Content Policy Update

Cheech5 · 1時間前

Today, in addition to applying Quarantines, we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else. Our most important policy over the last ten years has been to allow just about anything so long as it does not prevent others from enjoying Reddit for what it is: the best place online to have truly authentic conversations

Which communities have been banned?

slyf · 1時間前

This page (https://www.reddit.com/about/alien/) says that

Remember: "reddit" is always lowercase.

But your Content Policy spells it with a capital R, has this branding changed?

TheMentalist10 · 1時間前

Will you be sharing information about the communities which are Quarantined? Will moderators of those communities know if their subreddit has been affected?

Edit: Just as it's not immediately obvious, /r/Coontown has been banned

Edit 2: Here's what it looks like when you try to access a Quarantined subreddit

dwchief · 1時間前

If a user is subscribed to a Quarantined subreddit, will it still appear on their front page?

ChangloriousBastard · 1時間前

Under "Enforcement", shadowbanning is not listed. I know the list is not comprehensive, but does that mean that shadowbanning will no longer be used to enforce the rules as illustrated in the updated content policy?

BillW87 · 1時間前

For the sake of transparency I feel like it would be best to make the list of banned communities public. With all of the concerns lately about the admins not being transparent enough, banning subs without telling us who they are seems counterproductive.

zachlac · 1時間前

Soooooo...shadowbanning? Do you shadow ban for violation of content policy violations? At what point in the list of punishments would this fall?

raldi · 1時間前

I'm sure some of you are rushing to find the Imgur link about how ripping out someone's tongue doesn't prove them wrong, and that the real answer is to engage them in debate.

But it doesn't really apply, because nobody's tongue was ripped out. The bigots have already migrated to another site, and they're doing just fine.

Shockingly, it doesn't look like the conversation going on over there in any way resembles an intellectually-honest debate on racial issues.

Xet · 1時間前

Regarding Quarantining: Would you ever quarantine a large subreddit like /r/wtf?

A community will be Quarantined on Reddit when we deem its content to be extremely offensive or upsetting to the average redditor.

One could argue that the very gorey types of pictures that appear on /r/wtf would be pretty upsetting. I know I've accidentally clicked on /r/wtf images when I temporarily disabled my own RES filters, and honestly of all things on the site, some of the stuff there is more troubling to me than discriminatory self text posts.

Shintao6 · 1時間前

Changing the conversation away from CT and SRS for a minute, why were Loli subs banned? They produce no illegal content or anything that violates the new Content Policy. They do not harass, threaten or worsen anyone's Redditing experience. I was fully expecting a quarantine, and would have been fine with that. I understand and respect that Loli is not everyone's cup of tea. I also get that it's your show and we play by your rules, but can we get the rule written down somewhere at least?

illegal_deagle · 1時間前

Unfortunately it looks like SRS will continue to enjoy their harassment and downvote brigading.

Edit: Come on, guys. I make a comment about downvote brigading and y'all mass downvote /u/spez for actually responding when he didn't have to.

musicandwords · 1時間前

I am surprised nobody has mentioned that by collecting emails for quarentined subs you are essentially creating a database of users who read content you deem 'questionable'. What does verifying the email accomplish? This seems overly broad and Orwellian.

WhiteFlight2 · 1時間前

I thought you were going to provide a link with why a subreddit was banned. /r/coontown, despite being reviled amongst some users didn't appear to violate any of the rules. It also did well to enforce additional rules that places like SRS flaunt. Why was /r/coontown banned, specifically?

Teh_Compass · 1時間前

Quarantining is a good step from outright banning. But banning more subreddits in addition to that isn't going to solve anything.

Banning subreddits that break the TOS like harassing users and such makes sense, but you can't go and ban subreddits that don't, no matter how much people don't like them.

/r/fatpeoplehate, for example, was annoying to people but could easily be ignored. It didn't need to be banned initially. But I totally understand that it was banned for the brigading it did. I was subscribed to one of the subreddits that was being brigaded and its users harassed.

/r/coontown, for example is easily ignored and doesn't deserve to be banned, even if they are racist as shit. I hear rumors about brigading but I personally don't know enough about it. If there is evidence that they are doing something like that then by all means ban them. But just because you don't agree with them doesn't mean they should be banned.

You essentially run the site and can do whatever you want. But remember what the users want.

Naked_Bacon_Tuesday · 1時間前

Today, in addition to applying Quarantines, we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else. Our most important policy over the last ten years has been to allow just about anything so long as it does not prevent others from enjoying Reddit for what it is: the best place online to have truly authentic conversations.

