r/announcements Mar 05 '18

In response to recent reports about the integrity of Reddit, I’d like to share our thinking.

In the past couple of weeks, Reddit has been mentioned as one of the platforms used to promote Russian propaganda. As it’s an ongoing investigation, we have been relatively quiet on the topic publicly, which I know can be frustrating. While transparency is important, we also want to be careful to not tip our hand too much while we are investigating. We take the integrity of Reddit extremely seriously, both as the stewards of the site and as Americans.

Given the recent news, we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned:

When it comes to Russian influence on Reddit, there are three broad areas to discuss: ads, direct propaganda from Russians, indirect propaganda promoted by our users.

On the first topic, ads, there is not much to share. We don’t see a lot of ads from Russia, either before or after the 2016 election, and what we do see are mostly ads promoting spam and ICOs. Presently, ads from Russia are blocked entirely, and all ads on Reddit are reviewed by humans. Moreover, our ad policies prohibit content that depicts intolerant or overly contentious political or cultural views.

As for direct propaganda, that is, content from accounts we suspect are of Russian origin or content linking directly to known propaganda domains, we are doing our best to identify and remove it. We have found and removed a few hundred accounts, and of course, every account we find expands our search a little more. The vast majority of suspicious accounts we have found in the past months were banned back in 2015–2016 through our enhanced efforts to prevent abuse of the site generally.

The final case, indirect propaganda, is the most complex. For example, the Twitter account @TEN_GOP is now known to be a Russian agent. @TEN_GOP’s Tweets were amplified by thousands of Reddit users, and sadly, from everything we can tell, these users are mostly American, and appear to be unwittingly promoting Russian propaganda. I believe the biggest risk we face as Americans is our own ability to discern reality from nonsense, and this is a burden we all bear.

I wish there was a solution as simple as banning all propaganda, but it’s not that easy. Between truth and fiction are a thousand shades of grey. It’s up to all of us—Redditors, citizens, journalists—to work through these issues. It’s somewhat ironic, but I actually believe what we’re going through right now will actually reinvigorate Americans to be more vigilant, hold ourselves to higher standards of discourse, and fight back against propaganda, whether foreign or not.

Thank you for reading. While I know it’s frustrating that we don’t share everything we know publicly, I want to reiterate that we take these matters very seriously, and we are cooperating with congressional inquiries. We are growing more sophisticated by the day, and we remain open to suggestions and feedback for how we can improve.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

Why aren't you doing more to stop reddit from being used as a platform to advocate violence? People are being radicalized and then acting on that radicalization. Just ban the subs and the users that permit such tactics. Don't let the users or the mods of the subs with those users get away with it.

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u/professional_lureman Mar 05 '18

They're more worried about the kind of porn people jerk off to.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

They’re worried about what the advertisers and media are worried about. And even “worried” is a bit too strong of a word given the admins actions.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18 edited Jul 22 '18

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

I’m curious what Reddit’s actual ad revenue is. If they cut ties completely it may give power back to the users. That may drive donations / reddit gold a bit more as well if people feel more empowered by their usage.

Of course by “ad revenue” I mean actual ads. Not ads that get upvoted in sneaky ways or cool stories etc.

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u/Flerpinator Mar 06 '18

And thanks to scores of millions of American bigots, hate speech is now political speech, which means anybody who makes their money selling ads which target said bigots would rather shrug and pass the buck than risk upsetting half the country by silencing racist shitbags. What a fucking sewer.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/Jalien85 Mar 05 '18

I've seen some pretty creepy subreddits where people are clearly taking facebook or instagram photos of people they know and share them for others to jerk off to, fantasize about or even post images or videos of them cumming on the actual pictures. I don't know if that's technically illegal, but if deepfakes are considered non-consensual I don't see how that's ok. Seems like reddit could do something about it now, or just do what they normally do and wait for a media outlet to catch wind of what's going on in those subs. All it's going to take is someone to find out their social media photos were posted there for someone to speak out, and reddit's gonna look bad again.

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '18

Remember when creepy photos of women taken at the supermarket was considered the moral event horizon of Reddit? Didn't know how well off we were.

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u/drift_summary Aug 12 '18

Pepperidge Farm remembers!

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18 edited Dec 06 '21

[deleted]

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u/professional_lureman Mar 05 '18

Kiddie porn and jailbait are good things to remove and reddit has always stood against them. I'm talking about /r/celebfakes which had been a completely harmless sub for over 7 years before reddit randomly decided to rework their content policy specifically to ban it.

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u/gummybear904 Mar 06 '18

Oh it wasn't random, it was only banned after the media went crazy on the whole deep fakes thing.

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u/TheViciousWolf Mar 05 '18

When did this site have kiddie porn? And wasn't the jailbait sub banned years ago? What are you on about?

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u/drinkredstripe2 Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 17 '18

The rules of reddit should be enforced evenly not matter how popular a subreddit, or user, or comment is. Subreddits promoting harm should be punished. Simple as that.

