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Reddit: a necessary change in policy
- EiZei 15y agoOne of the remarkable things about this is that the campaign orchestrated by Something Awful users caused this happen in less than 4 hours. Even the CNN exposé took days.
- ortusdux 15y agoLink to the catalysis: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3466025 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=346...
- ugh 15y agoOn the other hand: What took ’em so long? Jailbait was shut down, what now? A few months ago? The admins must have been aware that the exact same crap was happening in copycat subreddits all over Reddit soon after Jailbait was shut down. Why was another campaign necessary in the first place? I don’t think the Reddit admins can take the moral high ground here. They will only do the right thing when you threaten them with bad PR. (I’m guessing they reacted so fast this time because they know that those kinds of things can escalate quickly and national press attention is not nice to have.)
- zotz 15y ago> On the other hand: What took ’em so long? Speaking as an interested outside observer, my opinion is that the personal connections between a few of these subreddit owners and reddit's admins were a stumbling block. Business and PR is now overwhelming those friendships.
- nikatwork 15y agoI didn't get this impression. It seemed to me that while the admins found the content personally distasteful, they did not want to erode freedom of speech. This is why it "took so long"; it was a debate, not a clear-cut decision (in their eyes). It seems like the potential PR/legal fallout has now outweighed any philosophical musings.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- unimpressive 15y agoSomething Awful has a reputation for Internet war campaigns. (They ARE the source of 4chan IIRC.) Anything coming from SA is expected to be so bad that it's not an uncommon occurrence for sites to change (stupid) policy simply on the hype generated by a SA scheme. What I don't understand is how a "Jailbait" thread/subreddit could really be considered "legal" since the term "Jailbait" refers to people who look like they're at the age of consent but aren't. And thus will land anyone who has...intercourse; with them in jail. So the illegality is implied in the title.
- citricsquid 15y agoJailbait refers to people it would be illegal to have sex with, this doesn't make pictures of them (clothed) illegal and it's only child porn when the subject is not clothed and even then they have to be engaging in sexual acts or the focus being their genitals for it to be (in the eyes of the law) child porn. edit: see comments below, I was wrong. No idea how reddit has not been shut down then...
- potatolicious 15y agoPatently false. It doesn't have to be nude to be child porn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dost_test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dost_test
- owenmarshall 15y agoIt's important to note that nudity is not necessary for an image to be considered child pornography. The EFF has a really good primer on this that I saw linked on more than one occasion today: https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/adult https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/adult "Nudity is not enough for a finding that an image is lascivious, but clothing does not mean a photo is in the clear: 'a photograph of a naked girl might not be lascivious (depending on the balance of the remaining Dost factors), but a photograph of a girl in a highly sexual pose dressed in hose, garters, and a bra would certainly be found to be lascivious.'"
- ErrantX 15y ago
- commandar 15y agoWasn't the CNN expose pretty much the culmination of an earlier SA campaign?
- timdorr 15y agoIt actually started a few days ago. The account creating the preteen girls subreddit and posting most of its content was 3 days old. It is very suspect and a plausible explanation is that someone from SA was running a smear campaign from the start.
- kmfrk 15y agoA smear campaign whereby a person commits an illegal act of posting child pornography?
- timdorr 15y agoThe preteen girls subreddit didn't have anything explicitly illegal in it. Just really creepy stuff.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ugh 15y agoDo you really believe those bullshit conspiracy theories? Yeah, right. Some goon posted CP on Reddit, causing outrage among some Reddit users but also flaming (and highly upvoted) defenses of said CP – presumably all by goons. There were numerous jailbait subreddits for years. This is no conspiracy. That doesn’t even pass the sniff test.
- citricsquid 15y agoThese sort of subreddits have existed for years, although it is most definitely the case that the actions of Something Awful caused them to be shut down, they did not create them. For example r/teen_girls has existed for 6 months.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Czarnian 15y ago
- res0nat0r 15y agoI think there have been a few high profile posts/submissions over the last couple of days related to child porn on Reddit so it has been a big issue the last 48 hours.
