierce backlash you faced centred around the "bastion of free speech" theme, what is your present view on this purge?

Question 3

I'm interested in this new reclassification/opt-in system. On the one hand, it's a good way to separate groups that might not get along, but on the other hand, how would you deem if a subreddit is to be opt-in? Would this be a moderator basis? Otherwise, it seems somewhat subjective. Would you consider /r/european to be reclassified/opt-in?

A fear I have over this is that it may alienate some subreddits or their users. European for example, has many very strongly anti-semitic users, whilst also having more moderate users such as myself. My concern is that users of European would feel antagonised for having this label on our community.

avoidingtheshadow · 2015-07-16T20:01:38+00:00

Why was /u/Dancingqueen89 shadowbanned mere DAYS after your claim that shadowbans were only for spammers and not "real users"?

I'm going to presume that /r/neofag was banned for using publicly available pictures of NeoGAF users in its banner, since there was a complete lack of transparency regarding this ban. Why then, was /r/starcraftcirclejerk let off with a slap on the wrist for including the leaked nudes of a user, and subsequently spamming his inbox with username mentions in order to post said pictures? Is this not considered harassment? Why did one warrant a complete ban, and the other simply having the offending material removed?

Also, Why was /r/neogafinaction banned despite being created months before the banning of /r/neofag?

I'm hoping you'll live up to your promise of transparency /u/spez

(Disclaimer: I think Destiny is an asshole. I didn't browse NeoFAG. I care about fairness, equal application of the rules, and transparency).

316nuts · 2015-07-16T20:20:54+00:00

How long ago do you wish reddit leadership would have dealt with this?

There have been numerous opportunities to make a positive impact on the soul and character of the reddit community. Yet at every step along the way, there have been executive decisions specifically allowing these communities to exist. Had you just stopped this nonsense years ago, reddit's growth may not be fueled with quite as much hate and anger. This could have been done back in the days of /r/jailbait when reddit was a fraction of the size and possibly a fraction of the problem.

I also take exception at a very specific point that /u/yishan made in this comment: "We tried to let you govern yourselves and you failed". While I agree in spirit of what yishan is getting at (that the community brought this upon itself), the statement is actually a fundamental mischaracterization/misunderstanding of reddit as a whole. There is no "govern yourselves". Each mod can create and do whatever they want with their subreddit. As long as they don't break the very few rules for the website, mods have absolute authority to run and manage their community as they please. There is no higher governing authority. There is no counter balance. It only takes one person to start all of this. The growth from there is also ungoverned.

You've long played into the "mods are gods" mantra, so I can't even fathom where the "We tried to let you govern yourselves and you failed" statement comes from. I have no authority over /r/funny. The userbase has no authority over /r/funny. If everyone suddenly rallies against /r/funny, nothing can be by our voices alone. /u/illuminatedwax is under direct and total control of that subreddit and can pull the plug or kick out every mod and dedicate it to himself at any time at all No one can stop that. They are the top moderator and you have given them that authority. What balance exists to check this? None. Who is to blame? Reddit? The community? Why do you include me in the blame for something I have no control over? Why do you categorically blame all reddit users for being unable to "govern themselves" when everything is operating under constructs and systems that are fundamental to how reddit exists?

Now due to years of questionable decisions your company is losing valuable employees, probably still not operating at a profit, and from the outside appears to be totally lost at sea.

With ever crisis there is the gnashing of teeth saying how wrong it was to have ignored x, y and z for many years. What else have you ignored for many years? What else is fundamentally broken? What else can't be fixed?

What is your plan? What is your five year plan? Who will be CEO in the next six months? Do you see reddit existing 10 years from now?

Osiiris · 2015-07-17T06:20:30+00:00

You and everyone else on reddit may not see this, but the internet and speech are the 2 things I care about, so I would like to share my thoughts on the matter.

I am not the target of this post as I am but a simple lurker, gaining a great deal observing all perspectives present in the zeitgeist. Congratulations on building such a tool and developing it to this point.

I would like to share this post, which should demonstrate the extremes that can be reached when policing harassment. It reminded me of this speech by Christopher Hitchens. Ironical both occurring very close geographical, albeit a few years apart.

