Reddit bans r/NoNewNormal and quarantines 54 “COVID-denial subreddits”

Reddit bans r/NoNewNormal and quarantines 54 “COVID-denial subreddits”

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Reddit yesterday banned r/NoNewNormal, a hub of anti-mask and anti-vaccine posts, after a protest against the platform’s refusal to take more aggressive action against COVID misinformation. In a post titled “COVID denialism and policy clarifications,” Reddit said it also quarantined “54 additional COVID-denial subreddits.” While NoNewNormal was taken off Reddit entirely, quarantining a subreddit imposes restrictions that “prevent its content from being accidentally viewed by those who do not wish to do so.”

NoNewNormal was banned not for spreading misinformation but for breaking Reddit’s rule against “brigading,” which refers to members of one subreddit conducting “targeted interference” in other subreddits. Reddit said:

While we want to be a place where people can explore unpopular views, it is never acceptable to interfere with other communities. Claims of “brigading” are common and often hard to quantify. However, in this case, we found very clear signals indicating that r/NoNewNormal was the source of around 80 brigades in the last 30 days (largely directed at communities with more mainstream views on COVID or location-based communities that have been discussing COVID restrictions). This behavior continued even after a warning was issued from our team to the Mods. r/NoNewNormal is the only subreddit in our list of high-signal subs where we have identified this behavior and it is one of the largest sources of community interference we surfaced as part of this work (we will be investigating a few other unrelated subreddits as well).

Although not mentioned in Reddit’s announcement, a subreddit called CoronavirusConspiracy was also banned yesterday “due to being unmoderated.” That community was already quarantined last year because it “may contain misinformation or hoax content.” Advertisement

Quarantined subreddits broke Rule 1

Reddit said the 54 newly quarantined COVID-denial subreddits were penalized for breaking Rule 1,” which bans harassment, bullying, and incitement of violence or promoting hate “based on identity or vulnerability.” Reddit’s post did not include a list of the 54 communities, and a spokesperson declined to say which subreddits were quarantined. Quarantined subreddits are still accessible after users see a warning and opt in, and Reddit probably prefers to avoid naming them because that could give them more traffic.

Reddit also said it is building “a new reporting feature for moderators to allow them to better provide us [a] signal when they see community interference. It will take us a few days to get this built, and we will subsequently evaluate the usefulness of this feature.”

Reddit initially resisted user protests

The changes came after a week of protest, which Reddit management resisted at first. Moderators of over 450 subreddits joined an open letter urging Reddit to “take action against the rampant Coronavirus misinformation on their website,” saying that subreddits existing “solely to spread medical disinformation and undermine efforts to combat the global pandemic should be banned.”

Reddit responded by defending its stance, saying it will continue to allow “debate” and “dissent” on vaccines and other COVID-related matters, even when it “challenge[s] consensus views.”

“We appreciate that not everyone agrees with the current approach to getting us all through the pandemic, and some are still wary of vaccinations. Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy,” the company said last week.

The protest against Reddit’s lack of action on COVID and vaccine misinformation moved into a new phase this week when over 150 subreddits temporarily went private. One of the key demands was shutting down r/NoNewNormal, with protesters saying that “Reddit won’t enforce their policies against misinformation, brigading, and spamming” and that “[p]eople are dying from misinformation.” Advertisement

COVID-denial content increasing

Yesterday’s Reddit announcement was written by “worstnerd,” an employee and moderator. “It is my job to oversee the enforcement of our policies on the platform. I’ve never professed to be perfect at this. Our policies, and how we enforce them, evolve with time,” the post said.

The post provided some data on COVID-related content that users report to the site for various reasons. “Since August, we see approximately 2.5k reports/day vs an average of around 500 reports/day a year ago. This is approximately 2.5 percent of all COVID-related content,” the post said.

This data is one indicator that “COVID-denial content on the platform is increasing,” the post said. Reddit said it also examined “some well-known subreddits dedicated to discussing and challenging the policy response to COVID” and found that these “high-signal subs” now generate over 3 percent of COVID content, up from less than 1 percent last year.

In these high-signal subreddits, content is on average more positively received and more widely viewed than content on all other subreddits, the post said. “This tells us that in these high signal subs, there is generally less of the critical feedback mechanism than we would expect to see in other non-denial based subreddits, which leads to content in these communities being more visible than the typical COVID post in other subreddits,” Reddit said.

Reddit clarifies misinformation rules

Reddit’s announcement concluded with a few clarifications of its policies on and approach to health misinformation. Reddit’s rule against posting content that “encourages” physical harm means “falsifiable health information that encourages or poses a significant risk of physical harm to the reader,” the post said. “For example, a post pushing a verifiably false ‘cure’ for cancer that would actually result in harm to people would violate our policies.”

That rule doesn’t cover all the types of misinformation that Reddit users have cited in protests, and it isn’t new. When Reddit defended its misinformation stance last week, it said it would “continue to [take] action [against] communities that do so or that violate any of our other rules, including those dedicated to fraud (e.g. fake vaccine cards) or encouraging harm (e.g. consuming bleach).”

Yesterday’s post also clarified Reddit’s stance on “health disinformation.”

“Our rule against impersonation… extends to ‘manipulated content presented to mislead,'” Reddit said. “We have interpreted this rule as covering health disinformation, meaning falsifiable health information that has been manipulated and presented to mislead. This includes falsified medical data and faked WHO/CDC advice.”

The post also provided clarification on the rule against community interference. “Rule 2 forbids users or communities from ‘cheating’ or engaging in ‘content manipulation’ or otherwise interfering with or disrupting Reddit communities,” the post said. “We have interpreted this rule as forbidding communities from manipulating the platform, creating inauthentic conversations, and picking fights with other communities. We typically enforce Rule 2 through our anti-brigading efforts, although it is still an example of bad behavior that has led to bans of a variety of subreddits.”

Disclosure: The majority shareholder of Reddit is Advance Publications, the parent company of Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.

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