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Let's talk content. AMA. (self.announcements)

spez[A] が 投稿x2

We started Reddit to be—as we said back then with our tongues in our cheeks—“The front page of the Internet.” Reddit was to be a source of enough news, entertainment, and random distractions to fill an entire day of pretending to work, every day. Occasionally, someone would start spewing hate, and I would ban them. The community rarely questioned me. When they did, they accepted my reasoning: “because I don’t want that content on our site.”

As we grew, I became increasingly uncomfortable projecting my worldview on others. More practically, I didn’t have time to pass judgement on everything, so I decided to judge nothing.

So we entered a phase that can best be described as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. This worked temporarily, but once people started paying attention, few liked what they found. A handful of painful controversies usually resulted in the removal of a few communities, but with inconsistent reasoning and no real change in policy.

One thing that isn't up for debate is why Reddit exists. Reddit is a place to have open and authentic discussions. The reason we’re careful to restrict speech is because people have more open and authentic discussions when they aren't worried about the speech police knocking down their door. When our purpose comes into conflict with a policy, we make sure our purpose wins.

As Reddit has grown, we've seen additional examples of how unfettered free speech can make Reddit a less enjoyable place to visit, and can even cause people harm outside of Reddit. Earlier this year, Reddit took a stand and banned non-consensual pornography. This was largely accepted by the community, and the world is a better place as a result (Google and Twitter have followed suit). Part of the reason this went over so well was because there was a very clear line of what was unacceptable.

Therefore, today we're announcing that we're considering a set of additional restrictions on what people can say on Reddit—or at least say on our public pages—in the spirit of our mission.

These types of content are prohibited [1]:

  • Spam
  • Anything illegal (i.e. things that are actually illegal, such as copyrighted material. Discussing illegal activities, such as drug use, is not illegal)
  • Publication of someone’s private and confidential information
  • 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)
  • Sexually suggestive content featuring minors

There are other types of content that are specifically classified:

  • Adult content must be flagged as NSFW (Not Safe For Work). Users must opt into seeing NSFW communities. This includes pornography, which is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it.
  • 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.

We've had the NSFW classification since nearly the beginning, and it's worked well to separate the pornography from the rest of Reddit. We believe there is value in letting all views exist, even if we find some of them abhorrent, as long as they don’t pollute people’s enjoyment of the site. Separation and opt-in techniques have worked well for keeping adult content out of the common Redditor’s listings, and we think it’ll work for this other type of content as well.

No company is perfect at addressing these hard issues. We’ve spent the last few days here discussing and agree that an approach like this allows us as a company to repudiate content we don’t want to associate with the business, but gives individuals freedom to consume it if they choose. This is what we will try, and if the hateful users continue to spill out into mainstream reddit, we will try more aggressive approaches. Freedom of expression is important to us, but it’s more important to us that we at reddit be true to our mission.

[1] This is basically what we have right now. I’d appreciate your thoughts. A very clear line is important and our language should be precise.

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[–]Vmoney1337 541ポイント542ポイント  (312子コメント)

I guess I'll ask the question that everyone else wants to hear the answer to: What subreddits are you considering banning, and what would be your basis for doing so?

[–]spez[S,A] 126ポイント127ポイント  (280子コメント)

We'll consider banning subreddits that clearly violate the guidelines in my post--the ones that are illegal or cause harm to others.

There are many subreddits whose contents I and many others find offensive, but that alone is not justification for banning.

[–]jstrydor 198ポイント199ポイント  (61子コメント)

We'll consider banning subreddits that clearly violate the guidelines in my post

I'm sure you guys have been considering it for quite a while, can you give us any idea which subs these might be?

[–]spez[S] 21ポイント22ポイント  (11子コメント)

Sure. /r/rapingwomen will be banned. They are encouraging people to rape.

/r/coontown will be reclassified. The content there is offensive to many, but does not violate our current rules for banning.

コメントをもっと表示する (49 返事)

    [–]obadetona 159ポイント160ポイント  (65子コメント)

    What would you define as causing harm to others?

    [–]spez[S,A] 70ポイント71ポイント  (58子コメント)

    Very good question, and that's one of the things we need to be clear about. I think we have an intuitive sense of what this means (e.g. death threats, inciting rape), but before we release an official update to our policy we will spell this out as precisely as possible.

    W

    [–]Adwinistrator 61ポイント62ポイント  (9子コメント)

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

    How will this be interpreted in the context of spirited debates between large factions of people (usually along ideological lines)?

    The following example can usually be found on both sides of these conflicts, so don't presume I'm speaking about a particular side of a particular debate:

    There have been many cases of people accusing others of harassment or bullying, when in reality a group of people is shining a light on someone's bad arguments, or bad actions. Those that now see this, voice their opinions (in larger numbers than the bad actor is used to), and they say they are being harassed, bullied, or being intimidated into silence.

    How would the new rules consider this type of situation, in the context of bullying, or harassment?

    [–]HungryMoblin 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

    That's a good idea, because I think what the community is seeking right now is straight guidelines that they can follow. /r/cringe for example, the sub actively takes a stance against off-site harassment (yes, including death threats), but it happens every time someone forgets to blur a username. This isn't the fault of the moderators at all, who are actively preventing harm, but the users. How do you intend on handling a situation like that?

    [–]cha0s 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Will you ensure us that you will clarify this before you ban anymore subs, and that the subs affected by the bans will be notified in advance and given an opportunity to rectify any transgressions they may be making?

    [–]mydeca 19ポイント20ポイント  (1子コメント)

    Yea, but how are you going to determine that the subreddit itself is at fault? There's going to be a few individuals in all subreddits that cause harm, how do you determine that the sub itself is at fault enough to be banned?

    [–]Brenbren25 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

    Thank you spez, I think we all agree (heck /r/coontown has a rule that bans for calls to violence) inciting violence is unacceptable. But the free exchange of thought can moderate us in fact.

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        [–]monsda 45ポイント46ポイント  (9子コメント)

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

        How will you determine that?

        What I'm getting at is - how would you make a distinction between a sub like /r/fatpeoplehate, and a sub like /r/coontown?

        [–]evmax318 26ポイント27ポイント  (1子コメント)

        What will be the process for determining what will be labelled "offensive" and will there be an appeals process?

        [–]MrBaz 95ポイント96ポイント  (6子コメント)

        Enough with the vagueness, please.

        Define "cause harm to others".

        [–]IM_THAT_POTATO 7ポイント8ポイント  (1子コメント)

        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.

        Is that the admins who are deciding what this "common sense of decency" is?

        [–]Mayniak0 17ポイント18ポイント  (2子コメント)

        Can you give examples of ones that you find offensive but aren't ban-worthy?

        edit: Also ones that currently violate your guidelines that may be banned?

        [–]Matthis500 25ポイント26ポイント  (4子コメント)

        The guidelines seem a little broad, can you give some examples of subreddits to be banned?

        [–]mydeca 22ポイント23ポイント  (1子コメント)

        I mean, a subreddit is made up of a group of individuals. Some individuals are going to be bad and cause harm to others, what are the guidelines in determining that the sub itself is at fault, as opposed to just a few individuals?

        [–]LeinadSpoon 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

        • 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)

        Does this mean that the racist subs will be banned?

        [–]SUSAN_IS_A_BITCH 35ポイント36ポイント  (10子コメント)

        Note: /r/coontown and others have not been banned because they have not harassed people outside of their subreddit. This was FPH's mistake.

        If you find them harassing people outside of their subreddit, report it.

        [–]CryEagle 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

        But that rule already exists and is being enforced for over a month now.

        You spoke about additional communities that shouldn't be on Reddit, those containing "offensive and obscene" material.

        Any comments on that?

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            [–]MrCaboose96[🍰] 427ポイント428ポイント  (237子コメント)

            Mr Huffman,

            First off, thank you for doing this AMA. On Tuesday, you said:

            Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen[...]

            In this Forbes article from 2012, Alexis responds to a question about what the founding fathers would have thought of Reddit by saying, "A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it."

            Can you please explain the disparity between these two comments?

            Thank you.

            [–]spez[S,A] -256ポイント-255ポイント  (216子コメント)

            First, they don't conflict directly, but the common wording is unfortunate.

            As I state in my post, the concept of free speech is important to us, but completely unfettered free speech can cause harm to others and additionally silence others, which is what we'll continue to address.

            [–]dangerdark 411ポイント412ポイント  (44子コメント)

            First, they don't conflict directly, but the common wording is unfortunate.

            Who, exactly, do you think you're talking to? You aren't surrounded by yes men here. This isn't a board meeting. And we're (mostly) native English speakers.

            How exactly don't they conflict? The only thing unfortunate about the wording is how explicitly it shows your doublespeak.

            [–]lodro 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

            First, they don't conflict directly, but the common wording is unfortunate.

            Please explain why they don't conflict, in your view. It seems to me that you're simply deflecting the question, instead of addressing the apparent contradiction.

            [–]ButtGardener 43ポイント44ポイント  (4子コメント)

            So you say unfettered free speech silences people, and your answer to stop this is for you to to selectively silence people.

            Basically you are telling us you are going to silence people who don't fit in with your own political agenda.

