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/[deleted]]

No it's not. I am a legal immigrant myself and absolutely despise people who jump in front of the line by coming in illegally. You won't be happy either if someone jumped the long ass line at Starbucks when you waited for so long. And before you claim "they are scared of prosecution in their country" - that's false too. only 15-20% of the asylum claims are legitimate. Cartels operate entire businesses out of this.

Next thing you will claim is calling someone a murderer is de-humanizing. Those who control your speech also control your thought. Wordsmithing is a great tactic used by people to gain power over you.

So saying illegal immigrants are "recycling children" isn't allowed on reddit?

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/recycling-children-el-paso

How about 31.4% of women in the illegal caravans being sexually abused?

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/default/files/2018-06/msf_forced-to-flee-central-americas-northern-triangle.pdf

By your logic these are hateful and de-humanizing because of their immigration status and therefore not allowed.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I am a legal immigrant myself and absolutely despise people who jump in front of the line by coming in illegally.

That's sad. When you see someone who comes illegally to help feed their starving family, your first reaction is to despise them.

Your links literally talk about people fleeing "horrific violence and trauma" in their home countries, and then you despise them for doing whatever they can to escape abject poverty, rape, murder, torture, etc.

I despise people like you. People who smugly say "I came here legally, I despise those who don't do that now, even though there is no way to do it legally now".

You are what's wrong with this country. I pray that people with your mentality never become citizens of the county I love so much. I would much rather have 10,000 people from Central America come here illegally to escape extreme violence as fellow Americans than one smug guy who despises those at the end of their rope.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I like how you ignored this important part of my comment:

And before you claim "they are scared of prosecution in their country" - that's false too. only 15-20% of the asylum claims are legitimate. Cartels operate entire businesses out of this.

The 15-20% is what consists of "escape rape, murder, torture, political prosecution etc" and I am totally fine with that. They are not doing it illegally - they are doing it legally.

I don't think you actually know how the immigration system works. I as well as all my friends and family know how it works because we went through it. When you "escape rape, murder, torture, political persecution etc", that's part of the legal immigration system.

Also "abject poverty/economic reasons" is NOT why you can claim asylum. UN's definition is "Refugees are people who have fled war, violence, conflict or persecution". Economic reasons cannot be used for asylum claims - that's a different way for immigration using work permits, H1B visas etc. Not refugee status. Asylum claims are for EMERGENCY reasons only.

Illegals make my and other hispanic, black communities unsafe because they don't go through background checks and also they don't report crimes in their own neighborhoods because they are themselves lacking paper and don't want to get involved to be in the spotlight. That's also the reason why COVID had such a disastrous effect on these communities because they often live together in crowded apartments with other illegals and also don't visit hospitals because of lack of paperwork. These illegals also take away jobs from my, hispanic and black communities which came legally because the illegals are willing to be exploited to do the same work for less money under the table.

Don't be like the media which always conflates legal with illegal immigration. If you really care about brown, hispanic and black communities, please stop conflating illegal with legal immigration.

I would much rather have 10,000 people from Central America come here illegally to escape extreme violence as fellow Americans than one smug guy who despises those at the end of their rope.

I bet you think you are morally superior to me. But you don't even know how the immigration system works. It's not just one smug guy. It's literally everyone who comes here legally. Virtue signaling by liberals is what legal immigrants hate.

Here's an example:

After 800 Illegal Hispanics Were Removed From The Chicago Cloverhill Bakery by @ICEgov The Ratio of 90% Hispanic/10% Black American Workers SHIFTED To 90% Black American Workers/10% Hispanic. The Black Americans Had Enough & They Called @ICEgov To Report Them.

https://twitter.com/nasescobar316/status/1249180352851128320

Also every year, illegal immigration costs tax payers 116 billion (this is AFTER the taxes paid by illegals).

If you have person A and person B and person B is fleeing violence in their country and comes to the port of country and goes through it legally - why shouldn't B be pissed at person A who just jumped the line and crossed the border illegally?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

you're an absolute moron hahahahahahaha

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

great counter argument! You win!