•
•

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

spez[A] が 投稿x3

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 (it's ok to say "I don't like this group of people." It's not ok to say, "I'm going to kill this group of people.")
  • 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.

edit: added an example to clarify our concept of "harm"

上位 200 件のコメント表示する 500
並べ替え:
Q&A (提案されたアイデア)
ベストトップ新着論争中古い順

[–]Vmoney1337 877ポイント878ポイント  (900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] 285ポイント286ポイント  (855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 324ポイント325ポイント  (418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] 437ポイント438ポイント  (347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.

[–]xlnqeniuz 24ポイント25ポイント  (58子コメント)

What do you mean with 'refclassified'?

Also, why wasn't this done with /r/Fatpeoplehate? Just curious.

[–]spez[S,A] 55ポイント56ポイント  (52子コメント)

I explain this in my post. Similar to NSFW but with a different warning and an explicit opt-in.

[–]Bibbity-boppity 13ポイント14ポイント  (1子コメント)

I notice that I still get porn posts when browsing r/all. Will these posts still appear on r/all?

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

Have you thought about simply revoking "offensive" subreddit's ability to reach /r/All? So only the users of those communities come across it when browsing Reddit?

コメントをもっと表示する (49 返事)

    コメントをもっと表示する (5 返事)

      [–]BigDickRichie 128ポイント129ポイント  (17子コメント)

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

      In the end all of them must be gone no matter how. You cant get rid of all the "bad" niggers and somehow keep the "good" niggers, their DNA is what is bad and they will pass on that bad DNA.-A post from Coontown.

      Why is Coontown still here?

      [–]QuinineGlow 131ポイント132ポイント  (12子コメント)

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

      ...then you'll need to 'reclassify' this statement...

      [–]JaseAndrews 22ポイント23ポイント  (6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)

      How is /r/coontown not considered either of these? It's an incredible double standard when /r/fatpeoplehate is banned but not /r/coontown.

      [–]shakypears 32ポイント33ポイント  (6子コメント)

      What are your thoughts on /r/philosophyofrape?

      [–]guccigoogle 76ポイント77ポイント  (7子コメント)

      /r/coontown has a picture of a different black man every day on their sidebar.

      From your post

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

      Does /r/coontown not do that?

      コメントをもっと表示する (235 返事)

        コメントをもっと表示する (70 返事)

          [–]obadetona 264ポイント265ポイント  (176子コメント)

          What would you define as causing harm to others?

          [–]spez[S,A] 200ポイント201ポイント  (166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.

          Update: I added an example to my post. It's ok to say, "I don't like this group of people." It's not ok to say, "I'm going to kill this group of people."

          [–]Adwinistrator 182ポイント183ポイント  (57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?

          [–]spez[S,A] 39ポイント40ポイント  (26子コメント)

          Spirited debates are in important part of what makes Reddit special. Our goal is to spell out clear rules that everyone can understand. Any banning of content will be carefully considered against our public rules.

          [–]Duck-You-Sucker 16ポイント17ポイント  (2子コメント)

          Would it be possible for you to have a sub where you post reasons for all bans?

          [–]alexanderwales 16ポイント17ポイント  (1子コメント)

          But you haven't clearly spelled out the rules. What does this:

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

          Even mean? It seems totally subjective.

          コメントをもっと表示する (21 返事)

            コメントをもっと表示する (30 返事)

              [–]mydeca 66ポイント67ポイント  (24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?

              [–]spez[S,A] 32ポイント33ポイント  (16子コメント)

              We won't formally change or policy until we have the tools to support it. Giving moderators better tools to deal with individuals is an important part of this process. Giving our employed community managers additional tools to assist the moderators is also required.

              コメントをもっと表示する (7 返事)

                [–]HungryMoblin 58ポイント59ポイント  (1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?

                [–]jklireoifdsio 13ポイント14ポイント  (0子コメント)

                See the thing is, this hasn't been really clear to us as users. You banned the subreddit /r/neofag and it did nothing of the sort and than you shadowbanned the mod when he asked for comment later after you had already announced that you would stop shadowbanning real users. So what is the actual policy? Btw I am fully expecting a shadowban for this post as well at this point because that seems to be the only way you know how to communicate with us regular users.