            [–]MrBaz 93ポイント94ポイント  (6子コメント)

            the common wording is unfortunate

            Ayyyyy

            [–]allthe_gundams 23ポイント24ポイント  (0子コメント)

            So you're silencing one group to allow another group to speak louder? The reason we have free speech in the first place is simple: so that no one is oppressed in their opinions. You can't restrict speech and opinion of one group and allow another to speak. It defeats the point of having free speech.

            [–]Kanshan 167ポイント168ポイント  (8子コメント)

            I'll take deflecting answers for 600, Alex.

            [–]luftwaffle0 27ポイント28ポイント  (11子コメント)

            but completely unfettered free speech can cause harm to others and additionally silence others,

            How specifically does speech within a subreddit harm someone who doesn't read it?

            How does speech silence? How is silencing speech the answer to that?

            [–]LapinHero 7ポイント8ポイント  (2子コメント)

            I think the line of "You have the right to say what you like, but are not immune to the consequences of what you say," is being ignored by a lot of Redditors.

            At the same time, it does come across as a little hyprocritical to draw a line between free speech and unfettered free speech. Banning illegal content is great, I'm all in support, but even I got a giggle from /r/fatpeoplehate once in a while.

            Sometimes the line between hate and humour can seem blurred, but I believe humour gives us a power over things. It's why I can make supposedly racist jokes with my friends, whatever their race, and they can do it back. It's taking control, sometimes.

            In what form could you see /r/FatPeopleHate existing on Reddit?

            [–]guccigoogle 21ポイント22ポイント  (7子コメント)

            What is your stance on /r/PicsOfDeadKids? That doesn't go against any of the restrictions in your post, but is arguably worse than some racist subreddits.

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                [–]justcool393 302ポイント303ポイント  (8子コメント)

                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

                1. 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?

                2. 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.

                3. 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.

                4. 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.

                5. 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.

                6. 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? 6. 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

                1. 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.

                2. 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.

                  1. 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.

                Related

                1. 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.
                2. 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".
                3. 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.
                4. 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.
                5. 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.

                [–]almightybob1 220ポイント221ポイント  (15子コメント)

                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 54ポイント55ポイント  (3子コメント)

                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:

                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.

                [–]Warlizard 171ポイント172ポイント  (18子コメント)

                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?

                [–]mach-2 525ポイント526ポイント x9 (261子コメント)

                /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?

                [–]zaikanekochan 229ポイント230ポイント  (49子コメント)

                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?

                [–]Georgy_K_Zhukov 46ポイント47ポイント  (6子コメント)

                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?

                [–]DEATH-BY-CIRCLEJERK 22ポイント23ポイント  (2子コメント)

                Hi Steve,

                I think this is a question I've not seen asked or addressed anywhere on reddit before, so I hope this is a good contribution to this AMA and discussion.

                Do you see an issue with more and more default subreddits configuring their automoderator to automatically remove comments from users who have just joined? On numerous occasions a friend or family member has created an account after me telling them about reddit only to find that when I go to their overview page and follow the permalink to their actual comments that it is missing. I presume moderators are doing this to mitigate trolls or something but I think it might become a systemic problem if all of the defaults move in this direction. How is anyone going to be able to get enough karma to get out of the automod filter if none of their comments get seen?

                Thanks.

                [–]urdle 77ポイント78ポイント  (4子コメント)

                Hello /u/spez, I thought about posting a long question about reddit's change of heart when it comes to free speech rather I have decided against it.

                In your previous post, you claimed we as a community need to decide what our values are. I propose this: Honesty.

                So my questions are this:

                is reddit still in the red?

                If so, who is paying the bills?

                And are these changes prompted by them?

                Thank you.

                [–]throwawaytiffany 69ポイント70ポイント  (11子コメント)

                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

                [–]krispykrackers[A] 56ポイント57ポイント  (10子コメント)

                The tool we currently use for DMCA takedowns has evolved a bit internally to take down things like personal information. We need to adapt that tool to be much more clear on what is a DMCA takedown and what is not, as well as develop better internal policies on when that should be used, since it does affect user generated content.

                [–]SirYodah 132ポイント133ポイント  (6子コメント)

                Can you please speak on why real members are still being shadowbanned, even after you claimed that they never should be?

                For reference: https://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/3dd954/censorship_mod_of_rneofag_shadowbanned_for_asking/

                Note: I'm not involved in any of the communities represented in the link, I found it on /r/all yesterday and want to know the reason why people are still being shadowbanned.

                [–]RamonaLittle 10ポイント11ポイント  (1子コメント)

                (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.]

                [–]donkey_democrat 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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.

                [–]Miserable_Wrongdoer 53ポイント54ポイント  (12子コメント)

                If you're thinking of banning places like /r/coontown and other racist 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?

                [–]amaperson1234 22ポイント23ポイント  (1子コメント)

                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.

                [–]Its_Bigger_Than_Pao 20ポイント21ポイント  (1子コメント)

                While it's important to talk about what is NOT allowed, I also think we need to address what is expressly endorsed by reddit. Specifically, why is /r/twoxchromosomes a default sub? The mods there very clearly push a certain political agenda. In addition, much of the content there relates to individual personal issues. While this is good, it seems very sexist and backwards to tell women that they should feel comfortable sharing their feelings and talking about personal problems while effectively telling men that we should continue to stay silent about our own issues. Why are women's feelings more important than men's? Why is a woman's problems more important than a man's? I see no justification for that sort of sexism coming from reddit.

                [–]My-whatever-account 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Okay, what I take from the announcement post is that you want to ban /r/CoonTown. Lets be honest here, that announcement was made specifically for that. I am not racist, but I personally am interested in what communities like that are like - what makes them think that way, and how. A lot of what I take from Reddit IS being able to witness fringe communities to get a better understanding of what their hot topics and arguments are, then debate them. We do not want to silence and wipe out the opposition and censor them while our popular opinion is the only one that is heard, this is not China. It is also great to not be closed-minded and actually hear the other person's side. This is called being mature.

                People want to express ideas and argue, and the moment you start to police the conversations, the Internet will find an alternative. The users provide the content, and you provide a message board for discussion. It will not be hard to reproduce, and when the community leaves, Reddit dies, just like Digg. Reddit is honestly NOTHING without the community. Nothing, nada, zip. It will just be a dead website. The community who come from all walks of life, experiences, and beliefs is what makes up Reddit.

                On the other hand (I'm sure this came up 7 million times), who draws the line? Will you also ban /r/SpaceDicks because it's "offensive"? How about /r/Atheism for hating on other religions? (No offense to the "good" atheists, just using this as an example, forgive me my Atheist brothers).

                Cheers.

                [–]smeezekitty 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

                his is basically what we have right now. I’d appreciate your thoughts. A very clear line is important and our language should be precise.

                What you have right now is mostly reasonable. I applauded Reddit when it banned Child Porn. But it is important to keep in mind that people don't have the right not to be offended.

                I have other questions that are important to pose:

                Do you still plan to discontinue shadowbans for users other than spammers? If so, what kind of time frame would there be on that?

                Will rules be applied consistantly? For example, will brigaders for a feminist cause be treated the same as a brigader for an other cause?

                Why the strange mix of banning subs? Like why was neofag banned?

                [–]dangerdark 18ポイント19ポイント  (10子コメント)

                Why was /u/justcool393's post hidden?

                https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_talk_content_ama/ct5qs8b

                It still shows up under his posts, but if you go directly to the link it has disappeared.

                Edit:

                Nevermind, everyone. I guess he deleted it and reworded it. Or reddit shit itself. Either way.

                [–]verdatum 25ポイント26ポイント  (1子コメント)

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

                [–]davidreiss666 68ポイント69ポイント x2 (131子コメント)

                The best run subreddit communities are the ones that have mod-teams that enforce the rules and don't allow any hate-speech and other bullshit.

                For example, /r/Science does not allow bullshit opinions that aren't scientifically valid. Either as submissions or comments. So, they will ban you for creationism, anti-vaccine BS and climate change denial as these are all views that are backed by all the world scientific community. In short, they want everyone to know that /r/Science is scientifically accurate. The same goes for other science based communties on Reddit such as /r/AskScience and /r/Biology.

                Likewise, /r/History and other history-based subredits like /r/HistoryPorn, /r/AskHistorians and /r/BadHistory don't allow history-denial. So, things like Holocaust denial, Lost Cause of the Confederacy propaganda, Ancient Aliens crap, Neo Nazis, White Supremacy and other total bullshit views will get you banned.

                There is a large problem with hate-based groups that are trying to colonize (their word) Reddit in their attempt to spread their views. Hate based groups like: White Supremacists, Neo Nazis, Skinheads, Holocaust Deniers, Extreme Misogynists, Homophobes, Racists who view all Muslims as terrorists, Extreme Racists, etc. It's a large number of groups, and there is a massive amount of overlap between these subgroups.

                These radical nuts run subreddits like: /r/CoonTown, r/GreatApes, /r/European, /r/Holocaust (holocaust deniers), /r/TheRedPill, /r/KotakuInAction, etc.

