r/worldnewsvideo Plenty đŸ©ș🧬💜 Aug 11 '22

Announcement🗣 A Friendly Reminder to Our Users About Avoiding Hatespeech on Reddit

Greetings everyone,

I am making this post due to a noticeable change in admin policies to combat hate on reddit resulting in an influx of punitive user suspensions. In the past, it was mostly up to the moderators of each community to handle hate speech and screen for it on their own. Nowadays, it appears that the admins are slowly implementing tools that screen each comment for particular things that could be considered hate speech and suspending violating users themselves regardless of mod action. Prior to this change our community handled hate speech internally and either removed comments silently, shadowbanned, or permanently banned users depending on severity of their violation. Up until now, our internal policy has been mostly successful in keeping the comments healthy and our community a positive environment.

Usually we resort to silent removals in hopes that our userbase would slowly recognize and avoid certain hateful statements. Due to the change in admin policy, we will continue with the removals as we have been but feel we should try to disclose some of our methodology in screening for hate. We feel like this is a good opportunity to come to our userbase directly to clarify what we have been removing as hatespeech so that users may understand why they got suspended if they happened to be suspended by an admin.

Dehumanization:

As a humanist subreddit
 its fitting we start with defining dehumanization and some brief examples that I often run across.

  • Definition = Dehumanize : to deprive (someone or something) of human qualities, personality, or dignity: such as
  1. : to subject (someone, such as a prisoner) to inhuman or degrading conditions or treatment

  2. : to address or portray (someone) in a way that obscures or demeans that person's humanity or individuality

  3. : to remove or reduce human involvement or interaction in (something, such as a process or place)

Examples of removed comments:

  • “[Nation/Group of People] are [gross object]/[insect]/[animal]” - A comment structured like this a is classic dehumanizing statement. Sitewide Violation.

  • “The most racist people I've ever met in my life were [specific demographic].” - Gross generalization of a population of people. Sitewide Violation.

  • “[Group of people] are incompatible with civilization/Western society.” - Violation for stating that a group of humans are subhuman and incompatible with humanity. Sitewide Violation.

  • “Peace will come when [group of people] will love their children more than they hate us.” - Dehumanizing comment that states a group of people do not value their own lives so its not worthwhile to value theirs as well. Victim blaming xenophobia.

  • “((([Group of people]/[Individual])))” - A blatant antisemitic dogwhistle that fuels hate. Implies a conspiracy of control and power that simply doesn’t exist. Sitewide Violation.


 and countless other generalizing statements about large groups of people intended to stoke hate. Many dehumanizing statements are often targeted towards minority groups such as people from developing nations, the LGBTQ+ community, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, and other vulnerable demographics of people.

Violence:

Don’t advocate for violence ever or wish harm on anyone else. Even the vague statements like “put [person] down” are rightfully seen as violations by the admins. More examples that were directly removed by admins resulting in suspensions:

  • “You'd boot lick the law if they saved your a$$. F$%& moron I hope they don't save you one day” - Sitewide Violation for wishing harm on another person

  • “[Nation of people] are gonna pay for this. In the eyes of God. Provoking non combatants where is the justice in this. Then are always looking for sympathy. Remeber” - “Payment” in the form of violence is a violation. Sitewide Violation.

  • “[Group of people] been fighting for the same piece of rock for 2000 years, can we nuke em all yet” - Wishing war is promoting violence. Sitewide Violation.

  • “Destroy [building/object/place] because they are evil!” - Targeting violence towards a specific thing is a violation. Sitewide Violation.

  • “[Use weapon] on [place/person/thing]” - Obviously a sitewide violation not needing too much explanation. Sitewide Violation.

  • “I would've knocked the glasses off [person] but that's just me” - Physical violence violation. Sitewide Violation.

Misogyny:

We wont tolerate misogyny here. Its a form of regressive thought and it is antithetical to human progression. Covert misogyny is not acceptable either and our mod team are passionate supporters of reproductive rights for all. While the admins still havent figured out how to act against misogynistic comments, we try to act as an example for other subreddits on how to handle misogyny. Here are some easy example of violating misogynistic comments:

  • “Women ☕” - Lazy misogyny is a subreddit violation

  • “[Mistake] always happens because of women” - Blaming a whole gender of people for a societal problem is a subreddit violation. Also likely a dehumanization violation based on the gross generalization of the comment.

