After weeks of turmoil and bad press and many, many outraged posts by very angry people without a sense of precisely what free speech protections Americans are afforded by the Bill of Rights, Reddit has announced some proposed changes to its content policy. Basically, the current thinking is they’ll lock the really vile stuff in the basement—but not evict it.
Cofounder and once-more CEO Steve Huffman (who got landed with this hot potato that’s actually radioactive shit wrapped in tinfoil when Ellen Pao made her recent, unceremonious exit) announced the proposed changes—where else?—on Reddit. First, he laid out some underlying thinking:
One thing that isn’t up for debate is why Reddit exists. Reddit is a place to have open and authentic discussions. The reason we’re careful to restrict speech is because people have more open and authentic discussions when they aren’t worried about the speech police knocking down their door. When our purpose comes into conflict with a policy, we make sure our purpose wins.
Sure, sure. He proceeded to outline several types of content which are expressly verboten: spam, private information, inciting harm—with the caveat that “it’s ok to say ‘I don’t like this group of people.’ It’s not ok to say, ‘I’m going to kill this group of people’”—harassment and abuse of individuals or groups, “anything illegal” i.e. copyrighted stuff, and “sexually suggestive content featuring minors.” As for what to do about the hateful subreddits that make you despair for the fate of humanity? The proposal is not to scrub them, but rather to delist them, essentially: