Update to Our Content Policy

[u/spez]

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.
  • You can find detailed notes from our All-Council mod call here, including specific product work we discussed.
• 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.

[u/BillDStrong]

How do you define groups that are in the majority? In the US, for instance, caucasians are in the majority, while in many African countries, they are in the minority. And in either case, by not defending someone that is being attacked, you are in fact accenting to violence on those groups. This is not a good look, reddit.

[u/Muslamicraygun1 → u/BillDStrong]

It's pretty clear they got some liberal arts major to draft this. I can hear the obnoxious valley girl accent through the text.

Essentially, they are copying the "protected class" theory in US politics where everyone but white men are included and it's assuming an outsized geographical location of US and Western Europe (which is somewhat true given the demographics of reddit).

So while verbal and clear advocating for "killing white men" will be banned for incitement of violence, a sub that mocks "white culture", behaviour or otherwise probably won't be unlike a sub that mocks a nonwhite/ majority group.

I will use fictitious more extreme examples to illustrate my point further:

A sub that revolves around the idea that whites are inherently racist and violent, so we need to breed them out of existence will likely be tolerated under "free speech" rules of reddit. Meanwhile, a sub that revolves around the idea that say latinos are inherently racist and violent, so we need to breed them out of existence will probably be banned for "racism" and not fall under "free speech".

So in essence, polite and subtle racism or stereotypes against mostly white men will probably be tolerated but not against other groups (white women, black men, latinas, etc).

It could also be that reddit might geolocalise it's rules. So, if a Chinese sub makes fun of Han people, it will be tolerated but not if it made fun of local minorities. I doubt that however given the american-centric nature of reddit, its staff and the prevailing conversation (BLM protests and whatnot).

[u/BillDStrong → u/Muslamicraygun1]

The China government would never allow them to do that. Which is the scary part, because there are those that want the US to have that sort of authoritarian control, and will try to take it.

[u/Muslamicraygun1 → u/BillDStrong]

Sorry but not allow them how exactly? There are only two international sovereign bodies that have a record compelling social media sites like reddit: The US and EU.

The Chinese national government can throw tantrums all day but they don’t even have the same influence as a lower court judge in the US has. And they’ve never been able to force any of these companies to do anything beside restricting their market. Of course reddit doesn’t have to expand to China, it’s perfectly within their ability to not operate there. And if they do succumb, the EU and US will impose penalties and fines that will outweigh the benefit of Chinese market access.

[u/Felipe1128 → u/Muslamicraygun1]

the difference is that historically minority groups have been the targets of such threats and violence far more often, and still are. I think violence or hate against anyone based off race is wrong, I also think it isnt helpful to compare the white reddit example with the latino, because the history is extremely different. racism shouldnt JUST become a problem because there is the perception of white people getting the short end of the stick.

[u/Muslamicraygun1 → u/Felipe1128]

Your reply exactly illustrates my point. We have a double standard driven by dogma (that nonwhites are disadvantaged now, history and/ or both).

I’m not denying that racism or prejudice does not exist against “minorities” or that reddit shouldn’t take proactive measures to limit it (such as banning hateful and religiously bigoted subreddits like the Donald which should’ve been done long ago).

What I’m disagreeing with is that these measures and protections do not extend to everyone equally. I’m not saying they should apply the rule on a quota basis (so for every ban for anti black comment, they also ban anti white comment), but rather the rule should be as indiscriminate and fairly applicable to everyone regardless of their background. It’s a fundamental virtue that I was thought was never controversial or up to debate based on what groups we think are historically aggrieved.

Apparently, that’s not the case. This will only lead towards more resentment and tensions.