                Right now, /r/CoonTown almost gets as much traffic as stormfront.org. And that's not including the traffic from all the other racist shithole subreddits. That spike in traffic is the Dylan Roof shooting, and the extra traffic seems to have staying power considering they picked up 4,000 subscribers in two days and another 1k at least since.

                If they don't take care of it, reddit will soon have the dubious honor of being the most active white supremacist forum on the the Internet.

                Hate Speech should not be a profit center for Reddit, or any other corporation. If the admins don't want to take the lead on this, then hopefully one or more media outlets will start pick up on it and force the Admins to deal with it.

                Another point that largely gets ignored in this debate: Non-racists generally don't want to hang out with racists. Racist and hate-group users generally strive to drive out the non-racist users.

                Everybody has a story about the racist family member that they only see once a year at some family gathering, and we all dread running into that family member. We really don't want to hang out, even for a short amount of time, with that person. Well, when it comes to family we make sacrifices, so we (1) try and only talk about the weather or sports with them and (2) are very thankful it's for only one-hour a year. But when it comes to non-family, you don't make the same allowances. We just cut those people out of our lives.

                Bad users will drive out good users. And then more bad users will be attracted to this site. And it will become a bad-user reinforcement-cycle with more and more bad users driving out, they hope, all the good users. These groups even know this, and count on the non-racists leaving. It's why they use terms like Colonizing, as they are actively attempted to take the entire site over. That is their goal. They are not interested in undirected discussion with anyone. They want to control the narrative and how any discussion happens. They are actively trying to turn young people who aren't already racist bigots into more racist bigots. If you allow them to run wild, 90% of the good users will leave. And what's left will simply be a Storm Front members wet dream.

                Paul Graham mentions this issue with bad users in this essay.

                Other web sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ have taken to dealing with racist hate groups. It's high time that Reddit did the same.

                I also want to address the BS that some limits on free speech are inherently bad. Because the only country that really thinks free speech means "Anything Goes, including extreme bigotry" is the United States. But other nations, such as Germany, France, the UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Italy, etc. place some limits on "Free Speech" via bans on things like Holocaust denial. Now..... I'm sorry, but you can't tell me Germany or Canada is any less free than the United States. The reason the Germans don't allow open-Nazis into the political debate in their country is that they tried it once. It ended badly.

                In short, you don't allow these people a foot hold because their goal is to make Reddit into a hate-propaganda site. Hopefully the admins are finally going to do something about these groups. It's high time the admins took action.

                [–]tacomotif 18ポイント19ポイント  (2子コメント)

                "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... We remain committed to protecting reddit as an open platform." - Reddit 2012

                So I'm wondering, do words simply not mean anything anymore /u/spez or is Reddit changing their minds on this issue? Is this move in the pure interest of profitability? I guess thats fine, this is a business after all, but why not at least be honest with us instead of saying that no one intended for reddit to be an open platform. That honestly sounds like revisionist history, the comment you made the other day where you completely contradicted Alexis and Yishan. I feel the biggest insult to people is pretending that the past didn't happen, and if you guys leveled with people in an open and honest way, there would be less of a backlash, but I guess reddit is going in the opposite direction of anything open and honest.

                So reddit is no longer to be a free and open exchange of ideas, as is the right of The Board of Directors to dictate and yes men to implement, but honestly, where does it end, who is next? Police discussions get pretty heated and hateful, pluto planet status discussions get out of control, feminists go flying off the rails, circumcision discussions can get waaaay out of hand too; are any of these things going to be snipped in the pud?! Its easy to get rid of the unpopular people, no one will cry for them, but if its so easy for y'all to throw away these values in the face of potential profitability, where will that end? Have fun with the monetized corporate platform I guess.

                I don't hate Ellen /u/ekjp Pao, if the smug shitposting of /u/yishan is to be beliebed, then she is our saviour and white knight in shining armor. Shes even kinda cute in an androgynous way! Supposedly /u/kn0thing is responsible for a lot of the bad stuff people blamed on her, like the firing of /u/chooter . I thought the vitriol was over the top and insane, but I understand how those people felt. They had only heard bad things about her past, and no one really knew where the moves were coming from, so they lashed out, and there was no communication whatsoever from anyone at reddit to explain what was going on. Not that talking to an angry mob is really all that helpful, to be fair. Its obvious now that you guys got a PR firm helping you out with all of this and coordinating people's movements. I guess the final decisions are made and everything will swing around to the green money jungle beat. It must be so easy to say all those lofty and principled things and then just sell everything out when cash is sitting on the table.

                Congratulations, you guys won, and anyone who cares about open and honest dicussions has lost. I guess you all got what you wanted and the gravy train is getting ready to leave the station. Was it all a lie to just get to this point, where the inconvenient people can be brushed aside like trash? I really hope that isn't what is happening here.

                When everything is said and done and we move on to voat and 8chan, I really hope you guys make an honest effort to communicate with the mods and the users of this site and maintain that effort. People deserve an open and honest conversation, even if you don't wanna give it to them.

                [–]redpillschool 11ポイント12ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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 scare 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?

                [–]nixonrichard 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

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

                So what about what we did to Comcast?

                What about what we did to George Bush?

                Rick Santorum?

                What is the point of banning intimidating others into silence when there are entire subreddits that explicitly ban people simply for disagreement? What value would that serve unless you're going to say you can't ban individuals from subreddits for ideological differences?

                [–]Hammerhart 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Firstly, will you comment on your backpedaling regarding Reddit being a "bastion of free speech"?

                Also,

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

                "Harassment" can be defined quite broadly.

                [–]bhalp1 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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.

                [–]RamonaLittle 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

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

                Publication of someone’s private and confidential information

                The User Agreement currently says "You agree to not post anyone's sensitive personal information that relates to that person's real world or online identity."

                Will the new policy clarify this, including what counts as "dox," and (if there's a "public figure exception"), who counts as a "public figure"?

                A few examples of why this is an issue:

                There was a redditor who used her IRL first name as her reddit name. She was associated with a high-profile criminal group and this was covered in many mainstream media reports. She moderated a large number of subreddits. In subreddits she didn't moderate, links to these articles were allowed because of course they were, they're mainstream news articles. But in subs she moderated, she called all these links "dox" and removed them, and banned anyone posting them. Permitted under new content policy?

                How about a situation where there's a mainstream news article, something like "UnusualFirstName UnusualLastName arrested for kicking puppies." In the comment thread, someone says, "Hey, I wonder if this is u/UnusualFirstNameUnusualLastName, who posts a lot in r/KickingPuppiesIsFun?" Can u/UnusualFirstNameUnusualLastName get this comment removed as "dox"?

                Basically I'm asking, can the "no dox" rule be used to shield someone from criticism and press coverage, especially if they're the one who made the connection between their IRL name and their reddit account? As it's been applied in the past, if there's a negative article about Joe Shmoe, all Joe Shmoe has to do to get it removed is to say "hey, that's me! Now remove this article which is doxing me!" I don't think that's a good use of the "no dox" rule.

                [–]fight_for_anything 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

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

                you will need a much clearer and specific definition of these things. there are groups on both sides of every issue that are basically guilty of this. while subs like FPH were clearly guilty, all of the SRS subs do basically the same thing. attempting to silence people, and lets not kid ourselves, they brigade like its their full time job, despite what their sidebar says. its important to be fair and unbiased, in this kind of thing.

                honestly, i think its better if you just tell eveyone to grow a pair, before this place turns into an idiocracy of people saying they are being harrassed just because someone else expressed a different opinion.

                [–]AlphaWolf101 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

                Steve, how do you plan on improving communication between mods and admins? Will you value their input on actions, such as firing Victoria?

                Also, will previous shadowbans be possibly reversed after the shadowban policy change?

                [–]MMZephyr 26ポイント27ポイント  (3子コメント)

                1. If a subreddit like /r/fatpeoplehate was banned, why aren't similar ones like /r/punchablefaces banned?

                2. Now that you've decided to take on the responsibility of making speech safe on reddit, how will you keep up with the hydra-effect of online users? (Eg. How do you keep up with harassment if users can just make a new account and keep going?)

                3. Why did you say reddit isn't meant to be a bastion of free speech, when you used to say the exact opposite?

                4. What do you have against free speech? Hasn't it gotten the US pretty far, despite the lame people who abuse free speech?

                5. How do you determine if an entire subreddit should be banned for an instance of harassment, rather than the individual users involved? If a moderator is involved, why not ban them instead of the entire subreddit?

                [–]ontott 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                First I wanted to say many of us know that running Reddit isn't an easy job and we appreciate what you /u/kn0thing/, /u/ekjp have done and continue to do to support Reddit. To me the best subreddits are the ones that are heavily moderated so I think the most important thing you should focus on is giving mods the tools they need to their job without fear and harassment (they put up with a lot shit from users).

                With respect with what you posted today, I guess I have question about how it is going to be implemented. Will you rely on the community to report subreddits that break the content policy or will reddit act proactively. There are many sub on reddit right now that already break these rules imo.

                edit - missing word

                [–]luftwaffle0 -1ポイント0ポイント  (2子コメント)

                If what this all means is that certain subreddits will be banned, and in particular /r/coontown, then I have some statements/questions:

                First of all, I think coontown is more interesting than some give it credit for. People frequently post their stories of how they finally became racist. By far the most common theme of these posts is that they were taught growing up that everyone was equal, but that this notion was shattered once they moved to a black area or got a job where they interacted with black people.