- joejohnson 15y agoThere were whole subreddits with questionable content? Damn, I'm surprised that they didn't take this move earlier.
- citricsquid 15y agoThere have been for years, it wasn't until recently r/jailbait was removed. For the longest time the policy was anything legal is allowed.
- TillE 15y ago> anything legal is allowed And quite a lot that was, at the very best, ambiguous.
- Czarnian 15y agoFrom what I understand, the real policy was more "Anything that you can manage to somehow twist into something that vaguely resembles legal in low-light conditions from a minimum distance of 100 feet away is allowed."
- tomjen3 15y agoFor the longest time the policy was no spam, no hacking (of reddit) and nothing illegal. Apparently they just changed the policy. I pray they do not alter it any further.
- kmfrk 15y agoHere is the original thread that started it all, since the admins at reddit don't want to link to it: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3466025 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=346.... And the reddit response: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/pmbyc/somethingawfulcom_starts_campaign_to_label_reddit/ http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/pmbyc/somethin....
- Fluxx 15y agoSince you need an SA account to view this thread, here is a mirror: http://bit.ly/xUMAup http://bit.ly/xUMAup
- muyuu 15y agoThere is a subreddit called "LegalTeens" that they find offensive??
- icebraining 15y agoHow do you effectively determine if a teen in a picture is 18+ or not? Porn companies get legal documentation to prove it, but there's no such thing in a random jpeg. Reddit is covering their legal asses, and I can perfectly understand that.
- muyuu 15y agoIt's opening a big can of worms. You cannot prove their age (I've seen 17 year-olds looking like they were 25) and you cannot prove they give their consent to have their seemingly private pic posted, but this can be said about almost any "mirror pic" or home pic. You also don't generally know when a picture has been publicly posted by the person in it, or not. As soon as you put the burden of proof in the website, you start slipping into SOPA territory. Not a good idea IMO.
- stfu 15y agoVery interesting to watch what a coordinated attack can do to a website. Always sad to see when people rally behind better/stronger censorship. Companies should get attacked for taking freedoms away and not the other way around. If they had illegal content on their sites, than by all means report it etc. But I still believe that anything legal SHOULD be allowed. On the other hand it might be more a personal thing against Reddit for freeriding/pretending ownership of ideas with might have originated in other places.
- kmfrk 15y agoWhat about the freedom of the children in the pornographic images? That important to you? Something Awful/SRS launched the campaign, because all efforts to curb these images had failed, so they took it upon themselves - as a last frustrated resort - to bring people's attention to this.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Gygash 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dost_test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dost_test
- adbge 15y ago> What about the freedom of the children in the > pornographic images? That important to you? The OP explicitly stated that he believes anything legal should be allowed. At any rate, this kind of remark really doesn't facilitate the kind of thoughtful discussion we, as a community, ought to strive for. Interestingly enough, though, by outright banning suggestive images of minors, you are limiting "the freedom of the children," their freedom of expression. It's for the greater good, of course. ;)
- kmfrk 15y agoHe's making it an issue of censorship, when the whole reason for this is the child pornography on the website to which this is juxtaposed. The admins have chosen to use a wide net in this case, presumably because they don't have the resources to fine-comb subreddits to determine whether they meet the criteria for child pornography. The concept of censorship and impediment of free speech on a privately held site whose owners are free to do as they please without curbing the constitutional fifth-amendment right of their users is also to blow this completely out of proportions and miss the point entirely. EDIT: alienth confirms my presumption in the first paragraph: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/pmk22/admins_today_we_are_adding_another_rule_no/c3qk6s9?context=1.* http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/pmk22/admins...
- dinglemyberry 15y agoFunny that they knew the 3 day old subreddit before everyone else.
- owenmarshall 15y agoSubreddits focusing on jailbait have been on reddit for a lot longer than 3 days.
- pjscott 15y agoWhat alarms me about this is that Reddit has to worry about hazily-defined legal gray areas. One of the big goals of common law legal systems is to make the law and its interpretation as predictable as possible, so that people can go about their business without fear of arbitrary legal penalties. The common law may not always be just, but it should at least be consistent.
