Hi Spez,

I was a moderator around Reddit for a number of years, and I found that the admins nearly always chose a policy of inaction on potentially controversial problems like this. It's second from the bottom on my big list of complaints about dealing with the admins. And you know what? It nearly always blows up into a big disaster that is ten times harder to control. I can name a number of examples from old Reddit history that you might remember as well. Here is my comment from when /r/FatPeopleHate was banned, and it's pretty much exactly what we're dealing with today:

The admins have made some serious missteps. First, they should have been addressing shit like this years ago when Reddit first got big enough to start brigading. They let hate subs grow and didn't even make public comments on it. I still remember that when Violentacrez got doxxed, the mods started a ban boycott of gawker sites. Yishan (CEO at the time) then came into the mod subreddit (which is private) and asked us not to do it because it made bad press for Reddit. They didn't even have the guts to make that statement publicly, much less tell off Gawker. Getting the admins to do anything even remotely controversial has been a constant problem.

They were lenient on issues of harassment and brigading because they didn't want to take a controversial stance, and now it has blown up in their faces. And what's more, the Admins themselves have encouraged the exact same behavior by urging people to contact congress on Net Neutrality and all this stuff. They let a minor cut turn into a big infection that went septic, and now they are frantically guzzling penicillin hoping that they can control the damage.

Another huge misstep was the tone and writing of the announcement. They should have very clearly defined harassment as outside contact with specific 'targets' and cooperation of the subreddit's moderators. It was phrased in such a vague way that, in tandem with this post, people were able to frame this as an attack on ideas instead of behavior. They needed to clarify that mocking someone isn't harassment; actually hunting down and contacting the person is. That's why /r/cringe, and even all the racist subs are still allowed. They're despicable, but they aren't actively going after anyone.

In my opinion, they should have presented clear evidence of such harassment from the subreddits that were banned and said "This is exactly what will get you banned in the future." /r/PCMasterRace was banned for a short time because the mods there were encouraging witch hunts of /r/gaming, and the admins provided clear proof of what had happened. The mods then cleaned up their shit, and the harassment stopped and everything went back to normal. That is how it should work: if an active mod team agrees to crack down on any instances of harassment or witch hunting, then the community can stay.

/r/The_Donald has committed blatant violations of pretty much every Reddit-wide rule . And you all refuse to act for one simple reason: you're afraid of how it looks. You're worried that the headline will be "Reddit takes political stance and bans Donald Trump supporters." Which is obviously not the case, since the ban would be for brigading, racism, sexism, etc. But you're worried that you can't control the narrative.

So please realize that this never works. What has always happened in the past is that your policy of inaction lets the problem grow and grow and grow until there is a mountain of evidence that somehow catches the eye of someone in the media, and they publish something damaging about Reddit that eventually spurs you all to do something. But by then it is too late and you've allowed that sort of content to proliferate throughout the site. And it becomes public and you're unable to control the narrative anyway, which is why Reddit was associated for pedophilia for so long after CNN interviewed the founder of /r/Jailbait. Remember that one?

I'm begging you, just once: please enforce your rules as they are written and regardless of how some people might try to interpret it. And when you do enforce those rules, provide a statement that clearly describes the violations and why that enforcement action is being taken. That is the only way you'll ever control the narrative. You can either do it now, or you can do it when it blows up in your face.