                This stands in direct contradiction to the most common theory of how people become racist, which is that they are indoctrinated in racism from birth by their racist parents and never encountered black people.

                Is that not an interesting observation in itself? I mean, even in academia there are theories about why people are racist. You can study that right here on the site like almost nowhere else.

                Secondly, there are useful purposes for a place like coontown. For one, it is a "safe space" where people are allowed to anonymously post their thoughts and opinions about things which could get them fired, cause them to lose friends, get them beat up or even killed in real life. People have repeatedly testified to how cathartic it is to have a place to say these things safely.

                The next issue is a question of why coontown would be banned in the first place. Is it because of the ideas, or because of the tone? I wonder, if coontown were instead a collection of dry political essays and scientific papers, would it still be up for being banned?

                If so, then that's quite clearly banning certain ideas, and all of this fluff about openness and honesty is just a cover.

                But if not, then there is yet another problem. Are you saying that it's not the content but the tone of coontown? Is that not what certain groups call "tone policing"?

                I have no problem with tone policing when it comes to talking to another person directly because it makes communication more amenable. However, to go after a subreddit which is almost specifically for venting and humor, on the grounds that their tone is out of line, is simply absurd. Furthermore, if it's really just the tone which is the problem and not the ideas, then there are a wide range of subreddits that would need to be banned as well.

                There is yet more utility to a place like coontown. Frequently (as in, every single day) there will be news articles posted about victims of black crime. While the mainstream news media blots out the sun with encomiums about an armed robber who got killed while assaulting a cop (he was turning his life around, don't you know) and other such nonsense, stories like that of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom are completely unknown and ignored. An innocent couple was tortured for days including being repeatedly raped/sodomized to the point of injury. Newsom was shot to death and set on fire. Christian had bleach poured down her throat while she was alive, then had a plastic bag put on her head and was thrown into a garbage bin where she suffocated to death.

                And these aren't the only stories. The stories of innocent people being raped, robbed and murdered happen every day and nobody seems to know about it or care.

                This kind of backwards presentation of reality is exactly why increasingly so many people are getting pissed off, and why coontown not only exists but thrives. People feel that they are being lied to, that ordinary people are being made out to be evil using abstract, philosophical and vague notions of culpability while truly evil acts that actually happen in the world are being ignored. The rage comes from the powerlessness. The rage comes from compassion and love. "If you love something, you have to be willing to hate that which threatens it."

                Having established that there are good and interesting reasons for coontown to exist, let us now address this idea of "openness and honesty" as opposed to "freedom of speech".

                What does "openness" mean? To me, this means everyone being allowed to have their voice be heard. This seems to be precisely correlated with freedom of speech. I don't see how you can want openness while banning ideas.

                What does "honesty" mean? Because it seems to me, that an anonymous place where people can openly state beliefs and opinions that would have harsh consequences in the real world is the definition of honesty. What honesty could you hope to have if people are afraid to make subreddits or post comments for fear of being banned? That is either not honesty at all and what you have achieved is instead a chilling effect, or it's "honesty" which is reserved only for people of certain ideological stripes which the admins happen to agree with, which is just about the most milquetoast version of "honesty" imaginable. What kind of virtue is honesty among people who agree with each other?

                But maybe you mean intellectual honesty? To me that means making a good faith effort to understand what someone is saying, to be charitable in your interpretation of what they're saying, and to seek clarification if something is misunderstood as opposed to pouncing on it aggressively.

                Well to that I would say that when it comes to intellectual honesty, I have not seen any worse offender than proponents of extreme feminism and anti-racism. The very idea of calling something "hate speech" is poisoning the well and intellectually dishonest. Countless times - really nearly every time - I have seen these people either purposefully mischaracterize or ignore arguments and counterarguments. I have seen schoolyard-style tactics such as "I could show you proof but you wouldn't listen" or "I'm not debating an angry inbred bigot" or a thousand other insults and deflections. The idea that everyone is equal is an article of faith which is held and defended so strongly that facts, reason, and even basic human standards for conduct are thrown out the window.

                Why? Because racists and by extension coontown, are the boogeyman. It doesn't matter what the boogeyman says, because he's the boogeyman. A normal person, completely ignorant about 90% of the things relevant to a discussion about race including basic knowledge of statistics, history, facts about crime, neurology, psychology and genetics, just sees some kind of a devil who they have been indoctrinated to hate since birth.

                But how applicable are ideas of "openness and honesty" to reddit anyway? That sounds like a policy aimed at promoting productive debate, but most of reddit is not a debate at all. It's people posting cat pictures or people talking about model trains or a thousand other things for which openness and honesty are virtues which are practically meaningless in how automatic they are.

                And not only that, but considering the fact that the real end-user experience of reddit is the subreddits themselves, and the experience of the user is tightly controlled by the moderators thereof, "openness and honesty" is an idea almost completely out of the hands of the admins in actual fact.

                Banning coontown doesn't improve openness and honesty one iota. Not only have you actually reduced openness directly, but people will still be banned from countless subreddits for posting the wrong idea, whatever it may be. I have over 1,000 comment karma in /r/news and have been gilded there 4 times, and I was banned while having a debate with someone in the comments which was going on 2 or 3 days after the news was originally posted. I was not trolling or insulting, I was explaining an idea in as plain of language as I am here. They never gave a reason for my ban despite my messages. I'm also banned from AskReddit, politics, science and probably a few other places. Although I am not perfect, I almost always conduct myself as politely as possible even if the other person is being rude, specifically because I want them (and readers of my comment) to see that I am not unreasonable or zealous, and to contrast my conduct against their own/my opponent's. I am honestly trying to change minds and I believe reason is the way to do that, not anger and venom.

                My point is that "openness and honesty" is already dead on this site. With ideologue moderators running the defaults and no recourse from being banned from them, people are already shoved off from meaningful participation if they think or say the wrong thing. Of course I understand banning someone for straight-up trolling, but people have their access to the site restricted for much less than that.

                Also, about brigading: certain subreddits blame coontown for brigading, but everyone and especially the moderators there are acutely aware of the trouble that brigading could bring. But any time some kind of anti-racist viewpoint is downvoted, this is chalked up to a coontown brigade. I do not believe there is any truth to this idea. I think that there are lots of people in the general population of reddit who are "racist" or at the very least can recognize a bad argument and thus downvote it. I've hardly ever seen an anti-racist comment that was truly buried, maybe -4 or -10 but that should be considered within the realm of normal voting patterns.

                Meanwhile, I have lost hundreds of karma just recently because of a brigade from /r/shitamericanssay (they linked one of my comments), and while I did receive an admin response that they would "look into it", nothing seemed to have come from it. The mods did not post a notice and nobody in their sub posting comments related to me were banned. Also, if you search the site there are lots of complaints about their brigading. I do not understand how obvious brigading by subs like this and SRS can be ignored while coontown can be blamed for anything.

                I have no "ultimate question" for you. It sounds to me like the decision has already been made. This post is my statement.

                [–]KaliYugaz 9ポイント10ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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.

                [–]Darr_Syn 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

                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.

                [–]PeBeFri 10ポイント11ポイント  (10子コメント)

                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.

                And whose code of decency would be the basis for this new classification?

                I have enjoyed this website for many years now. It has been superb as a collection of communities where news, ideas, and interesting new things on the Internet can be shared. And its success is owed largely to its reputation as a space where free expression can thrive.

                But the structural integrity of Reddit is under threat. It has been for many years. And it's not from those who engage in hate speech. It's from another community of Redditors, one which simultaneously denounces and profits from the site's hands-off policy towards its users. Their most problematic community is /r/shitredditsays, and they are unofficially known as social justice warriors.

                Here is my stance on this latest Reddit controversy in a nutshell:

                I would rather use a website populated by racists and bigots than by social justice warriors.

                Say what you will about those who frequent the hate subreddits. At least they only want their voice to be heard, even though what they say may be unpalatable. By contrast, social justice warriors aim to suppress the voice of others. Only one of these groups pose a threat to a free and open marketplace of ideas.

                It is understandable that you would wish to restrict hate speech, either for moral reasons or to placate potential advertisers. But long before you ever discussed the censorship of hate speech on your site, you strongly opposed the actions of vote manipulation, of which there is substantial evidence of guilt by SRS.

                Here is my suggestion for you, to avoid hypocrisy:

                If you censor the hate subreddits, you must censor /r/shitredditsays as well.

                If you do not comply, I will cease my regular activity here, migrating my presence to Voat and other competitors that may arise. I will not purchase Reddit Gold, for myself or anyone else. And I will use ad-blocking software when visiting your site.

                I have no moral qualms about this. Reddit may no longer call itself a "bastion of free speech," but it still advertises itself as a place where one can make their voice heard without being subjected to downvote brigades, and would be given equal footing with the censorious. If you shut down subreddits for their ideas and not others for their behavior, you would be guilty of false advertising.