                [–]cha0s 33ポイント34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?

                [–]Darr_Syn 24ポイント25ポイント  (1子コメント)

                This question is of paramount importance to the NSFW subreddits under the family of BDSM.

                Your previous wording is such that you take a pretty strong stance against subreddits like /r/BDSMcommunity and the like.

                So, this definition is rather timely in my opinion.

                [–]Hurt_Fee_Fees 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

                Yet /r/badfattynodonut was banned when they were created to provide similar content to /r/fatpeoplehate, without the issues that got /r/fatpeoplehate banned.

                Should /r/badfattynodonut be reinstated and be given a chance to operate as they'd planned?

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

                How do plan on determining who is an authentic member of a subreddit?

                If I make a few posts to /r/ShitRedditSays and then go harass members of /r/kotakuinaction or /r/theredpill would that then be enough to get /r/shitredditsays banned?

                How do you hope to combat strategies such as this?

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

                What does this mean for the subreddits (hateful or not) actively brigading against other subreddits?

                Is this behavior going to be blanket disallowed (pretty please can it be)?

                コメントをもっと表示する (74 返事)

                  コメントをもっと表示する (9 返事)

                    [–]monsda 88ポイント89ポイント  (36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?

                    [–]IM_THAT_POTATO 21ポイント22ポイント  (2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?

                    [–]evmax318 33ポイント34ポイント  (2子コメント)

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

                    [–]Mayniak0 26ポイント27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 35ポイント36ポイント  (7子コメント)

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

                    [–]CryEagle 11ポイント12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?

                    [–]SUSAN_IS_A_BITCH 116ポイント117ポイント  (33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.

                    [–]MrBaz 131ポイント132ポイント  (17子コメント)

                    Enough with the vagueness, please.

                    Define "cause harm to others".

                    [–]mydeca 27ポイント28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?

                    [–]DuhTrutho 7ポイント8ポイント  (0子コメント)

                    This is what everyone wants more clarification about hehe, what is the true justification for banning?

                    If you tried to go onto FPH and mention that you were fat you would be banned by the mods.

                    FPH was a relatively contained sub before the leaking happened, but is banning those who come onto your sub considered bullying?

                    In the same vein, if I were to go onto either /r/TwoXChromosomes or /r/Shitredditsays and post about mens rights, or women's rights with /r/TheRedPill I would get downvoted, ridiculed, and most likely banned.

                    Please define what you mean in detail.

                    [–]LeinadSpoon 5ポイント6ポイント  (1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?

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

                    The issue is a clear bias in what you mean by the ones doing what you are saying.

                    So the brigading going on by subreddits that agree with your views is ok, but the brigading being done by the subreddits that don't isn't? Because no matter what it's harassment.

                    コメントをもっと表示する (146 返事)

                      コメントをもっと表示する (44 返事)

                        [–]MrCaboose96[🍰] 669ポイント670ポイント  (371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] -637ポイント-636ポイント  (336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 813ポイント814ポイント  (72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 39ポイント40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.

                        [–]allthe_gundams 54ポイント55ポイント  (4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.

                        [–]ButtGardener 85ポイント86ポイント  (15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 150ポイント151ポイント  (12子コメント)

                        the common wording is unfortunate

                        Ayyyyy

                        [–]Kanshan 241ポイント242ポイント  (9子コメント)

                        I'll take deflecting answers for 600, Alex.

                        [–]luftwaffle0 46ポイント47ポイント  (25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?

                        コメントをもっと表示する (192 返事)

                          コメントをもっと表示する (34 返事)

                            [–]justcool393 601ポイント602ポイント  (30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.

                            [–]SUSAN_IS_A_BITCH 141ポイント142ポイント  (6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.

                            [–]almightybob1 422ポイント423ポイント  (34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?

                            [–]Warlizard 307ポイント308ポイント  (36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?