If you do plan to ban subs, I'm sure reddit would enjoy an itemized list of ban reasons/offenses by each sub. This shouldn't necessarily include a link or something to an example of the offense, but the list provided should be detailed enough for a reasonable person to say, "OK, yeah, that's clear enough to require the ban."

But the bans should definitely be released and reasons for them made clear.

pigeonburger · 1時間前

I'm not going to cry for Coontown, but there's two things that worry me.

First, there's the absence of transparency. I want to see who gets banned, for what reason and I believe there should be a forum or a possibility for that group to appeal to the community or at least publically appeal to the administrators to get their sanction reversed.

Then, there's still too much vagueness.

"Extremely offensive or upsetting to the average redditor" - Who decides? This ties with my point above regarding the absence of transparency.

"Forming or joining a group that votes together, either on a specific post, a user's posts, posts from a domain, etc." - Does the group have to be explicitely formed for that purpose? Does incidental voting from being linked by another subreddit which tends to have similar feelings towards that post count? One could argue that being "featured" on SRD/SRS/BestOf/DepthHub is an implicit invitation for people to go and up or downvote the post in question. If implicit brigades are also banned, who draws the line? Again, we need transparency.

"Being annoying, vote brigading, or participating in a heated argument is not harassment, but following an individual or group of users, online or off, to the point where they no longer feel that it's safe to post online or are in fear of their real life safety is." - Thank you for mentionning the first part, but we've seen people who think that heated disagreements gave them PTSD. Which one has priority? Leaving the standard for "harassment" to be determined by the so-called harassed is easily gameable.

While we're on that subject. If we look back to the FPH ban; the images that were floating around showing that they were "harassing" were certainly very debateable. Will we ever have any public proof that they were engaging in harassment according to the guidelines?

LukeTheFisher · 1時間前

Regarding the "animated CP" sub: This was a very odd choice for me. It's not illegal in most places and everything can be illegal in some places. It's on a similar level to bestiality legally but it's actually illegal in far less places. If they're getting quarantined for legal issues, what about the horse and doggy porn subs? Also it's not as if the users of the sub are harassing anyone.

Why this sub specifically? Have they actually harassed anyone? Was it just because of objectionable content? Why not target subs with similar issues then? Like the bestiality subs aforementioned. Seems weird to single out this one in particular.

Also: what about subs like candidfashionpolice? Those seem more dangerous to me in a lot of ways especially since people can't request to have their photos removed. Just a side question on this: I see that you guys are hosted by AWS. They have a compliance policy surrounding this I think, could someone request that their photo be removed from the sub in that way? Do you guys cooperate with them regarding that?

I'd appreciate any answers you can give me.

psuedopseudo · 1時間前

I have to say, though I think the "quarantine idea" is a good balance, the ban policy looks a lot more like content censorship that anything else. If that's the way the site will be run, that's your prerogative, but it seems like we keep sidestepping the issue while simultaneously getting closer to bans for content. I know we've moved past the concept of reddit being a forum for free speech, but let's go one step further and approach this honestly.

How do you reconcile a policy strictly against "communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else" with the subreddit bans from today? If "offensive ideas" falls under this umbrella, why not just say we are banning offensive ideas? I feel like the language about harassment and annoyance is a thin veil, that started as a narrow definition but is now expanding to just mean "offensive;" I feel like I called this two months ago when this whole debacle started:

I guarantee this is what is happening. Banning the blatantly racist subs, etc, would be too obviously based on disagreement with viewpoints - they are moving slowly and widening the meaning of "harassing" subreddits as they go.

I don't really disagree with this decision, by the way -- I just feel like the reasons put forth continue to be disingenuous.

Mobre · 1時間前

Can you explain the difference between these two?

We will Quarantine communities whose content would be considered extremely offensive to the average redditor.

and

we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditers, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else

and how /r/coontown applies to the latter rather than the former? Because it seems that the application of who is quarantined and who is banned overlap and is completely up to the arbitrary decision of the admin rather then an explicit and defined rule set.

Olive_Jane · 1時間前

I'm sorry, can you clarify how hentai and ficticious drawings is child porn?

unwelcome content

2 While Reddit generally provides a lot of leeway in what content is acceptable, here are some guidelines for content that is not. Please keep in mind the spirit in which these were written, and know that looking for loopholes is a waste of time.

