3 upvotes, 0 direct replies (showing 0)
View submission: Content Policy Update
This is actually one of the problems with having written rules (side note: it creates a lot of work for lawyers). When you're writing rules you can't include a list of everything that would break them, which would be the most clear way of writing a rule. This is because you would inevitably leave things out or people would change one small thing so it didn't quite break the rule. People would violate the spirit of the rule but not the letter of the rule. Additionally, you could include some behavior you didn't mean to. This is where people violate the letter of the rule but not the spirit of it. The more specific you make the rule, the easier it is for bad actors to find a way around it, and the more over- and under-inclusive it becomes.
On the other side, you can state the spirit of the rule itself, which leaves open the possibility of making sure the rule is applied when it should be and not when it shouldn't. But then it can be difficult for someone to be able to tell what's actually prohibited. What this ends up doing is pushing the meat of the judgment onto the people enforcing the rule instead of on the people writing the rule. This makes theoretical sense because they are the ones looking at what actually happened in the specific case. However, it does allow for both intentional and unintentional misapplication of the rule.
So in writing its content policy, reddit has to decide between 1) writing very explicit rules that make it easy for bad actors to find loopholes and that capture unintended behavior, and 2) writing vague rules that make it easy for mods to abuse their power and don't guarantee avoiding the bad outcomes from explicit rules. They've chosen the latter, and the thing that will hopefully make it work is the promised transparency. This could make it more difficult for mods to abuse their power with no repercussions. The important thing will be to see how this works in practice.
I honestly prefer the more vague rule, though that may be because I'm a law student in the US (where much of our law is written vaguely). I wouldn't want to have to read through a long list of things that aren't allowed every time I thought about posting something to make sure I didn't break a rule, especially if the rules weren't effective at what they were intended to prevent. I'm sure people would leave reddit in droves if it published a long list of violations and people and subreddits started getting banned for things like "violating content policy rule 17.A.3(ii)"
There's nothing here!