Promote ideas, protect people

With regard to the new harassment rule, what remedy will Reddit admins employ against users accused of harassment? Will they also be shadowbanned, or will they be told they were banned and given an opportunity to respond to the accusation?

Comment by FauxBoDo at 14/05/2015 at 19:55 UTC

24 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Next blog post - "Announcing our Partnership With Hooli: Making the World a Better Place"

Comment by [deleted] at 14/05/2015 at 19:23 UTC

181 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Buzzwords. Corporate buzzwords everywhere.

Comment by [deleted] at 14/05/2015 at 22:13 UTC

44 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by [deleted] at 14/05/2015 at 16:52 UTC

365 upvotes, 3 direct replies

It's odd to have a post one day from admin's about transparency, and then the next day, have an entire new post which involves new rules that are nearly 100% opaque.

The definition of harassment is so vague as to be useless, as are the penalties.

Comment by [deleted] at 15/05/2015 at 14:36 UTC

17 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I welcome the hateful and offensive comment. It is why I come to reddit. No, seriously. Everywhere else, you get kicked out if you say something vile. I enjoyed this place because I need to hear the worst of the worst for perspective.

I am all for banning threats. But otherwise, back off. If reddit gets sanitized I will no longer come here. "Good riddance", you might say, but it is your loss. A forum without the full scope of human opinion is worthless.

Comment by rag3train at 15/05/2015 at 13:00 UTC

16 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Keep moving towards that sjw hug box you so desperately want pao.

Comment by cjcrashoveride at 14/05/2015 at 17:40 UTC

68 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Wouldn't the easier solution have just been to make the report button actually, ya know, do something?

Comment by kvachon at 14/05/2015 at 16:59 UTC*

407 upvotes, 8 direct replies

So is stuff like /r/justneckbeardthings and /r/fatpeoplehate against the rules now? Systematic and continued actions to demean people which would make any reasonable person feel unable to discuss any ideas that might go against the majority opinion? Or is it more for stuff like http://redd.it/35vv1v[1] or http://redd.it/35xc8d[2] which involves stalking a person to see what they post about where and for what purpose, solely to bring it forward to a group of people to judge and demean said person.

1: http://redd.it/35vv1v

2: http://redd.it/35xc8d

Which of those is now harrasement. If none are, then what is a concrete example of it. Does it need to be reported to you by the person being harrased? Does the admin team have to decide that they consider the treatment harassment? What constitutes feeling "like reddit isnt a safe place" seeing as its website with text comments.

To be honest, it seems like this rule is going to open a new can of worms, not solve any issues. You should either not allow mean comments, or not moderate legal comments. Trying to find that grey area is going to require you to choose sides on infinite endless battles between groups of people that honestly hate eachother. I know reddit tries its hardest to be a safe and friendly place, but there's a sub-section of this site that wants nothing more than to hate on things. Culture, people, trends, politics, reddit itself. ITs a pretty hate filled site outside of saner places like /r/aww or /r/askscience. ITs one of the prices you need to pay when you dont require anyone to reveal who they are. You cant expect anonymous people to retain their inhibitions and manners.

Comment by K_Lobstah at 14/05/2015 at 16:46 UTC

74 upvotes, 1 direct replies

So this will be enforced by admin, but how is reporting of it handled? Just modmail to /r/reddit.com? Are there plans to increase the efficiency or response rate for messages sent there? Will moderator reports of other users being harassed be given the same level of attention?

The vast majority of subscribers aren't even aware they *can* contact admin. We receive reports of harassment in modmail quite frequently.

Comment by [deleted] at 14/05/2015 at 17:29 UTC

173 upvotes, 4 direct replies

What is with all of the reddit propaganda lately? Seems very unusual and out-of-the-blue for the random face-saving posts about how great Reddit is

Comment by Darr_Syn at 14/05/2015 at 18:15 UTC

118 upvotes, 2 direct replies

The continued use of the word "safe" in this blogpost seems. . . ominous.

See, I'm a mod of a number of BDSM subreddits and the term "safe" is one that's used quite a bit and is talked about all the time. But it's also argued about.

Let me put it this way.

What about my subreddits? Is discussing my kinks, hobbies, and passions going to be seen as "threatening" or " fear for their safety or the safety of those around them" by the very action of existing?

Many people have issues with alternative sexual practices and can see what I, an active sexual sadist, do as unsafe and even threatening.

So should I be worried about being protected against?

The issue that this brings up is what is considered "safe". In the BDSM world we tend to understand that there's no such thing as being 100% safe. It's a concept that is mythical, and fictional. Sitting there at your computer reading this there is a chance, no matter how small, that you could be hurt, harmed, or even killed.

That is true throughout the world. Both online and offline. The world is not safe. The internet is not safe.

At best you can make things safeR, but never safe.

But given your recent announcement of transparency I also have to ask, what is the process for being deemed "unsafe"? Are people going to be told they are being unsafe? Is there an appeal process? What are the punishments for being unsafe? Are there varying degrees of unsafeness?

This seems like an ideal that sounds good in political-speak and on paper but can, and should, be questioned quite a bit before being implemented.

Comment by ecafyelims at 14/05/2015 at 17:38 UTC*

183 upvotes, 4 direct replies

Reading over the survey results[1]. I can't see where people were complaining about being harassed. I even went to the survey CSV[2] and did a CTRL-F for "harass" and came up with 0 results.