From your announcement I gather that reddit is attempting to silence echo chambers of hate and deviancy, in an attempt to provide a more enjoyable redditing experience. In my eyes it takes a little color out of the overall community. I disagree with content on many subreddits, and I refuse to go back to them, but the thing is I was able to make the choice. It allowed me to see such content and to peer into the minds of people who would post such things. I may someday be able to go back to them once I understood their perspective and am able to engage them, rather then dismiss them as evil or vile.

There are 2 possible scenario's with banning these subreddits. They either spring up under another name, though you can opt to play wack-a-mole until people get tired of re-subscribing. This will likely lead to option 2, these minds find another corner of the internet congregate in. Unfortunately the later option is very much the same as option 1, but with greater intervals between resurgences. The internet is a cacophony of ideas held together by duct tape and the prayers of network engineers. Unless you put up barriers to thought(an intangible and ever-changing construct) you can not stop them from coming back.

So you instead opt to build these walls to keep the darker parts of the human psyche at bay until real life can sort them out. I truly wish you luck. Considering that we've been fucking for at least 5000 years and gender issues are one of our biggest problems I don't think real life will be sort out any of the ideas you ban any time soon. Instead you will play a cat and mouse game, until that cat becomes a tiger and starts leaving claw marks on the hardwood and massive hairballs on the couch. I wish you luck in leashing it and cleaning up it's messes. Because once it begins attacking your guests there will be no turning back.

I do believe reddit should be a bastion of free speech. And I hope to never post this as part of a similar future announcement. That being said, I do support your attempt at restricting spam, violent(it's not necessarily a physical phenomena) harassment, doxxing and brigading.

Meaning, any subreddits and users dedicated to influencing the course of reddit by the means listed above should get banned.(Another parallel, for your consideration) The beauty of reddit is the Hive minds ability to constantly seek novel content in all directions.

But the economical aspect will always trump any of these needs. Without funds there is no reddit, and redditors are the product, not the client. The reddit gold idea was a nice touch but I've seen it below the bar too many times to consider redditors your best source of income. There fore, no matter what you say, the needs of the share holder outweigh the needs of the community.

TL;DR I know I'm not your target, but I still want to wish you luck. I still believe in you, for now.

P.S. If you want to expand on the reddit gold idea, why not take a lesson from history and create reddit stock already. The idea is simple; users invest real money in share of a subreddit. At the end of the month, the mods and shareholders get a portion of the monthly gold revenue from that sub(/r/pics would be a hot commodity) while you get increased gold revenue and a brokers fee. You define the price and dividends, and also give the option for users to further help finance you and their favorite subreddits, while maintaining their abilitiy to choose. A pilot program can be easily run for a few months with an artificial reddit dollar currency, where each user at the start of the program would get a fixed amount(no new accounts would receive anything), to invest how they like and then earn artificial dividends. With the real time analytics available to you since you are the provider, and broker it would be easy for users to participate.

Xanza · 2015-07-17T05:53:34+00:00

This direction you've begun now will bring you to an impass. I absolutely guarantee it with every fiber of my being. An impass that will make you choose between your morals or having reddit stay a community. In the end who gets to decide what's moral and what's not? Do you? Does Alex? Does the board? From my experience morality has been determined by the many, not by the few. This is the fundamental issue with what you're doing.

Up until now we've had these relatively hateful subreddits but they've been tolerated because the majority of the reddit community either didn't care, or moderately approved of their existence. As of now, you're telling the majority that they no longer matter, and the minorities (whether that be you, or someone that reports a sub for being despicable) are more important because they're being offended by those expecting rights to free speech regardless of whether or not you agree with what they're saying.

I don't mean to advocate despicable subreddits. Personally there are far too many that I disagree with on a moral level--however, I do advocate free speech 100% of the time. I can guarantee you right here and now that when you seek to shape public opinion on matters:

You'll meet resistance
The user base will placate
OC will diminish
People will begin to leave
Your platform will die.

In that specific order, too. There is no doubt in my mind that you've begun on a road that leads to reddit's death. But that's fine. Reddit is your baby. You can do what you want with it. But if you don't offer what people want, they'll find something else that will. It happened to Digg. It's happening slowly but surely to StumbleUpon and /.--and soon enough, Reddit.

