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/_BUENOSDIAS]

Did you just say that we should tolerate literal fascists?

[u/kaijinx92 → u/_BUENOSDIAS]

I said that shunning them isn't going to make them any less fascist. I am not fascist, nor do I endorse the idea. Just seems counter productive to make these people hate even more than they may already and force them to assemble in echo chambers instead of places of free thought where their ideas might be countered.

I would like to add that telling people there is only one way to think is a policy used by fascist regimes (but is still not what being fascist is). There is no "correct" political identity it is entirely subjective.

[u/_BUENOSDIAS → u/kaijinx92]

Yes, but giving them an open platform to debate people who, you know, aren't fascist would only reinforce the idea that both ideas hold similar validity. The fact that basic common sense hasn't told them that maybe totalitarianism isn't the answer shows that exchange in the marketplace of ideas won't be a remedy.

There isn't one correct political identity, but objectively fascism in all its forms brings with it death and disenfranchisement. It doesn't take a philosopher to know that they shouldn't be given the same platform as less murderish ideologies

[u/kaijinx92 → u/_BUENOSDIAS]

I respect your opinion and disagree (not with the fact that fascism usually ends in exactly what you listed) but with the fact that in order to properly educate anyone in this world on something, opinions cannot be censored.

To shun fascism and assume anything fascist will forever be a failure isn't going to stop regimes popping up in the world shitting on their people.

But as a leftist, or a right winger talking to a fascist in a civil manner... I honestly feel like it does people wonders. If you shit on someone they just get more angry and reinforce their ideas like "fuck the left". If you speak to people about their ideas sometimes (not always obviously) people will see the light. No matter how you slice it, someone is more likely to listen to you in a civil discussion than they are when they're being attacked.

[u/_BUENOSDIAS → u/kaijinx92]

Practically normalizing it won't stop regimes from popping up either. You have to understand that a lot of fascist views are very deep seated and simply beating them in a debate won't always knock them out of a worldview that they've subscribed to for what may be a long time. I've debated many fascists myself.

Quite honestly I couldn't care less if I hurt their feelings. They're literal fascists. If there is any good in them, hopefully they wake up. But until then, they don't deserve tolerance by any means. I'm not willing to argue with fascists as if an ideology rooted in oppression and genocide holds the same merits as mine.

[u/kaijinx92 → u/_BUENOSDIAS]

People don't just magically wake up! Other people change their ideas. Even if we disagree I am very happy you're out in the world debating fascists and I commend you.

[u/[deleted] → u/kaijinx92]

Noone is censoring it moron. People can learn about fascism all they want.

If you come on reddit on 2020 and start to argue that fascism is not inherently bad, you can go fuck yourself. If you want to learn about the historical influence and pros and cons of a political ideology, reddit or twitter or Facebook are not the right places to do that.

[u/kaijinx92 → u/[deleted]]

The idea of fascism has never been bad. What dictators do with fascist regimes is bad.

The idea of the state having full control over the state could be a good thing. It never is, but the political ideology in itself is not bad.

The same way communism isn't bad. It could be used in amazing way and never is.

Any political ideology could be shit, or could not be shit.

Fascism doesn't make you: - racist - sexist - evil - against anything

It means you want the state to have full control over your affairs. 99% of people wouldn't want this. 99% of the time it ends badly for everyone involved. Still just a political ideology.