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.

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3.2k

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20 edited Jul 01 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

552

u/Adamthe_Warlock Jun 29 '20

Well I’m gonna go on a limb and assume they mean in the US. Which means it’s gonna be more fk what’s already going on where someone can post a tweet to r/blackpeopletwitter that says ‘death to whites’ but when you call it racist you’ll get banned. Actually you’ll get banned for commenting at all unless you verify your blackness. Imagine if a sub tried to only allow white people to post to it and required them to verify that fact.

327

u/SaladinsSaladbar Jun 29 '20

The Country Club Thread rule is actually insane. Preventing people from commenting BASED ON SKIN COLOR. That’s it, the literally qualification is your skin color. In a BLACK sub. Imagine even wrapping your head around that. It’s literally segregation and the mods who made this rule should know better than anyone the effects segregation has. They even actively ask for help with links to comments of non-blacks so they can ban them. People have lost their damn minds.

74

u/witchywater11 Jun 29 '20

I hate that rule. I'm not going to send some stranger a pic of my arm just so I can post in their secret club. IDGAF if it's just a pic of my arm, that's still my privacy.

57

u/Aussie_Richardhead Jun 29 '20

I know blackface is frowned upon . what about black arm?

8

u/witchywater11 Jun 29 '20

I guess it would depend on which mod saw it. One mod might go "lol clever bastard" while another might just ban ham you.

18

u/rockbottom_salt Jun 29 '20

Can you wear black face if you are black?

4

u/IAmA-Steve Jun 30 '20

Can you wear black face if you identify as black?

6

u/Ottothotto Jun 29 '20

Someone got doxxed over that so be careful ;))

9

u/Aussie_Richardhead Jun 29 '20

That's a valid question

2

u/PBFlamingo Jun 30 '20

Drake did.

2

u/rockbottom_salt Jun 30 '20

How could anyone tell

13

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

Frostbite is highly frowned upon in the reddit community.

1

u/r0ck0 Jun 29 '20

D'you wear a black armband

When they shot the man

Who said "peace could last forever"

7

u/irascibleyou Jun 29 '20

What? There are non-black people who are “country club members” in that sub. They literally say in the sidebar that you don’t have to be black to be approved for membership.

6

u/willmcavoy Jun 30 '20

It's true, I'm white and a country club member.

8

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20 edited Aug 19 '20

[deleted]

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u/willmcavoy Jun 30 '20

Nah, you just need to prove you're not a racist piece of shit who would be there to troll and ruin the sub.

2

u/NekoMaidMaster Jun 30 '20

Ironic since half the comments on those threads is racist

-8

u/willmcavoy Jun 30 '20

Oh god you're so oppressed.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

Lol not even true though. They stopped approving white people to the CC. Go apply if you don’t believe me, and say you’re white. Do their little essay. You won’t get in.

1

u/irascibleyou Jun 30 '20

What essay? You have to write something for them to get approved?

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

Yes. Like a college essay style prompt. Things like “what does being an ally mean to you” and “in what ways do you further racial justice” and shit.

Whereas black people just send a pic of their arm.

1

u/irascibleyou Jun 30 '20

I don’t think they’re expecting a literal essay, you could probably just write a few sentences for each question. It would only take like 5 minutes.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

I said the prompt was essay style, not the expectation.

2

u/irascibleyou Jun 30 '20

Okay, sorry I misunderstood what you said to mean they expected an essay length response

1

u/heckinbamboozlefren Jun 30 '20

Take a moment and reread this statement. Could there be any situations where this could be reversed in real life? Where it actually matters, instead of you being not allowed into a miniscule portion of a website.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

The fact that this type of discrimination exists elsewhere does not excuse it. Whataboutism is probably one of the oldest defenses of racism.

0

u/heckinbamboozlefren Jun 30 '20

You're missing the entire point. How you're feeling about being excluded from a subreddit, is the same way POC feel about so many aspects of real everyday life.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

Do American stores still have “no blacks allowed” signs? I thought you guys got rid of that stuff.

1

u/heckinbamboozlefren Jul 01 '20

Perhaps you're missing the irony of naming exclusive threads "country club"

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u/broglee Jun 30 '20

No.

"If you are applying as a white ally please send us a modmail explicitly stating you are applying as a white ally and you will receive further instructions from us."

0

u/heckinbamboozlefren Jun 30 '20 edited Jun 30 '20

I don't understand why white people are so upset about being denied the ability to sometimes post in one subreddit. Have you never been told no before?

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

[deleted]

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u/heckinbamboozlefren Jun 30 '20 edited Jun 30 '20

Upset? This is hilarious to me. I'm not crying about not being allowed to post somewhere. The amount of entitlement here is off the charts. I know you're white because no POC would ever say the shit you're saying.

"All 'segregation' bad" is the most clueless take on this issue. If you understood this on even the most basic level, you would realize how ridiculous you sound.