                [–]Stink_Snake 10ポイント11ポイント  (4子コメント)

                First off why is the first priority about content policy and not all the other MASSIVE problems with Reddit? There is 50 MILLION in the bank. SPEND IT. I don’t like having to hit F5 to pay my respects to Reddit’s 503 error.

                How are all your promises given to the mods going? Your lead engineer just quit because she did not believe she “could deliver on promises being made to the community.” Ayyy lmao, that doesn’t bode well. Can you be certain that you will hit your target dates?

                More importantly why is this not a power grab? You are asking the users how Reddit should wield more power.

                Remember when the US government said, “The vast majority of Americans are law abiding good people we need some new tools though for those few folks that wish due harm to our communities and bring terrorism to our soil. Don’t worry folks ‘cus if you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.”

                We gave our government more power and look how well that worked. This feels the same.

                While I find the oft-mentioned subreddits that would be banned under new content rules vile; I disagree with Reddit wielding any more power. Why? Reddit tends to fuck things up. Rules are have been applied arbitrarily in the past; if we even know what the rules are in the first place. Could we clear that up first?

                From what I see, Reddit is embarking on a journey of sanitize and monetize. First step is to sanitize the subreddits but how far will it go in order to get ad revenue Reddit needs to make its stockholders happy?

                Usernames? Never fun when a news story goes something like, “ According to reddit user, cum_on_her_titties.” What is to stop future rules on comments? Soon we could have a content team removing comments.

                I fear our community has set us in its haste down a dark rode. A rode in which our up vote buttons will become Doritos and Downvote Mountain Dew. A rode where we can all enjoy the site being wrapped in Suicide Squad banners. We did it Reddit!

                [–]athrowaway_a 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

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

                So that includes SRS? A subreddit dedicated to linking to other users comments so they can make fun of them. Doesn't that also intimidate users into silence?

                [–]BedDedroom 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

                So under this new "No harassment policy" who dictates what is considered harassment? I'm sure all the SJWs out there will start messaging moderators around the clock because they've got hurt fee fees.

                Can I get /r/atheism banned because it harasses Christians?

                Can I get /r/fitness banned because I get triggered looking at healthy people?

                This is a very slippery slope and I would hate to see my favorite website become Buzzfeed 2.0. All I can say is that I'm so glad I'm not a moderator.

                [–]mcctaggart 3ポイント4ポイント  (2子コメント)

                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 exuse 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 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?

                [–]DuhTrutho 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

                • 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)

                These two points need clarification. What subreddits do you have in mind, especially if those places are currently self-contained?

                I mean, /r/ShitRedditSays for example will bully individuals and link directly to them. /r/coontown bullies people, but from the haven of their own subreddit.

                Are you asking us what the line should be, or can I ask what the line you want to establish is?

                [–]MovkeyB 188ポイント189ポイント  (107子コメント)

                As a black man, I came to Reddit because it was a bastion of free speech. It was a place where I could come and be judged on the quality of what I had to say - not the person who said it. It was a place where new ideas could be born, because nobody was afraid of expressing their honest thoughts, opinions, and theories. From what I've seen, SJWs want to destroy that. They care more about who you are than what you say, and if you're not a trans-woman genderqueer attack helicoptor feminist, your ideas don't count.

                As a black man, I hate /r/coontown , but I would defend to my death their right to speak freely. /u/spez, What will you do to ensure that reddit remains a free and open platform for everyone?

                edit: ty

                [–]GodOfAtheism 184ポイント185ポイント  (58子コメント)

                What about SRS?

                [–]ImAKidImASquid 11ポイント12ポイント  (0子コメント)

                So if reddit is not a bastion of free speech then what about all this?

                (Credit to /r/BoFS)

                [–]anticapitalist 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

                All these censorship rules will be enforced selectively. (Depending on the personal views of the admins.)

                eg:

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

                That's the whole goal of many anti-male hate subreddits.

                (Like ShitRedditSays.)

                But they've never been targeted. eg how they've been brigading for years, & always get a pass.

                [–]endomorphosis 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

                I am wondering if you're intending on making reddit a curated space, with the addition of video content and the removal of content you personally deem objectionable, how your're going to address the reduced safe harbor protections provided by USC 230. Furthermore what is deemed objectionable may in fact be protected speech under the Unruh act, which prohibits any and all arbitrary discrimination whatsoever, for example removing subreddits that aren't breaking rules or criticizing reddit's actions.

                Furthermore, I would like to address reddits participation in the http://derp.institute , and whether or not reddit can be trusted as a unbiased source of news, considering the conflicts of interest with for example /u/kn0thing and and Marc Andreessen's relationship with the Clintons. Because to many outsiders it seems like reddit isn't fostering a community but pushing for a narrative, for example punishing groups deemed unfavorable to their political ideology, but allowing for blatantly objectionable content that follows your ideology.

                For example the fact that reddit and many of its admins openly advocate breaking civil rights laws, and indeed likely breaking hiring laws when it screens users for social justice and gender, while disparaging the userbase that it derives its income from. Do you feel that this is a violation of the fiduciary duty, because it's clear that its exposed Reddit to alot of risk, and alot of harm to the community from which it derives income.

                Lastly, I remember Sam Altman mentioning that users would be able to participate more in reddit governance, and his plan on increasing the ownership of reddit by its own community. Its clear that many of us are upset with the governance, and would enjoy a more open and participatory governance scheme, or is reddit going to continue to ignore its users at its own peril.

                [–]AlphaWolf101 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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?

                [–]Mutt1223 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

                3 minutes 307 comments. Some multiple paragraphs long. He could have just posted nothing but the word "kitten" a thousand times and the thread would still look exactly the same.

                [–]Honestly_ 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

                Thanks for doing this AMA. A couple of concerns:

                Have the admins/ex-CEOs collectively decided that the best way to move forward is to introduce WWE-style drama with these public spats between Yishan, Ellen Pao, kn0thing, etc?

                It's starting to harken back to when Vince McMahon stopped pretending to be a neutral announcer and became his own character/villain. Throw in the power mods who thrive in creating drama and we now have what's starting to feel like the SuperStars of Redditing.

                But seriously: with all the focus on admin drama, the relatively few terrible subs, the issues held by some mods, and those associated distractions it's becoming a headache for those of us who run and those who simply enjoy the normal, uncontroversial, successfully operating communities hosted on reddit. Is the focus of the site on producing varied, interesting content for the 160m monthly visitors or arguing with the less than 1% who participate in these silly drama-fests?

                Do those in charge of reddit HQ even know what reddit is good at doing anymore?

                How would you define what reddit is good at doing?

                For example: In all of this, the major sports subs (/r/NFL, /r/NBA, /r/hockey, /r/CFB, et al) are some of the best communities hosted on the site. They have all done their best to stay out of the outside drama (none went private) while thriving because they manage to make vast amounts of rival fans come together without degrading into the cesspits seen on comment sections sports websites elsewhere. They all continue to host their own AMAs without problem, heck /r/CFB has just managed to get credentialed as a media organization by several athletic conferences. They're all doing it based on the reddit platform you helped create, as independent communities hosted on reddit. Is that still the emphasis? Will reddit HQ push harder to control that aspect of the narrative? Some of us are tired of being dragged along by these spats and the terrible PR they generate for all of us whether our subs are involved or not.

                [–]FlyingPeacock 14ポイント15ポイント  (0子コメント)

                In your earlier post you said, “Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech…” You also went on to say, “We as a community need to decide together what our values are”. Since free speech is a value that by and large is represented throughout the community, how do you plan to reconcile this? Will we only get free speech when it is convenient for the reddit admin and marketing teams? I understand that threats are not covered under free speech, but where is the line? People don’t have a right to not be offended. Is that your goal for reddit?

                [–]SheWhoReturned 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                A lot of people seem to be coming in with prepared comments, it makes sense, there are two clearly divided camps on the issues and everyone whats to get their ideas seen. Some of the stuff you mentioned already existed, no spam, no sexualizing of minors. So lets talk about the new 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)

                You have clearly decided to move forward with these ideas (which I am in favour of personally, but others certainly are not) . But really what the important question here is, what constitutes bulling a group? Clearly things like FPH and Trans_Fags did, coontown seems to be on the chopping block, but do you who else do you consider bully subs TRP? KiA? SRD? Gamerghazi? I think everyone, on both sides of the issue really wants to know, where is the line?

                I know creating a hard line opens up rules to being subverted by those who try to get their way, but the same can be said about having the line obfuscated.

                [–]steamwhistler 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

                From /r/gamerghazi:

                1. The CEO stated that he'd like for a system to be implemented where people can read deleted comments. What will this entail, and what will be done about comments that contain personal information?

                2. How does the CEO feel about unbridled free speech stifling minority voices that disagree with the majority?

                3. There are users who feel that all moderation is censorship, even when one community spills into another one and posts content or comments that do not align with the rules or culture of that sub. These users generally believe that subs should "let the votes decide" when it comes to what content is and isn't allowed even in places like /r/AskHistorians. How would you respond to a user who expressed these ideas on how reddit should be run?

