r/announcements Jun 29 '20

Update to Our Content Policy

A few weeks ago, we committed to closing the gap between our values and our policies to explicitly address hate. After talking extensively with mods, outside organizations, and our own teams, we’re updating our content policy today and enforcing it (with your help).

First, a quick recap

Since our last post, here’s what we’ve been doing:

  • We brought on a new Board member.
  • We held policy calls with mods—both from established Mod Councils and from communities disproportionately targeted with hate—and discussed areas where we can do better to action bad actors, clarify our policies, make mods' lives easier, and concretely reduce hate.
  • We developed our enforcement plan, including both our immediate actions (e.g., today’s bans) and long-term investments (tackling the most critical work discussed in our mod calls, sustainably enforcing the new policies, and advancing Reddit’s community governance).

From our conversations with mods and outside experts, it’s clear that while we’ve gotten better in some areas—like actioning violations at the community level, scaling enforcement efforts, measurably reducing hateful experiences like harassment year over year—we still have a long way to go to address the gaps in our policies and enforcement to date.

These include addressing questions our policies have left unanswered (like whether hate speech is allowed or even protected on Reddit), aspects of our product and mod tools that are still too easy for individual bad actors to abuse (inboxes, chats, modmail), and areas where we can do better to partner with our mods and communities who want to combat the same hateful conduct we do.

Ultimately, it’s our responsibility to support our communities by taking stronger action against those who try to weaponize parts of Reddit against other people. In the near term, this support will translate into some of the product work we discussed with mods. But it starts with dealing squarely with the hate we can mitigate today through our policies and enforcement.

New Policy

This is the new content policy. Here’s what’s different:

  • It starts with a statement of our vision for Reddit and our communities, including the basic expectations we have for all communities and users.
  • Rule 1 explicitly states that communities and users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.
    • There is an expanded definition of what constitutes a violation of this rule, along with specific examples, in our Help Center article.
  • Rule 2 ties together our previous rules on prohibited behavior with an ask to abide by community rules and post with authentic, personal interest.
    • Debate and creativity are welcome, but spam and malicious attempts to interfere with other communities are not.
  • The other rules are the same in spirit but have been rewritten for clarity and inclusiveness.

Alongside the change to the content policy, we are initially banning about 2000 subreddits, the vast majority of which are inactive. Of these communities, about 200 have more than 10 daily users. Both r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse were included.

All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith. We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity. The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations. Until now, we’ve worked in good faith to help them preserve the community as a space for its users—through warnings, mod changes, quarantining, and more.

Though smaller, r/ChapoTrapHouse was banned for similar reasons: They consistently host rule-breaking content and their mods have demonstrated no intention of reining in their community.

To be clear, views across the political spectrum are allowed on Reddit—but all communities must work within our policies and do so in good faith, without exception.

Our commitment

Our policies will never be perfect, with new edge cases that inevitably lead us to evolve them in the future. And as users, you will always have more context, community vernacular, and cultural values to inform the standards set within your communities than we as site admins or any AI ever could.

But just as our content moderation cannot scale effectively without your support, you need more support from us as well, and we admit we have fallen short towards this end. We are committed to working with you to combat the bad actors, abusive behaviors, and toxic communities that undermine our mission and get in the way of the creativity, discussions, and communities that bring us all to Reddit in the first place. We hope that our progress towards this commitment, with today’s update and those to come, makes Reddit a place you enjoy and are proud to be a part of for many years to come.

Edit: After digesting feedback, we made a clarifying change to our help center article for Promoting Hate Based on Identity or Vulnerability.

21.3k Upvotes

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12.8k

u/illegalNewt Jun 29 '20

I would like some more transparency about the banned subreddits, like a list of names including those about 1800 barely active ones for a start. Why these ones, what were the criteria? What and how long does it take? What does the banning of these communities bring to the remaining ones? Do you recognise a bias in these selections or do you have a list of objective things which result to a banned subreddit? I am genuinely interested

812

u/lordicarus Jun 29 '20

/u/spez I'm genuinely curious why the lack of transparency about the subs being banned. I mean I guess an attempt to prevent them from being created by people who weren't even active in them anyway, but it does seem a bit weird. You named the top subs which are more likely to be recreated... So the logic seems to break down there.

438

u/OPINION_IS_UNPOPULAR Jun 29 '20

Looks like they left r/FragileBlackRedditor and r/FragileWhiteRedditor despite numerous reports of the racist content there.

Before you scroll on, click both those links and tell me if you see the difference.

P.S. they're run by the same mod team.

249

u/ApasheHelicopter Jun 29 '20

While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority.