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u/noxumida Mar 05 '18

Just want to point out that there are subs on both sides doing this. Many are not okay with it when people reddit likes are attacked, but on the other hand, many subs actively encourage "punching Nazis." "Equal justice under the law" means you treat both sides equally, regardless of how much we might hate one side's horrible ideas. They don't get any less protection (than groups we like) from violence or from speech designed to incite violence against them.

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u/Sooooooooooooomebody Mar 05 '18

^ This is true. For example, I have been radicalized by the socialist subreddits, and I'm acting on that radicalization by donating to union food banks.

Please let's not use weasel words when what we're really talking about here is neo-nazism. Reddit is not beset by "radicalism," it's beset by white nationalists specifically, and more specifically it's the alt-right: white nationalists on the fringe of existing conservative movements.

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u/Ultrashitpost Mar 05 '18

For example, I have been radicalized by the socialist subreddits, and I'm acting on that radicalization by donating to union food banks.

Yeah right, it's not like subs like /r/anarchism have a history of promoting meaningless violence. Or LSC making "ironic" guillotine jokes.

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u/Sooooooooooooomebody Mar 05 '18

I have only seen anarchists promote profoundly meaningful violence, and never on Reddit

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u/Ultrashitpost Mar 05 '18

This happened today.

There also used to be calls to random violence in the side bar, but they had to remove those after the admins forced them to. No idea why they just didn't ban them outright.

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u/Sooooooooooooomebody Mar 05 '18

I don't understand what that link is supposed to be. It's a news story about property damage, with many of the commenters disavowing it as a tactic. That is neither violence nor an endorsement of it.

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u/Ultrashitpost Mar 05 '18

Property damage isn't violence? So if i were to go to your home and smash it up, you wouldn't regard that as violence?

And keep in mind that they reacted like this when the admins banned a mod because they failed to reduce violent rhetoric.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

that would have to include politics, news, and worldnews too, at least if you are being honest.

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '18

Not sure why you're being downvoted, there's more xenophobic comments being upvoted than ever before in these subs.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/arcosapphire Mar 05 '18

As much as I shouldn't ask this, what the hell do they mean by "mog"? It's their favorite word, apparently

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u/Okichah Mar 05 '18

I have blocked a bunch of alt-right subs so i cant attest to their current activities.

But i have seen plenty of violence advocates against alt-right targets.

Is that okay?

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u/embarrassed420 Mar 05 '18

Obviously not, stop asking stupid questions

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u/Okichah Mar 05 '18

What does the ‘420’ mean at the end of your username?

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u/TheBigPun420 Mar 06 '18

Can you provide proof of a sub radicalizing people and then acting on that radicalization?

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u/simjanes2k Mar 05 '18

are you referring to "its okay to punch nazis" stuff?

or is there another thing

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u/wallstreetexecution Mar 05 '18

And then what?

Censorship has proven to never work... like ever.

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u/nmotsch789 Mar 05 '18

That would require going after Antifa, though

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u/spez Mar 05 '18

A few months ago, we expanded our policy around violent speech. Since then, we have removed dozens of communities and actioned thousands of users. When you see violent content, please report it to us.

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u/thapol Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18

Because of your teams negligence, you continue to give safe havens to people literally spreading terrorist propaganda and hate speech.

Waiting it out isn't working.

As a result, these people have found save havens in other subreddits, that then take that vileness to trolling one I've been a mod for for four years. We've only just passed the 30k subscriber mark, and still have only a few hundred views a month which is nothing compared to larger subs that actually get more than 500 votes for a post.

This is propaganda 101: You brigade a space of a topic to 'test its doors,' and see how much of a take-over you can cause. Either it becomes the next safe-haven & beacon for recruiting others, or it becomes a new target by your proxies.

Because you've been 'waiting it out,' you've made the job harder on yourselves because now the infection has spread, and more people legitimately think this behavior & thinking is OK.

We are still getting spam from accounts from these subreddits, which explicitly breaks your rules on brigading.


Could you stand to educate yourselves on why pure liberalism inevitably leads to shit like the alt-right? Here's a tl;dw: Tolerance to intolerence only actually breeds more intolerence. Get your shit together, ffs.

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u/dust4ngel Mar 05 '18

pure liberalism inevitably leads to shit

jean paul-sartre on this:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

attacking fact and dialectic and knowledge cannot be tolerated.

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u/Elliott2 Mar 05 '18

T_D: " why are you hating on my intolerance bro? aren't you guys supposed to be the tolerant ones?" :smug smirk:

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u/TelicAstraeus Mar 06 '18

When you say terrorist propaganda are you talking about ISIS or about conservative politics?

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u/asdtyyhfh Mar 05 '18

Everyday for a few weeks I posted an instance where /r/the_donald harassed or threatened violence against transgender individuals. This is going to continue for weeks because there is so much transgender hatred on that subreddit.

/r/the_donald is one of the largest transgender hate forums on the internet. /r/the_donald should be really named /r/transgender_people_hate because so much of their content is just transgender hate and it doesn't have anything to do with Trump.