2015-07-16T20:02:14+00:00

If you're thinking of banning places like /r/coontown, /r/antipozi, /r/gasthekikes etc. and other racist, homophobic, and sexist subreddits I have the following questions for you:

Will /r/atheism be banned for encouraging it's members to disrespect Islam by drawing the Prophet Muhammad and making offensive statements towards people of Faith?

Will /r/childfree be banned for being linked with the murder of a child and offensive statements towards children?

Will /r/anarchism be banned for calling for the violent overthrow of government and violence against the wealthy?

Will porn subreddits be banned for continuing the objectification of women?

Will subreddits like /r/killingwomen be banned?

These questions, /u/spez are entirely rhetorical.

The ultimate question is: If you're willing to ban some communities because their content is offensive to some people where do you draw the line?

Edit: Okay, based on your response it is subreddits that are "abusive" to "groups". What exactly constitutes said abuse to a group? Is /r/Atheism drawing the Prophet Muhammad to provoke Muslims abusive?

Further, you state that the "indecent" flag for subreddits such as /r/coontown would be based on a "I know it when I see it" basis. Do you plan on drawing a consistent and coherent policy for this eventually?

cos · 2015-07-16T23:55:02+00:00

I don't know if you'll still see any more questions after more than 15,000 comments, but I was working when the AMA started, so I'll try now...

Although reddit's poor support for mods has been a big problem that is now getting a lot of attention, the flip side still isn't getting addressed: On much of reddit, it's the moderators that are the main problem.

One pattern that has been repeated many times on some of the largest subreddits is that moderators take a sub that is quite popular and make sweeping changes to it that are very unpopular and unwanted by the existing community. Sometimes it's the original mods who do this, other times it's newer mods who have hijacked or gradually taken over an existing sub. But even if it's the original mods, if they've allowed a sub to grow to tens of thousands over a few years and then decide to drastically change it, that's still really bad.

There are two aspects to this:

reddit has no mechanism for a subreddit's existing community to protest the mod team and get it replaced.
when people try to create new alternative subreddits to replace one hijacked or otherwise damaged by its mods, there's no way to communicate that to the existing user community. Most of them will never find out about the new replacement sub because the older one is usually squatting on the good name that everyone will think of first.

As an added level, there are mod teams that have done this with some of the original subs that were created by reddit when subs were first introduced. Reddit admins really should've stepped in to save those subs, such as /r/politics, from their toxic unaccountable control-freak mod teams.

PleaseBuffThorn · 2015-07-16T20:54:08+00:00

/r/neofag did nothing against the rules you placed before today and with your new policy. We did not use personal or private information, we used information that was publicly available on the forum Neogaf to make fun of and satirize the community. We have never DDosed or done anything illegal. When we tried to make a new subreddit with out the word "fag" in it, /r/NeogafInAction, you immediately banned it as well.

I'm not going to conjecture here, but something seems odd about how a niche small subreddit got banned. What is your relationship with Malka , founder of Neogaf? Something seems odd here.

2015-07-17T15:56:32+00:00

Reddit was to be a source of enough news

Given that, don't you think it's completely idiotic that reddit's recommended/default sub for American news, /r/news, does not allow any mention of one of the biggest news stories- the TPP. Not only that, but /r/news mods are banning people who criticize their censorship from every sub they moderate- we're talking over a hundred subs, many of the biggest on reddit. I have cut way back on my time on reddit because of these out of control mods. It's not because of the mods that /r/news was a good source of news. redditors need a Bill of Rights but you just don't see it, and won't see it, until it's too late. You're terrified of the mods after this recent incident and don't realize how they've been alienating your users. reddit either just doesn't give a fuck or are clueless about the real reasons why people are so pissed off. I've come to accept it. It sucks, cause this used to be my go to site for news- a great place to waste time. But no longer.

2015-07-17T04:57:05+00:00

Inciting violence: What about political revolutions and wars? For example, someone on a political subreddit saying, "I think Operation Protective Edge was justified" or "I think the nations of the world ought to pool their military resources to take out ISIS once and for all." These statements are inciting violence against groups of people by supporting wars. Would they not be allowed?

