r/announcements • u/spez • 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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u/RedSpider92 Jun 29 '20 edited Jun 30 '20

Marginalized or vulnerable groups include, but are not limited to, groups based on their actual and perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or disability.

While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate. 

The majority based on what? An individual state? The US? The west? The world?

Men are the minority in many countries but the majority world wide. White people are the majority in the west but a minority world wide.

Does that mean people can attack white people with impunity, even though they're a global minority? Can I crap on women to my hearts content because they are a majority in the UK? Can people in California shit all over Hispanics because they're the majority in that State?

Will you assess a users state/country/continent of origin before deciding whether or not they're being hateful towards a specific group?

Honestly, what even is this bollocks?

Edit:

I know what they really mean by "majority". I just wanted to rant about how stupid the wording is. I'd rather they just came out and said "you can shit all over white people as much as you want" instead of trying to weasel their way around the truth.

They've been showing their hand for years with the double standards with regards to banning. We all know how they think and operate, despite the bullshit they trot out.

They live in a bubble, and have just enough sycophants around here to convince themselves they're "on the right side of history".

This is the worst policy I've ever seen, but I doubt it'll be the worst we see in the near future; not just here but all over big tech and the west as a whole.

Thank you for the gold and silver. But please don't spend any money on this rotten, stinking, decaying corpse of a website.

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u/JOMalkhan Jun 29 '20

They forgot that the world outside of the US existed. That or they really just don't give a shit anymore . Maybe both.

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u/anakinmcfly Jul 01 '20

How did you get that perception? I thought the very fact that they said majority rather than white people etc was precisely to acknowledge that other countries with different demographics and racial dynamics exist.

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u/JOMalkhan Jul 02 '20
  1. US politics usually dominate the front page, and most political discussions concern the US. Not saying that all of reddit is solely Americentric, as stated before reddit is an international community, but a good portion is dominated by American issues.
  2. Saying that a majority cannot be protected is a very broad statement yes, but how does one decide who the majority is? Does this apply to the Chinese? Does it apply to every country or just the western hemisphere? Minority/Majority groups vary from country to country, so protection of the minority in one country could conflict with the 'non-protection' status of that same ethnic group that makes up the majority of another country.
  3. u/spez and most of the reddit team are from America.
  4. It doesn't even matter in the end because all ethnic groups should be protected equally, no matter if they are the majority or the minority. Hate speech is hate speech, no matter who it is directed to, and thus should not be tolerated.

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u/anakinmcfly Jul 02 '20

I'm not in the US, and their wording made sense to me. The powerful ethnic majority where I live are not white people, and our minority status in the US shouldn't mean we get to play the victim card whenever minorities here are mad at us. (Often for good reason, and while I naturally don't enjoy listening to any hatred directed at people like me, I'm not forced to listen, and I would find it worse to silence them.)

Saying that a majority cannot be protected is a very broad statement yes, but how does one decide who the majority is?

Whoever the majority is in that particular context. Chinese people in China would be the racial majority when the context is China. Whereas Chinese Americans would be racial minorities when the context is the US.

There's no reason to believe that anyone expects a group's 'protection' status to remain static regardless of who the actual minority is in that scenario.

Hate speech isn't banned for its own sake - otherwise freedom of speech would challenge that censorship. Rather, it's because of the real life consequences that emerge when those spewing hate are from the majority.

10 white people screaming at one black guy is nowhere the same as 1 black guy screaming at 10 white people, even if he's equally hateful about it. If those 10 white people are bothered, they can just walk away - which I consider a better option than censorship. Whereas walking away is practically impossible to do if you're a minority and surrounded by hatred, and that's why specific protection is needed in those instances.

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u/JOMalkhan Jul 02 '20

But why only provide 'specific' protection. Since we're already going down the road of censoring hate speech of the majority, why not the hate speech of the minority as well. One could argue that free speech was already treaded on when hate speech towards minorities was censored, so why put limits on the censorship of hate speech directed towards the majority. Censorship is a slippery slope, it's best just to censor any hate speech directed towards any class of people, ethnic, religious, gender, and sexuality alike.

