With Pao’s dismissal last week, though, it now looks like Reddit will scrub the subsections, known as subreddits, that have damaged the site’s reputation by devolving into racism, sexism and homophobia. However, her departure was also marked by abusive messages.
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In many ways, his words echoed those of Pao, who resigned from her position last week after a maelstrom of online attacks related to her restrictive actions against more unseemly elements on the site and presumed involvement in the removal of a key employee beloved by the community.
Reddit, Huffman, said, still needs to create more specific guidelines for what to ban, but it essentially boils down to whether there is some kind of threat of physical harm.
According to Huffman’s initial outline, spam, “anything illegal”, harassment, bullying, “anything that incites harm or violence against an individual or group of people”, unauthorized publication of another person’s private information and “sexually suggestive content featuring minors” are prohibited.
“If they don’t take care of it”, one user wrote in response to Huffman’s policy discussion, “Reddit will soon have the dubious honor of being the most active white supremacist forum on the the Internet“. This is what we will try, and if the hateful users continue to spill out into mainstream Reddit, we will try more aggressive approaches.
The move, Huffman said, will allow all views to exist, “even if we find some of them abhorrent, as long as they don’t pollute people’s enjoyment of the site”.
Huffman added that he believed some communities now on the platform should not be there at all. The reason we’re careful to restrict speech is because people have more open and authentic discussions when they aren’t anxious about the speech police knocking down their door.
In an op-ed essay in the Washington Post Thursday, Pao wrote, “The foundations of the Internet were laid on free expression, but the founders just did not understand how effective their creation would be for the coordination and amplification of harassing behavior”. Is Reddit’s content at risk of heavy censorship?
Another ex-CEO, Yishan Wong, commented on a post left by Huffman on Tuesday, taking responsibility for maintaining a “free speech policy” during his two year tenure. Her announcement came in the wake of months of harassment from the site’s members, as well as a petition with over 200,000 signatures calling for her resignation.
“It was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen Pao”.
‘No one has figured out the best place to draw the line between bad and ugly – or whether that line can support a viable business model, ‘ Pao writes in a damning suggestion that Reddit will sink without her. But that balancing act is getting harder.
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Then when the hate-train started up against Pao, Alexis should have been out front and center saying very clearly ‘Ellen Pao did not make this decision, I did.’ Instead, he just sat back and let her take the heat. I’m rooting for the humans over the trolls.