                4. What subs would you be most proud to present to strangers as an example of what makes reddit a place they should visit? (i.e., any other than the defaults?) What subs would you present to strangers if you wanted them to stay away from reddit?

                5. A lot of the troubles that plague reddit seem to come from incredibly vague policies and direction. You could ask 1000 different mods and users what the admins consider brigading to be, and the only thing they could agree on is that it has to do with voting. You could ask the same group what the admins consider to be the posting of personal information, and it's likely they wouldn't be able to agree on a definition at all. And finally, you could ask that same group where they think the admins want to take reddit, and you'd likely see a split between people who think it's being cleaned up to be sold off and people who think it's being taken back to "free speech roots" as though it should be the next 4chan. Is there any intent to clarify what entails a brigade, what is considered the posting of personal information, and where you hope to lead reddit?

                [–]CloudTheWolf 8ポイント9ポイント  (5子コメント)

                Wow 1 minute in and people have 6 paragraphs on how subs they don't like are bad.

                Obviously prewritten.

                [–]mobiusstripsearch 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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?

                [–]seamslegit 9ポイント10ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Yesterday you said that Reddit would be creating policies and tools for removing:

                more offensive and obscene content

                I get that there is plenty of disturbing and reprehensible content on reddit but isn't this very subjective? I work in medicine and have no problems seeing pictures of surgeries while others might find this obscene. I find plenty of content on r/republican an d r/democrats to be disgusting. Others probably find religious( r/christianity or r/atheism), pornography (r/gonewild r/nsfw) and shock (r/wtf) subs to be offensive and obscene. The only way to find common ground values for the majority is to dumb down reddit to the point that is a whitewashed disnyesque political correct shell of its former self. Why do you think taking the censorship route of banning subs and limiting free speech is better than improving the tools to view and participate in those areas of reddit they want to be a part of?

                [–]AdamColligan -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

                1. Different rules for behavior, popular behavior, or organized behavior?: A fundamental fact about reddit is that it encourages visibility and participation from large numbers of people in otherwise obscure situations. When you make rules to limit your behavior, will your philosophy be: (a) each user's actions are either against the rules or not? ... (b) a user's allowed actions can become against the rules if enough other users are also acting the same way? ... or (c) a user's allowed actions can become against the rules if they are part of a large enough group, but only if the user is actively organizing or being organized by others in the group? If (b), will there be some warning to the 500th user that she cannot pile on to what the first 499 have done spontaneously? If (c), how do you practically distinguish between linking to some outrageous reddit post or news story (core to the site's purpose) and "organizing" a downvote brigade or harrassment campaign?

                2. Public vs. private people, or just public vs. private information ?: Will the rules for how reddit is used to encourage or organize people to contact, lobby, protest, etc. depend on the identity of the person or people on the receiving end, with some "on limits" and some "off limits"? Or does the site simply ban certain types of behavior or the posting of certain types of contact information, regardless of the subject?

                3. Collaborative platform?: Will you post site rules and other relevant documents on GitHub? Let pull request submissions be an ongoing opportunity rather than something for special consultation moments.

                4. Consistent format?: Will you consider a more standardized scheme for moderators to use to indicate what is allowed or not in a given subreddit? Rules should always appear in the same place. Each sub's tolerance or ban on a few behaviors should be listed on every sub. And there should be more tags for subs and/or posts along the lines of the successful "NSFW" and "SERIOUS" tags, which have become terms everyone understands.

                5. Admins and sub policies?: Can you clarify the role, if any, of admins in creating or enforcing subreddit-specific rules that are not site-wide? For example: (a) Will admins directly help mods enforce sub-specific rules when standard tools can't handle a situation? (b) Will admins impose rules from above on some subs but not others, such as a ban on some subs being taken private or deleted by their mods? (c) Will admins be an avenue of appeal for users who object to moderator action/inaction on sub-specific rules? (d) Do any of the above depend on admins' judgment about whether moderators' rules or decisions are good ones?

                6. Site-wide rules interpretation: local or unified?: Since mods are required to enforce site-wide rules, do you intend to have admins intervene or settle disputes/appeals in order to standardize this enforcement? Or will different subs be places that not only have different custom rules but also different interpretations of the site-wide rules?

                7. Appeal/support panels?: If admin resources are stretched too thin, would you consider Wikipedia-style panels of mods to handle complaints or appeals on certain issues? Mod-mod and mod-admin interaction is already becoming more orgnaized and formalized.

                8. History visibility?: Are you prioritizing the development of site functionality that allows users to view their entire post history as well as any data being kept about their site use? This is crucial to helping users understand what can be known or inferred about them, especially if they intend to be anonymous but are eventually at risk of being "outed".

                9. Rule precision?: Would you consider choosing more precise terms or descriptions rather than ambiguous or contested ones in the harrassment policy (like "safe"), even if it makes a policy statement longer or less conversational in tone? Edit: in this new post, you use the phrase "harm or violence". Okay, so harm is officially separate from violence, which isn't inherently unreasonable. But now it can stop anywhere between encouraging suicide and harming someone's sensitive feelings about cross-stitch patterns. What does it really mean here?

                10. Six degrees of personal information?: reddit clearly tolerates user accounts that identify the user himself/herself. And because The Internet, it is increasingly difficult to tell any story using any account without some breadcrumb trail that, now or in three years, could unmask the subjects. Do you think that the time has come to articulate more precisely what the ban on personal information means in this environment? There is a huge gray space between -- on the one hand -- publishing an organized doxxing and -- on the other hand -- telling every interesting or unique story with a new throwaway account while also changing not only the names but most or all of the important facts in a Quixotic attempt to make it impossible to recognize through careful research or another user's personal connection. Will your rule revisions give some better idea of what lengths the site wants users to go to here?

                [–]Pierce28 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

                content that violates a common sense of decency

                What exactly do you mean by this? NSFL content, or content such as hate speech? If not NSFL, will you finally separate out NSFW from NSFL? There's a major difference between boobs and someone literally losing their mind.

                [–]bilde2910 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Hi, /u/spez, and thank you for doing this AMA regarding the upcoming content policy update. I've got a few questions that I would appreciate being answered.

                Content policies are a highly controversial topic among redditors, and no matter which position you choose to take, there is bound to be a lot of drama and hate over the decision. First question, how do you intend to deal with the reaction of such a policy change? The last time this happened (banning of FPH), harassment and threats to Ellen Pao were floating around on the front page for days. Are you afraid that too many people will leave reddit to join alternative sites in order to voice their opinions without being censored?

                Several subreddits are worried about whether or not their subreddit is going to be banned following the content policy update. So the next question is, where are you going to draw the line as to what content is considered acceptable, and what is considered reprehensible? How serious does the harassment have to be to call for a sub deletion? What if it is confined to a single or a few subreddits, and does not spread into other parts of the community? What if it does spread, but still remains within the boundaries of reddit? Will brigading subreddits be banned?

                Next, I'm wondering about the reasoning and purpose behind the policy change. So, why do you change the policy that has been in place for over a decade? Is it for financial reasons? Is it to protect the individuals being harassed? Is it to protect reddit's reputation in the media? All of them?

                Harassment subreddits have been around for a while, and some even for several years. Why have you waited until now to implement the policy changes? This surely has been a problem for you for a while, so is there any specific reason as to why this happens now, as opposed to maybe a year or two ago?

                And finally: The [/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/](announcement post) has sparked a lot of controversy regarding reddit's goals as a free speech platform. You said in your announcement that:

                Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech

                Yet, initially, free speech was exactly what your goal was for reddit. Why do you now say that free speech never was the intention?

                Thank you in advance for answering my questions. I hope the changes turn out to be good for reddit.

                [–]Vladimir_Is_Pootin 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Alright, /u/spez, in that announcement post a few days ago, you claimed that you never referred to Reddit as a “free speech platform.” I have a few pieces of evidence that point to the contrary.

                Interview where /u/spez calls Reddit a free speech platform, original video went conveniently private.

                Reddit rules page Archive in case of sneaky revision

                Reddit FAQ page Archive

                /r/blog post Archive

                “A bastion for free speech on the web…?”

                How would you like to respond to the people calling you out for your blatant attempt to rewrite history?

                [–]isolatedextremophile 11ポイント12ポイント  (0子コメント)

                You say that you want to remove offensive, obscene and dark parts of reddit. Do you realize that those words describe a subjective feeling?

                [–]sleeps_with_crazy 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Fifty years ago, the overwhelming majority of people would have been deeply offended if I suggested that two men should be allowed to get married. They would have gone apoplectic if I suggested they should be allowed to adopt children. If history tells us anything, it's that there are things we consider self-evidently morally true now that in fifty years, our grandkids will be laughing at us for and they will be right. So my question is: if reddit existed back then and I created a sub dedicated to why gay couples should be allowed to adopt, would you have banned it?

                [–]hansjens47 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

                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" ?

                [–]_pancaste_ 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Can you address the Forbes article where Alexis referred to reddit as a "bastion of free speech"? What's caused the shift in reddit's policy from uninhibited discussion to "safe" topics only?

                [–]lodro 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                • 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)

                These two seem potentially quite problematic.

