

Reddit will not ban 'distasteful' content, chief executive says - citricsquid
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19975375

======
tptacek
"Distasteful" subreddits that consist of compromising photos of teenagers
taken without their knowledge are to be tolerated. That's "free speech", the
highest ideal at Reddit.

Meanwhile, "doxxing" of the people who traffic in those photos is forbidden.
That's not "free speech", it's something else.

However, journalism that happens to disclose identities of Reddit trolls...
that's not necessarily "doxxing". It's a fine line.

There is no intellectual clarity to these lines at all; they're simply
gerrymandered around the proclivities of the most active Reddit users. I guess
that's fine, but it's hard to pretend that there's any important ideal being
defended by their management.

~~~
betterth
Please refrain from commenting on subjects that you're ignorant about.

"Distasteful" subreddits that consist of compromising photos of teenagers
taken without their knowledge are to be tolerated."

As per <http://as.reddit.com/rules/>

"No child pornography or sexually suggestive content featuring minors."

These kinds of things are not tolerated on Reddit.

~~~
tptacek
I think if you read my comment carefully you'll discover that I didn't say
"child pornography" or "sexually suggestive content featuring minors".

Are you suggesting that "child pornography" and "sexually suggestive content
featuring minors" is the bright line, and that anything on the privacy
spectrum that doesn't cross that line should be defended? That's the
implication I get from your comment, but I'm happy to be corrected.

~~~
bduerst
Voltaire nailed it best with "I do not agree with what you have to say, but
I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

~~~
tptacek
That's not a real argument. Are you seriously suggesting that there is _no_
line to be drawn about what people can and can't post to Reddit? My guess is
you don't support the posting of child pornography and snuff films.

~~~
bduerst
It is a real argument. Are you suggesting that you can't find "intellectual
clarity" from the list of reddit rules?

~~~
tptacek
I told you why I don't think it's a real argument, and you responded by
repeating yourself without acknowledging my point.

~~~
bduerst
You built a straw man and said, "Are you suggesting this straw man?" You've
done this with several comments now.

It's entirely up to a private website to run itself in any manner it deems
fit, and if you can't find "intellectual clarity" when the rules are posted
then why do you even comment?

~~~
danielweber
If you say "reddit can run itself any way it wants," that's true, but it
doesn't lend itself to useful conversation. 'tptacek is also free to comment
on what he sees as inconsistent moderation rules on HN (as long as HN
tolerates it, etc etc turtles all the way).

~~~
bduerst
Finally - some discussion. The moderation on reddit, outside of the rules, is
run by volunteers. The rules set by admin are clear so why does tptacek have
an issue with clarity?

~~~
tptacek
The rules appear to be "free expression above all else until someone makes an
argument against some particular form of free speech that a small group of
Reddit moderators find compelling". I do not think that is a clear standard.

~~~
bduerst
>some particular form of free speech

Where in the rules do you see this?

~~~
tptacek
"No doxxing".

------
jgrahamc
And so I finally deleted my reddit account. Goodbye "Six Year Club" Trophy!

Of course, reddit can happily decide to be a beacon for upholding free speech
rights and can chose to allow distasteful subreddits. I am not going to argue
with their right to do it.

But at the same time I don't wish to be associated in any way with that type
of content.

EDIT: As there has been quite a strong reaction to me saying that I decided to
delete my reddit account, I think it's worth me emphasizing what I said above
about reddit being free to do as they please. I am NOT telling them how to run
their site; I am merely stepping away from a community that has content that I
dislike.

EDIT: I think the fundamental schism is that reddit sees itself as a
collection of independent web sites (subreddits); the rest of the world is
likely to see it as one place. A similar thing can be said about 4chan.org. If
you ignore /b/ there's other interesting content, but in the public's
imagination 4chan is /b/.

~~~
recapthrowaway
If someone were to compile a list of distasteful websites using Cloudflare
would it help you quit working there to prevent you being associated with that
content?

~~~
jgrahamc
I feel that CloudFlare is similar to a search engine, DNS provider, hosting
company, domain registrar etc. in that we are providing a shared service and
inevitably some users of that service will be things that I personally
dislike.

As I mentioned above in an EDIT, the problem with reddit is that reddit sees
itself as a group of subreddits which are different communities; everyone else
sees reddit as a single entity. So, I don't want to be associated with the
single entity that's supporting this content that I find distasteful.

------
potatolicious
But they just did...

Personally I don't feel strongly one way or another about the shutdown of
creepshots and jailbait, but come on.

