3 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: Let's talk content. AMA.
I don't think you're looking at this objectively. This is actually pretty simple.
You can't harass, bully, or abuse a person or group of people without communicating directly with them. Communicating with them means leaving the bounds of where your discussion is taking place and seeking them out where they are.
Is /r/blackpeopletwitter going out and finding black people to harass? No. Then it's not harassment. This isn't really that complicated.
"Harassment" is ill defined.
It really isn't, though. Harassment is repeatedly going after a group of people and initiating communication with them when it isn't wanted. If you're inside your own subreddit talking to your like-minded friends, you're not harassing anyone. If someone comes into your subreddit with a different view and you tell them they're stupid, you're not harassing them -- they came into the subreddit. Harassment is when you go out and initiate the conversation yourself.
There *is* a definition of harassment, and you're just ignoring it.
Comment by ramonycajones at 17/07/2015 at 03:13 UTC
3 upvotes, 2 direct replies
To me the problem is "group of people". Calling someone out by name and insulting them all over reddit, okay. But where does the group come in? Say you're criticizing atheists or Christians all over reddit, is that the same thing? If you're naming 10 individual atheists, that's a "group", but it only matters because of the individual people involved - i.e., the rule could just specify "individual" and logically that would include cases with multiple individuals. The converse isn't true, because "group" adds a whole new, vague meaning.
Comment by colechristensen at 16/07/2015 at 23:30 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I am making an assumption, and I think a fair one, that the intent and outcome of this line is really about bulk actions on reddit. Like banning subreddits.
Harassment, being the legal definition, while still vague generally involves one-on-one interactions through personal channels or in the real world – especially around one's home or place of work – especially for private citizens, that is the bar is set considerably higher for public figures or people making public statements.
Harassment is already illegal, and building tools to minimize it is a good idea as long as the cure isn't worse than the disease.
What about "bullying a group of people" – that could mean anything, and it's why I'm assuming "harassment" doesn't really have much to do with the legal definition in this context.
The problem is several recent actions that were overtly about silencing people who weren't being nice. There's a difference between that and harassment, and that distinction *isn't* being made. Instead it seems pretty clear that the goal is to expand (and weaken) what harassment means to include anything a certain set of groupthinkers find unacceptable.