Reddit will start warning users that upvote violent content

In a post on r/RedditSafety by a Reddit administrator, the platform announced that it will start sending warnings to users that upvote violent content.

Reddit is a social media platform and online forum where users can share and discuss content across a wide range of topics. The platform’s structure divides it into communities known as “subreddits,” each focused on a specific subject or interest (from cars to movies to sports to knitting). Users can submit posts, which can be links, text, images, or videos, and other users can vote on these posts using “upvotes” or “downvotes.” The voting system determines the visibility of posts, with highly upvoted content appearing at the top of subreddits and potentially reaching the site’s front page.

For now, the new enforcement action will be limited to users that regularly upvote violent content and the repercussions will be limited to a warning, but it’s not unthinkable that the platform may decide firmer measures are necessary, and the scope of the warnings may also be widened to other bad or violating content.

Some subreddits have additional rules about which content is allowed, but this new policy is a global one. In the discussion following the announcement, the administration promised to check whether a user upvoted an edited post, to avoid sending a warning to users that did not see the offending content when they cast their vote.

Before this new enforcement action, Reddit already acted based on rules against violent content, which prohibit content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against individuals or groups. But the actions only affected the actual posters and not the users engaging with the content.

But as Reddit points out, the culture of a community is not just the posts themselves, but also the interaction that the posts initiate.

“Voting comes with responsibility. This will have no impact on the vast majority of users as most already downvote or report abusive content. It is everyone’s collective responsibility to ensure that our ecosystem is healthy and that there is no tolerance for abuse on the site.”

Given the recently announced investigation by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) focusing on the content that platforms like TikTok, Imgur, and Reddit show to young users, this is likely an initiative to improve the quality of the promoted content.

There are a lot of questions about this new enforcement action and how it will be implemented, and it will probably take a while before everyone is comfortable with what will be allowed or not. But if the end-result is a platform with less offensive content, then that’s a good thing.

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