In recent years, Reddit has banned a bevy of far-right troll havens, including its board for the white supremacist “alt-right” and others used for the harassment of women, minorities and other people. The bans were a reversal of Reddit’s prior policy to not ban “questionable” content—and drew predictable outrage,…
Nearly all the major technology services we’ve come to rely on have been negligent in enforcing their own user protection guidelines. Repeated calls to act on the Terms of Service these companies outlined for themselves without any meaningful response has arguably emboldened the worst elements taking root on them—with…
Germany’s parliament passed a law on Friday that forces social media sites to quickly take down illegal and slanderous content or face a fine of 50 million euros ($57 million). The new rule affects Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other sites with more than 2 million users.
On Wednesday, ProPublica published dozens of startling training documents reportedly used by Facebook to train moderators on hate speech. As the trove of slides and quizzes reveals, Facebook uses a warped, one-sided reasoning to balance policing hate speech against users’ freedom of expression on the platform. This is…
On Sunday, the European Commission warned Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and Microsoft that if the companies do not address their hate speech problems, the EU will enact legislation that will force them to do so.
If you’ve used Twitter long enough, you’ve probably run into this classic conundrum. You’re typing out a repulsive, potentially racist, thinly veiled death threat to send to an actor, political commentator, or the person you’re currently stalking. The tweet is looking pretty dang good. It checks all the boxes. Racial…
Reddit is a total fucking mess, but the new boss is laying down the law. The site’s CEO Steve Huffman opened a traditional Ask Me Anything session this afternoon with a fairly non-traditional type of announcement. Or at least it’s non-traditional for Reddit because CEO Steve is banning specific types of content.
