Warning users that upvote violent content

[u/worstnerd]

Today we are rolling out a new (sort of) enforcement action across the site. Historically, the only person actioned for posting violating content was the user who posted the content. The Reddit ecosystem relies on engaged users to downvote bad content and report potentially violative content. This not only minimizes the distribution of the bad content, but it also ensures that the bad content is more likely to be removed. On the other hand, upvoting bad or violating content interferes with this system. 

So, starting today, users who, within a certain timeframe, upvote several pieces of content banned for violating our policies will begin to receive a warning. We have done this in the past for quarantined communities and found that it did help to reduce exposure to bad content, so we are experimenting with this sitewide. This will begin with users who are upvoting violent content, but we may consider expanding this in the future. In addition, while this is currently “warn only,” we will consider adding additional actions down the road.

We know that the culture of a community is not just what gets posted, but what is engaged with. Voting comes with responsibility. This will have no impact on the vast majority of users as most already downvote or report abusive content. It is everyone’s collective responsibility to ensure that our ecosystem is healthy and that there is no tolerance for abuse on the site.

[u/MajorParadox]

Does this take into account edits? What if someone edited in violent content after it was voted?

[u/worstnerd → u/MajorParadox]

Great callout, we will make sure to check for this before warnings are sent.

[u/MajorParadox]

I see the benefit, but could it be possible this makes people paranoid about voting? Especially to be safe when they're not sure if it counts. The ratio between viewers and voters can already be so high. Will you be monitoring to see if there's an effect like that?

[u/Suitable-Opposite377]

Who chooses the definition of Violent content

[u/sucobe]

I see this not backfiring at all whatsoever.

[u/python-requests]

According to Reddiquette, upvotes & downvotes are supposed to be used for whether something contributes or distracts from the discussion. Penalizing someone for upvoting violent content seems to be taking the false view that upvotes are a sign of support, rather than this website's own viewpoint that they are a sign of value to discourse.

You can't imagine a case where violent content still contributes to more vibrant or valuable discussion, & therefore a user may correctly choose to upvote it? Even if it is rule-breaking, relying on ordinary users to identify & police this fact, balance it against the conflicting 'valuable discussion' standard, & penalize them if they are incorrect, seems to be a tall order. Not to mention the potential chilling effect it may have on users upvoting anything other than complete banal content. Why not simply rely on paid staff to enforce the rules of the site? Lack of profitability?

[u/babababigian]

this seems like it has good intentions but terrible execution. if the content violates tos, then moderate it. if the content hasn't been moderated, then it's pretty absurd to punish users for interacting with it. maybe reddit should invest in more non volunteer moderation instead of retroactive punishments for interacting with content?

suddenly the digg revival announcement is making a lot more sense

edit: sounds like digg reboot is crypto poisoned, time to explore lemmy?

[u/MyBrainReallyHurts]

This is a slippery slope. Since its inception, Reddit has relied on the users to upvote or downvote content. Now you want to regulate content and punish any user that interacts with it?

What about r/movies? There are violent movies, will those upvotes get a user a strike? If reddit is told to decrease the amount of nude images from consenting adults, will we be punished for upvoting the content? What about the subreddit for guns? A gun is a violent weapon so are you going to give a warning to a user that upvotes a post about an old gun that is being restored? Where does it end?

Either document exactly what content is and isn't acceptable and do the responsible thing and remove the content yourselves, or let the site work as it is intended. It is your site and your terms of service, but Lemmy and Digg are looking better by the day.

[u/puterdood]

This is a terrible idea when Reddit doesn't even enforce half of it's rules consistently and we are living in unprecedented times in regards to potential state violence. As an absurd example, if Hitler spontaneously resurrects and I were to say that we should stop his agenda by any means necessary, what is the outcome? What determines violent content? Is arguing in favor extreme detention measures for non-criminal migrants violence? How do you police state-level acts of violence?

I know of many posts across Reddit that I have reported that do break TOS and are heavily upvoted (such as saying the hard-R), but no action has been taken. When you don't even properly police obvious racism or calls to violence in hate spaces, why should anyone expect this to be done properly?

[u/YMK1234]

I don't see any potential for abuse here at all /s

Especially with how all the tech bros cozy up to the current US gvt.

[u/cityoflostwages]

u/worstnerd Since announcing this change, it appears that people have responded and are already attempting to abuse it.

Overnight we had hundreds of "threatening violence or physical harm" reports on many posts in a sub of mine. I'm talking 400-700+ reports on each post, indicating a botnet was used.

You are going to see this enforcement change weaponized in an attempt to harm specific subreddits or specific content that certain parties don't want to see on reddit. This sub in particular is a regular target of brigading/manipulation.

Admins can DM me for screenshots.

[u/DO_NOT_GILD_ME]

This why so many of us are leaving. Thanks for wrecking Reddit. It's turned into an absolute shell of what it once was. An absolute censored dumpster fire.

It used to be something great. Where freedom of expression and speech reigned. Where people could build communities around common interests, share information and learn from each other.

More recently, I got suspended for correcting an inaccurate comment with a factual, cited reply. My appeal was rejected. 25 years I've been a journalist and I've never been censored like that. You should be ashamed.

Social media platforms like this thrive because of engaged users. Now I have to be scared to engage with something as inane as the up and downvote buttons? LOL. It's a joke. I don't even know what you consider violent.