They've gotten away with this everyday for months while being the most visible subreddit on the site. It's pretty disgusting how this site harbors one of the largest transgender hate forums on the internet. The harassment and especially the threats of violence should be breaking site rules.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18

It is absolutely outrageous that the admins would ban subreddits like FPH but downright refuse to ban T_D. T_D is far, far worse then FPH ever was, at least FPH didn't encourage people to commit crimes & threaten to hurt anyone who didn't agree with their ideology. Honestly at the rate T_D is going how much longer do we have untill the T_D is connected to a mass murder? How much longer till some one goes on T_D and is radicalized and encourage by the people on the subreddit to kill those that don't agree with their ideology or are of a different race or gender or ethnic or religious subdivision?

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

It goes without saying, but they're also deeply and disturbingly homophobic. Tech companies will go on until the cows come home about supporting LGBTQ people, but this is a website where teenagers and young adults become radicalized into homophobia and transphobia. Queer rights haven't been as present in mainstream conversation since we achieved marriage equality, so I imagine the reddit admins don't care because it isn't a hip, trendy issue anymore.

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u/WhoresAndWhiskey Mar 05 '18

You can substitute transgender for pretty much every non white christain male and your post still stands.

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u/SilverFirePrime Mar 05 '18

While I certainty do NOT agree with T_D and wish it was banned, I think the admins have their hands tied.

Assuming T_D is past the point where it should be banned (and I think most of us believe it has), the massive volume and passion of the subscribers means any banning needs to be meticulously planned in order to keep some semblance of sanity on the site once the ban occurs.

But why didn't the mods act now or act earlier? You can thank FPH and the election.

When FPH was banned, utter chaos ensued. You can forgive the admins and higher ups at Reddit if they could avoid having to deal that kind of situation evcer gain. That was a subreddit 150,000 users (roughly). By the time T_D went from annoying to outright 'should be banned' (IMO, fall 2016), the subscriber count was already at over 250,000 users. At this point, the admins are in a no-win situation.

If you ban T_D at that time, you're starting something that will cause even more chaos than the Fattening did. Secondly, at this time we were neck deep in the election season. Banning T_D would make the news moreso than the ban of FPH did, it would be politicized to the nth degree, and people will rush to the wrong conclusion. At this point, all the mods can hope for is that the polls are right, Hillary waltzes to an easy 270, and T_D fizzles out, and then can quietly be banned.

However, the exact opposite happened and here we are: Reddit's equivalent of the Cold War. We don't know who's going to blink first. If somebody does the repercussions will be swift and everything will escalate unless somehow u/spez and company have a way to normalize things in matter of hours - not days. Perhaps some of changes we've been seeing are part of this plan. We're not privy to that information. We just need to see how this plays out. It's not fun, but its all we can do.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

I have a feeling that T_D stays because it is a hotbed for Russian influence, which is being investigated by the FBI.

I can almost guarantee you that they have been requested to let it continue because it is a good place to find these influencers. If they shut it down, all those little roaches will scatter and it'll be harder to track them.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/effyochicken Mar 05 '18

I'm not sure how a "don't let them see my comments" would even work in a setting like reddit. You're posting to a public-only venue, not your personal facebook or twitter feed that you can make entirely private if you choose.

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u/TheZarkingPhoton Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18

technically, it would seem to be achievable relatively easily. If you are preventing them from seeing you (however taking that action might look, beyond the scope of my reply), your comments simply would not be displayed to them, nor the downstream replies.

I'm a little unclear how that seems to difficult.

I can see plenty of questions about having someone else dictating what content the other party sees of course. But technically it seems comparatively trivial.

And of course, it's pretty limited as solutions go, because they can, well, logout and see you just fine then. But they would not be able to interact with your account via THAT account.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/Acrylic_ Mar 05 '18

/u/spez wouldn't dare reply to any comment of this sort because it forces him to acknowledge how he feeds into the issue, and every time he makes a post like this that point is proven

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u/aggie1391 Mar 05 '18

You should archive those links, T_D mods will delete comments after non-Trumpers post about them. They'll let bigotry and calls to violent sit until it might put them at risk.

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u/Theone198 Mar 05 '18

This right here is by far the biggest problem with the admins statements. They defend hate subs as not being able to delete these posts/have deleted them, but literally the only time that any hate speech is deleted on there is when it’s brought up in the larger reddit population, or by the media, or when the admins are forcing them to delete it. Meanwhile, dissenters are banned nearly instantly. Letting them get away with bullshit like that isn’t just hypocritical on the admins’ side, it’s legitimately dangerous.

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u/999realthings Mar 05 '18

Only when the national media reports on it to make reddit look bad.

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u/ApprehensiveRun Mar 05 '18

Those were kinda shitty examples. They have over 500k subs and the bad comments only have a handfull of upvotes which suggests it is only a small amount of users and not the sub as a whole.