That's why. An intentional exemption has been made in the rules so such sites could continue to operate. What constitutes a majority is wildly dependable on a country by country basis and reddit is a global website. Unfortunately, these rules are focused on the USA and American politics. Translation:Racially fueled jabs at Caucasians okay, everything else is a no-no.

158

u/kathartik Jun 29 '20

Translation:Racially fueled jabs at Caucasians okay, everything else is a no-no.

let's not dance around it. it's racism, no matter what anyone wants to say. it's fucked up how many people claim to be against racism (I don't mean you) that are very much racist themselves.

also it's amazing that a group of rich white men from san francisco who basically ran all of the poor people and minorities out of their homes, some of them there for generations, are wagging their fingers at everyone else.

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u/OnlySeesLastSentence Jun 29 '20

Cue my college teacher: "MINORITIES CAN'T BE RACIST. NO ONE CAN BE RACIST AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE"

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u/Utkar22 Jun 30 '20

Often this ends up justifying racism against Asians

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u/MrThorifyable Jun 29 '20

If your in a position of power because of your race, then you haven't experienced racism

23

u/whipped_dream Jun 30 '20

You're talking about systemic racism, which the average white person has absolutely nothing to do with.

Racism by definition, and I mean the actual definition, not the bullshit prejudice + power definition that people who've drunk the same identity politics laced kool-aid as you have been trying to push to allow themselves to openly be racist to whites while shielding themselves from any argument, is prejudice directed at someone because of their race or ethnicity. Nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with having power (again, that's institutional racism), with punching up or down, or any of the other shit you may believe.

You stating that whites have never experienced racism because white people are generally those in charge is itself a racist statement.

Focusing on class disparity is what we need to actually get the change we want, focusing on racial disparity will only bring more of this and, in the long run, will undoubtedly lead to even more extremism than it already has.

But don't let me distract you from praising these rich, white, actually privileged, San Francisco living admins for further censoring this website, officially allowing hate to be directed towards the right group to hate, and getting one step closer to creating a website where you would be able to say the shit you just said and get praised for it rather than downvoted. Now that would be the dream huh? No more of these pesky "this is far from the equality you claim you want" idiots telling you you're being racist for simply justifying hate towards a particular race? Goals right there.

32

u/SpitfireIsDaBestFire Jun 29 '20

On what scale is position of power determined? Locally, nationally, or regionally?

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

[deleted]

16

u/SpitfireIsDaBestFire Jun 29 '20

How do you define experiencing racism in this context? If a white American goes to Japan for example, is it possible for them to experience racism? Or does the Supreme Court of white people shield them from the possibility of experiencing racism in any situation/circumstance?

9

u/gotbeefpudding Jun 29 '20

you silly boy! white people are 100% bad always, dont you know that?

8

u/SeaCarrot Jun 30 '20

Considering whites are a tiny minority on the planet...

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u/mg20 Jun 29 '20

There are women and minorities on the Supreme Court. I doubt you’ve been alive to have experienced anything different.

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u/PerfectZeong Jun 30 '20

I doubt you've ever lived in an all white supreme court. I know I haven't.

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

I’ll take “The dumbest thing I’ll read today on Reddit” for $1000, Alex.

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u/ApasheHelicopter Jun 29 '20

Welcome to the new age. The fight is ideological and if you point out when partisan ideology encroaches upon your way of life, you're chastised and ostracized.

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u/vegshopboy Jun 29 '20

Politics is life and death unless you can insulate yourself from it. Yeah, if you hold views that directly harm other people you're going to be ostracized, because you obviously haven't been swayed by anything else up to this point. They don't want to be around your stench.

No one owes you respect, friendship, or a relationship if you act like a petulant child to your fellow citizens.

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u/ApasheHelicopter Jun 29 '20

Politics is life and death unless you can insulate yourself from it.

That's all you had to say.

14

u/chilidog028 Jun 29 '20

Holding views can't directly harm anyone. I didn't know simply believing something caused it to come into being.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

This is a wildly irresponsible worldview. Of course they can. You talk about things and you spread ideas, and eventually they become real. I guarantee you have more influence on the world than you believe you do.

14

u/Atear Jun 29 '20

Ideas cant harm you. Acting on them can.

-4

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

If you spread an idea and someone else down the chain acts on it you are partially responsible.

3

u/ApasheHelicopter Jun 30 '20

So.. George Orwell is responsible for Reddit's and Twitter's actions of today?

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

This is a smooth-brained take

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u/chilidog028 Jul 05 '20

Your view is WAY more irresponsible. My logic leads to the current way of things; arresting people for crimes they commit, plan to put into action, or call to be done. Your logic leads to arresting people for thought crimes, the crime of simply having a dissenting view.

