A row has been breaking out over at the social news site Reddit in recent weeks over just how to respond to legal yet distasteful content. If you’re not familiar with the story, it started when a section of Reddit was created with the aim of sharing photos taken of women without their knowledge. The photos were not indecent in the sense that there was no nudity on display, yet the whole situation was undeniably seedy.
Thus an argument developed, with one side arguing that such things have no place on the site and should therefore be removed, whilst the other side suggested freedom of speech should be upheld, and so long as the content was not illegal then it should be up to users to effectively self-police what they see.
The official Reddit response has been somewhat ambiguous. They have removed the areas at the point of the discussion, called Jailbait and Creepshots respectively (no prizes for guessing the kind of content shared in each), but have made it clear that they stand for free speech and will not ban distasteful subreddits.
So how should you respond to posting distasteful content on your community?
For me it comes down to the kind of culture you want to create. The law provides an obvious baseline that should never be crossed, but for most communities your culture will be some way above that. It will determine the kind of things you want to be shared on your community and it’s tone of voice.
Flame wars for instance are not illegal, but they aren’t something that community managers will want to condone on their sites either. Ditto things like regularly going off topic. I mean think about it, and think about it right from the beginning, before you’ve even created your community.
If you’ve done things the right way then you’ll have defined a purpose for your community. This will be what you want your community to achieve. You’ll also then have defined a how for your community, which will focus on how you forsee this being done.
In Reddit’s case, their aim is to be the ‘frontpage of the Internet’, providing readers with breaking news as it happens around the web. That’s a noble aim, but it’s hard to see how posting lewd photos of women (of whatever age) is in keeping with that aim. So by all means Reddit should maintain their libertarian ideals around free speech, but they will do well to remember that their purpose is to surface news articles, not smut.
Exactly. Every community should have its limits, and posting that kind of rubbish should have no place anywhere online.
I remember at The Environment Site there were a few posters that were submitting some really disgusting stuff. I was very glad they and their content were swiftly removed. Free speech doesn't mean you have the right to post disgusting garbage.
It does. That doesn't make necessarily appropriate, but it does not forbid anyone from posting anything. Your logic is along the lines of "I defend free speech, but not for X", which indicates that you do not understand what free speech entails. Noam Chomsky defended the right of an author who wrote a book denying the (severity of) the holocaust. He did so not because he agreed with the book, but because he feels that the state should not have the right to determine historical truth (his words).
I'm all for free speech, but not when it means they start posting pictures of anal sex on a family friendly forum!
I like Reddit, I "discovered" it 2 years ago.
It's a very smart community of people,
and it's worth to spend some time in it, reading threads and comments.
Of course they are fascinated from nice girls coming from the popular subreddit NSFW or GW.
A thing I should say Reddit is a closed community.
You need to work hard and be active with new posts and comments, to become a popular member.
So many people who exhibit this type of behavior comment anonymously as cowards. I've been attacked on national sites before from folks not listing their name. Horridly rude comments that make people feel badly. I go back at them, but it still makes me upset.
I'm seeing more posts about how social media has become a bullying channel. Why should people be horrible to others? makes me really angry.
I quite agree Jayme. Communities should aspire to higher standards than merely upholding the law.
I don't want to be rude but you don't seem to understand a basic and major principle of Reddit, namely, that anyone can create their own community. Reddit isn't just trying to be "the frontpage of the internet", it has always been about allowing communities to develop and moderate themselves in way they deem appropriate (withing certain boundaries, of course, but those are most legal in nature).
I highly doubt that you have actually done much research on Reddit, but you seem all to eager to voice your opinion about what they are currently and how they should be. I think you're wrong on both of those.
I'm not sure if you manually approve comments but if you do, I do hope that you will accepting of a negative reaction. I'm willing to debate this issue with you in case you want to defend your article.
Hi Anon, thanks for the comment. They are approved for first timers, mainly to stop spam. I don't tend to censor critical comments though.
Re the Reddit situation. The commentary here is aimed at community managers of all shapes and sizes. I think all communities should have a purpose, and as such should ensure that content posted on the community is focused around that purpose.
So for instance a community for customer support gains very little from allowing discussion of the presidential election.
For me it's the same from Reddit. They must have a purpose for being here on the web, and they're main publicised purpose is to be that frontpage of the Internet. As such it's unlikely that photos of unsuspecting women is in keeping with that purpose, and thus even if it was neither illegal or unpopular with the community, I think it was right that they removed it.
That's the rationale behind my thinking anyway.