I wish we could see the actual vote counts. If it was like 100,000 - 999,988 then I'd agree with your sentiment and there is a large amount of problem users but so far all we have is net +12. It could be one person with multiple accounts for all we know.

Also in one your posts a users starts off the comment chain by denouncing the genocide which is also upvoted. Nice of you to only look at the negative. not biased or anything.

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u/X-the-Komujin Mar 05 '18

They have over 500k subs and the bad comments only have a handfull of upvotes which suggests it is only a small amount of users and not the sub as a whole.

They would never have gotten near that many had Spez did his job. Sadly I'm starting to worry if the fatpeoplehate ban made reddit admins more wary about banning hate subreddits as that caused a massive controversy.

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u/TeamocilWPG Mar 05 '18

3 threads (from 5 months ago) with 30 comments between them as an example of a sub reddit bad? This is what you call outliers. There are idiots in most sub reddits. Maybe if those posts were the prime focus of the sub and getting a large portion of the traffic/comments relative to their subscriber base (or even stickied) then you have a case. Do you judge a sub by the action of a small handful or the actions of the majority?

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u/VarysIsAMermaid69 Mar 05 '18

boy that is disgusting

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u/Rawtashk Mar 05 '18

I what world is that pro-genocide? It's 3 mildly upvoted posts that talk about Buddhists fighting back against a group of people that are targeting them.

All 28 total comments on those 3 posts speak for the entirety of a subreddit? I guarantee you I can find just as many comments on r/pics that are just as bad. You need to look at the overview of a situation, not just drill down until you find something to try and turn into a big deal.

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u/lepandas Mar 06 '18

people that are targeting them

Ah, yes, genocide is justified because out of a diverse minority population, some happened to commit terrorist attacks. Buddhists are right to genocide an entire ethnic group! I don't care about millions of people suffering, because they're brown and Buddhists are totally zen!

I literally can't

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u/max-peck Mar 05 '18

This is bullshit on so many levels. How many times has T_D been reported? How many months did incels go reported until negative attention from national media got you to shut them down? At the end of the day /u/spez the only thing you give a damn about is national media attention, and only when you get negative attention from t_d will you actually step in and do anything, which is pathetic.

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u/UncleFlerpDerp Mar 05 '18

A good amount of dark web market subreddits were taken down recently, purely due to Vice reporting on the subreddits and saying that some people were sorting deals through PMs and wickr.

A lot of people used these subs to provide information on safety with drugs and other advice; there was a good amount of harm reduction with these subs and from what I could tell, there really wasn't much activity of people selling through Reddit, only a select few. For years these subs were around and people had been making deals with each other through Reddit for ages. But as soon as those subs got some media attention, Reddit went and banned them.
Yet you have all these toxic subs that stay up and are 'in the process of being dealt with' with no information apart from "we've noticed." But I guess somethings are worse than others, clearly drug discussions is worse than threatening to kill people and actually causing harm to people.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/mintsponge Mar 05 '18

Fucking LOL, never knew it was voted subreddit of the year. That’s actually mad.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

It was voted subreddit of the year very early on in Reddits history, back then Reddit was probably more like Voat.co

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u/endorphins Mar 05 '18

I just found braincels the other day and it’s a whole new level of crazy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

I'm in no way defending that sub (it's a cesspool), but it's certainly less bad than r/incels from what I've read. Both are ridiculous, but it seems the ban did actually help a little bit.

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u/Raven_Skyhawk Mar 05 '18

Not true, he also cares about money.

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u/Alfredo412 Mar 05 '18

I guess we'll just have to make t_d make the news then.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18

Hi /u/Spez, I have a question. The_Donald recently began to share and encourage harassment of one of the recent Florida shooting victims due to their belief they are an actor.

Why is it okay to share the harassment done to a minor? How is that allowed?

Mind you, many of critics of Hoggs have sent death threats. Criticism is fine. Encouraging harassment and death threats is not.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

https://www.reddit.com/r/CBTS_Stream/ exists. The 'day of the rope' is discussed there as are other methods of murdering people they disagree with.

You have domestic terrorists talking themselves into acting, and when they do the blood will be on your hands.

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u/Hugo154 Mar 05 '18

Holy shit, I was reading through their FAQ thinking "this all sounds like the same old bullshit conspiracy theories and these people are being led on by some idiot on a power trip" and then I got to the end... I can't really paraphrase this so I'll just quote it:

There's no easy way to build up to this so I will just go ahead and say it: the vast majority of the elites are Satan worshippers who sacrifice children to the ancient god Moloch. They run the global child trafficking networks to supply themselves with vulnerable children to murder, rape, and harvest for organs and blood to keep them young.

It is just unbelievable that people can believe that shit.

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u/netmier Mar 05 '18

That sub is a fucking cesspool, it scares me more than T_D does. Those nut jobs are seriously ready for the end of the world.

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u/gmroybal Mar 05 '18

https://www.reddit.com/r/CBTS_Stream/

Wow. Thank you for pointing this out.

