/r/AmITheAsshole

The r/AmITheAsshole subreddit banner

/r/AmITheAsshole or AITA is a sub on Reddit where users post about an interpersonal conflict that they have experienced and other users give a ruling on the situation in the form of an acronym: YTA (you're the asshole); NTA (not the asshole); ESH (everyone sucks here); and NAH (no a-holes here). /r/AmITheAsshole is not an advice subreddit. Its primary purpose is for arbitration.

AITA's structure encourages a group-sourced judgment on everyday moral dilemmas in the form of interpersonal conflicts. However, Reddit's "anonymous" user structure and subreddit architecture bring up ethical issues involving Privacy, Anonymity, and the platform's neutrality as a technological entity.

Background

The "about" sidebar, showing users active as well as total subscribers

/r/AmITheAsshole was created in June 2013, and as of March 2020, has grown to have more than 1.8 million subscribers. A post’s ruling is determined by the most upvoted comment on the post 18 hours after the posting. Posters are expected to stay active on their posts and answer questions up until the 18 hour time deadline, which take the form of a commenter posting INFO (not enough info).

People post on AITA for a variety of reasons. Some posters submit their conflict after it has occurred and others post about ongoing conflicts (usually starting posts with WIBTA, which is short for “Would I be the asshole if…”). Sometimes, posters return multiple times to update readers. This occurs through either through update comments on an original post or by linking a new post to the original. Conflicts discussed on the subreddit range from deep disputes to relatively lower stakes disagreements (think “AITA for telling my dad I hate my step siblings after they knocked over my dead mom’s urn?” versus “AITA for suggesting my 7yo name his new stuffed tiger "Tig Bitties"?”). Many posts have some sort of arguable moral ambiguity.

The AITA subreddit has specific rules about poster and commenter interaction. Posts should be upvoted if users believe that they belong or if “you think they make for interesting discussion,” but should not be downvoted if a user believes that the poster is an asshole. Commenters are required to give explanations alongside their rulings — simply giving a ruling without the reasoning is not allowed

Trolls

AITA has had issues with trolls submitting posts. Troll posts can take the form of inflammatory remarks, posts with noticeably manufactured conflicts, or simply posts that are intentionally broad and don’t contain interpersonal conflict. Most of the time, the subreddit's moderators depend on user-submitted reports in order to identify and remove troll posts and ban posters. Often, commenters will also call stories into question in the comments section.

In The Media

In May 2018, model Chrissy Teigen tweeted about AITA. There have been numerous articles chronicling the subreddit’s rise to popularity, including one from Wired about AITA as a guilty pleasure and one from Vice that surveyed AITA subscribers on their perceived morality.

Demographics

Vice's article on the subreddit also revealed that according to a survey conducted by the author, Amelia Tait, AITA's primary user base has the same demographics of the Reddit platform as a whole. Most notably, 68% of respondents resided in North America, over 80% were white, and 77% of subscribers who responded were between 18 to 34 years old . If the AITA were casually compared to the process of jury selection in a jury trial, there would be clear bias as to who makes up the AITA "jury." This homogenous population distribution undoubtedly influences the judgments on the subreddit, although it is difficult to determine how, exactly, the subreddit would be different if the user population was more diverse.

Ethical Issues

Anonymity

An update post from u/GirlFriendRestaurant, detailing their girlfriend's reaction after she found their post on the AITA subreddit.

One of AITA’s key components is that both posters and commenters have a certain degree of anonymity. When posting, it's assumed that the poster will receive a non-biased judgment from people who have no personal stake in the situation, just as commenters assume that posts come from people they don't know. This structure is in line with what Kathleen Wallace describes in Online Anonymity, where “computer-mediated communications” may foster a false sense of anonymity. This can have real-life consequences if a person described in an interpersonal conflict finds the post or if someone from OP’s real life recognizes the situation described. There have been several occasions in the past where update posts from the OP reveal that the conflicting party found the post on Reddit, realized it was about them, and is no longer on speaking terms with the OP. In these situations, the AITA subreddit is no longer just an external entity passing judgment on a conflict, but instead an involved entity that directly affects how the conflicting party reacts.

Privacy

Privacy and Anonymity go hand in hand. Philosopher Luciano Floridi's says that a right to privacy is "a right to personal immunity from unknown, undesired, or unintentional changes to one's own identity as an informational entity." In many situations, other key players in a poster's story do not agree to have their personal affairs on the internet for anyone to see and judge. These individuals then have their privacy compromised by unknown and undesired entities as a direct result of the AITA subreddit — there is a first level of compromise when the post is made, and then subsequent levels of compromise as more users read the post and begin to pass judgment.

Reddit and Moral Neutrality

AITA’s functionality centers around providing a judgment that is determined based on the highest voted comment on a post. However, if the interface is evaluated in accordance with Floridi’s embedded values approach, which suggests that software systems may promote certain moral values and norms, the Reddit platform itself is not morally neutral. Across Reddit’s platform, upvoting and downvoting is used to convey agreement/disagreement, enjoyment, and draw attention away from troll posters and posts that do not contribute to communities. Individual subreddits often have specific rules for what upvoting and downvoting symbolizes, but not everyone actually reads the rules before participating. This can mean that top comments, which usually determine rulings, are in part upvoted because a small group voted based on personal preference rather than an agreement with the ruling and explanation. Because the subreddit has over 8 million subscribers, the effects of improper up or downvoting can snowball quickly, potentially resulting in biased rulings that are based more on a comment's quality and humor rather than the judgment and logic behind a ruling.

AITA’s official subreddit rules (Top upvoted post as official ruling) foster the idea that there is only one right perspective to any given interpersonal conflict, which promotes a very one-dimensional set of morals. Often, conflicts discussed on the subreddit are incredibly nuanced, with layers of effects, stakes, and reasoning — ie. even if a commenter doesn't entirely agree with one party or the other, they can recognize what drives each party's perspective. Many posts have conflicting comments and rulings for this very reason. Differing levels of awareness between posters and commenters can further exacerbate the potential problems relating to this simplification. However, some might argue that this simplification is the entire goal of the subreddit — when one asks whether or not they are the asshole, they want a straightforward answer, not necessarily a thesis on the conflict.

See Also

A separate subreddit that may be of interest is r/ChangeMyView (CMV), which is a space for posters to “post an opinion you accept may be flawed, in an effort to understand other perspectives on the issue.“ Like AITA, CMV also has very specific sets of rules intended to foster discussion and learning, but unlike AITA, CMV’s main goal is for users to actively engage with one another.