- Czarnian 15y agoChild porn is not really a hazily defined legal gray area. The law is pretty concise on what constitutes child porn. Possessing may be a bit murkier but only in the edge cases where the pictures were put there without the persons knowledge. Reddit finally got shamed into taking the ultimately correct stance. Anything that vaguely smells of child porn is no longer allowed. There's no slippery slope here.
- pjscott 15y agoNot a gray area? The Reddit admins say otherwise, and presumably they would know what they've been dealing with: > Beyond these clear cut cases, there is a huge area of legally grey content, and our previous policy to deal with it on a case by case basis has become unsustainable. We have changed our policy because interpreting the vague and debated legal guidelines on a case by case basis has become a massive distraction and risks reddit being pulled in to legal quagmire. While we're at it, Neil Gaiman points out examples of several of those gray areas: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-...
- Czarnian 15y agoI think it's been pretty well demonstrated that the Reddit admins have their heads up their asses, at least when it comes to this issue. Just stating that the law has grey areas is not evidence that the law has grey areas. It has more to do with their deliberate obtuseness toward what the law actually says. As far as I can tell, Neil Gaiman is a really talented writer. There's nothing in his background that indicates expertise in law. Beyond that, upon reading his post, he is clearly talking about government censorship in the context of literature and graphic novels depicting sex involving minors, not the distribution of actual pornography. At one point he even concedes that he has not even looked at the site in question and cannot make a judgement on it's contents. Really, if you're going to post a link as support for your argument, read it first and make sure it supports your argument.
- benologist 15y agoIt will be interesting to see how far this goes, it's likely we'll look back on this as reddit's turning point - there is some really awful content on that site. However it's ironic that people rush to defend linking to cam-of-new-hollywood-blockbuster.torrent as "just a link", declaring it can't be illegal because it's just pointing to a file, it's not hosting it and only a fool lawyer or judge nestled warmly in the pocket of the RIAA/MPAA could misunderstand this. But when that link goes to 13yearoldinabikini.jpg, a collection of 1s and 0s on someone else's server, suddenly this Link is a tool of evil and not only must it be removed, but the community celebrates the censorship and nominates more items for censorship.
- carbocation 15y agoChild pornography is dissimilar to copyright piracy. Child pornography is in a legal category unto itself, at least according to United States case law.
- z92 15y agoI shall be waiting for the next phase of banns on things that can lead to CP and things that are worse than CP.
- sliverstorm 15y agoIndeed. The concepts of "fair use", "safe harbor", et al are copyright concepts.
- rplnt 15y ago"13yearoldinabikini.jpg" probably cannot be classified as a pornography. Most of the things they banned were probably legal (I can't imagine there really was a true child pornography subreddit). But I understand having these subreddits around was a slippery slope and some content might have been over the edge. And as was already mentioned, it's hard work to control it post by post. Especially when some askreddit post accumulated the infamous reddit-hivemind and they went on reporting every single post in "targeted" subreddit (whatever the content).
- tzs 15y agoOne thing that disappointed me in the discussion is how most was focused on whether or not the pictures in /r/preteen_girls were legal. Even if they were clearly legal, I think a strong case can be made for banning them for violating the privacy of the children in the photos. Most of them seemed to be girls photographed at home, probably by family members. I suspect they were shared on the net with relatives, by people who did not know they were making them publicly available. There were also quite a few that seemed to be girls photographed in public who were not aware they were being photographed.
- streptomycin 15y agoIf the standard becomes to delete every picture containing people who haven't explicitly consented to that picture being posted in a public forum... well, that's a huge chunk of Reddit.
- tptacek 15y agoSad.
- sadface 15y agoGood thing for them that's obviously not the standard.
- streptomycin 15y agoI know, I was just pointing out a flaw in tzs's reasoning.
- JulianMorrison 15y agoIt's different when the privacy violation is followed by being involved in somebody else's sex act without consent.