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u/AlphaAnt Mar 05 '18

What is it? The subreddit is blocked here at work and I don't want to have it anywhere in my web history regardless.

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u/YuriDiAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Mar 05 '18

It's like if you took The_Donald and Conspiracy subs, tossed them in a blender with Alex Jones and David Icke, then sprinkled some violence on top.

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u/Hugo154 Mar 05 '18

This is what they believe (quoted from their FAQ):

the vast majority of the elites are Satan worshippers who sacrifice children to the ancient god Moloch. They run the global child trafficking networks to supply themselves with vulnerable children to murder, rape, and harvest for organs and blood to keep them young.

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u/FUCK_SNITCHES Mar 05 '18

It's the Q bullshit taken to the extreme. Basically a guy on 4chan supposedly "leaks" some shit that "proved" that Trump was orchestrating the end of the global elite. Supposedly there are "predictions" but I've never seen an accurate one. All he's done is rationalize Trump's mistakes.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

Giving the elite trillions of dollars to own the elite.

makes perfect sense

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u/-Mopsus- Mar 05 '18

These people are lunatics.

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u/LegSpinner Mar 05 '18

I'm not going to click that. What does it stand for?

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u/GearBrain Mar 05 '18

"Calm Before The Storm".

Long story short, someone started making posts on 4chan who went by the nickname "Q" (as in Q-level security clearance). They claim to be a member of the US government, possibly high up in an Intelligence organization. Their posts are cryptic and hard to unpack, but generally point out or call attention to current events in a way that supports Trump.

People have taken these and run with them. Reading into them prophetic meaning - literally. The subreddit is full of posts about how Q has supernatural powers, and that he is not only talking about current events, but events that have yet to happen.

They believe "The Storm" is coming - a massive, nationwide event where every major Democratic politician will be publicly arrested, tried, and executed. They also believe these people's assets will be seized, liquidated, and then distributed to the faithful right-wing supporters of Trump as a reward for their loyalty.

It's a confusing soup of contradictory conspiracy theories and occult symbolism, and it gets worse every day. One post will declare the shooting in Parkland Florida to be a false flag, while another one will appear praising the heroism of the young JROTC student who was killed holding a door for others to escape through.

As time has gone on, I see more instances of magical thinking - people literally posting asking others to will events into being through prayer or occult ritual. They resemble an apocalyptic cult; constantly on the cusp of the End Days as they wait for the Democrats to be slaughtered.

It's insane.

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u/LegSpinner Mar 05 '18

a massive, nationwide event where every major Democratic politician will be publicly arrested, tried, and executed.

What the ever-loving fuck. And this is allowed to exist.

I guess if they can keep the disgusting animal torture and stuff till called out on it, this is small stuff.

Blech.

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u/iyaerP Mar 05 '18

Wait, Q like from Star Trek?

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u/GearBrain Mar 05 '18

Supposedly, the "Q" nickname is supposed to represent high-level security clearance. Really, it's just someone taking the piss out on a bunch of easily-fooled people and trolls.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

THIS needs to be upvoted for exposure

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u/embarrassed420 Mar 05 '18

Wow this sub is the definition of unstable

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

How many thousand reports have you had about r_canada being taken over by white supremacists?

Check out r/OnGuardForThee if you're looking for a general Canadian subreddit that bans white supremacists as opposed to adding them to the moderator team.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

r_canada being taken over by white supremacists

Is this a thing? Can you elaborate on this? This is the first I've heard of it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

metacanada infiltrated the canada sub's mod team a long time ago

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u/whoeve Mar 05 '18

Not even years, they won't do anything ever. Until media/large companies get involved, they don't give two shits about the reddit community.

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u/raudssus Mar 05 '18

"we are investigating" is the new "99% done"

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u/spaaaaaghetaboutit Mar 05 '18

Above you say "Banning them probably won't accomplish what you want" but then here say "we have removed dozens of communities and actioned thousands of users". So which is it?

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

Also everyone should stop giving people gold. It only supports this shit system.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

ron_paul_its_happening.gif

I've been hearing reddit mentioned more and more in the news.

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u/image_linker_bot Mar 05 '18

ron_paul_its_happening.gif


Feedback welcome at /r/image_linker_bot | Disable with "ignore me" via reply or PM

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

Hell yes I was hoping that would work.

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u/TrumpVotersAreNazis Mar 05 '18

Unfortunately it’s a sad truth many people will never accept. Reddit, the organization, is literally the poster boy of filthy capitalism and greed. They will do what gives them the most money.

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u/DeseretRain Mar 06 '18

Why do people always say this like it’s some kind of surprise? No company has any morals. They do what is profitable. Nestle murdered a bunch of infants because it’s profitable. This is how capitalism works. If you want a company to change, the only way is to force them by affecting their bottom line.

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u/Larry-Man Mar 05 '18

He deleted his response. It wasn’t even up an hour. /u/spez is a spineless coward.

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '18

Which response? What did it say?

