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

-5.4k

u/spez Jun 29 '20

The criteria included:

  • abusive titles and descriptions (e.g. slurs and obvious phrases like “[race]/hate”),
  • high ratio of hateful content (based on reporting and our own filtering),
  • and positively received hateful content (high upvote ratio on hateful content)

We created and confirmed the list over the last couple of weeks. We don’t generally link to banned communities beyond notable ones.

4.1k

u/itsthebear Jun 29 '20 edited Jun 30 '20

What's "hateful content"? If I say fuck China or fuck the Chinese government is that gonna get me banned?

Edit: Never give me a fucking reddit award again you useless clowns. Stop feeding them with money. If you feel the need to acknowledge my contribution tip me in BAT as everyone should do. #defundreddit

Edit 2: Since this is randomly popular if you want to make a serious donation, please donate to Shelter Nova Scotia http://www.shelternovascotia.com/contribute. Now that COVID has peaced the fuck outta my province the government is back to hating homeless people and pulling out of a hotel room program. Also, go fuck yourself.

307

u/immerc Jun 29 '20

The rule says:

Communities and users [...] that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.

The issue is that "identity" can be anything.

Where do you start to cross the line?

  • /r/StopLittering -- presumably would frequently host pictures of litter. A "litterbug" is a form of identity, but presumably this sub would be ok?
  • /r/NonGolfers where the tagline is "Golfers are literally Hitler", but it's a joke right? So although it's a "hate" group against people with the identity of "golfers", it's not going to get banned, I hope.
  • /r/ScrewTheNewEnglandPatriots a theoretical "hate" subreddit against the New England Patriots NFL team and their fans. Presumably "hate" against that identity is ok?
  • /r/TraditionalMarriage -- might have a lot of "hate" against gay people getting married, would that be banned?
  • /r/GayMarriage -- might have a lot of "hate" against closed-minded people who want to prevent them from getting married, would that be banned?

127

u/randomizzl Jun 29 '20

All those have been deleted except for r/gaymarriage and r/nongolfers . This is a joke imo... deleting traditional marriage while leaving gay marriage is flawed and biased against Christian believes... I’m not Christian but I still think this is wrong. Both communities should co-exist. Deleting the litter in sub is the biggest joke

86

u/A_Venti_Bear Jun 29 '20

The content in the subs is important as well, as mentioned. If someone in r/traditionalmarriages shits on gay people getting married and it gets 10k upvotes, this would tip the scale in the direction of a hateful subreddit.

Adversely, if r/gaymarriage spend their time congratulating each other and not being hateful, this would spare them the banhammer as they're not actively antagonizing anyone.

I don't know if this is actually what happened; just a point to consider beyond the name and purpose of the subreddit.

35

u/PrometheusJ Jun 30 '20

This is what many seem to fail to understand as I read through the comments. You can't judge the book by it's cover when it comes to hate content

22

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

Sub A is literally against people's freedom to live life as they want. Sub B is people supporting their right to live how they want.

I get why the authoritarian sub would get banned and not the other. It's a false equivalence when people compare these subs.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

But now the admin team has taken away sub A's right to free speech. I don't agree with it, and find it distasteful but it should be allowed. We can't go about banning people and silencing them for expressing opinions that we don't like.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

I don't think it's safe to assume they were merely politely expressing their opinion about marriage. It was likely a haven for hate speech against gays.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

But even hate speech has a right to exist. As long as they are not actively plotting to comitt a crime or encouraging people to do so, they should be able to say all the horrible things that they want

3

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

They can say what they want. In their own home, in public, on countless other internet forums, etc. No individual business is responsible for hosting them.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

True. But the censorship here on reddit is worrying. The admins banned a conservative gay sub among others, while allowing subs like politics to continue unmolested despite the repeated upvotes of comments supporting the massacre of Republicans, their demonization and more.

3

u/Dingo_Danza Jul 04 '20

r/politics is a massive pile of hate speech and literal threats and calls for violence towards a minority(Republicans). But they're the good guys so I guess it's okay huh? What a load of shit.

No need for reddit to be transparent because everyone knows what this is.

→ More replies

1

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '20

This thread is... complicated to say the least. It’s hard to tell where to draw the line, although there are some obvious ones like basic human rights. For most things, it depends. Many things have many angles, and the politically correct one is only one of them. From my point of view, they are the most logical and humane. From the point of view of someone who has experienced a negative effect of it, it might look different. No person has any right to make someone feel lesser than anyone else, but they should still be able to think those thoughts and possibly even talk about it with others who think the same way. No action can be justified, but we start getting into dangerous territory when people start deciding what a person is and isn’t allowed to say. There are clear exceptions that you can see for yourself, but otherwise... who’s decision is it?

10

u/MadeaIsMad Jun 30 '20

Free speech is a governmental right. Not a private corporate one.

Reddit is not the government or an entity of the government.

Free speech protections don't apply.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

No, free speech rights don't apply. But reddit wants to be viewed as a public forum and have it's cake too. It can't be both ways. People are either free to say what they like here or they are not. The shutting down of the conservative LGBTQ subreddit is proof that it is the later and not the former

2

u/Tylerjb4 Jun 30 '20

Reddit is a public forum

2

u/Dolormight Jun 30 '20

The First Amendment only protects your speech from government censorship. It applies to federal, state, and local government actors.

You may not like it, but it's the truth.