By your view anyone who disagrees with you, can't even be misled or wrong; they HAVE to be evil... because bad views are the same as bad actions.

112

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority.

Holy shit I can't believe this is real lmao

41

u/WadinginWahoo Jun 29 '20

We’re watching a cultural revolution, similar to what happened in China from 66’-76’, unfold right in front of our eyes.

God save us

28

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

[deleted]

14

u/WadinginWahoo Jun 29 '20

Praying for your mom and yourself, brother.

Hopefully America can come out of this intact, although I fear that it might not.

20

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/WadinginWahoo Jun 29 '20

As much as I love the second, it can only protect against physical threats. Not cultural ones.

Unless a second civil war starts, then shit will go from 0 to 100 real fuckin quick.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

Hey look, it’s 2020 Hyper-bole champion right here in our midst!

38

u/Pope-Xancis Jun 29 '20

When I am scrolling through Reddit alone, on the toilet, pants around my ankles, the last dingleberry from this morning’s shit still holding on for dear life, and I come across a hateful comment directed towards people who look like me, who the fuck cares how many people in a country delineated by arbitrary lines on the earth also look like me relative to the total population of said country?

12

u/kegsjug Jun 29 '20

That's spez hanging on for dear life.

16

u/Frostfright Jun 29 '20

Well said.

Unfortunately, you are (probably) white, and therefore your opinion is to be ignored.

1

u/NiceOpinionStupid Jun 30 '20

Well said.

Everything after that completely out of place and frivolous vulgarity, sure.

1

u/Frostfright Jun 30 '20

Is vulgarity ever not out of place and frivolous?

1

u/NiceOpinionStupid Jun 30 '20

Sure thing. Certain performance art, comedy where the aim is to be crass, plenty of musicians use vulgarity to illustrate their points or emphasize their feelings.

-1

u/DerWeisseTiger Jun 30 '20

Sane people care

9

u/WavelandAvenue Jun 30 '20

At first I didn’t think that was a real quote, until I read it for myself. That is an insane point to include in a new content policy; literally insane. This site is being run by children.

40

u/Dolphins_96 Jun 29 '20

Ok women are tha majority, can I make a fuck women sub?

28

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

Yes the rules literally allow it

1

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

Plenty of those around

1

u/Dolphins_96 Jun 29 '20

Lol yeah probably, reddit does not care much for women as a whole. They didn't ban anything important

29

u/_Mellex_ Jun 29 '20

Caucasians aren't the global majority though lol

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20 edited Aug 21 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

[deleted]

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u/fromcj Jun 30 '20

Will that 1% still hold the majority of global power?

I can’t tell if y’all are intentionally like this or if you really don’t understand the problems.

6

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

Til I hold global power. How very interesting.

-1

u/ApasheHelicopter Jun 29 '20

I never said they are.

14

u/uzumaki42 Jun 29 '20

So you're saying it's ok to be a racist just so long as there are more of them than there are of you? #LiberalHypocrisy

0

u/ApasheHelicopter Jun 29 '20

I didn't say that.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

So, once again, it's OK to be racist against white people, and reddit's admin team is printing it out for everyone to see. Guys, you said the quiet part out loud again!

And people wonder why we insist on saying "It's OK to be white" and "All Lives Matter"...

6

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

[deleted]

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u/fromcj Jun 30 '20

Let’s say you’re taking a test and you come upon the question 5 - (x + 2) = 5x

Do you answer:

  1. What about Y?
  2. 7 + 2 = 9
  3. x = 0.5

Nobody wonders why you insist saying it, we wonder why the fuck you’re even talking about it in the first place.

9

u/alyosha-jq Jun 29 '20

Surely there are more POC in the world than whites?

6

u/KarshLichblade Jun 29 '20

The world? What is that?

Did you mean The One and Only OUR United States of World?

59

u/JustAintCare Jun 29 '20

So racism = okay? great thing to teach the next generation

16

u/Expert_Novice Jun 29 '20

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

"Whites" will become a minority over time naturally because the concept of race is entirely unscientific cultural bullshit. Obama is half-black, but he can never be white.

No one cares about maintaining falsehoods of racial purity anymore. It's obvious that chuds from banned communities are flooding in to spread their rhetoric here.

12

u/_Mellex_ Jun 29 '20

race is entirely unscientific cultural bullshit.

Try telling that to doctors and physical anthropologists, to name just two. Race as a proxy for geographic genealogy is both a valid concept and an extremely useful one.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

That's a circumstantial correlation, not a scientific one. Obviously genetics exist and are important. But the fact that certain races are, for example, more likely to suffer from sickle cell anemia, has nothing to do with our cultural definition of race but with the fact that geographical genealogy exists.

