Direction of reddit, a 'safe platform'

People are being mean to others. Reddit wants to stop them from being too mean.

You do realize how vague/subjective this is,.. and how nearly impossible it is to uniformly or fairly enforce,.. right?...

If your argument is:.... "Things like death-threats or aggressive racism or direct-harassment should be dealt with.".. then YES.. I think most of us agree with that. That's something Reddit SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING ALL ALONG. They don't need to come out with some "Code of Ethics/Morals" -- they just need to start doing what they should have been doing all along.

And if that's all it is,.. then I think most of us would agree with it (in extremely overt, obvious, plain situations).

The larger issue however is this fixation on "making Reddit a "safe-place". Who determines "safe" ?... Who determines when things get "to mean" ?... How do you enforce that fairly?.... What do you do when 2 different people disagree on how "mean" a certain comment-thread is ?... What do you do when an Admin/Mod says: "No,.. that doesn't quality as harassment." -- but the victim still feels "unsafe" (in their own perspective)..

If the goal is that nothing ever under any circumstances could be mis-interpreted to "hurt someones feelings" --- then you might as well just turn Reddit OFF. Expecting that to happen is like standing on a ship in the middle of the ocean and yelling: "OK.. now all you fish swim in the exact same direction!"..

I don't mean that to imply that we shouldn't have a certain set of standards for behavior,.. BUT .. that we should also be realistic about how enforceable they are in everyday scenarios.

If you create an environment where people are afraid to say anything because of how it might get misinterpreted or construed.. then you may solve the negative-behaviors.. but you'll also lose a big chunk of contributors who just don't want to hassle with the bullshit.

/r/technology Thread Parent