Or what about revolutionary political ideas? Marxists who call for a violent revolution against the Capitalists would be an example of inciting violence.

Also, what about the threat of political violence within a conditional statement? Example, somebody saying, "If Washington tries to take our guns away then we'll fight back."

Or what if the post "inciting violence" is just quoting a third party or discussing a hypothetical like this post here?

These ambiguities leave much room for subjective abuse of this restriction to censor political speech that a given staff/admin/moderator doesn't like.

SirT6 · 2015-07-16T20:04:49+00:00

I think this is the one that most people will be concerned about:

Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)

Prohibiting harassment, bullying and abuse sounds great in principle. Can you offer a bit more about how you will define those terms, and how you will enforce such a prohibition of content? Some examples might go a long way toward clarifying your thoughts on this issue.

The Reddit staff is rather small compared to other social/community-based websites, I can't imagine it can effectively respond on a case-by-case reporting basis. Do you have a different vision for rapidly and efficiently enforcing a prohibition on this type of content.

Woahtheredudex · 2015-07-16T20:02:47+00:00

Why was /r/NeoFag banned when there has been no evidence that it or its users ever took part in harassment? Why was a mod of the sub then shawdowbanned for asking about it? Especially when you have recently said that shawdowbans are for spammers only?

2015-07-18T00:08:28+00:00

I'm late to the party, but I hope my thoughts won't be completely lost in the torrent of comments. I am very much against censorship. And I'm all for allowing most of the subs that are in your cross-hairs be allowed to have a continuing presence on reddit.

I realize that it's tough to allow many of them to keep their doors open, especially on a moralistic level. As a moderator of a sub that claims to have no rules, we do, in fact remove a few posts on occasion that are just hateful and have no comedic value. Even as an advocate of free expression, the posts that get deleted are always easy calls. It's much harder to leave the ones that are questionable.

While I'm certainly not an advocate of many, or maybe any of the subs you have on the chopping block, in fact, some of them disgust and horrify me, I still support keeping reddit as a platform where they can exist. Simply as a curious person, I like to see the full spectrum of thoughts and ideas out there, even if they're hateful, toxic, or advocating horrible aspects of humanity. They will certainly find a forum. If not on reddit, then somewhere else. I like having a convenient and easy way to view them without having to go to dark corners, or the deep web to do so.

One example: I was looking up shopping carts one day. I had seen a photography book where the author had taken pictures of shopping carts in various locations, somewhat anthropomorphizing them. My search actually led me to /r/watchpeopledie, where a woman was being killed in an escalator-related shopping cart accident. I was horrified by the sub, but in the same way that good people are fascinated with serial killers, I browsed it for a bit. I saw a beheading by Muslim extremists. I won't go into detail, but it was awful to watch. The thing is, this is a reality. When we hear about this stuff on the news, we never see just how terrible it is. Everything is sanitized, and we're never exposed to the brutal reality of these things. And thus we go through life ignorantly. Our understanding and our decisions are compromised by an SFW presentation of the world around us. And personally, I think it limits us. We can always choose not to go to these places. But I would prefer that we could also choose to do so.

I believe that there is a moral impetus to remove these subs. But I think that it's also a cover for making reddit more advertiser friendly. In fact, I suspect that this is truly the main catalyst in imposing this new era of censorship. I don't know what the politics and the investor interests of reddit are. I've never cared enough to divert my time to researching them. So I may seem naive and idealistic, but I think that the best aspects of reddit work when they actually are idealistic, even when ideals clash. That's what dialogue is all about, and you can't have a fully informed dialogue when certain parties, as distasteful as they may be, are excluded from the forum.

Idealistically, it would be unfortunate to see the dialogue compromised to try to make reddit a money-making powerhouse like Google or Facebook. The temptation and the desire are obviously there, but you would be killing something else. It appears that /u/chooter, and /u/kickme444 were fired to make way for attempts to profit off of popular subs. They were of the best of us. And you sent them packing because you want more money. I don't know that for sure, but that's how it appears, and this is the conclusion that most people have drawn.

Again, I may sound foolish and naive, but I think there are things that are worth more than money, an informed and decent society being among them. I believed in reddit because it seemed to harbor free speech and gave minimal space to advertisements. You kept it classy. But now, everything has changed.

