Reddit bans reporting in the wake of New Zealand mosque killings

Reddit banned r / watchpeopledie, an infamous subreddit that hosted videos of dying people. The ban came after the deputy minister reorganized videos of recent mosque killings in New Zealand. According to the new landing page, the subsite was banned for violating Reddit's content policy to glorify or encourage violence.

A spokesman for Reddit said, "The terms of service of our site clearly indicate that publishing content encouraging or glorifying violence will get users and communities excluded from Reddit. Subtitles that do not comply with these site rules will be prohibited. "

A company source concurred with this assessment, confirming that when communities encourage the publication of the shooter's manifest or video, they will be banned. "Reddit's approach is very contextual and, you know, it depends on the nature of the conversation around these kinds of issues," they said. "Now we have made it clear from the start that the manifest, the video – these were not allowed to be published on Reddit. And these are deleted through the site. However, these communities do not respect these rules and in fact turn to the glorification of violence or the celebration of violence, "continued the source. "That's when the hammer ban falls."

This new prohibition reflects recent changes made by Reddit to its content policy, which makes the moderation guidelines of the site much more explicit. Previously, just about everything that was not illegal was allowed on the site, and now that is no longer the case. Even so, the subsite had been active since 2012 and had been quarantined – a way used by Reddit to describe communities explicitly obscured to the public – before the site's content policy was changed.