                            [–]DEATH-BY-CIRCLEJERK 46ポイント47ポイント  (6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.

                            [–]mach-2 697ポイント698ポイント x10 (367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?

                            [–]Georgy_K_Zhukov 65ポイント66ポイント  (9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?

                            [–]zaikanekochan 273ポイント274ポイント  (59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?

                            [–]urdle 120ポイント121ポイント  (9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 107ポイント108ポイント  (17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] 82ポイント83ポイント  (16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.

                            [–]Darr_Syn 17ポイント18ポイント  (3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.

                            [–]Miserable_Wrongdoer 153ポイント154ポイント  (31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?

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

                            [–]-Massachoosite 5ポイント6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.

                            [–]SirYodah 212ポイント213ポイント  (12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.

                            [–]TheCid 7ポイント8ポイント  (0子コメント)

                            Publication of someone’s private and confidential information

                            Can we get a clarification on what is classified under this? Gawker wrote an article outing a reddit user's real name a few years ago and they suffered no punishment from the reddit admins. Some subreddits banned all Gawker content, but this policy should have been handed down from the top.

                            • Is a reddit user's real name considered private and confidential information? What if they've already validated that user name against their real identity somehow (admins, people who've done verified AMAs, etc)?

                            • Is a pseudonymous user of another site's real name considered private and confidential information? What if they're an e-celebrity and this real name is already widely known (TotalBiscuit, PewDiePie, anyone with a verified Twitter account, etc.)?

                            • Is the reverse of this considered private and confidential information? (Going from real name to username on reddit or another site, such as Twitter.) What if this has been validated?

                            • Is "giving credit" to a cosplayer or an artist, given just a image hosted off-site (such as on imgur), considered releasing personal information?

                            That should be sufficient to clear up most of the gray area on personal information.

                            I have concerns about the "harassment/bullying" rule, as certain political groups on the internet like to claim that any and all disagreement with them is harassment, but this is a rule whose quality can only be measured in its enforcement, rather than its phrasing.

                            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.

                            Will it be evident when this classification has been applied to a subreddit? Will subreddit creators be allowed to label themselves under this classification? Will other subreddits be able to apply this label to comments or posts rather than deleting them outright?

                            [–]donkey_democrat 13ポイント14ポイント  (3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.

                            [–]bhalp1 4ポイント5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.

                            [–]ItsMeCaptainMurphy 6ポイント7ポイント  (1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.

                            [–]mcctaggart 23ポイント24ポイント  (5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?

                            [–]amaperson1234 47ポイント48ポイント  (6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.

                            [–]KaliYugaz 18ポイント19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.

                            [–]redpillschool 29ポイント30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 trouble me as a moderator:

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

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

                            [–]RamonaLittle 20ポイント21ポイント  (2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.]

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

                            Copy/pasted because this question was not answered during your last AMA:

                            Do you have any plans to remove all the subreddit squatters?

                            I find it very unsettling that I've put 2 years of volunteer work into building my community and yet it can all be undone on a whim because there are squatters who outrank me in the mod list. These people are still active on reddit, just not in my specific community. The problem exists all across reddit.

                            At the very least, making it easier to get admins to remove these people would do a world of good.

                            [–]tacomotif 31ポイント32ポイント  (5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.

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

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

                            Under what jurisdiction? North Korea? Iran? China? A small town in Kansas that wants to ban pictures of kittens?

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

                            I would argue that r/republican and r/democrat promotes all kinds of economic violence and harm.

                            [–]nixonrichard 20ポイント21ポイント  (2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?

                            [–]colin_moore 5ポイント6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?

                            [–]MoobyTheGoldenCalf 5ポイント6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)

                            That seems to be open to a vast variety of interpretation. Who is going to arbiter when individuals disagree on what is "harassment" or "bullying"?

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

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

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

                            [–]krispykrackers[A] 16ポイント17ポイント  (1子コメント)

                            Currently if something from say, /r/fullmoviesonyoutube gets a DMCA request, we review it. If we do not host the content, we do not remove it and refer them to the hosting site for removal. Obviously, we cannot remove content that is hosted on another site.