                How are each of these terms defined? Who decides what is in or out, and by what process? Is that process transparent, and is there room for community input?

                For example, some people see vehement disagreement in debate on a controversial subject as harassment, as in a Canadian legal case of harassment of Twitter that was in the news earlier this week. That sort of definition would capture a great deal of content that I believe a majority of Redditors do not want censored.

                [–]RodrigoPer 10ポイント11ポイント  (1子コメント)

                When will /r/crackertown be removed?

                PSA: one of the mods there is also a mod at /r/blackladies (an openly prejudiced sub in my view, have a look, see if you agree) and has been one of the most vocal /r/coontown critics.

                [–]MARX0 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Where do you draw the line with harassment? /r/CoonTown is pretty famous for their batshit crazy views, but what about /r/TheRedPill or /r/GenderCritical ? I dont like either and I think that they are stupid but I do respect that they have their opinions and reddit allows those opinions to be expressed. I would like to see them educated and them change their views but that is a different goal from address in harassment on reddit. Their have been stories of members/mods of /r/CoonTown harassing people, yet they are not banned.

                TL;DR - Who's gonna make the decision on banning of harassing content and what are the objective standards that will be used? or is it a case by case basis

                [–]avoidingtheshadow 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

                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).

                [–]NUMBERS2357 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                I have a question about "group harassment.". Reedit defines harassment as something that would make a reasonable person think reddit isn't a safe platform for their participation, or that makes them fear for their safety. Given this, it sounds like " safe" means more than just physical. Is this the case?

                If so, what else counts? Many people talk about "safe spaces," defined similarly to the definition of harassment you use, and such spaces usually ban certain ideas. If users (credibly so!) think certain ideas (even mainstream ones!) make reedit not a safe platform for them to participate, will you ban those ideas from being discussed?

                [–]2211108646 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Who is the arbiter of "content that is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it"?

                [–]SirMeaky 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                /u/Spez - I've spent many hours on Reddit and participated in many events over my time here. I'm all for free speech, however I think everyone has the right to an opinion and the right to express it.

                The views over the various subreddits can be insulting, nobody is argueing that, but it's easy for people to unsubscribe and/or block the subreddits they find offensive and continue as normal on the site insult free.

                Why is Reddit choosing to get rid of these subreddits? Why is it that Reddit doesn't just leave its users to moderate the content they wish to view?

                Thank you for your AMA today.

                [–]freekill 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Hi /u/spez,

                Concerning the free speech vs. "better overall community" argument, why are there no discussions from the admins regarding solutions that are democratic and involve the entire community? Instead, it seems the only option being proposed involves only bans handed down by admin decision making? In my opinion, admin bans based on monitoring of "appropriate" subreddit content seems so counter to the Reddit spirit that it has to be the absolute worst solution for the long term survival of the community.

                For instance, instead of banning communities outright that post content the majority of Reddit might find reprehensible, why not force those subreddits simply to be private subreddits? You could setup a subreddit where such communities are submitted and the Reddit community decides if it should be private by default. No shadow banning, no admin policing of content (other than existing policies on illegal content) and you get the added advantage of keeping Reddit a bastion for free speech, even though you apparently no longer believe it should be such. You don't have to worry about people stumbling upon "reprehensible" content, since you explicitly have to opt in to see it. Even search engines can't parse it while closed, so your reputation remains intact. You could even potentially mark such subreddits differently denoting that they contain content that may be offensive and require people to explicitly consent to joining.

                There are many subreddits I personally find reprehensible, but that's why I don't subscribe to those subreddits. I would never want Reddit to be a place where a community could not exist simply because I don't agree with the content. The beauty of Reddit, and I believe its core strength, is that my experience on the site is tailored to my own preference and the same goes for every other member. That benefit would rapidly decline if I was unable to find communities of interest due to censorship efforts attempting to whitewash content.

                [–]BaneWilliams 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Hi there. I'm a psychopath who has Erotophonophilia. A variety of sub reddits that exist today on Reddit definitely help someone with a Philia based condition like myself control the very urges that keep us from being a blight to society.

                For years, Reddit has helped people in my boat to function extremely well, by providing outlets for our Philias. Are sub reddits with those kinds of content at risk of getting shut down (such as /r/AbusePorn all the way to things like /r/CuteFemaleCorpses ) because we run afoul of people who have no idea WHY the sub exists in the first place?

                [–]-Massachoosite 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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.

                [–]block1 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

                /r/ShitRedditSays seems to fall under the policies category of "Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)"

                [–]ItsMeCaptainMurphy 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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.

                [–]TunicSongForKaren 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Hi,

                A lot of people on this site don't like that there are hateful subreddits like C__nTown, GasTheK_kes, TRP, Anti Pozi, White Rights etcetera. By tolerating those subreddits' existence, you give off a strong signal to everyone who is not a white, straight male that they are not very welcome on this site.

                I have three main questions right now:

                • What are the communities that you consider not having a place on this website?
                • What is the current status of the update of mod tools?
                • How are the responsibilities of moderators regarding hate speech going to change?

                Furthermore, I'd like to soapbox to express a sentiment that has been drowned out a lot amidst the two extremes of this debate:

                In this AMA you'll see a lot of people in the coming hours speaking up about "sliding scales", "free speech" and "censorship"

                However, the vast majority of this site understands that this is a privately owned website and that banning a sub that is literally dedicated to the dehumanization of people of color is not a precedent for "sitewide censorship" or other hyperbolic outrage. Virtually every community website on the internet bans hate speech and I don't see why Reddit can't do that: by allowing hate speech subreddits you're effectively saying to non-white, non-male, non-straight Redditors that their rights end where other people's rights begin. It is a big fuck you to a very large portion of your userbase, just to please a very vocal and very paranoid minority that has been spamming this site with manufactured outrage about "censorship" for months now. It is embarassing to see a couple of thousand emotionally stunted manchildren influence the discourse of this site so much.

                For all the talks about "cancer ruining this site" in the past few months, a lot of people miss that the admins are not the cancer ruining Reddit; no, the whiny kids spamming Swastikas, derailing threads everywhere and stirring up drama on a daily basis are the ones ruining this site. We're better off without them - the site I grew to love over the past couple of years has been put in a chokehold by those people. Years ago, the most drama you'd see were euphoric /r/atheism may-mays being crossposted to smug metasubreddits, now you can't move yer left great toe without being called a SJW and cancer. It has made a lot of great people leave this site en masse, now that the inmates of the hate subs are running this proverbial asylum.

                This brilliant comment sums up my feelings about it all quite well:

                First they came for jailbait, and I was happy, because fuck pedos.

                Then they came for Fat People Hate, and I was happy, because fuck those guys.

                Then they came for the Red Pill and I was happy, but nobody will fuck those guys.

                Then they came for the White Supremacists, and I was happy, because fuck those guys.

                Then...well, that's it really. It wasn't any form of oppression, they just banned some shitheads from a website.

                Just to clarify something to people reading this and itching to talk about "muh freedom of speech", here is what freedom of speech is:

                • freedom of speech is being guaranteed that you won't be prosecuted by the government for what you say.
                • freedom of speech is not a guarantee that a private website should host your shit opinions. Compare it to your own home: if somebody would stand in your frontyard and rattle of a monologue about "black crime", would you let him remain on your frontyard or would you spray him with your water hose?

                Bonus points if people are willing to address my comment in a constructive manner without using buzzwords; I am willing to discuss this in-depth with y'all, and I hope that you can show the maturity that befits an adult when addressing my comment.

                [–]figureinplastic 72ポイント73ポイント  (15子コメント)

                I'm just here for the popcorn.

                [–]Dworkinator 33ポイント34ポイント  (7子コメント)

                If any place deserves to be banned, its r/SRS. They’ve been allowed to doxx and harass people for years. They even banned np links allowing their users to vote brigade every single thread they link to. Plus it’s filled with the worst sexists and racists I’ve ever seen.

                [–]andkylrob 9ポイント10ポイント  (1子コメント)

                Are you going to be censoring reddit even more so in the future?

                spez answers here

                You stated reddit was not a bastion of free speech, which contradicts what Alexis said previously, why is this?

                spez answers here

                 

                Edit: The policy towards content that is hard to define, such as hate sub-reddits like /r/fatpeoplehate I imagine, I personally think that this is one way to tackle the issue, but the question has to arise, how are those groups meant to be seen by people who haven't opted to be part of it? If this policy was put into place, I'm sure it would go against that policy to discuss these sub-reddits outside of said sub-reddit, is that correct? Do you have an outline of this new subreddit-wasteland policy is going to work?

                [–]-eDgAR- 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

                Why did you choose to use "a bastion of free speech" to describe what you and Alexis did not design reddit to be when he was quoted in such a huge publication using the exact same words, but in saying opposite?

                [–]simsalabimbam 23ポイント24ポイント  (4子コメント)

                My question is simple: does /u/kn0thing have popcorn right now?

                [–]OGwilly 7ポイント8ポイント  (4子コメント)

                are you going to ban vicious hate subs like /r/ledootgeneration?