"We're not going to shut down distasteful subreddits, except the ones we
already did! But no more! Honest!"

I guess I'll believe it when I see it. Reddit has no shortage of content that
is just one viral blog post away from a PR shitstorm. This newfound (and if I
may say, a bit late) respect for expression will be challenged sooner rather
than later.

~~~
tptacek
Since you're obviously a pretty thoughtful guy, I'm curious _why_ you don't
have a strong opinion about creepshots and jailbait. I've read the rest of
what you said and inferred a sort of "pox on all their houses" message from
it. Jailbait and creepshots seems like the kind of thing you'd normally have a
problem with. Why don't you?

(I'm asking seriously, expecting to learn something about the situation from
your response, not to make a point.)

~~~
cdrxndr
I'm OK with it because I see it as a necessary evil - always considering the
worst implementations of any new rules.

Right now we all have the same expectation of privacy - that is we have none
if in public, and none if its a digitally distributed photo. That expectation
does not shift based on one's age.

What if the non-consenting minor is Miley Cyrus? What if a compromising photo
of police brutality has a kid in the background - can they force a take-down
of my photo? Off the deep end, but I'm just pointing out that we are on a
level playing field, and it's likely for the better.

We obviously make many concessions to our rights to protect children, but this
is not one of them. E.g., as an adult male, I can't eat my sandwich in some NY
parks unless I'm accompanied by a child. I just hope the children are grateful
for my sacrifice ...

~~~
tptacek
Is 'cdrxndr an alias for 'potatolicious? (If so, I'll start following that
nick on HN too).

------
jedberg
I'm glad to see them upholding the principles of free speech and expression
that we fostered in the first few years.

I always told people, my job is to provide a platform, not be a tastemaker. It
is up to the users to be the tastemakers.

~~~
buro9
It's up to the users _and lawmakers of the country_ to be the tastemakers.

~~~
jedberg
Yes, of course. Any illegal content was removed without hesitation. But we're
talking about legal but distasteful content.

~~~
buro9
Perhaps I should've expanded... I agree with you totally.

What I think is that those who find the content distasteful should either to
seek to lobby to make that content illegal, or ignore it. But seeking to force
self-censorship is not the solution.

I agree with you. But I would point out that if the people want to re-define
unacceptable behaviour then through representation they already have the
means, reddit and other sites will comply with the law.

------
recapthrowaway
A pretty comprehensive recap of what's been going on if anyone is interested,
it's in three parts:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/11bypn/recap...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/11bypn/recapthe_great_dox_of_2012_or_doxgate_a_recap_of/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/11byvp/recap...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/11byvp/recapthe_great_dox_of_2012_or_doxgate_a_recap_of/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/11gg8v/recap...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/11gg8v/recap_doxtober_part_iii_violentacrez_and_gawker/)

~~~
jshu
Thanks, that was really interesting insight into what's going on behind the
scenes.

So it looks like most of this is being orchestrated by the group running SRS
(ex-somethingawful?), trying to shake the foundations of reddit just to "see
what happens"? I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

------
stfu
Excellent - happy to see Reddit supporting free speech and not giving into
this mainstream media bullying campaign.

I wish more platforms would abide to the rule of law and not to a hypocritical
rule imposed by professionally "i am outraged, there is something on the
internet, that i don't like, this has to stop!!!" commentators.

Kudos to Reddit!

~~~
tptacek
I do not like articles on the Internet that purport to explain that the world
is 9,000 years old, or that suggest that the Bible demands that women be
subservient to men. I don't like articles that suggest that the world is ruled
by a secret cartel of Jewish international bankers. I don't like articles that
militate against taxes for capital gains or inheritances.

I tolerate all of these things because they are ideas. Stupid ones, yes, but
ideas.

A photo of a minor taken without their consent and posted to a public forum
for people to comment on is something worse than a blog post that tries to
convince me that the world is 9,000 years old.

~~~
stfu
In my opinion the issue is relatively simple. If the content is illegal, then
remove it. If it is not, then it stays.

It can not be the task of a platform provider to conduct an in-depth
investigation on who agreed or did not agree on a picture being taken.
Otherwise you would need to include with every picture some form of a weaver
were all persons displayed state their real age and consent to the picture.

