Reddit scrubs up: Child abuse? Gone. Drugs? Cool. RACISM? FINE Freeloading commentblurt site Reddit is to implement a limited scrub-off of some of its more noxious communities - but others will stay. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the message-board website he cofounded will crack down on harassment, threats, and posts that break the law. Under the new regime, spam, child-abuse imagery, …
"Under the new regime, spam, child-abuse imagery, and posts leaking other people's personal information are not allowed, and will be removed"
Spam, kiddy-porn and doxxing have always been against the rules over there - it's not a new announcement by Steve regarding that unholy trinity, just him re-stating the existing rules.
This is 100% true. It seems a lot of journalists covering Reddit don't have much of a historical or in-depth knowledge of the site.
The illegal content has been quickly banned and the current issues are more about what constitutes harassment/promoting violence. Part of the uproar was due to the lack of consistency with the bans. Some subs are banned but others that are known to violate the same site rules are still open(for now). It has been about consistency and the concern that Reddit is changing its own ethical code away from what attracted users to the site in the first place.
It's such an American decision: Violence is ok (racism, hate etc), Sex (rape & children), is verboten - you must not speak of it - which is funny because someone created a throwaway account to discuss the fact that he found children to be desirable, had never acted on it, indeed had considered taking his own life thru dealing with it, utterly alone with no one to talk to...
It made the front page and was an unbelievably civilised discussion, with people praising him for his honesty and strength of character and people finally seeing a difference between paedophilia and child abuse (it opened my eyes since I'd never really considered the fact there might be people out there who refused to act on their desires).
That's why free speech is important.
I've never even visited Reddit to be honest, but surely there is a huge difference between discussing something along those lines openly (I have desires to xxxxxx but have never acted on them and it's a lonely place to be, kind of things) and actually encouraging others to commit such acts or admitting to them etc?
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That's a very interesting and highly laudable approach - treatment/rehabilitation should always be preferred over retribution. I do have to wonder what happens to the victim of abuse, in cases where the perpetrator confesses his crime to his doctor, though.
In the case of reddit, I suppose they need to draw make a distinction between openly discussing a criminal acts and inciting others to commit them.
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"That's why free speech is important."
Yes, exactly, and this is the real crux of the matter. Too many people nowadays don't understand what free speech is about and why it is so important. The 'right' to say things which are morally, ethically and even politically acceptable is not in need of defense, and is a freedom that was available even under Stalin.
Now the right to say things that are controversial and possibly offensive, well that is really the heart of what free speech is actually about. I may not support what someone says at all, but their right to voice their opinion is something I will always stand up for.
It is sad that in some so-called 'free' western democracies the true ideal of free speech is being eroded as we speak.
"That's why free speech is important."
Indeed, free speech is important, and there should be avenues for people who are trying to elicit help to overcome unhealthy, harmful addictions, particularly when the law outlaws thought itself. However, I don't think the fora that exist solely to cater to those who want to spew their vitriol at the world should be given a platform on Reddit.
On the one hand you've got specifically American attitudes - ie that constitutionally-protected freedom of speech applies even to privately-owned websites to which individuals have access, ie "freedom of speech" means "I can go on some website and say what I like, ideally without any consequences" - and on the other hand you've got the corporate/business desires - usually to make money (in the case of websites, by selling advertising, because charging for access isn't going to work) and minimise costs.
Those two things can't easily co-exist; at best you build a good community initially and volunteer mods help keep things more or less ticking over (while costing nothing and providing a reasonable answer to the whole "legal liability if we don't respond to complaints/illegal content pretty quickly"). The problem is, being a mod can limit how much you get to participate in the community and can lead to burnout - so unless your management/leadership are very astute in their understanding of the community, conflicts can happen easily between the punters and management.
Personally, I think that the lack of willingness to enforce higher standards of discussion is what makes a lot of discussion sites unpleasant from the outside. But that would limit the potential appeal to the "asshole tireless rebutter" contingent of the potential audience, so it usually won't fly on sites that need high hit-counts to drive advertising rates...
This 'new' approach will surely be hard to reliably maintain: the CEO (highly paid) is telling moderators (highly unpaid) that they have to work even harder and be even more vigilant to make reddit a profitable (not to the mods) platform and friendly for advertisers - the ones people come to reddit to avoid. I don't see the CEO and his team doing any useful work or providing any sort of added value here. I think reddit is heading fast into MySpace and yahoo! territory.
I think reddit is heading fast into MySpace and yahoo! territory.
The numbers seem to indicate otherwise, but it might be harder to monetise them. I've not used Reddit but I can imagine that the market for this kind of very hands-off approach is pretty big. This is one of the reasons I stick with El Reg: we have a large degree of freedom in our comments.
Facebook and, particularly Twitter, have had to kowtow not least because they've embraced by mainstream media.
@MrWibble - kind of depends, as with the likes of /. you get some highly entertaining/informative discussions in some places and some utterly vile stuff elsewhere. (Something that rarely gets mentioned in the context of advertisers is that they also have a sizeable NSFW section, which may not be on the radar now but will probably get noticed as more people start nosing around just to see what the fuss is about).
The problem is, an increasing userbase is great as long as it can be translated reliably into increased cashflow for the company. If ad-serving is the desired approach there, it'll be tricky to attract advertisers and also retain the community with its sizeable (or at least noisy) contingent of posters for whom the ability to post offensive/controversial content is a non-optional part of the site's appeal.
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