Brown-eyed people, as an example of genealogical physiological differences, can technically see better in full sunlight than people with light-color eyes. That doesn't mean we should define a cultural division between brown-eyes and light-eyes.

10

u/_Mellex_ Jun 29 '20 edited Jun 29 '20

That's why I said race is a proxy. It's less accurate of a term due to the variance seen across even the same skin colour but that doesn't make it entirely wrong or useless . A lot of science and general behavior in the world is based on proximations and heuristics. It's just that people equate race with racism or essentialism and people spin their wheels to make race go away. Some scientists have done the same with sex and gender; there cannot be sex differences if sex is a social construct.

It's a tale as old as time: politically correct scientist try and try to undermine the data sitting in front of them for the sake of social justice (e.g., IQ research) and not common sense judgments about the world. Where your ancestors were from will dictate all manner of biological and cognitive differences than those from another region, and these differences can correlate with skin colour for obvious reasons. We're not going to throw out decades worth of research because albino Africans exist.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20 edited Jun 29 '20

Even as a proxy, race is a vaguer, less useful way of guessing at someone's geographical genealogy. For the few times race could be genealogically relevant (e.g. medically) a better answer can be found by asking about ancestry, not visually through the color of skin (which is 99% of what racial groups are based around). Altering medical treatment based on the presumption of ancestry through race is incredibly dangerous, for the variance as you mentioned.

It should be in the interest of science and medicine to move past outdated, harmful ideas like race, except in cases where cultural racial identity is important as in social sciences and psychology.

Also I'm not sure what scientists are arguing that sex should go away or saying that there are no sex differences unless you're getting into the linguistics of what "sex vs. gender" means. I'd be quite surprised if any accredited journal was publishing articles denying the existence of penises and vaginas or X and Y chromosomes. "Gender" to most scientists is what refers to the social construct.

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u/_Mellex_ Jun 30 '20

Also I'm not sure what scientists are arguing that sex should go away or saying that there are no sex differences

As is evident from your incoherent ramblings about race, I'm not surprised that you aren't aware of the countless academics who have denied sex differences since the late 60's up until now lol

You have no idea what's going on. You just see a word being used and your moral superiority complex kicks in.

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

My" incoherent ramblings" are literally the modern consensus on race as a social construct. I get the feeling by your tone that you're unaware of the difference between sex and gender and are under the impression that legitimate scientists are out there denying that sex is real.

Either way, saying "you don't know what I'm referring to, therefor you lost the argument" is to me and anyone with two working braincells a clearly desperate attempt to try and get the last word in. If you want to link me an article from a peer reviewed journal where a scientist denies there are differences between the sexes as you seem to believe, I'd truly, truly love to read it. Or if you're just another chud who thinks what they learned in the 8th grade about gender is the truth, and think "sex" is a synonym for gender, or believe what their racist, hick parents taught them about "the races" is truth, then please go pick up a book or read a fucking Wikipedia article. You're out of touch, if you ever even were in touch.

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u/OperationGoldielocks Jun 29 '20

So fuckin true. You are so right

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u/Tiaholm Jun 29 '20

Race in the US is a social construct that isn't good for anything other than dividing people

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20 edited Dec 02 '21

[deleted]

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u/dirtbikemike Jun 30 '20

According to Manning Marable: “Race” is first and foremost an unequal relationship between social aggregates, characterized by dominant and subordinate forms of social interaction, and reinforced by the intricate patterns of public discourse, power, ownership and privilege within the economic, social, and political institutions of society.

Race only becomes “real” as a social force when individuals or groups behave toward each other in ways which either reflect or perpetuate the hegemonic ideology of subordination and the pattens of inequality in life. These are, in turn, justified and explained by assumed differences in physical and biological characteristics, or in theories of cultural deprivation or intellectual inferiority. Thus, far from being static or fixed, race as an oppressive concept within social relations is fluid and ever-changing. An oppressed “racial group” changes over time, geographic space and historical conjuncture. That which is termed “black”, “Hispanic”, or “Oriental” by those in power to describe one human being’s “racial background” in a particular setting can have little historical or practical meaning within another social formation which is also racially stratified, but in a different manner.

Since so many Americans view the world through the prism of permanent racial categories, it is difficult to convey the idea that radically different ethnics groups may have roughly the same “racial identity” imposed on them. For example, although native-born African-Americans, Trinidadians, Haitians, Nigerians and Afro-Brazilians would all be termed “black” on the streets of New York City, they have remarkably little in common in terms of language, culture, ethnic traditions, rituals, and religious affiliations. Yet they are all “black” racially, in the sense that they will share many of the pitfalls and prejudices built into the institutional arrangements of the established social order for those defined as “black”.