                [–]zk223 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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:

                1. "Community" means a sub-reddit, acting by and through its registered moderators.
                2. "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.
                3. "Submitter" means the author of a Submission.

                II. Policy

                1. 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.
                2. 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.
                3. 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.
                4. 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.
                5. 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.
                6. 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.
                7. 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.

                [–]QuinineGlow 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

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

                Why do you believe that people are unable to defend and speak-up for themselves without your protection, and can you provide a comprehensive list of groups you believe are particularly incapable of doing this, along with some reasons why you think they can't look out for themselves without some form of assistance?

                [–]colin_moore 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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.

                Who defines this "common sense of decency"? isn't someone always going to be offended, not matter what the content?

                [–]aplaceatthedq -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

                I am uneasy with the idea that because you put things in a kind of demilitarized zone on your website and say you won't profit from them, then you aren't responsible for it. It is still attracting users for you and thus you still benefit from it.

                Still, I think this is mostly a step in the right direction if you actually enforce it, especially:

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

                Again, we'll see if you enforce it. Here are my mostly prewritten thoughts on free speech and the direction of reddit:

                Freedom of Speech

                Once we move past the obvious truth that reddit is not the United States Congress and has no obligation to support free speech, it remains whether or not reddit should support it. Is freedom of speech a good thing? Is it worth maintaining and fighting for even as our corporate overlords tighten their clutches around the Internet, at once their most exciting opportunity for exploitation and their most potentially dangerous foe?

                The words free speech have been repeated so many times they feel divorced from any actual meaning— just mouth sounds signifying a particular ideology in some never ending internet debate. But what is so great about freedom of speech in the first place? The idea that everyone can say anything anywhere anytime to anyone without any consequences is obviously absurd. Everyone agrees that there are some limits, but I think you can't begin to describe what freedom of speech you are defending without describing why you are defending it. I support freedom of speech because it is the last most basic dignity of the downtrodden, the oppressed, the forgotten, the right to be heard, the refusal to be silenced, a whispered truth against all power and reason and hope.

                And so it is in this context that I ask, what the hell are we even talking about? What does fomenting massive harassment campaigns against anyone who doesn't fit the site's majority demographics have to do with freedom of speech? What does using dehumanizing slurs to chase already severely underrepresented and oppressed minority groups out of the conversation have to do with freedom of speech. What does celebrating a racist terrorist and hosting the communities who if allowed to continue will no doubt groom the next one have to do with freedom of speech. And in all the seven hells what does trading sexual pictures of people taken and shared without their knowledge or consent have to do with freedom of speech? How can reddit be for free speech when it has done so much to actively chase away if not outright terrorize anyone who disagrees with it? How do any of those things actually contribute to a free and open conversation about anything?

                Here are my suggestions:

                • Site-wide ban on hate speech (there are different definitions, but my rough draft principle would be any language with either the intent or the clear effect of driving people from minority or underrepresented demographics away from the website or conversation)

                • Site-wide ban on pictures a reasonable person would surmise were likely taken or publicized without the featured persons consent for various purposes at a minimum including demeaning, mocking or sexually objectifying the subject and possibly extending to anything other than being of legitimate public interest in a journalistic sense (yes, like the above this requires some subjectivity (like all rule enforcement), but while there are always edge cases most aren't even trying to hide it)

                • Tools to actually enforce the above as well as the recent harassment policy and other forms of rule breaking including witch hunts and the like. People should be able to report this activity direct from any comment they see with confidence that an admin equipped and willing to investigate will see it. I honestly have no idea if admins ever review some kind of "global" report queue or not or if only subreddit moderators who have limited options see things from the report button right now, and that is part of the problem. Too much of this knowledge feels like it is in a cellar behind a sign that says "beware of the leopard".

                • Seriously consider to what extent the upvote/downvote karma system has played a role (especially with regards to comments) on this communities tendency to form massive witch hunts, brigades, harassment campaigns and a general feel of negativity. Of all the sites I have seen with up and down voting systems, reddit seems far more liberal with the latter option, reddiquette not withstanding. While I am generally skeptical, you seem to believe in technological solutions to some of these kinds of human problems. Surely there might be some improvement from this ten year old model that might encourage more engagement and less downvoting of anything outside the majority opinion.

                • Better moderation tools for the unpaid labor you exploit to run this site who will be called upon to make a lot of the previous work.

                • Don't do whatever that thing you were talking about with disabling deleting is. There are already a million mirrors of reddit and making it easier for people to stalk / harass people who made a mistake or just attracted the ire of the hivemind is a giant step in the wrong direction.

                Yes these will not be easy or likely go over well at first, but reddit is one of the largest websites in the world. Take some responsibility and find away to do it.

                I stand for freedom of speech. Not a circlejerk of reddit's majority demographics hating people not like them while enforcing the status quo and downvoting those who disagree, but an actual free and open discussion with diverse viewpoints from people of all backgrounds free of intimidation, hate and harassment.

                My question is, which character from ABC Family's Bunheads are you?

                [–]Gandesa 15ポイント16ポイント  (1子コメント)

                GET THE FUCK IN

                [–]316nuts 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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?

                [–]courtiebabe420 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

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

                Can you provide a definition of what that means?

                [–]birdguy 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

                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.

                Introducing Reddit Hugbox! Now you'll never have to see anything you might find offensive.

                [–]EatingSteak 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

                I have three questions, all of which I've put a lot of thought into:

                • What is your "angle" with cleaning up Reddit?

                • Seriously, what happened with Victoria?

                • What can you say to convince me not to jump ship?

                • Are you ever going to use the word "bastion" again?

                Here are a few thoughts and some background/context to my questions:

                • Fine, the last question was just trolling
                • With Victoria: You have two options: one, you can come clean and/or let her tell her side of the story; or two, just let everyone assume the worst. Obviously there is the "but the lawyers" response - fuck it, they work for you, make an arrangement that works.
                • (Victoria, cont'd) ...if you don't, we're just going to assume that she is/was great, and she refused to comply with shit/bad decision-making
                • I've been using "you" a lot, which isn't intended to be a 'personal attack', but it is addressed to you as the face of the company, and in reference to something "you" did - well, same thing
                • My tone while writing this is coming over more harsh than I intended, but I'm not just ranting. I love reddit. I heard about the site after reading Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters, and it's been probably my favorite place ever since. I'm not "angry" with reddit, it just hurts to see it dying
                • I'm not being melodramatic - the site is seriously going to die if it keeps getting torn up like this. I was an editor for the now-defunct Shoutwire (the spinoff Spankwire is still around, but it's awful). It hurt then, but I watched that die, and I don't want the same to happen to reddit. The "suits" come in, try to make their changes and turn it into a revenue stream, and they piss off the users, and dump the site to pieces. Then find another
                • In regards to "cleaning up" reddit, my speculation is this: investors are trying to get reddit go mainstream, and stuff like /r/fatpeoplehate looks bad, and they're making you get rid of that to open the door for more advertising money. Is there any truth in that?

                [–]Gin_And_Ramune 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Hello /u/spez, I've been thinking of a collaborative solution between the users and the admins of Reddit. I've posted this a few places today, so I might as well place it here.

                Reddit (the website) should be a site for discussion on whatever legal topics are wanted to be discussed, regardless of "good taste." Reddit (the company) should be a facilitator for this discussion while making revenue through the website while also giving stamps of approval to discussion boards that they feel to represent Reddit. To do this, the front page and /r/all need to be reworked into three, instead of two, main portals for Reddit.

                1) The Front Page: this would remain the same as it has been, either being defaults for non-signed in users or subscribed subreddits for signed in users.

                2) r/all: this would also remain the same as it is currently, with one change: an 18+ verification would be required to access the page, similar to what nsfw subreddits have now. This would state that the opinions on r/all do not represent the opinions of Reddit, but represent views of a broad user base. r/all would use sidebar ads like there currently are, but not have any additional corporate sponsored monetization programs unless they achieved an r/all status due to user voting.

                3) A new main portal would be the Reddit Verified Boards, a group of subreddits given a stamp of approval by Reddit (the company). To become one of these subreddits, the moderators of a subreddit could submit an application to a board of admins. The admins could approve or deny, through a consensus of the board, whatever subreddits they choose for whatever reasons. These subreddits would show what Reddit approves of; Reddit doesn't like FPH? Don't allow it on the Reddit Verified Portal, but allow it to stay on the website to keep getting ad revenue. Corporate sponsors don't want their products to be associated with porn? Don't put nsfw subreddits in the Reddit Verified Portal. Getting brigading from a subreddit? Remove its verified status.

                Through the new Reddit Verification process, I believe the majority of users would be happy with the state of Reddit, with the obvious exception of a few flamers and trolls. Instead of completely being banned from Reddit, a subreddit that is distasteful would just not be verified. Users get their subreddit, Reddit gets ad revenue while winning over users by saying that even though some ideas they do not agree with, they will provide a discussion space for them, corporate sponsors get a family-friendly version of Reddit that can be tailored specifically to advertising, and users like Reddit because they, whether Reddit (the company) believes in it or not, uphold the idea of free speech.

                Are you considering to make some sort of collaborative solution with the users of Reddit, since they are the ones who produce content for the website?

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