Reddit Has A New List Of Banned Content

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In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) discussion on the site, Reddit's new CEO, Steve Huffman, announced some changes to the policies governing what is and isn't acceptable to post on the website. He started off by talking about how in the early days, there was no clearly defined policy about what is acceptable, and it was left solely to his discretion whether to ban someone or not. As the site grew this became impossible, so the company adopted a model of "Don't ask / Don't tell," essentially leaving anyone to post anything at all.

Earlier this year the company made its first attempts at censoring toxic behavior in the community by banning non-consensual pornography. This change has been widely accepted within Reddit's community, and the company credits the rule's success and acceptance with the fact that the behavior was clearly defined as unacceptable.

Soon, Reddit will be extending the list of content deemed inappropriate and unacceptable. Going forward. the company will not tolerate the following:

Spam posts. Posts that are illegal for Reddit to host, such as copyrighted materials. (Discussing illegal activities is not considered banned material.)Releasing anyone's private information such as addresses or personal contact information. There will be no tolerance for anyone who posts anything calling for violence or harm. Harassment, bullying or abuse of any individual or group is not acceptable. Anything depicting sexually suggestive content featuring minors.

Other topics are allowed, but only if the user opts in. Any content that would be considered adult in nature, such as pornography or things that would be generally considered indecent, must be labeled NSFW (not safe for work). Content with such a label will not show up in search results, nor will it appear on the main page of the website. This has technically been in place since the early days of Reddit, but it is now being made into a formal policy.

The changes have not taken effect yet. The company is still deciding the fine details of how certain terms will be defined, and what is considered to be causing harm, but this announcement is largely to set expectations as to what the official rules will be.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • okcnaline
    You bring down one enemy, and they find someone even worse to replace him. - General Shepard, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
    Reply
  • clonazepam
    My gripe is reading about reddit content somewhere else, or hearing about it on youtube, only to find out that mods deleted all of it to quell some "flame war". Just gone. Dead links, no more reference to something that was going on within a community.

    I agree with the official policies being laid out, I just hope mods don't go overboard and delete content because of their own bias or to "save a buddy".

    Witcher reddit is the best I have to say though! ;)
    Reply
  • Fatal_Taco
    Seems reasonable enough for me.
    Reply
  • g00ey
    Well, I guess that will be the end of Reddit. This new 'policy' sure looks decent, the problem however is that what will be judged as offensive and harassing or whatever is rather arbitrary and will be removed accordingly. That's why we now see posts and threads being mysteriously removed from that website. Anything that goes against their political agenda will be labeled as 'offensive' and removed immediately.
    Reply
  • jungleboogiemonster
    Well, I guess that will be the end of Reddit. This new 'policy' sure looks decent, the problem however is that what will be judged as offensive and harassing or whatever is rather arbitrary and will be removed accordingly. That's why we now see posts and threads being mysteriously removed from that website. Anything that goes against their political agenda will be labeled as 'offensive' and removed immediately.

    And to add to that, there are so many different political agendas among all of those who can delete that it's going to be very hard to post anything other than pictures of cats. I'm a mod of a smaller sub and I very seldom need to delete anything other than blatant spam. Why? Because the users do a very good job of policing the site themselves. Most of the time I don't even need to delete spam because it gets down voted so fast and so hard that Reddit's auto-filters delete it before I even see it.
    Reply
  • Larry Litmanen
    This is what will happen, should you say anything against any liberal group you will be banned, but hate against conservative groups will be permitted.
    Reply
  • hdmark
    why the hell were people posting non consensual porn??? wtf is wrong with people?
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    why the hell were people posting non consensual porn??? wtf is wrong with people?

    Revenge porn is, unfortunately, a commonplace activity.
    Reply
  • surphninja
    "Posts that are illegal for Reddit to host, such as copyrighted materials."

    Uh huh. How did that work out for Digg, exactly? And what about images? Users can now only post images they own the rights to or stock photos? Half the site is built on users posting copyrighted material.


    The harassment rule is going to bring in a lot of trouble. That's a very broad and subjective rule, and it's only a matter of time before unpopular speech starts being censored.

    Anyone working on a solid reddit alternative? Cause there's a huge community ready to jump ship and make you rich off ad dollars.
    Reply
  • Fierce Guppy
    Seems reasonable enough for me.

    Yes, to me too. I am relieved that the word "offensive" has been omitted from the rules because I'm inevitably going to be seen as offensive to anyone holding authoritarian or destructive ideas be they religious or secular.
    Reply