Hundreds of Reddit communities go private after company hired controversial politician

Reddit put the rules in 6 March after claiming it had not vetted the employee, before enforcing the policies on 22 March

(AFP via Getty Images)

Reddit has announced that it is “evolving a number of relevant internal policies” after a debacle over its moderation policies that led to numerous subreddits going private in protest.

The issue began when a moderator from the r/UKPolitics subreddit was suspended for posting an article that included the name of former Green Party member. That member had been suspended from the party for failing to properly disclose serious sex crime allegations against her father, who then continued to work for the individual during two elections.

“On reflection, I can understand that it was unacceptable for me to appoint my dad as my election agent when he had been arrested. I can now understand the potential risks of that decision. For that I am sorry,” the individual said at the time.

A Reddit administrator later explained that the individual had been employed by the social media company as an administrator, and the deletion of the article was due to a “standard processes to protect the employee from such harassment, including initiating an automated moderation rule to prevent personal information from being shared.”

This led to confusion and frustration among Reddit users, as the article posted only mentioned the individual’s name in passing, and Reddit had given no explanation for the moderator’s suspension. The r/UKPolitics subreddit went private – meaning that it could only be accessed by existing members - and requested that users could not name the individual, ask questions about the ban, or discuss the incident publicly or privately as it could result in a ban.

Reddit also claimed that the employee was “the target of harassment and doxxing (sharing of personal or confidential information)”, although it was unclear what, if any, form that took. A Reddit administrator said that the company’s “intent was never to remove any and all mentions of this admin’s name”, but rather was “just … overzealous automation”.

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In the aftermath, over 100 subreddits including r/Apple, r/pokemongo, r/relationship_advice, r/AmongUS, r/smashbros, and more went private or publicly expressed solidarity with r/UKPolitics. Many subreddits also shared photos of the Reddit employee, asking users to upvote the image, in order to raise awareness of the issue.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, posting on the site under his u/spez account, addressed the backlash in order to give an “update” on the issue.

“As of today, the employee in question is no longer employed by Reddit. We built a relationship with her first as a mod and then through her contractor work on RPAN. We did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her”, Mr Huffman said in his post.

“We’ve put significant effort into improving how we handle doxxing and harassment, and this employee was the subject of both. In this case, we over-indexed on protection, which had serious consequences in terms of enforcement actions.”

Mr Huffman said that the company added extra protections for the employee, including actioning content that mentioned the employee’s name or shared personal information on third party sites. These rules were put in place on 6 March, with the article being posted on 22 March. It is not known yet how Reddit could have put in place alerts for the employee’s name without also knowing

These are moderation policies that Reddit has in place for “serious cases of harassment and doxxing”. When questioned by The Independent, Reddit did not provide examples of such behaviour.

It is also unclear exactly what position the individual had at Reddit, or why the company’s vetting process had either not highlighted her scandalous history or why such history was dismissed by Reddit. The social media company did not provide more information to The Independent when questioned, instead referring to the aforementioned blog posts.

“We care deeply for Reddit and appreciate that you do too. We understand the anger and confusion about these issues and their bigger implications. The employee is no longer with Reddit, and we’ll be evolving a number of relevant internal policies. We did not operate to our own standards here. We will do our best to do better for you”, MrHuffman said.

It is not yet known what these policy updates are; The Independent has reached out to Reddit for more information.

This is not the first time where Reddit’s moderation policies have been called into question. In June 2020, more than 550 moderators, representing 200 million users, signed an open letter to Mr Huffman calling on him to take greater action against racism on the platform following the George Floyd protests in the UK and US.

Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, who had been subject to great abuse on the platform, had also spoken out against the social media company for “amplifying … hate racism and violence”, following a statement from Mr Huffman that the company does not “tolerate hate, racism, and violence, and while we have work to do to fight these on our platform, our values are clear.”