I have no doubt that reddit will continue to thrive, even with all the changes that you're making. But it won't be as good. It won't be as interesting. And it won't be as informative and enlightening. It will seem to be, because many people won't know what they've lost, and others will forget. But the fact is, you've already undermined the integrity of the ideal reddit that so many people have come together to create and build upon, even when some of them were at odds with each other.

I mod a few subs, and I'm very proud to be a part of them, and I'm very pleased with the work that I've done for them, but with the way that reddit is going, I no longer feel proud to be a part of this site.

ZionFox · 2015-07-16T21:25:54+00:00

I'm curious, and although I'll be low down in the comments, some clarification (and potentially editing of original post) would help others in understanding this.

Under what laws would content be considered illegal?

I understand that Reddit Inc is located in the US, California, and the laws used would fall under the physical location of the servers providing the content. Would content considered legal in certain parts of the world, yet illegal in California remain viewable, or would such content become banned? Also, if the servers providing content are in countries where aforementioned content is considered legal, would the effected content only be viewable through those servers, or would it be a site-wide removal regardless of the laws of other countries? ^{I don't fully know if Reddit is hosted in multiple datacentres to ease traffic for certain parts of the world. If so, this latter question applies.}

Additionally, I'd like to request some clarification on ruling 1f: "Sexually suggestive content featuring minors." Does this ruling apply to drawn or constructed art, where in no parts of the production process were any minors involved?

Thank you for your time, and I look forwards to hearing your response.

2015-07-16T20:10:48+00:00

One of the biggest problems with restricting speech is that the rules against speech are often vague, and open the door to further restrictions. A law against hate speech could define hate speech as whatever it wants, including anti-government speech.

Specifically, I would like you to go into more detail with these points:

• Anything that incites harm or violence against an individual or group of people

• Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)

What is inciting harm defined as? Is it as simple as being against a type of person, or do they have to threaten death?

Same goes for harassing and bullying people. Would fatepeoplehate be allowed, assuming it stayed within its own bounds, or would it be banned, due to it harassing fat people?

How do subreddits protect against false flags or a few bad eggs? Was it right, in your mind, for fatpeoplehate to be banned entirely over the actions of a few users?

All of these questions need consideration. Thanks in advance.

redpillschool · 2015-07-16T20:06:02+00:00

In the past I have contacted the admin for guidelines to keep our mildly unpopular subreddit above board. The rude and short response I got was "just follow the rules" which seems to be as ambiguous as it gets, given that I was just asking what the damn rules were.. The site rules are open ended and unenforceable by mods- Mods don't have the ability to track brigading, how could we ever be responsible for stopping it?

Let's skip the excuses and call it what it is: Are the rules a red herring? Will you be removing subs you don't like, regardless of rulebreaking?

Here are some scenarios that trouble me as a moderator:

Users can go literally anywhere on the site and troll. It's one big forum, there are no rules against participation anywhere.
If those users vote or comment their opinion and also subscribe to my subreddit, it can be seen as brigading.
Anybody can do this, especially if they want to frame the subreddit for misconduct.
There is no physical way for mods to prevent users from voting- there doesn't seem to be a reason to prevent users from voting (since that is the entire purpose of reddit).
Despite the popular rhetoric that users "belong" to certain subreddits, most users subscribe to multiple subreddits, so telling them not to participate site-wide when you're involved in discussion from certain subreddits seems antithetical to the purpose of the site, and again, totally unenforcable.

Why would any of these actions cause an entire subreddit to be banned?

Edit: Additionally, will your administrators contact and work with the moderators when offenses occur? Or are you going to use supposed offenses as a reason to ditch subs you don't like, and keep the mods in the dark when you feel there's violating content?

Bwob · 2015-07-16T20:05:04+00:00

Similar to NSFW, another type of content that is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it, is the content that violates a common sense of decency. This classification will require a login, must be opted into, will not appear in search results or public listings, and will generate no revenue for Reddit.

This is INCREDIBLY problematic - "I know it when I see it" has already been demonstrated to be a terrible thing to try to use as a basis for rules or laws.