3 Content is prohibited if it

Is illegal

Is involuntary pornography

Encourages or incites violence

Threatens, harasses, or bullies or encourages others to do so

Is personal and confidential information

Impersonates someone in a misleading or deceptive manner

Is spam"

Does drawn pictures of underage, fictitious characters, really apply to the above?

Here is a definition of child porn that I found:

Child Pornography

Child pornography is a form of child sexual exploitation. Federal law defines child pornography as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor (persons less than 18 years old). Images of child pornography are also referred to as child sexual abuse images.

Source: http://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/child-pornography

Can you speak on how exactly minors, or anybody, is being exploited or hurt by the content in subs like /r/lolicons?

Facerless · 1時間前

Encourages or incites violence
Threatens, harasses, or bullies or encourages others to do so

Are these going to be used against communities that are centered around the pre-existing hatred or dislike of a group or person?

I realize this is nit picking but this is still fairly vague

What constitutes encouragement or how will you decide what incites someone to action?

CarmineCerise · 1時間前

Today, in addition to applying Quarantines, we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else.

Will there be a clear list of banned subreddits?

zerconic · 1時間前

A community will be Quarantined on Reddit when we deem its content to be extremely offensive or upsetting to the average redditor or to ourselves.

Does this also mean that reddit is endorsing any subreddits they choose not to quarantine or ban, since they are now individually censoring subreddits?

kochevnikov · 58分前

Any plans to deal with moderator abuse in some of the larger subs like /r/news or /r/politics ? Certain mods will delete comments and hand out bans for advancing political opinions or posting stories they disagree with. For example /r/news is notorious for censoring stories related to the TPP.

Also what about plans to deal with mods who mod 20, 50, or even more than 100 subs? Clearly they're simply in it for the power and can't even pretend to be able to actually moderate that many, especially that many large or default subs.

These things make reddit worse as a space, much more than some of the rather spurious claims people are making in the rest of this thread.

Iron_Booger_59 · 1時間前

Your content policy is so vague as to be meaningless. "make Reddit worse for everyone else." How? Is that its "sole purpose"? Who gets to decide? What is the reasoning process?

It's time to go, after just all this shit. I never know if what I'm reading is what the community as its own entity has produced or if it's been hacked away at by mods, with communities banned, etc. to produce what the higher-ups personally believe is a more perfect website. I don't want my experience here to be shaped by force by others' moral persuasions or financial incentives. Your use of the phrase "everyone else" is extremely troubling. We are ALL "everyone else." All of us who don't get to control what is and isn't up on this website.

Goodbye Reddit. Hello Voat. Deleting this account, and deleting my real account.

thesexygazelle · 1時間前

With the new push for transparency I would expect that the list of banned subreddits would be published. I feel like there is a lot of talk about transparency and community involvement but not a lot of actual transparency and the community involvement seems more for posterity's sake.

culman13 · 1時間前

Are you serious /u/spez? Wow. You banned subreddits because they "generally annoy people." This right after you litterally said you would quarantine subreddits rather than ban them because they don't violate set rules. You have gone back on your word and have become a straight up dictator.

Listen I am not a fan of any of those subreddits, but people have a right to say what they want to say so long it is not hurting others directly. Those subreddits did not harass people and kept to themselves.

This site is such a disappointing pile of dog shit. Every day the right to say something someone else might not like crumbles away a little more than the day previous. What happened to your words /u/spez when you said you can't win an arguement by silencing the opposition?

Lumpyguy · 1時間前

Ban SRS already.

Why haven't you banned SRS yet? They are the WORST offenders of breaking the rules you have set up, but you refuse to ban that subreddit.

Why? Why do you continue to let SRS harrass people? Why do you continue to let SRS doxx people? Why do you continue to let SRS vote brigade? What makes SRS any different from Coontown? Or fatpeoplehate? Or Watchniggersdie?

Is it a racial thing? Are you only banning racists? Do you not give a shit about anything else? What is going on?

You keep on talking about being open with what you're doing, but you don't tell us anything about what we want to know.

What is even the point? Why are you even talking right now? Just letting us simmer in the absent silence is basically the same as what you're having us do right now.

"I believe this policies strike the right balance." Also, some people are exempt from them. Apparently.

james52312 · 1時間前

So many subreddits now have to be banned because of the new policy..

I wonder, if all of them will actually be banned or if the admins are just nitpicking what they want to get rid of..

LadyKa · 29分前

Where is the proposed transparency? I was not a supporter of coontown, but I would like to know what policy rules they violated along with concrete examples shown to justify outright banning rather than quarantining.

