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From the comments: Q: In Ellen Pao's op-ed in the Washington Post today, she said "But to attract more mainstream audiences and bring in the big-budget adverti

From the comments: Q: In Ellen Pao's op-ed in the Washington Post today, she said "But to attract more mainstream audiences and bring in the big-budget advertisers, you must hide or remove the ugly." How much of the push toward removing "ugly" elements of Reddit comes from the motivation to monetize Reddit? A: Zero. _____________________ His reply currently has -1022 points. The censorship of Reddit for advertisement purposes has been a topic of discussion in a select few subreddits for quite awhile. It looks like the rest of reddit is finally realizing what is going on. I don't have anything against it, people have to make money and with free services like reddit, the users are the product that is sold to advertisers. What I don't understand is, why not just admit it? From my ~20 years of internet usage, I have learned the one constant is you never lie to the internet. Also, from the list of prohibited content: >Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people This sounds like a rule that some teenager made up for guild forums. How in the world does Huffman think using something so vague as an actual punishable rule will turn out well? Anyway, good luck to Huffman he is going to need it. I feel like voat.co is going to see a very huge increase in numbers during the next few months.

deleted 11y ago
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fweespeech 11y ago
Its pretty clear that they tested out the "remove" option, pushed Ellen Pao out when it got ugly, and are switching to the "Hide" option. Yishan [ "Not our problem" ] -> Pao [ "Remove" ] -> Spez [ "Hide"] That seems to the be evolution at the moment, and honestly, I think "Hide" is the right answer. People have a right to avoid content that offends them. Voat's problem [honestly] is as drama-filled as this transition has been...Voat really isn't offering anything other than "Reddit with more transparency". Assuming Spez doesn't screw this up, I'm not seeing how Voat.co will benefit. As for vagueness, I'm not surprised...its like the legal definition of Obscenity or Pornography, its a community-tested definition based on social norms. You can't really quantify it the way you can numbers on a spreadsheet or "Marijuana is illegal". As long as Spez is transparent, communicates effectively, and doesn't come across as arbitrary I think it'll work out fine.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  Just for some more context on that, Yishan's comment from yesterday is insightful and very entertaining to be honest: https://pay.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/content_policy_update_ama_thursday_july_16th_1pm/ct3n7hc?context=3 https://pay.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/conte...
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Yishan is pretty clearly biased, but yeah, he is definitely entertaining. I'm pretty sure Pao's "remove" was going to be a tiny fraction of what will end up hidden and she was closer to Yishan's "Do whatever" position than Huffman will be.
- angersock 11y ago
  People have a right to avoid content that offends them. Do they though? EDIT: Meant that seriously. Do we have a right to avoid all of the people complaining about discrimination in tech, for example?
  - malnourish 11y ago
    I agree, if someone is walking down the street and there's a street preacher who offends them, they have the right to turn the corner, turn around, or tell them off. They don't have the right to stuff the person (metaphorically) in a box out of sight. The hazy term is "right". Perhaps it means "People [on reddit] have a right to avoid content that offends them."
    - npizzolato 11y ago
      That's a really good way of putting it. You have the right to walk away or to yell back, but you don't have the right to make them stop talking. That's a really important distinction.
    - interpol_p 11y ago
      There is a case where a person does not have the option to avoid the speech they find offensive. I think that happens a lot on the Internet. For example, on Twitter, users are harassed, but short of leaving the service they don't have an easy way to avoid their mentions being cluttered by hate speech. It devalues the service for them and puts hate speech directly in their face. Blocking tools are improving, but people who want to harass others claim such tools are against free speech. From the sounds of it many subreddits "branched out" onto personal Facebook pages and other places to attack users — to put offensive speech in front of the people who would find it offensive. It complicates the ideal scenario you put forward because while these are public places where anyone can post, there is a malicious intent behind much of the speech. To put that offensive content in front of a person's friends and family in a way that they can't avoid, or have to work to avoid, is very different from reciting that speech in your own private area of the Internet. Yet defence of one is often blurred with defence of the other. How do you stop such hate groups from "branching out" without shutting down the source and being accused of stifling free speech? It's a nice ideal to say that one person is free to speak while another is free not to listen, but one is able to make a physical (or virtual) location distinctly uncomfortable and scary for another person. This sort of harassment is often defended under the guise of "free speech."