1: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QJBPZt0oa3UCkL6QGBHp6vITXs3f1bYcCyA5xIQcFZw/pub

2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7mGKrwE1DttbjZhRWdWTXRqVjg/view?usp=sharing

I'm not convinced harassment is as big of an issue as you think.

Instead, like you say, the reason they don't recommend to friends is "they want to avoid exposing friends to hate and offensive content"

Well, offensive content can mean any range of things. I know a lot of people who are offended by the science behind climate change. I know others who are offended by LGBT in the public. I know a lot of people who are offended by nudity, in general.

I hope you're not going to start removing content based on reports of it being "offensive," and I'm scared you'll start shadowbanning users under general guideline of "harassment" such as calling out CEO's for misconduct.

Please tell me this isn't the plan.

Comment by chugz at 14/05/2015 at 18:47 UTC

289 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Buddy Fletcher, husband of Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, is being described as being the operator of Ponzi scheme after his now bankrupt firm diverted money for their own use and, according to the Chapter 11 trustee, committed fraud against investors. Three Louisiana pension funds lost $144 million.

shadow bans for everyone.

Comment by [deleted] at 14/05/2015 at 16:47 UTC*

281 upvotes, 4 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by Dlgredael at 14/05/2015 at 20:19 UTC

71 upvotes, 1 direct replies

This is having the exact opposite effect on me. I don't want to use reddit because I'm afraid that by getting in a disagreement with someone, they're going to report me and you're going to ban me. I have spent time debating people, which can be confrontational, and even though I don't take it to an extreme level I still don't feel okay with even participating in a debate anymore when your rules are so poorly defined. If you're going to come up with a blanket rule like this that affects everything, you could at least be clear enough that people can actually tell what it takes to break it.

Comment by [deleted] at 14/05/2015 at 16:38 UTC

131 upvotes, 3 direct replies

The harassed can report their so called harassers, correct? Will the harassers get any notification or chance to defend themselves, or will they just be shadowbanned?

Comment by FalconGames109 at 14/05/2015 at 20:34 UTC

49 upvotes, 1 direct replies

We value privacy, freedom of expression, open discussion

No, you don't. Freedom of expression and open discussion mean *no* censorship, **at all**. Whenever you say something similar to "I support freedom of speech, but..." you are basically admitting that you don't -- it's exactly the same as "I'm not racist, but...". You might support open discussion of *some* topics, but that doesn't mean anything about true freedom. If a government chooses to censor only discussion of its politics (I will mention this later) and allows open discussion of everything else, that doesn't mean you have freedom of speech. In fact, it means exactly the opposite.

We’ve always encouraged freedom of expression by having a mostly hands-off approach

Keyword being "mostly". Except you don't actually support it half the time. What about all those people who were shadowbanned for all that gamergate non-sense (for clarification, I don't support this gamergate movement but I also don't support the people against it; I am not in any way affiliated in its discussion). Why? Because the reddit admins disagree with them. Which is, let me remind you, how oppressive governments deal with discussion they don't like. Better yet, those same admins have also shadowbanned people contributing to the discussion of whether these bans should be allowed, which is *exactly* what countries like the DPRK do to deal with citizens who disagree with their ideology: they censor their opinions.

Instead of promoting free expression of ideas, we are seeing our open policies stifling free expression; people avoid participating for fear of their personal and family safety.

Because of this, we are changing our practices to prohibit attacks and harassment of individuals through reddit with the goal of preventing them.

This isn't reddit's place to deal with these issues. In the real world, if someone says something offensive you have to learn to deal with it. One way to do this is to remove yourself from the situation or ignore them. Blocking a user (requires R.E.S.) who offends you is enough. If you don't feel comfortable putting your opinion out there for the general public, post it on a private subreddit. Censorship will not fix this. It will do the exact opposite. It will be abused so much that it will prevent any meaningful conversation from occurring. You may have your doubts, but we've seen this in the real world before. Countries with strict "anti-defamation" laws (such as Italy) regularly abuse their power and use it to censor what they don't agree with. This is exactly *why* we need open discussion, which reddit originally served to be a place for. But then the admins changed their minds and ruined it all with changes like this.

To the admins of the site: Say what you will about how this does not affect the spread of ideas, it still won't change the fact that you are wrong. These changes are undermining the original principles that reddit was founded on. Please remember that what somebody posts will always be an idea, and censoring their thoughts about another person is only censoring "thoughtcrime"; if someone thinks, for example, that all homosexual people need to burn in hell, that doesn't mean that they are going to do it. It is what their religion tells them, and censoring what they say isn't going to change that (even if they tell someone that they deserve to go to hell for their "sins"). For the record, I'm atheist and I don't believe any of that crap, but that doesn't change the fact that you would be taking away their freedom to openly speak their opinion. And doing so will just turn around this issue -- people will only be more scared to say their opinion once opinions that the admins are against get censored.

As a final note: Honestly, this comment will probably be deleted or I'll probably be shadowbanned based on how the admins have recently reacted to people calling them out on their bullshit. Good for you if you do it, whatever. I don't honestly care. Just remember that by doing so you are putting an end to open discussion on the website. I'll be happy to leave if changes like these continue. voat[1] actually cares about openness. Take a look at their website and learn how to operate an internet community, because censorship is definitely *not* the answer.

1: http://voat.co