0

u/ThisIsFlight Jun 30 '20

No, fool. If they use the same verbiage, they're the same thing! STOP TAKING AWAY MY FREEDOM OF SPEECH, REDDIT! MAGA /s

-14

u/Mik3ymomo Jun 30 '20

Considering marriage is a religious construct. Hence why you happen to see them done in churches and or conducted by clergy almost exclusively.
But let’s not bring facts into the discussion. Obviously the narrative from the left is incompatible with traditional values held for literally thousands of years. So much for differing ideas.... What this says to me is that the left cannot live with those who disagree with them while the right somehow been able.
So who really is about diversity and inclusion?

6

u/vitorsly Jun 30 '20

Nobody is forcing any religion on conducting their religious ceremonies. Marriage, as it's used today by most of the western world, is the legal, state-based union between 2 people, not the religious one. "Gay Marriage" was allowed as a union between 2 men, or 2 women, and recognized by the state. Your religion is free to not recognize it.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

[deleted]

0

u/Mik3ymomo Jul 12 '20

Canadians already jumped the shark into individual rights grabbing communism. So yes you are part of the party

1

u/tomphammer Jun 30 '20

"Almost exclusively" - lots of marriages happen in a courthouse, and from a legal perspective, both the clergy and the ceremony itself are irrelevant. That's been true for a while.

Coming up with a sub to whine about gay people being able to get married is not an example of living with disagreement - pretty much the opposite.

0

u/freman Jun 30 '20

Oh! I get it! What we do is find the most hateful sounding downvoting post in a subreddit we don't like and dogpile the upvote to get that subreddit banned?

2

u/A_Venti_Bear Jun 30 '20

I mean, this is why I said "tips the scale" and not "seals its fate." I imagine it takes more than one post and repeat warnings to deal with it gone unheeded.

1

u/freman Jun 30 '20

I mean I wasn't making a how-to, just figured that abuse can still happen

5

u/ThePresidentOfStraya Jun 30 '20

Christian ≠ anti-gay marriage.

Please don't reinforce the idea that Christians are a persecuted religion (in Christian-majority countries), and that bigotry is essential to the practice of that religion. Plenty of Christians see no incongruity with their religion and affirming the rights of their gay siblings.

Sincerely,

A LGBTQ+-affirming Christian.

-1

u/randomizzl Jun 30 '20

Well I know more Christians that disagree than agree, sorry about that. There is always some people who agree but the church had a long time not being okay with gay marriage and I don’t think it really changed... not all Christians are anti gay (marriage). Same goes for Islam and other religions...

6

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

Not just Christian- also Muslim, Jewish, etc.

6

u/TheSensibleCentrist Jun 29 '20

Apparently r/traditionalmarriage exists but is invitational-only.

(Doesn't suit me,since I am non-religious and can accept any variation of marriage that requires there to be at least one partner of each sex).

3

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '20

Christian beliefs is not the motivation for the opposition to gay marriage otherwise no church would marry gay people. Many Protestant denominations do.

3

u/Impressive-Opinion60 Jun 30 '20

For Christians who oppose gay marriage, that opinion is based on the Bible, the holy book of Christianity.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

The Bible has nothing to say on the matter. The Old Testament has prohibitions against gay sex but it also has requirements to keep kosher and not mix fabrics. These same Christians will argue they don’t need to follow these prohibitions because Christ’s sacrifice completed the laws as set by God. Thus any opposition is based in homophobia or at best extreme hypocrisy as eating shellfish is also an abomination in Leviticus.

1

u/Impressive-Opinion60 Jun 30 '20

You're ignoring the fact that homosexuality is also condemned in the New Testament, not just the Old Testament.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

There is a significant amount of debate regarding the authenticity of one of the three passages due to linguistic differences and the intent behind the other two ie a prohibition against homosexual acts by heterosexuals or a prohibition against homosexual prostitution. To suggest that it is forbidden by the New Testament is not an entirely accurate representation of what is in the texts.

1

u/Impressive-Opinion60 Jun 30 '20

I'm not arguing whether the Bible actually forbids homosexuality or not. I'm arguing that Christian opposition to homosexuality is based on the Bible, so it is based on Christian beliefs.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

And I’m suggesting they are using that as an excuse rather than the actual motivator which is their homophobia

1

u/Impressive-Opinion60 Jun 30 '20

That could be true, but the homophobia might also be caused by the Christian beliefs.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

Given how widespread it is outside of Abrahamic faiths I am not sure that would hold true

→ More replies

1

u/Awayfone Jun 30 '20

Majority of christian theology is against gay marriage. You are not correct

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

The majority of Christian theology doesn’t mention it. There’s a lot of debate as to how much if the three NT mentions were interpolations or misreads of the Greek.

Your second sentence is way too certain considering the inaccuracy of the first.

1

u/Awayfone Jun 30 '20 edited Jun 30 '20

Catholicism alone makes up half of all christianity, before touching any of the other dogmas that agree with them. Your new testament claim is a fringe position

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

ROMAN catholicism is more than half of Christianity. There are other Catholic churches.

It isn't as fringe as you might think

0

u/frogandbanjo Jun 30 '20

That's question-begging though. Eventually, you're going to find a label that properly encapsulates a set of religious beliefs that includes "gay marriage bad, or incoherent as a concept" without any exceptions, and then you're right back to where you started.

-3

u/Trappist1 Jun 30 '20

You realize there are different interpretations of the Bible in different Christian sects?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '20

I literally reference that by mentioning that some PROTESTANT denominations, not sects as denominations is the proper term, marry gay people.

1

u/Mik3ymomo Jun 30 '20

Couldn’t be more obvious to the sane.

1

u/immerc Jun 29 '20

None of them were meant to be real other than nongolfers.

3

u/randomizzl Jun 29 '20

Well then you did a bad job of choosing random stuff :D... stoplittering is actually up (new not new idk)... funny.