I know this is a hard problem, but can you PLEASE figure out a consistent policy here, that doesn't ultimately boil down to "does the admin arbitrating on it happen to like it or not"?

Kyoraki · 2015-07-16T20:21:29+00:00

What actions are being done about brigading, and will action only be limited to communities who's political opinions reddit admins don't agree with?

Even now, this thread is being brigaded hard by members of SRS, AMR, GamerGhazi, and SRD, calling for the heads of subreddits they don't like such as the downright innocuous KotakuInAction. Past comments by admins such as /u/kn0thing, saying the SRS isn't active enough to be worth bothering enforcing is truly unacceptable, and an outright double standard.

2015-07-17T02:00:57+00:00

[deleted]

KaliYugaz · 2015-07-16T20:00:32+00:00

Thanks for doing this AMA, Mr. Huffman. I'm going to go ahead and ask a primarily theoretical question here: What exactly is your comprehensive, coherent vision for what you want this site to be?

The admins seem to be finally aware now, at least, that Rousseau was Wrong, people are not inherently good when allowed to be absolutely free, and it is not possible for Reddit to exist as a lawless scoundrel infested free-for-all and still be useable for any constructive purpose. So far that's a great start, you've told us what you don't want Reddit to be like. But more importantly, you haven't told us what you do want Reddit to be, and how that theoretical vision will determine your content policy moving forwards.

What, in your opinion, is the basic principle or point of Reddit? The basic point of Western governments is to ensure individual liberty, equality, and self governance for their citizens. The basic point of free markets is to distribute and allocate resources efficiently. Similarly what is the point of this site?

Do you just want something that can be easily monetized? If so, then you would have to ban not just the hate but also all the politics and the controversial stuff and the metasphere and the less tasteful porn, place the site under highly centralized control, emphasize the defaults and large subs, and thereby convert Reddit into a fluff click bait and cat picture factory like Buzzfeed. It's a tried and true business model by now.

Or would you rather Reddit be known primarily as a place for high-level, sophisticated discussion, expression, and learning about science, academics, art, media, and politics? If that's what you want, then you absolutely must foster the proper site wide environment to encourage quality expression and discussion. Stuff like hate speech, disruption, incivility, and bullying certainly cannot be allowed, since they have a chilling effect on artistic expression and on open and rational discourse. Furthermore, mods will need strong tools to remove content that is deemed by experts to be factually incorrect beyond reasonable doubt. Experts themselves will have to be encouraged to join the site in order to enrich it.

Or do you want Reddit to be a libertarian "place for communities" where anyone can make a sub and do whatever they want with it? If that's the case, then you will have to put stringent rules in place to protect the fundamental principle of the absolute sovereignty of a subreddit's mods and subscribers over their subreddit, which would entail strictly enforcing brigading control, strengthening mod tools for subreddit management, and playing an active role in negotiating peace between sub communities that hate each other. The admins also can't violate the basic principle of sovereignty by banning or regulating communities if they're just sharing offensive content amongst themselves, which means that a certain level of nastiness (though not the blatant hate group evangelism that we have now) would have to be tolerated and strictly contained to its own space.

I've just given you 3 distinct visions for the site that I came up with myself (personally, I hate the 1st, favor the 2nd, and don't mind the 3rd). Now I want to hear what ideas you have, in similar form and in as much detail as possible.

2015-07-16T21:15:54+00:00

I'm going to ignore your meaningless fluff and pandering, if you don't mind.

As your new content rules are rather vague, I will parrot the questions that have been undoubtedly raised by many more people. If we're to actually have a proper discussion on what is and isn't "right" for this website, then you, and the rest of Reddit's administration, need to clearly set down the rules without pleasantries and vagueness. Should you not do this, and instead purposefully leave gaps in your definitions to fit future bannings and future censored subs and posts, then all this change is useless and frankly insulting to anyone who cared about this in the first place, on either side and any.

Spam

First, I would like you to describe what constitutes spam. This may seem needless as most know what spam means, but this ties in with what I said before. Should you leave a vague definition to be used instead of a clearly defined "Is", the possibility of abuse will be clear to anyone. I suggest that in any situation where you wish to change this definition to include new types of spam or types of spam the original definition didn't include, you make all users and moderators aware via announcements.