- danielrhodes 15y agoThis discussion of whether the content is legal or not isn't very constructive. Clearly Reddit has to ban illegal content. However, they also have to uphold community standards and enforce rules which keep more toxic parts of the community in line. Allowing pseudo-child porn creates a meeting place for pedophiles and that is likely not a liability that Reddit wants to take on.
- streptomycin 15y agoAllowing /r/trees creates a meeting place for illegal drug users and that is likely not a liability that Reddit wants to take on. Indeed, quite similar to how people were accused of trading child porn on Reddit, people set up drug deals on Reddit. etc etc etc. It's a slippery slope.
- Devilboy 15y agoDon't forget about /r/niggers et al
- vectorpush 15y agoThe difference is in the effort required to moderate the content. An /r/trees worst case scenario is two people meeting up to perform an illegal activity at a later point. An /r/jailbait worst case scenario is illegal material being indexed by the site. Additionally, /r/trees isn't generating hundreds of flagged threads for review by the admins (who are then forced to spend man hours browsing pictures of under-aged girls).
- shareme 15y agoBut what is illegal content? Is it Adolph's Mein Komp? Is it Mohammad's Koran? Is it some words form a Journalist praying to some god other than Allah? Please enlighten everyone on what illegal content is.. US Law is based on possession..
- wavephorm 15y agoScumbag Reddit Freaks out about anti-childporn laws Bans pics of 18+ teenagers in bathing suits
- kmfrk 15y agoUpdate: alienth from reddit explains why and how they went about forming the new policy: As the post said, we follow NCMEC reporting procedures. However, addressing this type of content was taking up more and more of our limited time. Also, none of us were particularly keen on analyzing this content and trying to determine what was and was not illegal. Whenever flair-ups like the preteen mess occur, it adds a tonne of stress upon us. We've been pouring over these decisions all weekend. It became clear that unless we addressed this content with a new rule, we were going to continue to drown in the minutia of what is child pornography, and what is not. http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/pmk22/admins_today_we_are_adding_another_rule_no/c3qk6s9?context=1 http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/pmk22/admins...
- samstave 15y agoI am one who has pushed for removal of specific /r/ for some time. Specifically, /r/picsofdeadkids as well as most recently stating we should both delete /r/preteen_girls as well as the community to have ability to vote to close/delete /r/. In the past, when I was against /r/picsofdeadkids - my comments were voted down with arguments of "I may not agree with what you say, but ill defend your right to say it" I know it is a slippery slope, censorship, but I don't feel that standards == censorship. These people would be free to start whatever site/forum they like - but to argue that the platform that reddit provides should be wholly open to ANYTHING without standards is just plain stupid. I am very pleased with such a direction. Again, if you're the sick POS that needs extremely fringe content - then go host it yourself. Don't play victim that a public forum is actually telling you there is something WRONG with your interests - maybe its a freaking SIGN that people are offended by what you think normal.
- kevinh 15y agoMany of the comments on the post are disgusting. People being downvoted for supporting the removal of subreddits such as r/beatingwomen and r/beatingtrannies under the guise of supporting free speech (which isn't really a viable point on a website).
- samstave 15y agoExactly. While we have RES - we really need a meta-reddit at this point that will only show quality content. I think of HN's post rules as == to /r/AskScience where they have strict standards. I am a mod on a rather popular /r/ and while I am liberal in what I allow in that /r/ -- I apply standards though I am very lucky thus far that it is not abused.
- TillE 15y agoI think there's serious potential for a business to build a general-purpose Reddit-like community that applies high standards across the board. And then sells targeted advertising to that desirable audience. Hands-on moderation is a must, but I also think there's plenty of interesting possibilities for self-moderation that go beyond simple, equally weighted up/down votes that only serve to encourage low effort content and the regurgitation of memes.
