Reddit CEO says to the user, "we are not the police of thought", then suspends this user

A Reddit user s is found at the end of a suspension of a week – and the appearance of his account, he could have come because he publicly shared a "direct message" exchange with the CEO of Reddit Steve "spez" Huffman on handling the hate speech platform.

at Ars Technica that the Huffman conversation, as posted by the user "whatllmyusernamebe" on Sunday, is legitimate. The conversation begins with Huffman answering the question, "Why do not admins only ban hate speech?"

spez: Our violent speech policy is indeed that.

whatll: I would say that hate speech should be banned with its own rule, separate from the politics of violence. But thank you for your answer.

spez: Hate speech is hard to define. There is a reason why it is not really done. Moreover, we are not the police of thought. It's not the role of a private company to decide what people can and can not say.

whatll: But it's * the role of a private company to decide what people can and can not say.

spez: I know what you are asking, but it is a precedent almost impossible to maintain. It is impossible to apply it consistently.

When we contacted him for comment, a Reddit representative declined to confirm whether the suspension of the user was related to sharing this direct message history. Ars Technica was able to reach the user, who called Zachary Swanson on Monday. Swanson shared a screencap with Ars of the reason that Reddit gave to suspend his account for seven days: "for harassment" was the enumerated cause, without further clarification.

Huffman's logic seems to go against Reddit's initiatives. The social media platform has a history of closing channels as a result of controversy, especially those who violated the "harassment" rules in 2015. And Huffman's description of how companies define the speech of Hate ignores the fact that many online platforms inform its users of the rules of hate speech firmly defined, including Google (and its affiliates), Facebook (and its affiliates) and Microsoft (and its affiliates).

Before receiving the seven-day suspension, Swanson reminded community members about Reddit's occasional decisions to ban whole communities wholesale. "Remember the piece of Anderson Cooper on / r / jailbait?" Swanson wrote. "Immediately forbidden, I say we are starting to flood the lines of information whenever we see a blatant hate speech that is not forbidden."