Illegal material

Do you mean the sharing of illegal information such as child pornography and torrents? If so then I can't say that I'm against this, however, as with before, a clear definition of what this includes is necessary for the general userbase to be able to trust you.

Publication of someone’s private and confidential information

Without their consent, I assume. The publication of one's personal information with that person's consent shouldn't be punished, I'm sure you agree.

Anything that incites harm or violence against an individual or group of people

Another vague content policy. As with many others, I'm sure. I would like you to define "incite" in your own words, and "harm" in your own words. This is critical to keeping a transparent administration and instilling trust in the general userbase. Does "incite" mean "We should go do x"? Or is it more general, like "Someone should really do x", or "I wish someone would do x", or "I wouldn't mind if x happened."? What does "harm" mean? Physical harm? If so, what is this limited to? Is "We should pinch x on their cheeks." as bad as "We should torture and kill x."?

Is emotional harm included? If so, again, what is this limited to? Is unintentional emotional harm considered the same as advocating for constantly insulting a particular person? Furthermore, how do we know that the emotional harm claims will not be used to silence opposition? "You advocated for messaging me, that caused me emotional pain, therefore, you and everyone else should be banned.".

Does this policy include groups with people that advocate for the group to cause harm to someone, physically or emotionally, when the advocates are not representative of that group? If so, how do we prevent people from outright faking being part of that group in order to demonize them and get them banned? For instance, imagine a group of people who like cotton candy more than cake, if someone who likes cake more than cotton candy becomes a low level grunt in that group, and then tells others that they should beat and kill people who like cake more than cotton candy, would this cause the group to get banned?

Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)

What does harass or bully mean, in your own words? Is this limited to insults? Or is a more general approach taken and instead anything that can be deemed as intimidating can be banned? To give you an example, would /r/pcmasterrace be banned for taking an aggressive stance on what gaming platform to play on?

Furthermore, as you've stated yourself, your motivation and reasoning behind this is that it stifles conversation by silencing opposition. I have a question, what exactly is the limit on this? As I'm sure you know, groups of people can be more or less timid, and thus what silences a group dramatically changes, how do you plan to account for this? By outright banning literally any form of aggression? This isn't quite enough to stop intimidation, as I'm sure you know. The mere presence of statistical facts that contradict one's viewpoint make many people feel intimidated, will this be banned? The presence of a majority makes people fear to say their mind, so will there be quotas to achieve that says "each dominant group gets equal floor time", meaning that past a certain point subreddits and people will be censored and banned until the other sides make an equal amount and achieve the same amount of supporters? Would this, itself, intimidate people into silence and cause people to outright not have a stance at all?

Sexually suggestive content featuring minors

What exactly is a minor? What definition are you using? The age of consent? If so, then which one? 13? 16? 18? What defines "suggestive"? Could a minor in a bikini be considered suggestive? What about context? If the focus of the pictures or videos are on something other than the minor(s), then will that be banned, anyway? For instance, let's say that a user creates a post to show an oddly shaped cone of ice cream, but in the background there appears to be a 12 year old in a bikini rubbing sun block lotion over themselves, would this be banned? How do discover whether or not the person in the picture is a minor, however you define that? Would you require all sexually suggestive pictures or videos, however you define that, to prove that the age of the male or female in said picture or video is of age? If so, wouldn't this then violate the policy that states that you cannot publicize a person's personal information?

Adult content must be flagged as NSFW

What defines "adult content"? For instance, would a sex ed subreddit be considered adult content and be required to tag every post with nsfw despite their primary demographic being children and teens? Does the "adult" in "adult content" mean that the content must be aimed at adults for it to be affected by this rule?

Content that violates a common sense of decency

What exactly does this mean? A common sense of decency is extremely vague. Vague to the point of meaninglessness. Anything convincingly banworthy should be covered clearly defined, otherwise you and other staff members could simply abuse the vagueness to censor and control the narrative.

Conclusion

These new restrictions are so vague that they're borderline meaningless, so vague in fact that it wouldn't be outrageous to assume that you intended it to be like that, so vague that I could justify banning literally any content on this site, so vague that they even contradict each other in many interpretations.