oldmanjay 11y ago
Reddit is in a difficult position, seemingly being mainly used by people that consider making money to be "selling out." I'm sure they'd prefer a more mature community, but when you embrace youth culture as a way of life you get what you get, and need to lie accordingly.
- guelo 11y ago
  The distaste for advertising is as old as reddit itself. Reddit has always looked for creative ways to advertise and creative alternatives. You can't blame that only on the community.
  - tertius 11y ago
    "The distaste for advertising is as old as reddit itself." Rather: The distaste for advertising is as old as the WWW itself.
    - ionised 11y ago
      I had a severe distaste for adverts on TV before the WWW really took off so it's even older I would say.
mindslight 11y ago
> What I don't understand is, why not just admit it [users are the product that is sold to advertisers]. Because reddit's popularity is built on the illusion of being the complete opposite! One of the first large influxes of users came from Digg, who had their own revolt over censoring a 16 byte number. Centralized sites have been given a pass for way too long. Let us hope the pendulum swings back the other way hard. Restricting communication, no matter how repulsive one finds the content, does not make the "world ... a better place".
- tptacek 11y ago
  That's a worldview that does not accept any circumstance in which speech is also an action. But posting non-consensual pornography is more than speech; it's also a deliberate and disastrous violation of someone else's privacy.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    Yes. Content-opaque communications mediums are a binary proposition. If we do have some, then the harmful "actions" simply move to the freer networks. If they have all been eradicated, then unpopular speech is easily censored (insert a personal example you feel should be protected, yet isn't worldwide). I would choose freedom of speech rather than destroy it to prevent some uncomfort. Society will adapt to not seeing such publishing as harmful.
    - dragontamer 11y ago
      Then go back to Usenet. Its still open. EDIT: Downvotes. Yall feeling a bit salty? Look, unmoderated "free" discussions exist on the internet in many places. I'm an internet "veteran", I've seen over the years the rise and fall of moderated and unmoderated social networks starting back at Usenet. Between there and now, there have been an "Exodus" from GameFAQs (LUEsers), Digg, Something Awful, Slashdot and more as each of these communities grew. The "free speech" guys always find another place to take their discussions, and the previous communities usually begin to shrink to some degree. Reddit is simply going through the _same_ stages. The free speech argument comes up, toxic is spewed forth to test exactly how far the mods / owners are willing to let things go... some back and forth happens and eventually, the "free speech" guys are going to form a new community elsewhere and Reddit's role on the internet will solidify. Its how it happens. Its how it _always_ happens.
amyjess 11y ago
> How in the world does Huffman think using something so vague as an actual punishable rule will turn out well? He's made it clear in the thread that he's still working on the wording and the rules aren't going live until he has much more precise wording than this. https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_talk_content_ama/ct5red6 https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_t...
potatolicious 11y ago
> "How in the world does Huffman think using something so vague as an actual punishable rule will turn out well?" Because it is the only tenable position. As much as we want it to exist, there is not a set of hard, bright-line rules possible for governing literally all possible topics of discussion in all contexts in all communities. The expectation that we can make simple, universal rules and have it succeed is part of the problem. Governance is unavoidably complex and resistant to simplistic applications of ideology, in many places its rules must necessarily be vague because its reach is vast and the rule's interactions with the community is hard to predict. Room must be preserved for in-context judgment. > "I feel like voat.co is going to see a very huge increase in numbers during the next few months." Excellent. I can't wait, so long as voat's traffic increase is coupled with a commensurate decrease in reddit traffic from the same people ;)
