It took six years, thousands of complaints, and Anderson Cooper’s outrage, but Reddit finally gave in: the social news site no longer houses suggestive or sexual content involving minors.
It was easy to see the change coming. When Reddit banned controversial teen pics section r/jailbait last October, the site’s staff offered little explanation. That pretty much guaranteed they would have to turn that ban into a broader, site-wide policy.
Still, it took a surprisingly long time for the staff to finally make the move—a delay that only encouraged Reddit’s critics to paint the site as a den of child pornography.
Some redditors are worried the move represents a slippery slope to censorship.
It doesn’t. Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy. But perhaps more importantly: the universal outrage spawned by accusations of child pornography is unique, for both its intensity and its ability to cause serious, long-term damage to the reputation of the community and company.
This was a one-of-a-kind event and protest. It’s not likely to happen again.
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Reddit announced its annual awards this week. Big surprise, some people aren’t happy.
They want to know: How could POLITE_ALLCAPS_GUY, a novelty account, win commenter of the year?
Well, POLITE_ALLCAPS_GUY will probably tell you he’s not a novelty account—he just types politely, in all caps. Beyond that, he just your normal everyday redditor.
His detractors, however, say his popularity is due entirely to the novelty of his caps lock shtick. (And besides, many wondered, how could he beat out RobotRollCall, the r/askscience commenter who could gracefully distill any mathematical and scientific complexity into lucid prose?)
But the POLITE_ALLCAPS_GUY mini-controversy distracts from something that’s actually pretty cool about this year’s awards.
One of reddit’s best communities picked up two awards: r/askscience won for best big community and for best moderators. Meanwhile, r/explainlikeimfive—Reddit’s judgement-free curiosity zone—picked up the nod for best new community.
This year’s winner was social, crowd-sourced learning. That’s something worth celebrating.
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In other news, we got an update on the Kenyan orphanage Reddit helped save, moon Nazis invaded r/IAmA, and Colin Mochrie answered your questions.
