Reddit is on fire

Itzena_sl

shitlord
4,609
6
Content Policy update. AMA Thursday, July 16th, 1pm pst. : announcements

Hey Everyone,

There has been a lot of discussion lately -on reddit, in the news, and here internally- about reddit's policy on the more offensive and obscene content on our platform. Our top priority at reddit is to develop a comprehensive Content Policy and the tools to enforce it.

The overwhelming majority of content on reddit comes from wonderful, creative, funny, smart, and silly communities. That is what makes reddit great. There is also a dark side, communities whose purpose is reprehensible, and we don't have any obligation to support them. And we also believe that some communities currently on the platform should not be here at all.

Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen: These are very complicated issues, and we are putting a lot of thought into it. It's something we've been thinking about for quite some time. We haven't had the tools to enforce policy, but now we're building those tools and reevaluating our policy.

We as a community need to decide together what our values are. To that end, I'll be hosting an AMA on Thursday 1pm pst to present our current thinking to you, the community, and solicit your feedback.

PS - I won't be able to hang out in comments right now. Still meeting everyone here!
1rleFw8.gif
 

Adebisi

Clump of Cells
<Silver Donator>
27,682
32,726
If reddit wants to continue to burn to the ground that's fine by me.

I love watching it Digg it's own grave.

also

as a place where open and honest discussion can happen
LOL
 

radditsu

Silver Knight of the Realm
4,676
826
So exactly how wrong were you, bro?
smile.png



Did you miss most of the last page or something? Try reading posts other than your own.
Not one comment from the last page talks about taking back the gentrification of Reddit. One person said the opposite...besides me...and another engaged with us about how they could monetize the back end of Reddit.

It is a clear case of "You aren't wrong you are just an asshole."


Also there seems to be a random foray into fat people you engaged with. Also a joke about the Koch brothers (hint for you limey...they do not care for free speech. )


What did I miss again?


The internet rarely gets MORE open and free over time. New places start free then they cash out and become another arm of advertising to our idiot brains.
 

Hex

Lord Nagafen Raider
404
389
Shit keeps gettin weirder...

yishan comments on Content Policy update. AMA Thursday, July 16th, 1pm pst.

Yishan_sl said:
AYYYYYY LMAO
How's everyone doing? This is AWESOME!
There's something I neglected to tell you all this time ("executive privilege"), but I'm declassifying a lot of things these days. Back around the time of the /r/creepshots[1] debacle, I wrote to /u/spez[2] for advice. I had met him shortly after I had taken the job, and found him to be a great guy. Back in the day when reddit was small, the areas he oversaw were engineering, product, and the business aspects - those are the same things I tend to focus on in a company (each CEO has certain areas of natural focus, and hires others to oversee the rest). As a result, we were able to connect really well and have a lot of great conversations - talking to him was really valuable.

Well, when things were heating around the /r/creepshots[3] thing and people were calling for its banning, I wrote to him to ask for advice. The very interesting thing he wrote back was "back when I was running things, if there was anything racist, sexist, or homophobic I'd ban it right away. I don't think there's a place for such things on reddit. Of course, now that reddit is much bigger, I understand if maybe things are different."

I've always remembered that email when I read the occasional posting here where people say "the founders of reddit intended this to be a place for free speech." Human minds love originalism, e.g. "we're in trouble, so surely if we go back to the original intentions, we can make things good again." Sorry to tell you guys but NO, that wasn't their intention at all ever. Sucks to be you, /r/coontown[4] - I hope you enjoy voat!

The free speech policy was something I formalized because it seemed like the wiser course at the time. It's worth stating that in that era, we were talking about whether it was ok for people to post creepy pictures of women taken legally in public. That's shitty, but it's a far cry from the extremes of hate that some parts of the site host today. It seemed that allowing creepers to post (anonymized) pictures of women taken in public, in a relatively small subreddit that never showed up on the front page, was a small price to pay for making it clear that we were a place welcoming of all opinions and discourse.

Having made that decision - much of reddit's current condition is on me. I didn't anticipate what (some) redditors would decide to do with freedom. reddit has become a lot bigger - yes, a lot better - AND a lot worse. I have to take responsibility.

