Maybe it s time to stop talking about Reddit. How about just for the weekend? That might require making the whole place go dark and reset all 9,000 forums?
Whoever comes back on Monday and obeys a new set of clear rules on behavior and content gets to stay.
It s highly unlikely anyone will take me up on such a draconian measure. But I m Reddited-out and dispirited about the current leadership s ability to navigate its way.
Ellen Pao, now the former interim CEO of Reddit, took to the Washington Post this week to say the trolls had won on the Internet after her own battle on Reddit. She ended on an upbeat note about the power of humanity, but it was clear that the personal attacks had taken their toll.
Meanwhile, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong took to Reddit, as Heather Somerville wrote, to complain about Alexis Ohanian, one of Reddit s co-founders, about his treatment of Pao during its latest crisis.
Just in time, Reddit s leadership announced it had a new policy about content on the site. Steve Huffman, a Reddit co-founder and its new CEO took to Reddit of course. KQED-FM said that the online audience for his live Ask Me Anything forum peaked at 45,000 at one point. It generated 21,000 comments.
Reddit s new get-tough policy sounds similar to its existing policy, prohibiting spam, harassment, bullying and abuse.
And it also will allow some content that violates a common sense of decency, Huffman said. To get to this content will require a log in. That content will not show up in search results, nor will it generate revenue for Reddit. Some of it will be labeled, as some other Reddit forums are, NSFW, or Not Safe For Work.
A forum devoted to content about raping women will be banned, he said. Hooray. But not one devoted to racist content. The content there is offensive to many, Huffman said, but does not violate our current rules for banning.
Uh oh. Is this how Reddit s leadership plans to get through its current crisis, which, as I wrote, is because the Reddit community is really in charge?
Banning is like capital punishment, and we don t want to do it except in the clearest of cases, he wrote.
Buzzfeed s Charlie Warzel knocked Huffman s new policy for not being new or clear:
Reddit is an important online home for millions that is crying out for clear-cut laws and practical solutions by which to safely govern its community. Today, it received nothing of the sort.
T.C. Sottek at The Verge argued the problem isn t Reddit but a lack of leadership. Reddit isn t a country and their content policy isn t legislation, Sottek writes, adding, community can t be fixed by technology.
In an interview with the New York Times, Huffman said he wants Reddit to grow at a faster clip and be the go-to place for an open and authentic conversation on the Internet.
Whether the world can be proud of Reddit, as he hopes, will require Reddit leadership to take a firmer control of the service – and make the easy, subjective decisions to ban forums that are offensive. But to do that, Huffman and Ohanian have to be willing to endure the howls of protests.
Above: Reddit s logo.
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