  • “These sl-ts just want to have sex and not worry about the consequences” - Spiteful misogyny meant to punish women. Also another harmful generalization violation.

Obfuscation/Marginalization of Human Suffering:

  • “Actions have consequences” (In the context of human suffering or war) - A callous and cold statement made in the context of human suffering. We are a humanist subreddit that relies on empathetic users who value ALL humans equally. Such a statement while acceptable elsewhere on reddit and is not a sitewide violation would still be considered a subreddit violation.

  • “[Group of people] use their own as human shields so why do you care?” - This one counts as dehumanization through generalizing and also marginalizes the suffering of the victims as inconsequential collateral damage.

  • “[Nation/Group of people] are Nazis” - Sitewide Violation. We don’t want users conflating other crimes against humanity or fascism itself with Nazism and its crimes. Nazism lead to the genocide of millions of human lives through evil measures and actions that have never been replicated again. While other nations or groups of people may commit crimes against humanity
 we do not want to marginalize or conflate the evil of Nazism with other hateful ideologies that have manifested or will manifest in the future. Address crimes against humanity for what they are and do not resort to lazily labeling others as Nazis. The admins seem to agree with this stance as some suspensions seem to involve these types of lazy comparisons.

There are comments that occasionally marginalize genocide or even go as far as to say ethnic cleansing isn’t genocide... both are crimes against humanity and a user trying to thread that needle will get banned from here. No humanist would unironically debate such things.

Ableist Slurs:

Fairly simple to avoid if you aren’t looking to be a jerk. Don’t insult peoples intelligence or compare IQs. Here are some examples of some violations:

  • “You must be rtardrd to think I'm defending this guy or his actions. The war machine sent him to kill. Get mad at the war machine not the tools it tosses out.” - An ableist slur violation.

  • “No one said “as a mother” you dumb reading comprehensionless rtard.” - An ableist slur violation.

  • “Laid in bed being a f-king rtard. Well done to you “ - An ableist slur violation.

  • “Heroes? Man you Americans are rtardrd. They're not heroes. They're terrorists who go to other countries and murder people in the name of western secular ideology.” - A dehumanization violation via generalization and an ableist slur.

We have been moderating with this philosophy against hate since our founding. We will continue to refine and improve our methodology so that all groups are equally protected and their humanity is recognized. We assess comments across all of reddit when it comes to user appeals and assess whether a user is acting in good-faith. If you ever are suspended by an admin, you will need to contact them to unsuspend your account (if warranted) but if we banned you we will do our best to handle your appeal in a fair manner. We make judgement calls based on context and sometimes make mistakes. We hope you all are patient and understand that we are trying our best.

Thanks everyone and be safe out there!

18 Upvotes

9 comments sorted by

3

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '22

Can we trash furries though? Everything seems rational as stated, but if we consolidated the hateful rhetoric to one group, may I suggest them?

4

u/PlenitudeOpulence Plenty đŸ©ș🧬💜 Aug 11 '22

I appreciate the humor but for clarity we don’t really approve of any type of generalizations towards anyone in a negative way as it could open our community up to become a safe haven of hate towards a specific demographic. From there it could snowball out of control.

We make judgement calls based on context and do our best to not be looking for reasons to ban people just for participating. If the intent of a users participation is malicious or in bad-faith we take action.

As long as users stick to specific grievances and avoid painting in broad brush strokes they should be safe more or less in regards to our moderation philosophy. The admins on the other hand have different policies that I continue to try and figure out and understand.

I hope that helps clarify any gray areas that I might have missed.

1

u/judas734 Aug 25 '22

Can religion be criticized?

1

u/PlenitudeOpulence Plenty đŸ©ș🧬💜 Aug 25 '22

Depends on how it’s done and the context of the discussion. If a person is generalizing and making it a goal to otherize another group
 they will likely be banned.

It’s all about empathy and understanding here. Religion isn’t the problem - it’s hate and xenophobia.

2

u/Murky-Advantage-3444 Aug 12 '22

This seems like a pretty good template for the internet as a whole.

2

u/PlenitudeOpulence Plenty đŸ©ș🧬💜 Aug 14 '22

Share it if you like it! I’d rather it be disseminated far and wide.