But... the most delicious part of this is that on at least two separate occasions, the board pressed /u/ekjp[5] to outright ban ALL the hate subreddits in a sweeping purge. She resisted, knowing the community, claiming it would be a shitshow. Ellen isn't some "evil, manipulative, out-of-touch incompetent she-devil" as was often depicted. She was approved by the board and recommended by me because when I left, she was the only technology executive anywhere who had the chops and experience to manage a startup of this size, AND who understood what reddit was all about. As we can see from her post-resignation activity[6] , she knows perfectly well how to fit in with the reddit community and is a normal, funny person - just like in real life - she simply didn't sit on reddit all day because she was busy with her day job.

Ellen was more or less inclined to continue upholding my free-speech policies. /r/fatpeoplehate[7] was banned for inciting off-site harassment, not discussing fat-shaming. What all the white-
power racist-sexist neckbeards don't understand is that with her at the head of the company, the company would be immune to accusations of promoting sexism and racism: she is literally Silicon Valley's #1 Feminist Hero, so any "SJWs" would have a hard time attacking the company for intentionally creating a bastion (heh) of sexist/racist content. She probably would have tolerated your existence so long as you didn't cause any problems - I know that her long-term strategies were to find ways to surface and publicize reddit's good parts - allowing the bad parts to exist but keeping them out of the spotlight. It would have been very principled - the CEO of reddit, who once sued her previous employer for sexual discrimination, upholds free
speech and tolerates the ugly side of humanity because it is so important to maintaining a platform for open discourse. It would have been unassailable.

Well, now she's gone (you did it reddit!), and /u/spez[8] has the moral authority as a co-founder to move ahead with the purge. We tried to let you govern yourselves and you failed, so now The Man is going to set some Rules. Admittedly, I can't say I'm terribly upset.
 

Adebisi

Clump of Cells
<Silver Donator>
27,682
32,726
Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech
"(Reddit is) A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web" - literally Alexis

Lololollllllllllooooollolll
 

Leadsalad

Cis-XYite-Nationalist
6,005
12,052
Who is Yishan? Who are any of these people?

[email protected]/* <![CDATA[ */!function(t,e,r,n,c,a,p){try{t=document.currentScript||function(){for(t=document.getElementsByTagName('script'),e=t.length;e--;)if(t[e].getAttribute('data-cfhash'))return t[e]}();if(t&&(c=t.previousSibling)){p=t.parentNode;if(a=c.getAttribute('data-cfemail')){for(e='',r='0x'+a.substr(0,2)|0,n=2;a.length-n;n+=2)e+='%'+('0'+('0x'+a.substr(n,2)^r).toString(16)).slice(-2);p.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(decodeURIComponent(e)),c)}p.removeChild(t)}}catch(u){}}()/* ]]> */dick sucking in that verbal diarrhea of words.
 

Hex

Lord Nagafen Raider
404
389
Who is Yishan? Who are any of these people?

[email protected]/* <![CDATA[ */!function(t,e,r,n,c,a,p){try{t=document.currentScript||function(){for(t=document.getElementsByTagName('script'),e=t.length;e--;)if(t[e].getAttribute('data-cfhash'))return t[e]}();if(t&&(c=t.previousSibling)){p=t.parentNode;if(a=c.getAttribute('data-cfemail')){for(e='',r='0x'+a.substr(0,2)|0,n=2;a.length-n;n+=2)e+='%'+('0'+('0x'+a.substr(n,2)^r).toString(16)).slice(-2);p.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(decodeURIComponent(e)),c)}p.removeChild(t)}}catch(u){}}()/* ]]> */dick sucking in that verbal diarrhea of words.
Was the CEO prior to Ellen I guess
 

Siddar

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
6,369
5,919
Remember when I said that getting rid of Pao wasn't going to stop the gentrification of Reddit?
Remember when most said we knew that already?

Now reddit can continue to burn to the ground without people claiming sexism is the cause.

Funny things is the idiots running reddit now may well think it was actually just because Pao was a women and not because of that free-speech thingy people keep bringing up.