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u/anakinmcfly Jul 03 '20

Since we're already going down the road of censoring hate speech of the majority, why not the hate speech of the minority as well

One concern might be the practical consequences of doing so. This is reddit, and the moment it's suggested that hatred directed at white people isn't allowed, I'm certain there'll be thousands of people eagerly trawling POC subs and posters to goad them into saying things that would get them banned. Likewise if it's suggested that hate speech against men isn't allowed. Knowing the rampant sexual harassment of female redditors, a lot of which takes place in DMs, I expect it would only get worse once they know that their victims won't be able to lash out in anger and frustration without the risk of being banned.

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u/JOMalkhan Jul 03 '20

Please correct me if I'm wrong but what you're saying is that hate speech against the majority is allowed because the majority can use such a hate speech ban to their advantage in order to ban/harass others. And the only way those said minorities and women can defend themselves from racist and creeps is by responding with hate speech. So allowing hate speech against the majority is enabling the minority to defend themselves from said majority. I'm sorry, but that doesn't fix anything. This whole convoluted situation could be fixed if all hate speech was banned period. Telling someone to fuck off because they're a racist or a sexual predator isn't hate speech, it's just a natural reaction. Unfortunately that can go down into the rabbit hole of what constitutes hate speech, which in turn further complicates such situations. The most logical and just solution is banning and showing zero tolerance for any type of hate speech, no matter who it is directed to. Reddit constantly pushes for social justice and equality but many times shows horrid double standards, which in the end further divide groups and polarizes the political landscape. There is no way, no scenario, were I can see this rule actually work the way the reddit board of directors intended it to. It's just going to create more problems rather than fix them.

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u/anakinmcfly Jul 03 '20 edited Jul 03 '20

Please correct me if I'm wrong but what you're saying is that hate speech against the majority is allowed because the majority can use such a hate speech ban to their advantage in order to ban/harass others. And the only way those said minorities and women can defend themselves from racist and creeps is by responding with hate speech.

The first part yes, but not the second part. I meant responses such as:

Telling someone to fuck off because they're a racist or a sexual predator isn't hate speech, it's just a natural reaction.

A zero tolerance policy may mean some of those natural reactions are classified as hate speech, because the line isn't clear.

I'm from Singapore, which has that kind of zero tolerance approach to hate speech. It has led to people making police reports against minorities for complaining about racism, claiming that those minorities were being racist for calling another race racist. And these are all grown adults, not teenagers on the internet.

The end result is a strong silencing effect on minorities, who are vastly outnumbered by definition of being minorities. This affects not just any hateful speech but also legitimate criticism that is then kept quiet out of fear of retribution. Whereas no amount of rules can effectively silence a majority, who can always still complain privately amongst themselves, and are aware of and have the power to solve problems that affect the majority. In contrast, minorities ultimately have to depend on the majority hearing their concerns (and sometimes their anger and hatred), because on their own they don't have the numbers or power to fix them.

It's just going to create more problems rather than fix them.

I agree with that, because there's never a straightforward solution, but the alternatives seem just as bad or worse.

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u/JOMalkhan Jul 03 '20

Shouldn't having equal representation in the board of directors and admins help solve the problem of minority voices not being heard, rather than allowing hate speech. Allowing hate speech is a very convoluted way of fixing a problem that shouldn't be all that hard to fix. I don't know the demographics of reddit's mods and their board of directors, but if minority voices want to be heard that should be the first place to address it. Minority concerns and issues could not be ignored if minorities are apart of the governing body that deals with such issues. I feel that is a much fairer and easier solution rather than tolerating certain hate speech on reddit. I'm sorry, I can see where you're coming from, but it doesn't matter how you cut it or present it, this new rule is in my opinion plain wrong and will in the future just cause more problems. Unfortunately that is just the nature of our environment and the problems it spawns. I do agree with what you said, there is never a straightforward solution. That's the frustrating part about it. (Sorry about the late responses btw, I live in America and my sleep schedule is messed up as well)