- Jun8 15y agoBefore you start heaping it on Reddit for "child porn", think about the prevalent sexualization of girls in the US society. I just saw the movie "Journey to Mysterious Island" with my son and the outfit that Vanessa Hudgens, who was playing a 16 year-old girl, had to endure during the whole movie was mind-boggling: Short-shorts and tank top strategically altered to tease with cleavage. There were many shots focusing on her thighs and breasts.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Gygash 15y agoEdit: The parent comment, which has since been deleted, read: >It's occurred to me that r/jailbait is significantly tamer than the video for Britney Spears's "Baby One More Time". Except that the actors in that video agreed to be recorded and broadcast, and were (presumably, I haven't got any citations) over the age of majority. The pictures in /r/jailbait are, overwhelmingly, of people under the age of consent, and are being viewed and distributed without the consent or knowledge of the people in them. While the content may be "tamer", those pictures are still being viewed for sexual gratification.
- Jun8 15y agoTrue. I wasn't defending the tasteless content that some subreddits had (and, in some cases, continuing to have) but was pointing out that the phenomenon is not constrained to redditors with "unnatural appetites", i.e. mainstream media, commonly exploit it, e.g. the Vanity Fair topless photoshoot of Miley Cyrus who was 15 at the time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus#Controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus#Controversies). The interesting part is that it's not always clear to me why this exploitation is done, i.e. why dress the girl in the Mystery Island movie so provocatively (target age is probably around 10) or why Vanity Fair, whose target is not teenage boys, had those photos taken, etc. The really worrying thought is that the sexual gratification explains only part of it, the rest is the worship of the youthful energy/sexuality of teenage girls by not only men and by everyone.
- mistercow 15y ago>Today we are adding another rule: No suggestive or sexual content featuring minors. It's good to see that smut like Romeo and Juliet is no longer welcome on reddit.
- tzs 15y agoThis is a little off topic, but speaking of child abuse, I was recently called to jury duty for a case of "first degree rape of a child under 12". This was not one of those edge cases where you've got a 12 year old with a boyfriend a few years older, just outside the legal age difference. No, this was a 40+ year old man having sex with a 6 year old girl. (My number was high enough in the jury pool that I didn't get anywhere near the jury box, but I found out later the defendant was easily convicted). Here's what is interesting about this: in the last year, 3 other people from my area at work (about 10 people) have also been called to jury duty--and ALL of them were child sex cases. Two were also "first degree rape of a child under 12", and one just recalled that it was child molestation. Two things astounded me about this. 1. That there were so many child rape and molestation cases. I had never though of this area as some kind of hotbed of child sex (Western Washington, across Puget Sound from Seattle), but it seems kind of high to have all 4 people called to jury duty in my office in the last year be called for this kind of case. 2. There was nothing in the news. The defendant in the case I was on had an unusual name. I googled for it, and the only things that show up about him are things like his entry in the county jail booking records: http://www.kitsapgov.com/sheriff/incustody/jailwebsecond.asp?charges=700067930 http://www.kitsapgov.com/sheriff/incustody/jailwebsecond.asp... and his upcoming court dates on the county court calendar. Not a single newspaper story of his arrest, or his conviction, or of his earlier trial that ended in a hung jury. If a 40+ year old man raping a 6 year old girl is not newsworthy, that leaves me wondering what other horrible crimes go on around me that do not make the news.
- bratao 15y agoIt is interesting that yesterday I was reading an article that relates increase of child attraction to Internet Phonograph. http://www.reuniting.info/wiring_sexual_tastes_to_hairless_genitals_oops http://www.reuniting.info/wiring_sexual_tastes_to_hairless_g... TLDR: The market standard of waxed in phonograph movies , confuses the evolutionary trigger that protect adults having desires for females that are not sexually mature.
- Scaevolus 15y agoThis comment was intensely confusing until I realized that "phonograph" meant "pornography".
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- scragg 15y agoI can relate to the decision Reddit made. Moderating the content on a forum is alot of work and it's frustrating. Eliminating the grey area is probably the safest move (on a legal stand point) although it will create many angry users that feel entitled. Expect mass bannings because users love to rebel then afterwards the inevitable "well you removed this but allow that" arguments.
- tommoor 15y agoI honestly cannot believe this was not already a policy at reddit.
- sequoia 15y agoI may have missed some of the context here, but it looks like SA was able to force a significant policy change at Reddit in less than a single day. I know there was a lot of lead up, but still, wow. They obviously take the "goons" quite seriously!