Content moderation in Reddit

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Content moderation in Reddit is the process of filtering and removing posts or comments that do not confine to the rules of Reddit. Nearly all content moderation is done by volunteer moderators who enforce their subreddit’s rules in addition to the site-wide [1] rules. Reddit moderators have almost complete control over their subreddits. However, there have been several cases in which the Reddit administrators have stepped to moderate, remove moderators, or even ban entire subreddits. Ethical issues include freedom of speech, bots, bias of algorithms and moderators, effects on volunteer moderators, lack of moderations by moderators, lack of moderation by administrators, and moderation abuse.


Current Logo of Reddit

Overview

Reddit uses a highly decentralized model of moderation. Subreddit moderations, in general, have the freedom to enforce their own subreddit rules as they see fit, with administrators only becoming involved in extreme circumstances.

  • Auto-Moderator is a bot built into Reddit for moderators to use to enforce rules that are tedious or repetitive for moderators themselves to do as well as some recurring community discussion posts. It has the ability to flag and detect rule-breaking or inappropriate content on a subreddit. [2]
  • User Reports are the action of a user of Reddit who uses the report feature of Reddit to bring possible rule-breaking comments or content to the attention of moderators to review and take action if necessary. These reports are anonymous. [3]
  • Moderator Action is a moderator or moderation team taking action to remove content considered rule-breaking for their subreddit and issue suspensions or bans if necessary.
  • Administrator Action is the Reddit Administrators taking action either because they have deemed the moderators to have not properly moderated their subreddit or if an entire subreddit is deemed to be breaking the site-wide content-policy.
  • Lack of Moderation is where either the moderators or administrators fail to properly moderate their subreddits, leading to blatant rule violations and dangerous and life-threating consequences.

History

Reddit proclaims itself as the "front page of the internet".

2005 to 2010

June 2005: Reddit is created.

December 2005: Comments

March 2008: Subreddit creation left to the Users.

2011 to 2015

May 2011: Posting any personal information is banned.

April-May 2013: Boston Marathon bombing witchhunt.

October 2013: r/politics bans several websites.

September 2014: Reddit affirms freedom of speech in the shadow of "The Fappening".

June 2015: CEO Ellen Pao criticism begins.

June 2015: r/FatPeopleHate is banned

August 2015: Many controversial subreddits are banned under a new policy of new CEO Steve Huffman

2016 to Present

September 2016: Steve Huffman edits comments on r/The_Donald

November 2016: r/PizzaGate is banned.

February 2017: r/altright is banned

February 2019: Chinese tech giant Tencent invests in Reddit, sparking concern over its influence on-site moderation.

June 2019: r/The_Donald is quarantined.

February 2020: Reddit adminstrators remove several mods from r/The_Donald

Ethical Issues

The ethical issues involving Content moderation in Reddit, in general, revolve around the actions or lack thereof by moderations. Bots are used to help with moderation, but the majority of moderation is subjective and thus full of ethical issues.

Freedom of Speech

The history of this topic on Reddit has a long history. In 2011, Reddit general manager Erik Martin stated, "We're a free speech site with very few exceptions (mostly personal info) and having to stomach occasional troll reddit like picsofdeadkids or morally questionable reddits like jailbait are part of the price of free speech on a site like this." [4]

Bias

  • Algorithms

Algorithms can be incorrectly programmed, intentionally or not, and cause issues that may not be apparent to moderations until either they or their communities notice an issue with them.

  • Moderators

Moderators are said to be impartial in all matters, but their actions as moderators can be heavily influenced by their personal biasses often unknowingly.

Effects on Volunteer Moderators

The psychological effects of reviewing or reading rule-breaking cannot be understated. Moreover, unlike most websites, users know who banned them and Reddit. This allows banned users to harass moderations over their actions and make new accounts to keep up the harassment.

Lack of Moderation by Moderators

Some subreddits have moderators using a hands-off approach when it comes to controlling their subreddits. Many subreddits have been quarantined in part because of this but also because moderators have failed to uphold site-wide rules.

Lack of moderation by Adminstrators

Many of the more controversial subreddits have only been removed after pressure from the media, which raises the question of whether should they have been banned earlier instead of after bad press.

Moderation Abuse

With the decentralized model of subreddits, abusive moderators continue to remain in their positions despite complaints from users to the administrators or posted about the said moderator. Reddit rarely acts to remove troublesome moderators.

See Also

References

  1. [1]
  2. [2]
  3. [3]