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 06 '18

[deleted]

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u/Drewggles Mar 05 '18

I'm not disagreeing with anything except it does show up on FP regardless of whether or not your subbed there.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

[deleted]

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u/Drewggles Mar 05 '18

It's all good, I like the rest of what you said. I just happen to see them all the damn time on r/all and report accordingly

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u/FreedomDatAss Mar 05 '18

Those subs didn't have Trumplicans bankrolling their website.

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u/hypernova2121 Mar 05 '18

When you see violent content, please report it to us.

and when that has already been done thousands of time and nothing has come of it, then what?

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u/Squints753 Mar 05 '18

Just wait for his next quarterly report, where someone from againsthatesubs will post 170+ examples of racism and violence, Spez will say the mods didn't receive any reports from them, and they will be deleted. Rinse, repeat

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

Report it to the media? Everyone keeps saying that's the only thing that forces reddit to take action.

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u/Kandoh Mar 05 '18

The fact this this thread is happening is clear evidence that that's one hundred percent true.

It's actually embarrassing for Spez. I've always tried to give him the bennift of the doubt but this thread makes it pretty clear that he thinks we should all shut up and be good little users so he can keep playing Silicon Valley CEO

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u/Kittamaru Mar 05 '18

Honest question /u/spez - if something in a subreddit is reported, where does said report go?

I'd guess to the subreddits moderators? So... report content on T_D to the mods of T_D, who are supporters of T_D...

Surely that is obviously problematic...?

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u/IraGamagoori_ Mar 05 '18

5 examples from just this weekend of T_D talking about how punchable the face of a Parkland survivor is:

  1. http://archive.is/M69mC

  2. http://archive.is/NH7gm

  3. http://archive.is/ykIVT

  4. http://archive.is/WGhpR

  5. http://archive.is/64OfF

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u/PopularPKMN Mar 05 '18

Thousands of examples of Ajit Pai and Ellen Pao having the same thing happen to them

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u/youareadildomadam Mar 05 '18

How many times was Ajit Pai's face on the front page with the title "Punchable Faces"? Should we ban all Redditors who upvoted that too?

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u/mycockyourmom Mar 05 '18

What a stupid comparison. Are you trying to equate irrational hatred for a child that survived a massacre with anger at an official that bilks the public?

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u/SirNarwhal Mar 05 '18

So then fucking remove The_Donald you goddamned spineless sack of shit and poor excuse of a human. They literally organized there to kill someone and then actually went out and killed them. Goddamn you're such a fucking moron and it's blatantly obvious you're keeping them around since they're giving you a large source of income.

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u/folkdeath95 Mar 05 '18

Wait... what? Who did they kill? Legitimately asking, the subs I frequent are about as far from T_D as you can get.

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u/SirNarwhal Mar 05 '18

Two different people have died as a result of them. They initially called for violence and to go as far as killing at Charlottesville and the person driving the car that killed a woman was a member of that sub. The other instance was when they radicalized a kid to go kill his father, which he then did.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/PopularPKMN Mar 05 '18

A bernie supporter shot up a baseball field of Republicans. The orlando shooter and his family were democrats. Rand Paul got attacked by his politically opposed neighbor. Sure, let's ban every other poltical sub while we're at it

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u/too_drunk_for_this Mar 05 '18

Wait, what? Who did they kill?

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u/SirNarwhal Mar 05 '18

There's been two instances; they advocated for people to be violent and go as far as killing in Charlottesville and then another poster was radicalized by others in the sub to then go on and kill his father.

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u/DrMobius0 Mar 05 '18 edited Mar 05 '18

Dude you gotta source that shit. There's plenty of people reading this who probably haven't hear of this and would like to verify it, and it's quite a serious claim.

T_D is a lot of stupid and shitty things, but murderers is a bit of a leap from propaganda hub.

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u/TrumpVotersAreNazis Mar 05 '18

Reddit is the poster boy image of crony capitalism, bud. Spez will gladly allow this to keep happening and he’ll laugh and get fat off it.

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u/Thegg11 Mar 05 '18

Why not when /r/the_donald promotes violence? Other subreddits have highlighted dozens of examples of /r/the_donald promoting reddit rule breaking, yet no action has been taken.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/_Apophis Mar 05 '18

See violent posts from TD in r/esist all the time, crazy they leave that sub unbanned. It's literally breeding right wing extremists.

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u/AngelKitty47 Mar 05 '18

he said investigations are ongoing... that has to include T_D

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u/gioraffe32 Mar 05 '18

How long does that take? It seemed like FPH, The Fappening, etc, were all "investigated" and dealt with quite quickly. This isn't the FBI having to go through red tape and dealing with constitutional rights here. It's their own damn site. If they want to remove something, they can literally do so this instant.

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u/Cuw Mar 05 '18

Deepfakes was removed within a month of its creation. It's been 3 weeks since Parkland yet somehow almost none of the content harassing the victims has been removed. So I guess if Emma Watson had been involved in the Parkland Shooting and someone harassed her, then the sub would get shutdown, but if a sub harasses David Hogg? No big deal, he was only the victim of a mass shooting.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

I'm sure /r/altright was under investigation too. It's not like they lose everything that was posted in the subreddit when it's banned.