                            The tricky area is if instead of just a streaming movie, the link takes you to a download of that content that puts it onto your machine. That is closer to actually hosting, and our policy has been to remove that if requested.

                            Copyright laws weren't really written for the internet, so the distinctions aren't always clear.

                            [–]AlphaWolf101 4ポイント5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?

                            [–]hansjens47 6ポイント7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" ?

                            [–]MMZephyr 38ポイント39ポイント  (8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?

                            [–]PeBeFri 28ポイント29ポイント  (13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.

                            [–]ImAKidImASquid 25ポイント26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)

                            [–]PrivateChicken 23ポイント24ポイント  (1子コメント)

                            Can you clean up your house? Frankly I've found the behavior of /u/Yishan and /u/kn0thing incredibly unprofessional in light of the recent drama wave. I realize Yishan is not an employee, but maybe as the CEO you could politely ask him to stop starting shit.

                            [–]verdatum 56ポイント57ポイント  (9子コメント)

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

                            [–]fight_for_anything 6ポイント7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)

                            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.

                            [–]davidreiss666 22ポイント23ポイント x3 (204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.

                            [–]Stink_Snake 21ポイント22ポイント  (9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 road. A rode in which our up vote buttons will become Doritos and Downvote Mountain Dew. A road where we can all enjoy the site being wrapped in Suicide Squad banners. We did it Reddit!

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

                            Spez,

                            I appreciate the work you are putting into making Reddit enjoyable yet still a business.

                            I don't like censorship of any kind. There are already user-tools and mod tools that control content. Mods of defaults already disallow undesirable content and users viciously downvote said content.

                            If the "undesirable" subs are flagged NSFW, is that sufficient containment from the rest of Reddit?

                            I'm not sure why people who disagree with undesirable content go read that content. There are plenty of subs I know to avoid like /r/gonewildcurvy /r/shitredditsays and twoX.

                            Are we children who are unable to police ourselves? What are downvote even for, then?

                            I have a great experience on Reddit and have unsubbed from most default subs. I don't have any trouble with content except when FPH gets banned.

                            I don't want Reddit to be like Tumblr

                            [–]Honestly_ 7ポイント8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.

                            [–]Vladimir_Is_Pootin 11ポイント12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?

                            [–]bilde2910 9ポイント10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.

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

                                you know it when you see it.

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

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

                            Well this turned out to be a good chance to have your voice heard.

                            We knew this was coming, though

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

                            Anything that hurts feelings? Anything that others don't like? Are we removing the option to simply avoid communities that you dislike, instead removing the people who say things you dislike?

                            If I want to reopen /r/fatpeoplehate; is that impossible now, because the very idea of hating people who are fat is harassment and bullying on its face, even if the people within the community are kind to one another? (and no, obviously someone admitting to be fat would not be "in" that community.)

                            [–]avoidingtheshadow 14ポイント15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).

                            [–]Its_Bigger_Than_Pao 35ポイント36ポイント  (5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.

                            [–]NUMBERS2357 2ポイント3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?

                            [–]courtiebabe420 10ポイント11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?

                            [–]isolatedextremophile 26ポイント27ポイント  (2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?

                            [–]FlyingPeacock 21ポイント22ポイント  (2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?

                            [–]seamslegit 13ポイント14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?

                            [–]EMINEM_4Evah 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

                            Hey Steve. I have a shit ton of questions, but I'll keep it a few for now:

                            1) Ever since the fatpeoplehate drama, people have been looking at SRS for what I've seen/heard as even more brigading than any of the banned subs. What make them different if they don't have any apparent hate or bigotry. What will you do about them? Are they gonna get the boot as per Reddit's stance on brigading? Asking a serious question with this.

                            2) Why are the board members wanting to monetize AMAs when what made them popular is their current format of asking anything?

                            Edit: removed unnecessary questions

                            [–]Pierce28 5ポイント6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.

