Fed-up Reddit Prohibits Attacks, Harassment of Individuals

Reddit administrators and users are unhappy with harassing behavior on its site, so the site has updated its practices to better curb harassment, an administrators' blog post said Thursday. “For the past six months we have been examining and reviewing reddit’s community policies and practices, collecting and analyzing data, defining our own goals, and making some hard decisions,” reddit said. “We value privacy, freedom of expression, open discussion, and humanity, and we want to make sure that we uphold these principles for all kinds of people,” they said. Some changes have already been made, such as an annual transparency report showing when private information was shared with law enforcement and when content was taken down in response to legal demands or for privacy reasons, the administrators said. In March, reddit’s privacy policy was updated to address revenge porn, and on Wednesday, additional changes were made to be “even more transparent about content that reddit removes for legal reasons,” they said. Reddit announced on Thursday administrators have been looking “closely at the conversations on reddit and at personal safety.” Reddit values freedom of expression and relies on volunteer moderators to determine and uphold rules for subreddits, allowing administrators to step in only when “we see threats to our values of privacy and safety,” they said. As use of the Internet and information available evolves, reddit said, it has seen more harassment and different types of harassment emerge, such as posting links to private information on other sites. “Instead of promoting free expression of ideas, we are seeing our open policies stifling free expression; people avoid participating for fear of their personal and family safety,” reddit said. “Because of this, we are changing our practices to prohibit attacks and harassment of individuals through reddit with the goal of preventing them,” they said. Harassment is defined as: “Systematic and/or continued actions to torment or demean someone in a way that would make a reasonable person (1) conclude that reddit is not a safe platform to express their ideas or participate in the conversation, or (2) fear for their safety or the safety of those around them,” the administrators said.