~~~
tptacek
Well then you agree with the point I made, which is that you can't stand on
the ceremony of "free speech" while forbidding forms of otherwise lawful
speech that happen to challenge the mores of the group, such as the names and
employers of pseudonymous members of the group.

~~~
stfu
Sure, I am all for removing illegal content. But I am absolutely against per-
emtive attempts to censor the incredible diversity that Reddit has to offer.

------
SoftwareMaven
I think the whole creepshots thing shows how hypocritical reddit is about free
speech. I thought the Gawker article did a good job describing the hive mind
attitude there of " _my_ speech is OK, but you must _burn_ for yours". And,
naturally, they responded exactly as I would expect: banning that speech.

I don't envy reddit's admins regarding this topic. Their user base is
extremely worked up over the notion of free speech, so any appearance of
interfering will be seen in a horrible light. But things like creepshots and
jailbait do horrible things for their reputation, which could leave it with a
situation where it becomes another 4chan, which I don't think they want.

In the end, I agree with potatolicious: this commitment to free speech will
last only until the next shit storm occurs.

~~~
danielweber
Reddit was following an internally consistent rule pattern when banning links
to Gawker.

(You can argue that following the rule pattern is stupid, like something that
comes out of a large bureaucracy instead of a <10 person startup. I'd agree.)

 _this commitment to free speech will last only until the next shit storm
occurs_

Since reddit has shown the _only_ times they ban anything is in response to
shit storms, they have unwittingly set themselves up for more shit storms.
AFAIK the people who hated creepshots got ignored when raising the question to
the admins, so the only other option was to create a new shit storm.

Reddit probably thinks they are sticking to their guns, but by not having any
kind of release valve beyond a shit storm, they're bringing them on.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I suppose my original comment was not clear. I meant the reddit community, not
Reddit, the company. I think the Reddit admins are being reasonably consistent
(or at least trying to be).

Banning the _article_ that doxxes the guy is following their rule. Banning all
of Gawker is something very different. It's a way for reddit's moderators to
punish Gawker for "contempt of reddit".

 _by not having any kind of release valve beyond a shit storm, they're
bringing them on_

Very concise, insightful way of putting it!

------
ebassi
the issue is not (only) having distasteful content; the real issue is
censoring links to content that embarrasses redditors, like the Gawker outing
of the reddit creep, in a shockingly hypocritical display of a double
standard.

you cannot "uphold the principles of free speech" by keeping creepy content
under the "it's not illegal" moniker, and at the same time censor the outing
of one of the moderators of said content - another perfectly legal action.

------
bryanlarsen
It seems to me that Reddit did the right thing here. How they got there is
questionable, but I think they've got it right.

1) "No child pornography or sexually suggestive content featuring minors"

2) No doxxing internally, external links allowed

To stay viable, Reddit has to ban internal doxxing. There have been several
instances in the past of false accusations combined with doxxing which have
resulted in witch hunts.

But doxxing is pretty much the only defence the Internet has against legal yet
hateful and harmful pseudonymous speech. So by drawing the line where they
did, they've made witch hunts more difficult to pull off, but still possible.

They're also just bowing to the inevitable: they can't censor the Internet, so
any attempt to do so will fail.

So did they do the right thing because it was the right thing, or just because
it was inevitable? They really give the impression that it was the latter, so
they don't come out of this affair smelling very good.

------
tokenadult
Reddit is a private business corporate entity, and not a legislative body of
the government, but this back-and-forth about what is allowed on Reddit and
what is not illustrates a famous saying about how laws are made: "The life of
the law has not been logic; it has been experience." Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr., The Common Law (1881), p. 1.

On my part, I decided not to get a second username on Reddit after being a
very early adopted on Reddit, when there was a foul-up of the user database
such that my user account data was lost. I figured a service that could foul
up something like that (MSN did the same, years ago) was not ready for prime
time, so I have never re-upped. I've never liked the immature, overly long
rewritten titles on submissions, or most of the other juvenile behavior seen
on Reddit. Yeah, I know, everyone would simply tell me to go look for a good
subreddit. I tried that a few times, but decided that the subreddits also have
their culture dragged down, even when they are about interesting topics and
include thoughtful participants, by the general culture on Reddit. Rather than
look for a subreddit, I try to invest in making Hacker News a better
community. That works for me.

------
mithaler
As an aside, I'm starting to doubt the inherent value of Internet anonymity in
the first place.

There are obvious good uses for it: Wikileaks in its heyday comes to mind
(that is, the time when they were actually a wiki, releasing leaks while
keeping their sources safe, not going out of their way to create PR nightmares
for the US government). But the vast majority of other widely-defended use
cases for it seem to be people using it as a license to do nasty things like
jailbait/creepshots. Even VA recognized that a compromise of his identity
would mean professional ruination, even as he exposed himself and his family
to that risk by revealing himself to people he thought he could trust.

