Subreddits posting combat footage from the war in Israel and Palestine face a new crackdown from the site’s admins, redditors say.
However, the crackdown appears to only be on videos from the Palestine side, deemed “terrorist propaganda.”
Redditors say this decision is fraught with political bias and prevents a fair depiction of the war from being shared online.
One newfound subreddit, r/2ndYomKippurWar, which quickly racked up over 32,000 followers since it began four days ago, is seeing numerous posts complaining about censorship and heavy-handed moderation from the website.
Those posts echo complaints by other war footage subreddits, such as r/CombatFootage, who say that while they don’t agree with the direction from admins, they’ll enforce their rules.
r/CombatFootage, which has over 1.5 million viewers, has been a clearing house for all sorts of combat footage from various ongoing wars, as well as historical clips.
The r/2ndYomKippurWar subreddit quickly became a go-to site for links to some of the most graphic imagery of the aftermath of the assault near that Gaza border in Israel by Hamas which killed over 1,200 people, including soldiers, police, and civilians. Strikes since Saturday by Israel on the Gaza Strip have also killed 1,078, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The subreddit pinned a post on Tuesday clarifying the rules in the sub going forward.
They included a message it received from Reddit’s admins warning about violations of their policy on graphic imagery.
“We are reaching out to your subreddit to ensure that you are aware of Reddit’s policies on violent content,” reads the message from u/ModCodedofConduct sent to the r/CombatFootage mods. “We understand this weekend may have resulted in a shift in the type of content you’re used to dealing with.”
That message highlights Reddit’s violent content policy.
The messages sent by the admins to the r/CombatFootage subreddit particularly highlighted a ban on posting “terrorist content, including propaganda.” In the message to the mods that line is bolded, but it isn’t on the page hosting Reddit’s violent content policy.
The message didn’t mention any new policies, but according to the post by r/CombatFootage mod, it meant that some types of content which had previously been allowed would now be banned.
“Particularly videos showing the perspective of HAMAS whether they are combat related footage or not will no longer be allowed as per the Reddit Administration,” the mod wrote, warning that “certain types of videos … are getting posted in this sub in violation of their rules and may result in a sitewide ban of the sub.”
The ban comes as social media have struggled to determine what clips from the war are propaganda, newsworthy, or too graphic to host.
Since the war kicked off, Hamas’ media arm has spread slick videos of their soldiers, including many first-person videos of its incursion into Israel, reported Politico.
There have also been concerns that Hamas may film and share graphic execution videos, which could prompt Reddit’s decision to reinforce its existing rules. But that isn’t sitting well with users.
The r/2ndYomKippurWar mod said they didn’t agree with the admin’s decision, calling it a “form of censorship.”
“We are here to moderate … NOT pick sides in a very complicated and tense geopolitical conflict,” u/tinkthank wrote.
The difficulty comes from Hamas being branded as a terrorist organization. As such, any video could be deemed in violation, whereas any act of Israel would be allowed on the subs, leading to a potentially uneven representation of the conflict across Reddit.
“This is idiotic, seeing the truth means educating yourself,” responded one user. “I could understand if the post itself had a horrible context thrust on the viewer but raw video is not glorifying anything inherently.”
“R/CombatFootage is only allowed to show footage from military entities from now on,” they continued. “So they can show all of the bombs Israel drops, but none of the events leading up to it from Hamas/Palestine.
Others noticed the sudden flip.
“So up until this point all these footage of terrorist POV in Middle East was okay, but the moment it is concerning Israel, reddit mods decided to act moral and righteous?” added another.
Yesterday one of the mods of the subreddit posted a stickied comment on the page’s pinned post explaining why they were including links to Telegram channels and other media sources where graphic footage and images are shared.
“I’ve just been suspended from Reddit for 3 days for posting … about how sad it is that Jewish people are targeted all over the world,” he claimed. “This suspension further clarifies the position of the admin team on this topic, which would now appear to be: If you post content showing Jewish people as victims rather than evil monsters, you will be banned by Reddit. If you make comments humanising Jewish people, you will be banned by Reddit. We as mods are very sad to see the direction that this website has been taken by its staff.”
While Reddit likely doesn’t want to ban people for showing the victimization of Jews, banning videos by Hamas inherently prevents people from sharing that angle and potentially only seeing acts from Israel, leading to possible misrepresentation.
The post included a link to the group’s Telegram channel, where users again aim at the admin for their moderation policies.
On the r/2ndYomKippurWar Telegram channel, users complained about the moderation decisions, calling them “disgusting” and “political in nature.”
“All the main subs like combatfootage have been given direct warning by Reddit admins that they’ll take over the subreddit if they don’t stop the Hamas videos,” said another user.
“Worse that CCP censorship” wrote one user.
“Blatant interference imho” said another.
Reddit didn’t respond to a request for clarification about their moderation decisions or what sort of content was being posted to require cracking down on the subdreddits.