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  >I can't wait, so long as voat's traffic increase is coupled with a commensurate decrease in reddit traffic from the same people Really? Reddit seems to have even more racists and sexists since they all supposedly "left" for voat. But hey.. if that's what you like.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  >> "How in the world does Huffman think using something so vague as an actual punishable rule will turn out well?" > Because it is the only tenable position. Is it not tenable to avoid taking a specific position as a website individually, and to simply comply with the laws of the broader society? NearlyFreeSpeech.net seems to have been taking this stance successfully for years, for example. It would not allow them to dodge criticism, since plenty of people wish to manipulate Reddit and other Internet sites into implementing or achieving whatever social objective they have in mind, but it seems as though it ought to be tenable while simplifying the issue and putting it to rest.
  - zamalek 11y ago
    > to simply comply with the laws of the broader society That's about as clear cut as it's going to get, agreed. As originally suggested there are really no other reasons Reddit has this rule other than "making scary/ugly things go away." Regardless of whether it's for advertising or personal closed mindedness on behalf of the admins/staff.
dreamfactory2 11y ago
> How in the world does Huffman think using something so vague as an actual punishable rule will turn out well? This is precisely why every major publisher uses human curation rather than purely algorithmic.
deleted 11y ago
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byg80 11y ago
Go to Voat if you want the free speech (also some of the bad hate that comes with it) in a nice little familiar package (it's almost identical to reddit.) Go to Snapzu if you want more than a clone that has some rules (no hate) and a solid community, but most importantly tries to innovate and not just copy reddit. Go to Hubski if you want a civil place to discuss things without all the flashy pictures and what not.
8ig8 11y ago
As usual, The Onion has this covered (2012): https://youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o https://youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o "The Power Of Selling Out: Your Customers As Political Capital - Onion Talks"
mbesto 11y ago
> From my ~20 years of internet usage, I have learned the one constant is you never lie to the internet. I believe Gabe Newell said it best "You can't lie on reddit".
- ars 11y ago
  That is such a silly thing to say. Of course you can. It's very easy. People get so excited when they catch a liar and think "See you can't lie", not realizing just how many lies pass right by without being caught.
  - mbesto 11y ago
    Have you ever seen the extent to which Redditors go to in order to uncover people's lies? I'd be happy to provide examples. (Steve's AMA is chalk full of them)
woah 11y ago
Is it really that hard to define harassment? The law seems to do alright.
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  Not really. The law just pretends it's easy. Enforcing harassment laws has always been problematic both online and offline.
the_watcher 11y ago
I guess I still just disagree with Pao's position. The internet itself is a lesson in this. The internet has innumerable "ugly" sites (which are akin to subs for reddit). Do advertisers not buy web ads? No, they just buy ads on the sites they want to buy them on. Maybe Reddit was struggling to monetize at the rate they wanted. I'm sure investor pressure is high. But Reddit had a shot at being something like the internet on top of the internet, and choosing this path kills that. Doesn't mean it's the wrong decision, but the response I'd have liked would have been something like "we're working hard to ensure these less savory parts of reddit are only encountered by those looking for them and are very much aware of the content." NOTE: The illegal stuff obviously falls outside this, as the internet (and a corporation) clearly have to operate within the relevant laws.
- jsmeaton 11y ago
  > "we're working hard to ensure these less savory parts of reddit are only encountered by those looking for them and are very much aware of the content." That's exactly what they're doing, is it not? They're providing opt in controls for the less savoury content: > Similar to NSFW, another type of content that is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it, is the content that violates a common sense of decency. This classification will require a login, must be opted into, will not appear in search results or public listings, and will generate no revenue for Reddit. And the few subreddits that incite abuse are getting shuttered. I feel that's more than reasonable.
pbreit 11y ago
I think Reddit has clearly earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to advertising vs content. It has been operating for 10 years now with pretty much no sign of bowing to advertisers.
pbreit 11y ago
> What I don't understand is, why not just admit it? Did you ever think that maybe it's true? I could easily see a motive of pushing offensive content behind opt-ins, vs banning, without thinking so much about advertisers. If he had said 5% or 20% would you have jumped all over him about being beholden to advertisers?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

