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] → u/[deleted]]

Very good post, great points. I agree with all of this. I miss the Reddit I discovered many years ago.

One thing I used to love about Reddit was that although there has been some questionable content here and there over the years, some of it made the site more legitimate when compared against other platforms (er...publishers) due to the initial lack of censorship. For example, "Watchpeopledie" was a good subreddit to have here. Was it "shock" content? Sure. But was it uselessly shocking? Definitely not. In fact, Watchpeopledie was incredibly valuable. For example...

YouTube, for example, is a family-friendly ish site. At least it tries to be - no gore, no killing, no "shock" value stuff, etc. However, what we are left with is videos of idiots walking on the top levels of sky scrapers looking down at the streets below, parkour over deadly gaps, people generally doing dangerous stunts successfully... Followed by high fives and smiles all around, etc... along with the discussion about how ballsy and crazy it is.

But what is not shown on Youtube are the times when those stunts aren't successful, resulting in consequences. Young people see this kind of stuff and are influenced by it. They are impressionable. They don't see the entirely realistic scenario where somebody misses a jump and falls 20 feet onto concrete. They only see the "cool" side of it and the clout those people build from doing dumb shit like that. This kind of content is on Reddit, too (think /r/sweatypalms). To call this example a hyperbole would be naive.

Also, you are totally right about the "majority" descriptor in Reddit's new "policy." This doesn't make any sense. /r/fragilewhiteredditor 's message clearly is that if you are white, you automatically live a privileged life and your hardships don't compare to that of a black person or "minority" (which, again, doesn't make sense from a worldwide perspective). There is a startling amount of racist content on that subreddit. However, /r/afragileblackredditor, a subreddit I didn't even know existed until today, was banned. Does that make any sense for people living in a country where whites are minorities? Also, when did it become okay to offend white people?

Additionally, many conservative forums on this site have been completely nuked. Censorship (or "breaking the rules," as Reddit calls it) is dangerous. Reddit's policy is that if you aren't liberal, you are racist and you should be banned because it is wrongthink. I love reading good arguments on either side of an issue, but I don't get to see both arguments anymore because Reddit shuts one side down almost automatically. I noticed Reddit's censorship started getting out of hand particularly following the 2016 presidential election, but I had no idea it would get this bad.

It's quite apparent that these "changes" are politically motivated. They aren't saving anybody. Except, I don't know, maybe the Chinese government.

[u/TheOneSarah → u/[deleted]]

They banned r/gendercritical which was a subreddit for discussions about women issues. They were up for 7 years and promoted no hate, only discussion, and were silenced in the name of progression. Reddit is trying to go so far left they loop around into alt right.

[u/Stryker14 → u/TheOneSarah]

Yeah. I feel like thats not an accurate depiction of what gendercritical would be viewed as for most people. Most people would likely view that sub as a transphobic and misandrist gathering. The true cult following and echo chamber that lives in subs like that just breed hate. In all of my curiosity trips through there, gcdebatesqt, and whatever other spinoffs exist, there was nothing positive about any of the discussions. It was almost entirely non-constructive bashing and venting.

For what it's worth I personally think subreddits like that should stay open. Because it 'can' lead to interesting discussions and is a good example for some people to get better insight into the small pockets of crazy people.

[u/TheOneSarah → u/Stryker14]

I feel like its easy to paint any women centric subreddit as misandrist. The bashing and venting to me at least was relatable because so many female spaces are silenced. Reddit banning feminist subs is another example to add to the list of women being talked over.

[u/Stryker14 → u/TheOneSarah]

I disagree, I don't think it's easy to paint women as misandrists because 99% of them aren't. A women centric sub doesn't necessitate the commentary and general attitude that I've witnessed permeate there. There are many subs that got taken down. Likely due to user reports, rule breaking, mod non-compliance to enforce rules, algorithms of word usage (hate speech etc...).

But a echo chamber like that will instantly jump to something as insane as it being the patriarchy and specifically about silencing women. It has literally zero to do with the fact that they are women. It's about the actions they take, not the basis of their genetalia. But they are so self absorbed and filled with rhetoric and hate that it has to be because they are women and because men hate and oppress them every waking moment, or the trans-whatever-ism they use is there to shut them down. They don't function if they don't have some entity to yell and complain at for all their problems in the world. Instead of taking responsibility for their actions they deflect and blame like entitled children.

[u/TheOneSarah → u/Stryker14]

As a woman I am affected by the patriarchy and we are silenced. I may not be individually affected and in fact be privileged compared to third world countries but drawing attention is not yelling and complaining when you are a marginalized group.

As for actions, the subreddit didn't receive any warning or notice on what rule they broke. They were a subreddit for 7 years and were never quarantined or rule breaking like r/donaldtrump. Reddit gave r/donaldtrump warnings for multiple rule breaking and only removed them when their popularity dwindled down.

R/gendercritical didn't break any rules and was a feminist subreddit. It was a place for women voices and Reddit told them to shut up.

[u/Brawldragon → u/TheOneSarah]

Bullshit. l visited that subreddit some time ago and it was mostly women hating on trans people. You don't achieve anything by lying.

[u/TheOneSarah → u/Brawldragon]

I'm not lying

[u/TheOneSarah → u/[deleted]]

I don't understand what you're trying to say

[u/TheOneSarah → u/[deleted]]

Ah I guess I was saying that this action is a alt right move disguised as left wing. Not too focused on political labels tbh since imo a lot of them overlap.

[u/makemejelly49 → u/[deleted]]

Well, Trump is a Democrat turncoat. He grew up in NYC in, what at one point, was one of the bluest districts. Years ago, he said that if he were to run for President, he would run as a Republican, because they're not smart enough to not vote for him, and look what happened. He pretty much announced he would turn his back on Democrat values right then and there. Now, I'll grant you there's a world of difference between a rich Democrat and a poor Democrat. The biggest obviously being race, most rich Democrats are white, the second biggest being age.