Former Reddit CEO: You are free to be an a**hole, but keep it on Reddit
Under a new harassment policy, Reddit banned five communities, or subreddits, last week that it said "break our reddit rules based on their harassment of individuals." These included the r/HamPlanetHatred (an anti-fat person community), r/TransF*gs (anti-transgender), r/neof*g (criticizing videogame forum NeoGAF), r/ShitN****rsSay (racism), and - most notably - r/FatPeopleHate subreddits. (We have used asterisks to avoid offending readers.)
The backlash was swift in the community as many interpreted the ban of the subreddits as an attack on users free speech and a sign that the company was going to start banning content it found morally objectionable.
That's entirely false, Wong said.
"The key problem with a community site that allows any type of legal content is this: At some point, discussion and ideas can result in real-life actions," Wong wrote.
Before he stepped down as Reddit CEO in November and promoted Ellen Pao to interim CEO, discussions had already begun on how to stop harassment from spreading from the site into real life. He mentioned the r/FatPeopleHate subreddit as being a particular problem when users carelessly posted links to Facebook pages, which resulted in "real-life harassment of these individuals."
Wong interpreted the policy as not banning people harassing each other on Reddit itself, but behavior that leads to harassment off the site.
"Thus, I don't think reddit is putting a stop to the mockery of fat people or fat acceptance in general," Wong wrote. "It's not becoming a 'safe space' for fat people or anyone else: if you mention on reddit that you are fat, and a bunch of users then reply with a bunch of mocking comments on reddit, the company will likely take no action."
"You are free to be an asshole on reddit (within communities whose mods allow it), but keep it on reddit," Wong concluded.