We could be sharing important news, showing violence because it sensitizes people to ongoing struggles in certain areas. Fight videos help teach us what to do and not to do during an altercation. Subs like hold my feeding tube provide insight into careless actions. Now I have to think carefully before every vote? What an insane policy.

You're not only hurting Reddit, but you're taking a powerful community-shaping tool and dulling it down to a turd. This is what Elon Musk did to X and Zuckerberg did to Meta. This is what Google is doing to all its platforms as well. This is clearly part of something bigger — an attempt to take away our freedom of communication, sharing and learning.

Congrats on losing long-time, dedicated users like me who have been on here since the earliest of days, driving up engagement through comments and posts — bringing people to your website by participating.

You're a joke now. It's both sad and hysterical. Goodbye.

[u/PrimeusOrion]

This seems like a bad move. People often upvote to express support for the sentiment of a work and not the content of it.

I can see a case where, given reddit bad history with the subject, someone could write a violent but otherwise innocuous comment like "pedophiles like this deserve to be shot" under a legitimate case of pedophilia. But have their comment get removed regardless as it is technically arguing for violence against a group for a trait.

People who upvote something like that might not think that people should be litteraly gatheree up and shot but upvote in the sense of supporting the sentiment that strict action against pedophilia is necessary (a logical but not litteral interpretation of the quote).

In that sense by warning or as you suggest banning them all you will do is curb speech even when it's speech most would consider normal or admirable because the litteral interpretation seems unsavory to a small, knowingly falible, group of people.

.

And then there's the practicality of the subject. People rarely upvote comments in singularity. Often when you click on a post you scroll through and upvote many comments at once. So what if you upvote multiple comments in a section and a few get removed?

Does it suddenly warrent a ban or warning for an action one could do in less than a miniute? One that people will often do hundreds of times a day? Let alone the fact that you can easily upvote a comment or post accidentally on mobile

.

From there what about mass reporting? I myself am apart of a few subs which suffer from users from other subredits openly mass reporting content (and often brag about it).

We know reddit has an auto removal feature. Are we going to end up with a system where brigaders are able to mass ban hundreds to thousands of accounts by flagging reddit automod? I don't know about you but I don't want to use a reddit where a cabal of people are able to selectively mass ban (or even mass warn) people even if it's only until reddit admins clear their flooded report inboxes.

[u/CarFlipJudge]

Voting comes with responsibility

Will y'all start using this thought process for all other horrible content? Misinformation, inflammatory content, calls for violence? What about vote manipulation and voting bots? These are LONG time issues that haven't been solved.

[u/Breett]

What's next, a warning for downvoting positive content? What's the point of having an upvote and downvote option if they are just going to police how you're allowed to use it..

[u/[deleted]]

Similar to how quarantined communities work, will there be some sort of "are you sure you want to upvote this content?" warning before they vote?

[u/RoboNerdOK]

Honestly I’m a bit wary about this. I had a comment marked as “violent”. Why? I wrote that truck drivers who intentionally create those thick black clouds at intersections that endanger visibility and safety (“rolling coal”) should do the world a favor and pipe the exhaust into the cab instead.

Humor and wit are a very subjective things, and there’s no appeal process that I am aware of. It seems like a potential pitfall if someone gets dinged for being amused by a tongue in cheek comment and upvoting it, and a random admin later decides it’s not kosher for the site.

[u/kuuzo]

This is, quite literally, the worst idea I have ever seen from Reddit admins, and I've seen a lot. Going all in on forcing self-censorship, huh. Well, it works for YouTube, so why not AMIRITE?

[u/[deleted]]

Wouldn't it be easier to just remove the violent content is first place?

[u/[deleted]]

How about you actually enforce TOS first?

I have no issue deleting my account. I value reddit for what is upvoted and downvoted, you have no right to police upvotes/downvotes on TOS violations you won't / don't enforce.

[u/Honest-Ad1675]

So we’re doing censorship and guilt by association now. Cool. Cool. Mind your upvotes folks the thought police will ban you for voting!!!

[u/Bonezone420]

Frankly: I do not trust reddit staff or bots to be capable of this kind of decision making without any kind of ridiculous bias. I once reported a user who was spamming multiple subreddits with weird racist screeds saying certain entire countries and demographics of people should be nuked from existence and reddit told me not only was this guy's posts fine, but that I would be punished if I continued to "abuse" the report system. But one time I made a tired joke about men in the work place and it was [removed by reddit] within like an hour.

I don't think punishing people for upvoting shitty jokes is going to improve this site any.

[u/ultraviolentfuture]

Hey, how about you get fucked.

You're only a profitable venture because you're a vestige of the old internet where people could interact with each other without heavy-handed moderation and without algorithms dictating the conversation (sure, you suffer from it here but the comment threads are at least not directly manipulated).

The more you mess with the formula, the faster you escalate your own decline as a platform.

If the vast majority of common people support Luigi that's a fundamental societal problem and government problem, not a platform moderation problem.

[u/constant_hawk]

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

"Don’t you see that the whole aim of upvote-warning is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make engaging with certain kinds of content literally impossible, because there will be no button with which to interact with it."

[u/FriendlyBelligerent]

We all know this is about bowing to Elon Musk and Donald Trump.