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Reddit To Crack Down On Abuse By Punishing Hundreds of 'Toxic Users' (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Social media website Reddit, known for its commitment to free speech, will crack down on online harassment by banning or suspending users who target others, starting with those who have directed abuse at Chief Executive Steve Huffman. Huffman said in an interview with Reuters that Reddit's content policy prohibits harassment, but that it had not been adequately enforced. "Personal message harassment is the most cut and dry," he said. "Right now we are in an interesting position where my inbox is full of them, it's easy to start with me." As well as combing through Huffman's inbox, Reddit will monitor user reports, add greater filtering capacity, and take a more proactive role in policing its platform rather than relying on community moderators. Reddit said it had identified hundreds of the "most toxic users" and will warn, ban or suspend them. It also plans to increase staff on its "trust and safety" team. On Reddit, a channel supporting the U.S. Republican party's presidential candidate Donald Trump, called r/The_Donald, featured racist and misogynistic comments, fake news and conspiracy theories about his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, along with more mainstream expressions of support for Trump. Many of those supporting Trump were very active, voting up the r/The_Donald conversations so that they became prominent across Reddit, which is the 7th-most-visited U.S. internet site, according to web data firm Alexa. Last week, Reddit banned Pizzagate, a community devoted to a conspiracy theory, with no evidence to back it up, that links Clinton to a pedophile ring at a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor, after it posted personal information in violation of Reddit policy. Huffman then used his administrative privileges to redirect abuse he was receiving on a thread on r/The_Donald to the community's moderators -- making it look as if it was intended for them. Huffman said it was a prank, and that many Reddit users, including some Trump supporters, told him they thought it was funny, but it inflamed the situation.
It was fun for a while, and now this crap starts.
Funny thing is... it was the CEO who started it all!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
AOL isn't even dead yet.
Zombie reddit will live on. Shambling from butthurt circle jerk to butthurt circle jerk, seeking brains, but finding none.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We have identified hundreds of the most toxic users and are taking action against them, ranging from warnings to timeouts to permanent bans.
Unless /u/spez is on that list of toxic users, the list is meaningless.
"...Reddit banned Pizzagate, a community devoted to a conspiracy theory, with no evidence to back it up, that links Clinton to a pedophile ring at a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor..."
The only reason they care about a pedoring are to find ties to Hillary? That pretty much sums up the problem with the Right.
This is what happens when the host of a website abdicates responsibility for moderation of content to its users. The system gets gamed by special interest groups and political interests. Slashdot is a classic example of it, it only survives because it is not mainstream, though it has been on a steady decline because of this.
The website that will succeed (in both sensed of the word) will be one that has the balls to take responsibility for their content and not leave it to users to moderate it. It will remove content that is illegal in the country where it is hosted and leave everything else in place. No hiding content based on gamed user moderation systems - everyone will get their fair say. No shadowbanning, completely clear and up front rules that are consistently enforced.
User moderation systems are a failed experiment. I am thankful that their time is coming to an end. It is about time we had places where we can have free and open online discussion.
Slashdot isn't even dead yet... Despite their attempts with BETA.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
> will crack down on online harassment by banning or suspending users who target others,
I wonder if this rule will be applied to the SRS sub, which more or less exists for that very purpose? I'm guessing "no" but it's not a surprise after reading the leaked admin chat log and seeing what happened to the person who made that public.
I'm also guessing they won't explain why the anti-pedo sub /r/pizzagate got moved to /v/pizzagate, but why they're happy to keep subs like /r/pedochat /r/pedofriends, etc. Just look at this image just shows a picture of Reddit's description of /r/Pedochat which is a private NSFW sub for "pedos and friends of pedos" for an example.
Surely /r/Spez knows about this--when he edited all those posts, most of them were swearing at him for that very reason. And he has notifications turned off since forever (refer to the aforementioned admin log), so this would appear to be what got under his skin.
The theme I'm referring to has nothing to do with special interests using the site, but rather a specific mindset taking control of a site. Reddit became popular because it was a free speech zone, but I'd never claim it was "main stream" any more than Slashdot is/was. Free speech is a dangerous thing to people in power. Facebook gets tons of free advertising from broadcast media because they do not support free speech. Timelines is the only thing you need to see to understand that they are more worried about propaganda than free speech.
I don't know reddit and don't know if there is pressure for them to stifle speech or if the management was really against it from the start, but felt it was tolerable venting as long as it stayed away from main stream.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Funny... /r/The_Donald was the most stringently run safe space I've ever seen, and it certainly wasn't being run by SJW's.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Well, I still haven't seen any smoking guns just yet, only a lot of strange things that point in a bad direction or to bad taste in art & friends. I don't know too many Democrats these days eager to retain friendships with Republicans, let alone those who are also convicted child molesters, but it's not exactly illegal either. There's nothing illegal about saying that "traffic is really warm and really weird in light of Hastert" but people who have seen enough strange uses of language regarding what they suspect are codewords could read that in a weird way.
But by banning pizzagate, they've only made it better known. They didn't even manage to shut it down, it /r/pizzagate lives on Voat now as /v/pizzagate. Twitter users outraged that they did nothing about pedo pics someone allegedly pointed out on twitter gab.ai. Wikipedia censors all but a pitiful mention of it, so it's documented on Infogalactic.
There are still the usual problems with idiots who fake something to troll the community, though, but they're working on moderating that out. For example, I know at least one of the claims of steganography in the images appeared to be fake. There certainly wasn't any ZIP file marker in the image I found on Wikileaks, though it wasn't clear if you were supposed to use some steganography program first.
> most users regard being able to use Reddit without being harassed as a positive improvement.
You mean like the abuse coming from SRS? A sub that, essentially, exists for the sole purpose of harassing individual redditors? A sub with a history of doxxing people? I think people are more upset over the selective enforcement of the rules than about the rules themselves.
No harassment is a great thing. Just have a good definition of harassment and apply that to everyone. Not just the people you don't like.
It's the selectivity of it that has people pissed.
If it's just the CEO banning people who annoy the CEO (in a direct, personal way), that's silly but understandable.
If, as is so often the case on social media, it's harassment if and only if the speaker is conservative, that's different. That's a common pattern these days, and not a good one. Echo chambers aren't good for anyone, nor is chasing off half your customers a good business plan (as ESPN is discovering).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Is it merely "silly" if the CEO who recently promised not to abuse his position gets special support from enforcers in a form that no ordinary user can get?
I don't use Reddit and could hardly care less about what happens to it, but this "it's easy to start with me" approach smacks of hypocrisy and a broken promise.
most users regard being able to use Reddit without being harassed as a positive improvement
Yeah, because I'm sure they'll also crack down hard on all those users slinging hate and harassment at Republicans and Donald Trump supporters.
I'm holding my breath in anticipation for all the fair, not-at-all-biased ways in which this censorship policy will be applied.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So let me get this straight.
The site that proudly hosted the fappening's pics.
The site that let a group called "coontown" run for years without any issues or concerns.
The site that runs "Shit Reddit Says," a doxing, harassment, and bullying network that the admins openly support.
The site that, to this day, has gigabytes of pirated music, porn, art, and software indexed on it.
NOW has a problem with free speech, because a conservative candidate's followers organized on it and beat the political candidate their admins supported?
All at the same time the faux-liberal, progressive news sites and other social media networks are making a push to censor any and all conservative new media outlets by calling them "fake news" and taking measures to do the same thing to conservatives using their sites?
Forgive me if I'm a bit suspicious.