To my knowledge it was a subreddit where like-minded individuals could discuss an issue they felt strongly on. It certainly never showed up in my feed. If I wanted to participate I would have had to look this subreddit up, which is how most special interest subreddits work. You have to look for them. Sure, the majority of people are not interested, but you can't remove a discussion group because people who have never looked for it might be offended.

If the group discussed scenarios and issues amongst themselves without forcing their ideas on others or endangering anyone, then this group should be allowed, no matter how distasteful you find it.

If it violated these principles, I want to be able to see that. Tell me why, explicitly. Transparency. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but it's important. Give me examples on each and every banned subreddit, so that I can better follow the rules.

Akudra · 1時間前

Our policies are not changing dramatically from what we have had in the past.

The update to the policy:

we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else.

Seems like a pretty dramatic change to me as it is effectively a "whatever sticks" clause to justify banning any sub you find undesirable.

When are you going to update the values page to erase all this free speech business that you seem to no longer care about?

Bartisgod · 49分前

are /r/undelete and /r/ModerationLog safe? I guess what I'm saying is do not, under any circumstances, let the default sub mods have any input at all into this policy or which subs are banned. /r/worldnews , /r/news , and /r/technology are basically trying to censor all of Reddit, and they must be completely shut out of future policy decisions if Reddit is to remain the place that you and all of us want it to be. It is absolutely not in the cards, under any circumstances, that those 2 would be shut down or quarantined, right?

Corbee · 38分前

we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else

This seems like a vague, catch all rule that you can use to ban subreddits willy nilly. Who decides what is making reddit worse for everyone else? Why not quarantine the communities instead of banning them, because then they will be closed off among themselves and will have no way of flouting those rules? It seems like this rule is there to be applied anytime there is mounting political pressure on the company. Any subreddit that is creating bad PR, really. This is reddit's safety valve, not a principle.

Saint_Judas · 1時間前

I don't mind censorship on Reddit (after all it is your platform) but it is the hypocrisy that bugs me. Banning ideas, while saying you only ban actions, while certain subreddits actively engage in the actions you say you are preventing but are given free reign. I would be so much happier with these decisions if you just straight up told us that you are banning things the board members don't like.

Lynch_King · 1時間前

Can you own up to the fact that the subs you banned were not banned for breaking any of the new policy's rules (in fact, the rules you updated in this new policy have been on the rules of subs like coontown for a while, to avoid getting banned) but because you believed they showed the negative side of reddit?

Clearly this is true because, as hundreds have already pointed out, subreddits that encourage brigading (like SRS) are still here. And they actually broke the rules. At least then people will realize you used your own morals to ban subs you didn't agree with, which is pretty dumb on a website as huge as reddit.

GreyWalker · 1時間前

A community will be Quarantined on Reddit when we deem its content to be extremely offensive or upsetting to the average redditor or to ourselves. The purpose of quarantining a community is to prevent its content from being accidentally viewed by those who do not wish to do so. Restrictions on a quarantined community include:

Requiring an account with a verified email address

Requiring an explicit opt-in

No custom images

Will generate no revenue, including ads or Reddit Gold

DonkiestOfKongs · 1時間前

From an information security standpoint: How will you be storing the data about what quarantined subreddits I've opted into? In the event of a security breach, how easily could this information be associated with my 'verified email'?

geekgreg · 1時間前

The content guidelines refer to a harassment policy which uses the words "bully" and then "demean" as a part of harassment.

Could we get some clarification on those terms?

edafade · 1時間前

Subs like /r/coontown are banned (in fact, you banned only coontown related subs) but SRS is still up and running.

While I didn't agree with their ideology or what they represented, you, /u/spez stated yourself on several occasions, you did not support the beliefs of /r/coontown but believed they had a place here on reddit. SRS clearly violates reddit's Content "Policy" yet remains unaffected whereas the former did not and were contained to their own communities.

It's the same shit as before, just packaged with a ribbon.

Very disappointing.

ibnwarraq · 28分前

Ok. WTF.

So atheists living in Muslim countries write in /r/atheism and /r/exmuslim/ about being beaten, punished, persecuted because of their views. The subs are their source of support, help against the harassment they recieve.

On the other hand, I've seen Muslims actually cry tears (for them its beyond hate, harassment, triggering, etc) when their God or Prophet is criticized, on /r/atheism.

WHY ARE YOU ALLOWING HARASSMENT ON YOUR SITE? Which of these subs are you going to ban? /r/atheism or /r/islam?

