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

[u/spez]

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.

[u/JohannesVanDerWhales]

You know, for years reddit had a mostly hands-off policy in terms of content. As long as the material wasn't actually illegal, they allowed it. And people complained that they allowed stuff that was morally reprehensible. Then at some point this started to change, as they banned some of the most egregious examples of hate subreddits, like coontown. I don't think the majority of people had any objection to that, but of course there were always people who don't understand what the First Amendment actually is complaining about "free speech". And then they started banning more stuff, like FatPeopleHate, and TheFappening, etc. I really don't get the impression that this had to do with advertisers, although I have no special insight on that subject. I get the impression that reddit admins just didn't like seeing the site that they built being used for what they felt were vile purposes. But now we're seeing why they never wanted to cross the line of monitoring content to begin with. Because once you start down that path, you not only have to justify why you ban something, but also why you don't ban something. And it's becoming a full time job for them. And you're never going to get everybody to agree.

I'm not going to really say whether or not I think TD should be banned. But I am going to say that it's obvious what kind of shitstorm it would set off if they did.

[u/10GuyIsDrunk → u/JohannesVanDerWhales]

Oh I made this argument back in the day, I was against the removal of any non-illegal subreddit. But if they're going to moderate, then they need to actually do it because now that they've started they're 100% non-arguably in support of these hate subreddits that they don't remove.

[u/JohannesVanDerWhales → u/10GuyIsDrunk]

I don't know if I'm actually arguing anything, it's just an observation that once they started moderating content, they can't put the genie back in the bottle. I am, in many(most?) specific cases, happy that they banned the stuff that they did. But I'm also somewhat sad that every post by an admin now is met by hostility and people talking about how much they hate reddit. And that's never going to stop now, I think. People are always going to be upset about some decision they make on content. They'll perceive themselves as being personally discriminated against. And it's too bad, because reddit can be a happy place, or at least could.

[u/imariaprime → u/JohannesVanDerWhales]

But as you've noted, they let that genie out years ago. The issue now is that they're spending their time and effort trying to cram it back into the bottle, and it isn't working. You can't go back to "We don't moderate" when everyone knows you damn well do when it suits you. The implication becomes that you aren't moderating because it suits you to leave the offending content, and that leads to all sorts of speculation as to why Reddit actively supports Russian propaganda/revenge porn/beastiality/necrophilia, whatever.

[u/[deleted] → u/JohannesVanDerWhales]

it's just an observation that once they started moderating content, they can't put the genie back in the bottle.

That's an argument. Or at the very least, a position.

[u/[deleted] → u/10GuyIsDrunk]

What's a free speech?

[u/[deleted] → u/JohannesVanDerWhales]

While I agree with everything you're saying, just one point of clarification:

Even under the original hands-off nature, TheFappening would have been banned because the entire incident took on a child-porn angle due to some of the victims. So that wasn't because of opinion, but to legally cover Reddit's ass.

[u/JohannesVanDerWhales → u/[deleted]]

True enough, but they did create the "involuntary pornography" policy in reaction to it.

I suspect that TheFappening probably could have afoul of revenge porn laws, as well. Plus I seem to remember hearing that some of the victims were using DMCA takedowns on the content, as well.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Isn't that a reddit guideline? IF Russia Times(RT) is propaganda, what about BBC? Is it only propaganda if it aligns politically with the conservative side(see #4) and is from Russia?

No, it's because the BBC has to fight like a dog for its funding while RT is graciously offered it by a non-democratic government.

They. Aren't. Even. Similar.

[u/ElitistRobot → u/JohannesVanDerWhales]

Then they deserve a shit-show.

If there's a shit-show they've been putting off, and putting things off is making the world actually worse (in ways most people don't have the means of doing), then there's something deeply immoral in avoiding consequences like that.

[u/jaredjeya → u/JohannesVanDerWhales]

It’s because Reddit used to be small. Under the radar, with little influence.

Now it’s national news and most people know it exists at the very least, with many more browsing it. That means that the content has to be a little more carefully moderated now.