- Reddit will now warn users about upvoting content that violates site rules.
- Reddit has one of the fastest-growing user bases of social sites.
- Tensions rose recently on Reddit over criticism of Elon Musk and posts about Luigi Mangione.
Worried that upvoting a sensitive post on Reddit could get you in trouble? Now, it just might.
Reddit’s user base is growing rapidly as it is being hailed as one of the last truly “social” places online. Still, with growth comes volatility, and Reddit is now cracking down on users who interact with content that violates the site’s rules.
In a post on Wednesday, the site’s administrators said that Reddit users who upvote “several pieces of content banned for violating our policies” within a short period will receive a warning. Reddit said it made the change because the site relies on “engaged users” to downvote bad content and report potentially violative content.
“Upvoting bad or violating content interferes with this system,” the post says.
The company says this policy is currently limited to a warning but is considering “adding additional actions down the road.”
“Voting comes with responsibility,” the post says. “This will have no impact on the vast majority of users as most already downvote or report abusive content.”
One Reddit user said in a post on Friday that Reddit’s description of “violent content” in the new policy seemed too broad.
“What if I strongly dislike a fictional character from a television show or video game and want to express that in a hyperbolic way?” the post reads. “Now we have to dance around what we say and be paranoid that we’ll be banned?
Reddit does have broad rules for violent content. Still, the site’s policy says that users can post violent content if it is “educational, newsworthy, artistic, satire, documentary, etc.”
Last month, Reddit temporarily shut down the popular community r/whitepeopletwitter after several users made threatening comments against Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
Tensions between Reddit users and Musk grew in January after the moderators of over 100 subreddits moved to ban links to X following Musk’s speech at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, where he made a gesture that some interpreted as a fascist salute.
Reddit told BI at the time of the temporary ban that it wants its communities used for “civil discussion” and “one of the few places online where people can exchange ideas and perspectives.”
“We want to ensure that they continue to be a place for healthy debate no matter the topic,” the company said in a statement. “Debate and dissent are welcome on Reddit — threats and doxxing are not.”
However, Reddit’s content moderation system has not been without flaws. Reddit moderators said this week that the system flags the name “Luigi” for violent content, even when it is used in non-violent contexts. On Thursday, moderators for the popular subreddit r/popculture said they were forced to shut down the forum due to the censorship from Reddit’s moderation system in a post.
Reddit did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider about the content moderation system. A spokesperson for the company told The Verge that Reddit does not have a “sitewide filter for the word ‘Luigi’ or expectation that users stop talking about Luigi Mangione,” according to the outlet.
Luigi Mangione, 26, is the Ivy-league grad suspect charged with shooting and killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024.
Reddit told The Verge that r/popculture recently fell to just one moderator, allowing the subreddit to filter out potentially sensitive words automatically. The community’s moderator told BI that they did not make a list of possibly sensitive words and said they think Reddit’s content moderation is inconsistent.
“I’ve reported so many comments of people calling me or other people the f-slur, and Reddit tells me it doesn’t violate their policies, but saying ‘Luigi’ does,” the moderator said.
Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, who left the company in 2020, said last week that he thinks the future of social media will be moderated by AI, where users have “sliders” to “choose their level of tolerance” about certain topics.