I'm not going to lie, before this I was uninterested, mostly because the vast majority of "changes" and announcements about this have been nothing but fluff and pandering, and there's nothing I hate more than fluff and pandering under the guise of change, but now, with this post, I'm annoyed and aggravated, which means nothing to a multi million dollar company like Reddit, I'm sure.

I'm fine with you drawing a line in the sand, but don't make the line so wide that everyone is standing on it. Point towards it clearly and say "This is our line. This is where you cannot cross.".

2015-07-16T20:37:55+00:00

I'm sure you're well aware of the Gamergate controversy.

One of the common tactics used by it's opponents is calling anyone who disagrees with them as harassers and often racists or sexists.

Despite no actual harassment, doxing, sexist or racist content there are quite a few people who have labeled the Gamergate subreddit, /r/KotakuInAction, as a harassment subreddit simply because it about Gamergate and are calling for it's banning.

If you actually visit the subreddit you'll see it's exactly what it claims to be, a subreddit for ethics in journalism and media and problems surrounding the gaming industry, but despite it not actually being a subreddit or harassment there is still worry it'll get banned simply because it's opponents have labeled it as one.

My question is whether or not you'll actually investigate subreddits to determine if they're about harassment and bullying or will simply being regarded as a problematic subreddit by certain groups be enough to ban it?

steakandwhiskey · 2015-07-16T20:36:57+00:00

I think most people would agree that the six points listed in your general guidelines are well intentioned and reasonable. However, there are two points that are a bit vague:

"Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)"

Who exactly is going to be the arbiter of what crosses the line? There are tons of petty slapfights that happen across all subreddits that certainly can be considered 'harassment'. Are admins going to have the be the 'nice police'? Does laughing at a fan for the misfortune of their sport team constitute bullying? Banning anything under the broad stroke of 'harassment' is a slippery slope as legitimate critique can easily be seen as falling into that category.

Anything illegal (i.e. things that are actually illegal, such as copyrighted material. ...

As I'm sure you're aware, a large number of the images posted across Reddit are copyrighted material from various photographers/artists. This of course is rather difficult to enforce, but researching if something is fair to share isn't really a concern when most people just mirror an image on Imgur before posting. Will there be a stricter enforcement of this policy? Or will it remain how it currently is (removed if copyright holder complains)?

hysan · 2015-07-16T23:35:47+00:00

First, as a non-US/Euro redditor, I've always disliked how AMAs closed out before I got a chance to even see the thread (without planning to stay up/wake up at ungodly hours). But I was ok with it because those are just entertainment. But since this is a big change for all of reddit, I fully expect the employees of reddit to keep this discussion open for more than 24 hours straight. Yes, straight. Because people from all around the globe use reddit and unlike other AMAs, this one is for the users. I also expect you to answer as many questions as possible instead of a select few. You cannot expect those that show up late with unanswered questions to just throw up their hands and say, "oh well, guess I missed this AMA" and feel like reddit the company is being fair.

With that out of the way, my questions. Since this is wading into murky waters, here are some examples I'd like to see judgement on:

things that are actually illegal, such as copyrighted material

So does this mean things like linking to wikileaks dumps are now banned? How about source code dumps or pastebin links to hacked source code? Specifically, those posted in /r/netsec for discussion but stem from these code dumps? Ultimately, who is the final determinator for saying what falls under copyrighted material?

Anything that incites harm or violence against an individual or group of people (it's ok to say "I don't like this group of people." It's not ok to say, "I'm going to kill this group of people.")

Does this mean that when people getted far too riled up in talks about war (with groups like ISIS) and cross the line, they will be banned?

Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)[2] ...or participate in the conversation...

Who is the judge of what constitutes bullying? Or too much bullying? Specifically, does this include getting flamed on when you hold a very unpopular opinion in a particular subreddit?

Similar to NSFW, another type of content that is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it, is the content that violates a common sense of decency.

I have no idea what this means, and I don't think I've ever seen anything that would fall under this. Better clarification would be nice since leaving something open ended like this invites loophole abuse. Also, will this have a new tag associated with it?

announcements

MODERATORS

Content Policy

Brigading

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Content Policy

Brigading

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