                            [–]birdguy 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

                            Can you be more specific about what this means?

                            Edit: Will there be a clear distinction to prevent someone from claiming harassment in order to avoid criticism on reddit?

                            [–]AlphaWolf101 8ポイント9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?

                            [–]Namrok 2ポイント3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)

                            I have questions about these two things in particular. Namely, what counts? Outrage culture seems to have gotten wildly out of control, regardless of your specific politics. Everyone wants to "name and shame" people. But at the same time, some of the worst victims of this are also perpetrators. They live by the sword and they die by the sword.

                            Doxing clearly falls afoul of this policy. But on the other end of the spectrum, you get people linking to absolutely idiot things people have tweeted or blogged publicly, and then everybody piles on. Then the idiot saying idiotic things feels harassed by the sheer volume of disagreeing responses.

                            After the fact, all too often our interpretation of the events is colored by our politics. We think it's acceptable to dog pile the things we think are stupid, but we think it's unfair when our "side" gets dogpiled for the things other people think are stupid. And all over people are quick to claim they feel harassed, or bullied.

                            So my question is, is the policy going to be rooted in objective measures, or in how someone says the actions made them feel? Are we going to say "No linking to twitter, no linking to other subreddits, no linking to facebook posts", or is the rule going to revolve around whether the target cries uncle, and you sympathize with them?

                            [–]anticapitalist 10ポイント11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.

                            [–]MovkeyB 231ポイント232ポイント  (136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

                            [–]RamonaLittle 4ポイント5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.

                            [–]MarshalConsensus 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)

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

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

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

                            [–]GodOfAtheism 221ポイント222ポイント  (74子コメント)

                            What about SRS?

                            [–]smeezekitty 7ポイント8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?

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

                            It's quite simple for me; I know what content I like and what content I don't like. I look at the stuff I like and don't look at the stuff which I dislike. It'd never cross my mind to ban other people from looking at the disliked stuff; if they are racist, sexist or whatever then that's their problem, but as long as it's contained somewhere that optional to visit, then there isn't a problem. Don't like it, don't look at it.

                            [–]endomorphosis 7ポイント8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.

                            [–]birdguy 2ポイント3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.

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

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

                            Illegal in which jurisdiction, specifically?

                            [–]aplaceatthedq -1ポイント0ポイント  (2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?

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

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

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

                            Hi,

                            what happened to Reddit's stance of how it 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

                            ?

                            https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/pmj7f/a_necessary_change_in_policy/

                            What happened to Reddit's stance of

                            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.

                            ?

                            https://archive.is/uTcEK

                            Why, after all the (thus far very empty) promises of "transparency" are you unable to give us the actual reasons of this complete change in policy which indeed does, as shown here, not at all match with numerous previous quotes by (founders of) Reddit? Steve, if the reason is the venture capital, if it's the money, if it's the advertisers, you know what, that's fine. We know. It's how the world works and almost everyone would go for the money in your place. But man up and admit that, or give us a different valid reason for the complete turnaround.

                            [–]AdamColligan 0ポイント1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 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?

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

                            Hi u/spez. Thank you for taking the time to answer questions. As a user who was drawn to reddit by AMAs, this feature of the site is one of my biggest concerns. u/kn0thing went on record before you were appointed CEO that admins have no intention of monetizing r/iama. Now that you're CEO, I would appreciate if that pledge were renewed by you.

                            Can you please clearly answer the follow questions regarding r/iama policies/content with direct answers? I anticipate a response like "we're not monetizing, but I can't give details about board discussion" or something to that effect. I understand that is normally how things are done, but reddit leadership right now is at odds with a large chunk of its userbase, and I think more transparency is warranted here.

                            1. Is reddit, inc. currently under pressure from the board of directors to monetize on r/iama? If so, how demanding is the board regarding this?

                            2. Has the reddit admin team ever considered capitalizing financially on r/iama? I'm talking official plans that were scrapped all the way down to batting around informal ideas that never came to fruition. If so, how recent have discussions regarding this been? If you can't answer this because of your departure from reddit, please encourage u/kn0thing or other people who would have information to weigh in.