fweespeech 11y ago

Its pretty clear that they tested out the "remove" option, pushed Ellen Pao out when it got ugly, and are switching to the "Hide" option. Yishan [ "Not our problem" ] -> Pao [ "Remove" ] -> Spez [ "Hide"] That seems to the be evolution at the moment, and honestly, I think "Hide" is the right answer. People have a right to avoid content that offends them. Voat's problem [honestly] is as drama-filled as this transition has been...Voat really isn't offering anything other than "Reddit with more transparency". Assuming Spez doesn't screw this up, I'm not seeing how Voat.co will benefit. As for vagueness, I'm not surprised...its like the legal definition of Obscenity or Pornography, its a community-tested definition based on social norms. You can't really quantify it the way you can numbers on a spreadsheet or "Marijuana is illegal". As long as Spez is transparent, communicates effectively, and doesn't come across as arbitrary I think it'll work out fine.

scrollaway 11y ago
Just for some more context on that, Yishan's comment from yesterday is insightful and very entertaining to be honest: https://pay.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/content_policy_update_ama_thursday_july_16th_1pm/ct3n7hc?context=3 https://pay.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/conte...
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Yishan is pretty clearly biased, but yeah, he is definitely entertaining. I'm pretty sure Pao's "remove" was going to be a tiny fraction of what will end up hidden and she was closer to Yishan's "Do whatever" position than Huffman will be.
angersock 11y ago
People have a right to avoid content that offends them. Do they though? EDIT: Meant that seriously. Do we have a right to avoid all of the people complaining about discrimination in tech, for example?
- malnourish 11y ago
  I agree, if someone is walking down the street and there's a street preacher who offends them, they have the right to turn the corner, turn around, or tell them off. They don't have the right to stuff the person (metaphorically) in a box out of sight. The hazy term is "right". Perhaps it means "People [on reddit] have a right to avoid content that offends them."
  - npizzolato 11y ago
    That's a really good way of putting it. You have the right to walk away or to yell back, but you don't have the right to make them stop talking. That's a really important distinction.
  - interpol_p 11y ago
    There is a case where a person does not have the option to avoid the speech they find offensive. I think that happens a lot on the Internet. For example, on Twitter, users are harassed, but short of leaving the service they don't have an easy way to avoid their mentions being cluttered by hate speech. It devalues the service for them and puts hate speech directly in their face. Blocking tools are improving, but people who want to harass others claim such tools are against free speech. From the sounds of it many subreddits "branched out" onto personal Facebook pages and other places to attack users — to put offensive speech in front of the people who would find it offensive. It complicates the ideal scenario you put forward because while these are public places where anyone can post, there is a malicious intent behind much of the speech. To put that offensive content in front of a person's friends and family in a way that they can't avoid, or have to work to avoid, is very different from reciting that speech in your own private area of the Internet. Yet defence of one is often blurred with defence of the other. How do you stop such hate groups from "branching out" without shutting down the source and being accused of stifling free speech? It's a nice ideal to say that one person is free to speak while another is free not to listen, but one is able to make a physical (or virtual) location distinctly uncomfortable and scary for another person. This sort of harassment is often defended under the guise of "free speech."

oldmanjay 11y ago

Reddit is in a difficult position, seemingly being mainly used by people that consider making money to be "selling out." I'm sure they'd prefer a more mature community, but when you embrace youth culture as a way of life you get what you get, and need to lie accordingly.

guelo 11y ago
The distaste for advertising is as old as reddit itself. Reddit has always looked for creative ways to advertise and creative alternatives. You can't blame that only on the community.
- tertius 11y ago
  "The distaste for advertising is as old as reddit itself." Rather: The distaste for advertising is as old as the WWW itself.
  - ionised 11y ago
    I had a severe distaste for adverts on TV before the WWW really took off so it's even older I would say.

mindslight 11y ago

> What I don't understand is, why not just admit it [users are the product that is sold to advertisers]. Because reddit's popularity is built on the illusion of being the complete opposite! One of the first large influxes of users came from Digg, who had their own revolt over censoring a 16 byte number. Centralized sites have been given a pass for way too long. Let us hope the pendulum swings back the other way hard. Restricting communication, no matter how repulsive one finds the content, does not make the "world ... a better place".

tptacek 11y ago
That's a worldview that does not accept any circumstance in which speech is also an action. But posting non-consensual pornography is more than speech; it's also a deliberate and disastrous violation of someone else's privacy.
- mindslight 11y ago
  Yes. Content-opaque communications mediums are a binary proposition. If we do have some, then the harmful "actions" simply move to the freer networks. If they have all been eradicated, then unpopular speech is easily censored (insert a personal example you feel should be protected, yet isn't worldwide). I would choose freedom of speech rather than destroy it to prevent some uncomfort. Society will adapt to not seeing such publishing as harmful.
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    Then go back to Usenet. Its still open. EDIT: Downvotes. Yall feeling a bit salty? Look, unmoderated "free" discussions exist on the internet in many places. I'm an internet "veteran", I've seen over the years the rise and fall of moderated and unmoderated social networks starting back at Usenet. Between there and now, there have been an "Exodus" from GameFAQs (LUEsers), Digg, Something Awful, Slashdot and more as each of these communities grew. The "free speech" guys always find another place to take their discussions, and the previous communities usually begin to shrink to some degree. Reddit is simply going through the _same_ stages. The free speech argument comes up, toxic is spewed forth to test exactly how far the mods / owners are willing to let things go... some back and forth happens and eventually, the "free speech" guys are going to form a new community elsewhere and Reddit's role on the internet will solidify. Its how it happens. Its how it _always_ happens.

amyjess 11y ago

> How in the world does Huffman think using something so vague as an actual punishable rule will turn out well? He's made it clear in the thread that he's still working on the wording and the rules aren't going live until he has much more precise wording than this. https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_talk_content_ama/ct5red6 https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_t...