Do you not see the problem? Do you not see the case for free speech? Free Speech RESTS on the understanding that some opinions (Left/Right, Feminist/Antifeminist whatever) WILL hurt someone, somewhere.

You CANNOT decide what is hate or harassment - that is the point of free speech.

dragonfangxl · 1時間前

Today, in addition to applying Quarantines, we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else.

I dont understand. Why bother making this new tool (quarantines) if you're still going to ban subreddits? Do you not trust the effectiveness of this tool? Also is there a list of the subreddits being banned?

Demolishing · 1時間前

Is involuntary pornography

How will this affect stuff like /r/amateur and /r/realgirls and /r/SluttyHalloween ?

until0 · 1時間前

Why don't you just ban SRS? Seriously, why do you keep defending them. Half of this thread is saying your word is usless due to your blatant hypocrisy, and they are not wrong...

I don't understand why you don't just follow suit, they clearly break the rules you've just laid out, but yet, you'd rather annoy your users and provide shelter for a bastion of hate, then do what is not only expected, but morally correct.

IntoleranceFUCKYEAH · 1時間前

Reddit isn't doing this to protect the users, they're doing this to protect the advertisers so they feel more comfortable being associated with a website like this. It's pretty simple. Why explain to your advertiser who doesn't understand Reddit, "But those subreddits, you choose to enter! It's not all bad" and give a huge explanation. Wouldn't you rather just say, "Reddit is a great place!" and not have to worry about bad subreddits?

Sualtaim · 1時間前

Our policies are not changing dramatically from what we have had in the past. One new concept is Quarantining a community, which entails applying a set of restrictions to a community so its content will only be viewable to those who explicitly opt in. We will Quarantine communities whose content would be considered extremely offensive to the average redditor.

Can you provide a list of Quarantined subreddits?

Artalay · 1時間前

Out of curiosity what constitutes the "average redditor"? And if you don't have a working definition of that, what steps will you be taking towards coming up with it?

tracker2208 · 1時間前

We didn't ban them because we disagree with them. We banned them because this exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAAHHAHHHAHAHA.

0O0Ooo0 · 1時間前

Here's a quick list for you to check out:

/r/shitredditsays

PmMeYourWhatever · 58分前

https://voat.co/v/CoonTown/comments/379542/1583572

Not only that, let's set up the raid posts! now we don't have to worry about /r/coontown getting banned any more, time to start raiding their hugboxes.

This should be fun . . . :(

hannar · 55分前

To be honest, this is the first I've ever heard of /r/CoonTown or anything related to it. I'm subscribed to subreddits that I am personally interested in, I'm unsubscribed from those that annoy me, and anything with hurtful content has never crossed my radar. I don't go out of my way to find people to be angry with.

7-sidedDice · 54分前

Great marketing move. Too bad people aren't as thick as you think they are and can't be just fooled by repeating the phrase "we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else" ad infinitum.

GamersCorp · 1時間前

Can you give us any examples of specific subreddits that will be quarantined?

Aylesbury · 54分前

nor do we tolerate communities dedicated to fostering harassing behavior.

That harassing individuals around here isn't okay should be pretty clear, especially since Reddit still doesn't have a block function (a function that you'd usually take for granted), but the way it's phrased it just sounds like an excuse to close down subs that are a bit uncomfortable in your opinion, by claiming that they are "fostering harassing behavior". There are many people who are a bit "misguided" but I'd rather they'd keep circle jerking in their subs, rather than spread it everywhere, as it has happened in the past.

Speaking of the devil:

Today we removed [...] a handful of other communities that violate the spirit of the policy by making Reddit worse for everyone else: /r/CoonTown, /r/WatchNiggersDie, /r/bestofcoontown, /r/koontown, /r/CoonTownMods, /r/CoonTownMeta.

You can not get rid of people's negative feelings and opinions, at least not by trying to "ban" them. You accomplish nothing. I wonder what you'll ban next. Maybe something that isn't flat out hateful, but simply disagreeable?

thegoodstudyguide · 1時間前

I hate to defend it in any form but according to the spirit of this new policy update /r/coontown should have been quarantined and subs like SRS should have been banned, seeing as SRS targets specific redditors where as coontown is just a general racism forum.

man_and_machine · 1時間前

What is accomplished by making "quarantined" communities only available to users with a registered email address?

GoldenIvan · 1時間前

We will Quarantine communities whose content would be considered extremely offensive to the average redditor.

That's just hilarious.

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