Reddit has banned a number of its most toxic communities in its latest attempt to balance free speech ethics against ambitions for mainstream growth.
In July, Reddit's new CEO Steve Huffman attempted to "quarantine" offensive subreddits behind email verification gates, where they would also be hidden from search engines and not be included in ad deals. Certain subreddits relating to rape were banned, but racist forums were allowed to remain behind the verification checks.
That move was just the latest episode in an extremely complex and long-running saga, in which Reddit has been forced to confront the popularity of racist, sexist or simply mean-spirited content on its site.
But on Thursday Huffman announced the quarantine policy had not gone far enough, and introduced a new Content Policy update that effectively outlawed many of the more offensive subreddits.
Subreddits including the racist discussion forums /r/CoonTown, /r/WatchNiggersDie, /r/bestofcoontown and /r/CoonTownMeta were pulled from the site immediately after the announcement.
.
The content policy states that "while Reddit generally provides a lot of leeway in what content is acceptable", content can be prohibited if it is illegal, includes involuntary pornography, encourages or incites violence, threatens or bullies others, contains personal information, impersonates other people or is regarded as spam.
Other subreddits will remain quarantined and not banned, but a full list of exactly which forums have been affected is yet to be released.
In response, many Redditors pointed to the subreddit /r/ShitRedditSays -- which highlights seemingly offensive or idiotic statements made by Reddit users out of context. The subreddit has not been banned or quarantined and users claim this shows Reddit's continued hypocrisy and confusion around its simplified content policy. The ongoing debate on the site, and the growing user base of 'anything goes' alternatives like Voat, implies that hand-wringing on Reddit's part is far from over.
Huffman said the core of Reddit remained consistent: "Our most important policy over the last ten years has been to allow just about anything so long as it does not prevent others from enjoying Reddit for what it is: the best place online to have truly authentic conversations."
Huffman added later that while the decision was necessarily controversial, it was not reflective of the majority of the site's content. "I know some of you are upset because we banned anything today," he said. "But the fact of the matter is we spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with a handful of communities, which prevents us from working on things for the other 99.98% (literally) of Reddit."
In another minor change Reddit confirmed that its internal style guide had now changed to spell the site's name with an uppercase 'R'.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