While Reddit definitely shouldn't start trying to "solve" the problem, clearly
the use of vigilante "doxxing" as a weapon against people they don't like
isn't a real solution either. Is there even a good middle ground? "Do
distasteful things on peril of Gawker running a story about you"?

~~~
aes256
The value of Internet (pseudo-)anonymity is not limited to the big, headline-
grabbing incidents.

It underlies almost all the original content posted on the Internet. Simply
put, if you had to attach your real life identity to everything you posted
online, original content would dry up overnight.

People would no longer express their sincere opinions, they would no longer
debate controversial issues. They would no longer seek help and advice for
medical conditions, seek emotional support for their troubles, so on and so
forth.

I wouldn't be posting in this thread right now.

~~~
MartinCron
_Simply put, if you had to attach your real life identity to everything you
posted online, original content would dry up overnight._

Would it? People created original content long before they could post it
online with an expectation of anonymity. There are a lot of people who use
their real life identities online. Just as I am, right now.

~~~
aes256
I don't think it would dry up completely, but the flood of original content
would turn into a slow trickle.

Once your real life identity is attached to anything you post, so many topics
go off limits. You can no longer talk about your job, your education, your
friends, your health, religion, politics, etc.

You can no longer talk about people behind their backs, or embellish stories
for entertainment value.

You can no longer post a funny cat picture, or share a cool video, for fear of
how it might change people's perception of you as a person.

The list of topics that end up off limits goes on and on.

~~~
MartinCron
_You can no longer talk about your job, your education, your friends, your
health, religion, politics, etc_

You can still talk about all of those things (I do, all the time) but what you
can't do is talk about those things _without consequences_.

I'm starting to think that the "never use your real name online" wisdom from
20 years ago has done our culture a huge disservice. The message I'm teaching
my kids is "only post things online that you would be comfortable seeing on
the front page of the newspaper"

Then I had to explain what a newspaper was.

~~~
aes256
What I mean by not being able to talk about them is that you can't express
your honest opinions.

Most people probably think their boss is a jerk, that their colleagues are
incompetent, that their company rips off their clients, so on and so forth.
You can't say any of that with your name, and by extension that of your
employer, attached to it.

The same applies to education. Teachers can no longer discuss teaching methods
or lesson plans online, lest their pupils find out their teacher doesn't have
a clue what they're teaching. Pupils can no longer criticise their schools
online, or seek help with bullying.

The list of topics that people are willing to talk about pseudo-anonymously
but not with their real name attached to their comments is endless.

> The message I'm teaching my kids is "only post things online that you would
> be comfortable seeing on the front page of the newspaper"

That's precisely the attitude I subscribe to, and it's why I don't have much
sympathy for the teenagers who take photos of themselves scantily clad, put
them on Facebook, only to have them end up on places like /r/jailbait.

------
Millennium
Good for them, I suppose, but what is their position on enabling criminal
invasion of privacy?

------
nohat
"There sure has been a lot of trouble lately for Reddit, and I'd like to talk
about about that before I nip off for a spot of tea"

Other issues aside, this sentence uses several British expressions. Wong does
not seem to be British. Is Wong acting British because he is talking to the
BBC? Is the BBC paraphrasing? That quote just seems odd and contrived.

------
bduerst
I think what is being missed here is that this ban is party to a small
subreddit called "ShitRedditSays".

They ran a campaign to get jailbait banned, and recently to get creepshots
banned, by bringing the media's attention to these subreddits.

------
danso
The "distasteful" content always bothered me but was something that was so
disconnected from my normal use since I stay mostly in the programming and nyc
subreddits...I see things like r/creepshots as being one of the downsides to
the many upsides of how reddit is run, and one with no perfect solution.

However, this dampened my interest in Reddit quite a bit:

> _Mr Wong described the decision as a mistake that was "not making Reddit
> look so good". The ban has now been lifted.

"As admins, we chose to recognise that opponents have the right to criticise
us, to expose us, to tell a story about us - even if we don't like that story
or we feel it's wrong."

However, individual subreddits can choose their own rules regarding what sites
are blocked. One popular area, Politics, is continuing to block Gawker links._

It is sickening how quickly a site that is devoted to the extremes of free
speech would turn into that they despise after an investigative piece...and
all of this for someone who, besides administering the "distasteful" content
in question, turned tail and deleted his account after being outed.