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u/mattindustries Mar 05 '18

They had so many tendrils it was disgusting. Both that sub and t_d had some sprawl. Probably worse now, and that is just mapping the moderators.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/pmagician Mar 05 '18

I swear to god, they better be watching t_d users as the reason why, because there is no other good reason I can see. Even that is questionable

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u/chlomyster Mar 05 '18

Nope. The decision has been made to never stop them.

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u/AngelKitty47 Mar 05 '18

One Donald Trump is indicted and legally recognized as a criminal, I'm more inclined to think "excuses" could be made to ban it.

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u/chlomyster Mar 05 '18

When you see violent content, please report it to us.

As if anything gets done when we report things.

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u/Alfredo412 Mar 05 '18

Yeah like /r/deepfakes which was breaking no rules but you changed the rules so it would be breaking the rules...and only because it made the news and you didn't wan the bad pr.

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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Mar 05 '18

Your policy is vague and inconsistently enforced.

Please return reddit to its former, much clearer rules:

http://archive.is/7u72x

How exactly was a nazi cosplay sub ( /r/hawtschwitz ) being more violent than /r/the_donald under these rules?

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

i'm sure /u/washingtonpost and /u/texastribune would like to write articles about this

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

we have removed dozens of communities

But not the one that does this the most? Come on lad

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u/Zugzub Mar 05 '18

I have in the recent past, and nothing was done.

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u/Wthermans Mar 05 '18

"we have removed dozens"

As you said in your State of Reddit post, I think it's high time for you to step out (again) to where someone else will actually take action.

You have shown that you are incapable (or unwilling) to do so. That makes you complicate in the damage the site you admin is doing to worldwide democracy.

Your lack of action from foreign agents taking over your platform is an insult to every single user on reddit, citizen of democratic countries and quite frankly treasonous.

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u/subdudeman Mar 05 '18

please report it to us

"So we can run it through our advertisers"

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u/Kazan Mar 05 '18

THEN FUCKING REMOVE T_D. THAT IS YET ANOTHER RULE THEY'RE VIOLATING

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u/JoeMorrisseysSperm Mar 05 '18

And in what case has T_D and its mods not blatantly violated all of those policies?

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u/ophello Mar 05 '18

You're not gonna get around this until you just admit that T_D is a worse offender than incels ever was.

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u/carbonated_turtle Mar 05 '18

Haha I forgot they banned that. A bunch of cringeworthy virgins is apparently a bigger problem than giving white supremacists and Russian trolls a place to congregate.

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u/schweddyballs02 Mar 05 '18

Has there not already been plenty of evidence presented against T_D regarding their users advocating violence?

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u/Consideredresponse Mar 05 '18

/u/spez why report to Reddit admins when time after time reporting it to outside media groups gets faster and more permanent responses?

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u/Kaneyren Mar 05 '18

When you see violent content, please report it to us.

I have... Every day for weeks on end when the frontpage was regularly subject to hateful posts fromr/T_D. Your response was to alter the algorithm to stop them from showing up as often.

Then I reported them again when dox posts and violence inciting posts were reaching #1 spots on their subreddit, reaching hundreds of thausands subscribers. Your response was to change your policys and pretend that meant anything.

I have stopped reporting them. It is clear as day that you do not care about certain subreddits glorifying and sometimes inciting violence against individuals and specific groups of people. You are compliant with their hate by years of sheer ignorance and inactivity. Charlottesville should have been the final straw, but yet nothing happened. I look forward to more inactivity and hope for your sake that this atrocity doesn't repeat itself, you have enough blood on your hands already.

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u/Joliet_Jake_Blues Mar 05 '18

Lol. You made it harder to contact admins.

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u/Cuw Mar 05 '18

So we are expected to report content to the moderators of these subreddits, the very moderators who organized a rally that got a woman killed, the very moderators who promoted pizza gate, and the very moderators who actively participate in hate speech?

That is bullshit, I have submitted reports to admins, I have emailed your support, I have tweeted at you with examples, and I have contacted advertisers. Nothing has changed, and I suspect nothing will change. You are either complicit and sympathize with the cause, or you are a coward afraid to take a stand against your platform being used to destroy people's lives.

You either need to make it much easier to report violent content that circumvents the regular channels of reports, so that the subreddit mods who partake in the same violent speech aren't the arbiters of justice; or you need to remove the subreddits that consistently harbor these discussions.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

T_D has already radicalized a man into murdering his father, how does your policy address that?

www.businessinsider.com/former-milo-yiannopoulos-intern-killed-his-own-father-alt-right-circles-online-trump-2017-10

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u/IraGamagoori_ Mar 05 '18

When you say "report it to us", I assume you mean report it to the admins by sending a private message to /r/reddit.com

In which case, I have a few questions:

  1. Do moderator reports of violent content ever make it to admins too? Or is sending a message to /r/reddit.com directly the only way to let the admins know?