                            3. Can you, as newly appointed CEO, pledge that reddit, inc. will not implement a monetization scheme with r/iama? I asked here and here, but got no response.

                            4. In a semi-related question, u/kn0thing has explained his goal of getting celebrities to participate regularly in reddit rather than just isolated AMAs. Is the push to ban offensive content part of reddit's plan to lure celebrities to reddit? I.e., make reddit noncontroversial so celebrities can avoid potential scandal? 4a. Why don't you think it would be better to poll the userbase to see if they want to make this sacrifice for a celebrity presence? 4b. Wouldn't this give celebrities a power of ultimatum over reddit, inc. E.g., Tom Cruise wants all jokes about his sexuality deleted or else he leaves forever.

                            Thank you for your time.

                            [–]TheBearProphet 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)

                            How does a sub like SRS fit into something like this? They do nothing but mock and harass other people on reddit, most often those that don't hold to SJW thinking.

                            Where does a sub like rapingwomen fit into this? They discuss an illegal activity to the point of having step by step instructions on how to get away with it.

                            You need to be extremely explicit with what is and is not allowed, and frankly, the administration of this site has been dominated by your whims and what the media will call attention to. It's time for you to be consistent and transparent.

                            Frankly I may not be using your site beyond this point anyway. You guys have turned into a huge, drama laden shit show, but here is your last chance to convince me you can either promote free speech consistently, or establish and stick to a consistent and explicit set of guidelines, rather than these vague, pathetic excuses for rules.

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

                            My question is simple. Why abandon all the principles that made Reddit so successful? If you ban "distasteful" subreddits, you are ruining everything that made the site what it is - and thus less appealing to advertisers. If a company wants to advertise with Reddit, they should understand WHY it has the reach and impact that it does.

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

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

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

                            [–]Rytlockfox 15ポイント16ポイント  (5子コメント)

                            Remember, if you don't like what's said here don't buy reddit gold.

                            [–]Hammerhart 8ポイント9ポイント  (1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.

                            [–]OGwilly 15ポイント16ポイント  (7子コメント)

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

                            [–]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?

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

                            So, let's say you decide a subreddit has an issue. What actions are you actually going to take? Warning moderators, instant shutdowns, what? What about non-offending users of the subreddit, if the subreddit wasn't specifically devoted to whatever got them banned (for example, a hypothetical /r/incitingmurder), can they take control? Can they create a similar subreddit, so long as they follow the rules?

                            What about transparency in how a subreddit was banned? If I go to a banned subreddit, will I be able to see what caused them to get shut down? As long as personal or sensitive information is blacked out, it should still be fairly clear as to why a subreddit was banned should anyone check in the future.

                            Banning subreddits is pretty much the topic right now, and I think these are the major questions that just haven't been addressed yet. People are talking about "pushing the button" and nobody even really knows what that would mean.

                            [–]_pancaste_ 6ポイント7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?

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

                            I am okay with an opt in "parental advisory" category, but less so any concept of banning "offensive" subs.

                            When you say free speech, do you understand if you include any kind of a "but" that its no longer free? I recognize that there are limits to, for example, first amendment speech, but those are rare, and VERY specific. You're even allowed to be a Nazi, to espouse Nazi views if you wish, just not to incite specific violence.

                            The issue with any top-down decisions on the acceptability of subreddits, is that you become the arbiter of whats okay to say.

                            Obviously, its your site, but I hope you understand that Reddit is the only site of its size with such a young-trending, male-heavy audience, and I, for one, don't take kindly to this thought-policing, and I believe many others feel precisely the same.

                            You might feel this will all be okay, but I'd just say, "go ahead, and digg your own grave, if you wish."

                            [–]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.

                            [–]CloudTheWolf 14ポイント15ポイント  (6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.

                            [–]Dworkinator 52ポイント53ポイント  (12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.

                            [–]2211108646 8ポイント9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"?

                            コメントをもっと表示する (1315 返事)