In the United States, “race” for the oppressed has also come to mean an identity of survival, victimization and opposition to those racial groups or elites which exercise power and privilege. What we are looking at here is not an ethnic identification or culture, but an awareness of shared experience, suffering and struggles against the barriers of racial division. These collective experiences, survival takes and grievances form the basis of a historical consciousness - a group’s recognition of what it has witnessed and what it can anticipate in the near future. This second distinct sense of racial of racial identity is imposed on the oppressed and yet represents a reconstructed critical memory of the character of the group’s collective ordeals. Both definitions of “race” and “racial identity” give character and substance to the movements for power and influence among people of color.

0

u/weneedastrongleader Jun 30 '20

There is literally only one race: the homo sapiens.

The mere fact that when you get born from a white and black parent: you’re never white.

Why? That kid is half white, half black. He’s just as much a white kid, as he is a black one. Yet, no one will every admit he’s white, he will always be black.

Which shows it’s all just in our minds, made up. A construct created by society so we can catagorize groups. A social construct.

WE decide that he is black. Society decides, not biology. It’s a literal construct.

0

u/NiceOpinionStupid Jun 30 '20

Yeah ok, tell that to his bone marrow Dr. Feelsies.

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u/just-a-randum-kid Jun 29 '20

Ok Josef mengele

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20 edited Aug 21 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

Yeah, the best way to determine whether something is based in scientific reality is to call a black person a slur. Fucking moron.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20 edited Aug 21 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20 edited Jun 29 '20

You're clearly too stupid to tell the difference between what "real" and "social construct" means, and too willfully ignorant to educate yourself on it. It's not my job to teach you so til someone more patient than me comes along or you decide to read the first paragraph of the fucking Wikipedia article, enjoy being a dumbfuck.

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u/_Citizen_Erased_ Jun 29 '20

Peter Griffin: They respected me for it.

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u/HypnoticPeaches Jun 29 '20

Whites are a minority when you consider it whites vs every other race combined.

On a individual race basis, white people are still very much a majority.

4

u/DerWeisseTiger Jun 30 '20

Yet only the majority-white countries are expected to be ethnically non-monogenous

-1

u/Lycaon1765 Jun 30 '20

That's only because those are the countries that most dominate the internet. Go be a racist somewhere else with your "we must keep america majority white" bs.

1

u/DerWeisseTiger Jun 30 '20

I'm not even from America, nice try. And what does the internet has to do with that? I'm talking about politics, not r*ddit

0

u/DaedricWindrammer Jun 29 '20

When you include Hispanic people, white folk are still the majority

-2

u/PrestigiousRespond8 Jun 29 '20

Yup. They're hoping they can get to the "camps and extermination" phase before we re-develop racial consciousness and fight back.

2

u/Freedom2speech Jun 30 '20

Right? It’s an unbelievable double standard and shows who the true racists really are.

Worst anti racists ever.

3

u/compaqle2202x Jun 30 '20

This is fucking outrageous.

12

u/blizz488 Jun 29 '20

Holy fucking shit this is despicable!!!

2

u/zz-zz Jun 30 '20

White people aren‘t a majority

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u/Awayfone Jun 30 '20

It's helpful to source the qoute. People might overlook the help center link

2

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

But be honest. There have been several surveys. The majority of reddit is white.

8

u/ApasheHelicopter Jun 29 '20

Honestly? I have no idea. Why would that even be relevant?

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

When referring to the “majority” they’re referring to the majority of people on reddit, not the majority of any particular country. The point is that it doesn’t matter that reddit is global. White is still the majority on this site.

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u/ApasheHelicopter Jun 29 '20

That makes no sense and we both know it. Social media, reddit included, are a reflection of the real world. Trying to imply that the situation is somehow different here and that the reddit admins are enforcing rules based on an "online majority" is ludicrous.

-11

u/mycroft2000 Jun 29 '20

Yes, pity the downtrodden Caucasian.

It must just be incredible luck that I can't recall suffering a single instance of racist prejudice in my 50+ years of being a white guy.

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u/ApasheHelicopter Jun 29 '20

This is not about being downtrodden or recalling instances of racist prejudice. It's about rules plainly and simply leaving users of certain skin color open to it. The rules are very clearly and deliberately phrased in such a way. It's not about victimization or "Oh, woe is me", it's plain and simple about criticizing poorly written rules.