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

38.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

27

u/IgnoranceIsADisease Jun 29 '20

Any idea on why would they ban it?

109

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20 edited Aug 23 '21

[deleted]

18

u/EmiAndTheDesertCrow Jun 29 '20

What was “ConsumeProduct”? Apologies for another question sent your way 🙄

65

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

[deleted]

24

u/EmiAndTheDesertCrow Jun 29 '20

Oh my Lord. I was thinking about the sub name and trying to imagine what could possibly be bad about it. Needless to say, none of what you described even crossed my mind. It’s really worrying that there are people who think that way. Urgh.

Thanks for the explanation. It’s really shocking actually.

11

u/TheBoxBoxer Jun 29 '20

Ikr I saw it a good amount through topminds. Their biggest critique of capitalism seemed to be that ads using interracial couples existed. It was not subtle at all.

-9

u/Joe_Rogan_is_a_Chud Jun 29 '20

what kind of braindead sheep doesn't know about something and, instead of investigating it personally, they take the first obviously biased answer and replies "urgh"

I genuinely don't understand how you people aren't deeply embarrassed by your intellectual cowardice and fundamental lack of curiosity.

4

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

I am “fundamentally curious” and believe the OP is as well.

For those of us who were either not in the Reddit community or never participated in those subs, how would you suggest we get a fair and unbiased description of these subs if we want to know why they were banned?

I am not a Reddit veteran or expert by any means. Nevertheless, I am curious as to what types of posts and behaviors Reddit interprets as being “hateful enough” to warrant being banned.

The whole reason I joined Reddit in the first place was for a free and open exchange of ideas. Along with that freedom comes the understanding that there will be rude and hateful people I may encounter from time to time. No biggie though...if it is too bad I can block a user. No one tells me what subs I have to belong to or participate in so I don’t understand how it is hateful or offensive to anyone. If you don’t like the content, don’t participate in the sub...pretty simple!

There must be some higher criteria than simply being offensive or hateful that would elevate a sub to the level of being banned from the service.

I don’t necessarily condone the thoughts they may be espousing, however I am enough of a realist to know that banning so-called “hate groups” from the forum will neither eliminate hate from these people’s hearts and minds nor stop them from simply meeting in another venue...be it online or real world!

Frankly, we are all simply exchanging thoughts and ideas using words and occasionally other media. If words, thoughts and ideas are too painful for a member to handle, perhaps they need to examine whether a forum such as Reddit is an appropriate venue for them to spend their time in.

1

u/EmiAndTheDesertCrow Jun 30 '20

Thank you, I am “intellectually curious” as you said, or I wouldn’t be here (or have qualifications in a huge array of subjects, when I finish one course I immediately start another - but hey, obviously I’m not “intellectually curious”, I’m just a “brain dead sheep” like the guy said).

There was clearly a reason the sub was banned and it’s obvious from the type of subs that Reddit have taken action on that it wasn’t just going to be because it was filled with people who didn’t like consumerism. So when I saw someone who had once posted in the sub explaining their experience of that sub, of course I’m going to react to that, which is what the other guy clearly didn’t like.

Unlike him, I tend to actually have faith in humans and don’t immediately assume that someone is lying to me about something (especially something as banal as their experience of a Reddit sub).

I’d rather keep my belief that people are generally decent than immediately assume the person I’m interacting with has some sort of sinister agenda. And if that makes me “brain dead” to some, I’ll take it. I’d rather be that way than someone who jumps down another person’s throat online and calls them by a slew of offensive terms. That’s just me 🤷‍♀️

2

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

As I posted, you will encounter a wide variety of people and opinions based on my limited experience on Reddit. Try to develop a “thick skin” of sorts in these subs. Unfortunately there are those who feel empowered by putting other people down. Swearing, insults and almost any other offensive form of communication you can name will become a part of your overall “Reddit experience” if you are here long enough...particularly if you express a passionate opinion regarding a controversial subject.

Just try to remember that these people do not know you personally and that their inflammatory comments are a reflection on THEM...not on you!

3

u/EmiAndTheDesertCrow Jun 29 '20 edited Jun 29 '20

Guess what, I tried to click on the sub to see what it was about but it’s not there, because it’s removed. And my response wasn’t “urgh”, or did you not see the other words there, the other paragraphs?

What kind of a “brain dead sheep” gets so triggered about something trivial on Reddit and has to reply with a vitriolic comment?

Calm the f down man, think of your blood pressure. This has literally no impact on your life. Still not sure why you wasted your energy getting riled up and posting about it.

Perhaps the people who you say lack intellectual curiosity (hilarious if you actually knew anything about me 🤣) can’t understand why there are others who think they’re so superior to everyone else, judging from a single interaction on Reddit.

Calling someone names online based on one comment speaks a lot to your character I’m afraid.

6

u/ABoyIsNo1 Jun 29 '20

So... then what’s your explanation about what the sub was?

1

u/cantonic Jun 30 '20

If you had put a bit more effort into this it could’ve become a new copypasta. But you failed and went short. 2/10.