potatolicious 11y ago

> "How in the world does Huffman think using something so vague as an actual punishable rule will turn out well?" Because it is the only tenable position. As much as we want it to exist, there is not a set of hard, bright-line rules possible for governing literally all possible topics of discussion in all contexts in all communities. The expectation that we can make simple, universal rules and have it succeed is part of the problem. Governance is unavoidably complex and resistant to simplistic applications of ideology, in many places its rules must necessarily be vague because its reach is vast and the rule's interactions with the community is hard to predict. Room must be preserved for in-context judgment. > "I feel like voat.co is going to see a very huge increase in numbers during the next few months." Excellent. I can't wait, so long as voat's traffic increase is coupled with a commensurate decrease in reddit traffic from the same people ;)

zxcvcxz 11y ago
>I can't wait, so long as voat's traffic increase is coupled with a commensurate decrease in reddit traffic from the same people Really? Reddit seems to have even more racists and sexists since they all supposedly "left" for voat. But hey.. if that's what you like.
Pyxl101 11y ago
>> "How in the world does Huffman think using something so vague as an actual punishable rule will turn out well?" > Because it is the only tenable position. Is it not tenable to avoid taking a specific position as a website individually, and to simply comply with the laws of the broader society? NearlyFreeSpeech.net seems to have been taking this stance successfully for years, for example. It would not allow them to dodge criticism, since plenty of people wish to manipulate Reddit and other Internet sites into implementing or achieving whatever social objective they have in mind, but it seems as though it ought to be tenable while simplifying the issue and putting it to rest.
- zamalek 11y ago
  > to simply comply with the laws of the broader society That's about as clear cut as it's going to get, agreed. As originally suggested there are really no other reasons Reddit has this rule other than "making scary/ugly things go away." Regardless of whether it's for advertising or personal closed mindedness on behalf of the admins/staff.

dreamfactory2 11y ago

> How in the world does Huffman think using something so vague as an actual punishable rule will turn out well? This is precisely why every major publisher uses human curation rather than purely algorithmic.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

byg80 11y ago

Go to Voat if you want the free speech (also some of the bad hate that comes with it) in a nice little familiar package (it's almost identical to reddit.) Go to Snapzu if you want more than a clone that has some rules (no hate) and a solid community, but most importantly tries to innovate and not just copy reddit. Go to Hubski if you want a civil place to discuss things without all the flashy pictures and what not.

8ig8 11y ago

As usual, The Onion has this covered (2012): https://youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o https://youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o "The Power Of Selling Out: Your Customers As Political Capital - Onion Talks"

mbesto 11y ago

> From my ~20 years of internet usage, I have learned the one constant is you never lie to the internet. I believe Gabe Newell said it best "You can't lie on reddit".

ars 11y ago
That is such a silly thing to say. Of course you can. It's very easy. People get so excited when they catch a liar and think "See you can't lie", not realizing just how many lies pass right by without being caught.
- mbesto 11y ago
  Have you ever seen the extent to which Redditors go to in order to uncover people's lies? I'd be happy to provide examples. (Steve's AMA is chalk full of them)

woah 11y ago

Is it really that hard to define harassment? The law seems to do alright.

saint_fiasco 11y ago
Not really. The law just pretends it's easy. Enforcing harassment laws has always been problematic both online and offline.

the_watcher 11y ago

I guess I still just disagree with Pao's position. The internet itself is a lesson in this. The internet has innumerable "ugly" sites (which are akin to subs for reddit). Do advertisers not buy web ads? No, they just buy ads on the sites they want to buy them on. Maybe Reddit was struggling to monetize at the rate they wanted. I'm sure investor pressure is high. But Reddit had a shot at being something like the internet on top of the internet, and choosing this path kills that. Doesn't mean it's the wrong decision, but the response I'd have liked would have been something like "we're working hard to ensure these less savory parts of reddit are only encountered by those looking for them and are very much aware of the content." NOTE: The illegal stuff obviously falls outside this, as the internet (and a corporation) clearly have to operate within the relevant laws.

jsmeaton 11y ago
> "we're working hard to ensure these less savory parts of reddit are only encountered by those looking for them and are very much aware of the content." That's exactly what they're doing, is it not? They're providing opt in controls for the less savoury content: > Similar to NSFW, another type of content that is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it, is the content that violates a common sense of decency. This classification will require a login, must be opted into, will not appear in search results or public listings, and will generate no revenue for Reddit. And the few subreddits that incite abuse are getting shuttered. I feel that's more than reasonable.

pbreit 11y ago

I think Reddit has clearly earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to advertising vs content. It has been operating for 10 years now with pretty much no sign of bowing to advertisers.

pbreit 11y ago

> What I don't understand is, why not just admit it? Did you ever think that maybe it's true? I could easily see a motive of pushing offensive content behind opt-ins, vs banning, without thinking so much about advertisers. If he had said 5% or 20% would you have jumped all over him about being beholden to advertisers?