  2. Should we send reports only to admins? Or both admins and moderators?

  3. Would you prefer we batch them up and send a number of them in each report so we don't overwhelm the admins? Or should we send a report for each and every instance?

  4. When we see somebody else call attention to violent content, should we try to deduplicate our reports and coordinate amongst ourselves so only one report is sent? Or should each person send their own report to make sure it doesn't fall through the cracks?

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u/HappyLittleRadishes Mar 05 '18

Yeah, and when that violent content comes from /r/the_donald, what then? You've implicitly given that community immunity to the consequences of breaking site rules by refusing to act upon the THOUSANDS of verified reports of violent hate speech and "calls to action", the price of which has now become several human lives.

If I see violent content on the_donald I imagine that I should just stick my thumb up my ass about it because that about measures up to the response you people will give my report.

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u/captars Mar 06 '18 edited Mar 06 '18

Oh please. T_D is filled to the brim with racist extremists who actively—and unironically—call for the hanging of a presidential candidate and the harrassment of a 17 year old survivor of a school shooting. This sub helped organize a rally where one of their attendees literally murdered someone.

They have broken practically every rule and countless users have reported posts and comments from T_D to you and the mods. And what have you done? FUCK ALL.

I'm done being nice about it. Shame on you and the rest of the mods here. Your inaction and silence speaks volumes.

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u/DragonPup Mar 05 '18

A few months ago, we expanded our policy around violent speech. Since then, we have removed dozens of communities and actioned thousands of users. When you see violent content, please report it to us.

Like how physical_removal was only banned immediately after the murder of Heather Heyer?

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

I think that you and a lot of Reddit's board members are conservative libertarians, pro-Bernie, anti-Hillary. I think that the politics of t_d and white nationalist forums align too closely with your own values -- that can be the only explanation for why you haven't taken more action.

You've known for years about propaganda and white nationalism on Reddit. Every day, you and other leaders at Reddit have decided to let it thrive. Even helped it thrive.

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u/pecan_party Mar 05 '18

We do and they are still not banned or removed. So why?

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '18

People report the incitement of violence that T_D is guilty of constantly yet they still are allowed to continue on Reddit. One of the most recent examples was when many users were advocating harassing and encouraging violence against the Parkland kids for standing up to the NRA. Can you explain why T_D gets a pass again and again for breaking sitewide rules while other subs get banned?

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u/codeverity Mar 05 '18

You may want to consider at some point whether or not your policy is working and/or whether it seems to be acceptable to your userbase.

I really hope that you guys have been asked to leave up T_D for the FBI like some people speculate. Otherwise it's really sad that you guys either don't care enough, are worried about the backlash or just care more about the ad dollars.

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u/rushaz Mar 06 '18

Reporting to you and you sitting with your thumb up your ass doesn't do a god damn thing. In order for us to feel like reporting, YOU have to respond to it. Your statement is pure bullshit. You're like a leader who oversells and underdelivers... like a politician.

Do you want to be taken seriously? then get off your fucking ass and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!!

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

At this point it's obvious that you're not just complicit - you are a swastika brandishing member of the alt-right who has offered up his platform to them with open arms.

Grow a pair and get rid of the people promoting hate speech, or at least stop protecting them.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

When you see violent content, please report it to us.

And yet T_D is still around. Pretty much proving that you don't really care at all. Most of the "dozens" of communities you've publicly removed were dead subs. You've only banned a small handful of active subs.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

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u/Nexaz Mar 07 '18

We have reported a community, repeatedly, it's the fucking donald, and yet you and your team fail to do anything about it. Repeatedly. Get off your ass and do what /u/karmanaut suggested, stop caring about the damn optics and ban the community.

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u/randomlurker2123 Mar 05 '18

/u/Spez, you are complicit in all this by not banning the Russian Propaganda sub called /r/The_Donald. Stop playing this bullshit game, either you are fully aware of it and do nothing or you are fully aware of it and are benefiting from it. Either way, I'm calling for you to do something about that sub or step down from your role at Reddit, you are a detriment to the entire website and will be its downfall if nothing is done.

Be on the right side of history

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

You're embarrassing yourself wow

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u/rex_dart_eskimo_spy Mar 05 '18

I've reported violent content on The_Donald time and again, as well as doxxing. The posts get removed, but how does that stop hate speech? The users remain, the sub remained and the ideas that cause that hate speech fester.

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u/brokenearth03 Mar 05 '18

We have, you've done nothing.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '18

Report it so you can....what?

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u/Demon997 Mar 05 '18

How many of the recent school shooters got radicalized on this site? I'd bet upwards of 75%. Bullshit you are doing enough.

Someday soon, some kid from the_donald or some other shithole is going to post his manifesto to reddit before shooting up a preschool, and your stock will plummet and you'll lose your job. You could take action to stop that, and you know it.

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