Reddit began a cleaning mission this June which aimed to remove hateful content from the site, and Reddit has recently noticed early results of their campaign with an approximately 18% drop in users posting hate content on the platform.
This may not be a huge number, but it shows that there is success and the mission did not fail. Almost 7000 subreddits were banned by the company and many communities were blocked to get rid of hate speech, violence, religious and racial partiality, and other forms of discriminatory content on the platform.
Many of the Reddit users are happy and satisfied with the progress. It is believed to be a part of some strict policies that Reddit had introduced to ban hate content. As per its new stance and mission, Reddit has claimed that before the banning spree began in June, the company had to see more than 40,000 overtly and subtle pieces of hate content being shared in the communities daily. This is a staggering figure and comprises of 0.2% of the overall content. Now, in comparison to the total content, it looked like a small percentage, but this hate content including posts, comments, photos, and messages received more than 6.47 million views or roughly 0.16% of the overall daily views. But even this small viewership meant that in respective communities, this content was popular and could have gained more reach if Reddit had not initiated the banning policies. Also, the view percentage was smaller because Reddit’s moderation bots were already at work and removing some content before it got public.
The company has reported that 48% of all the hate content on the platform was on the basis of racism, targeting people belonging to a certain nationality or ethnicity. 16% of hate content was based on political bias, 12% of the total hate content targeted the sexuality of people, 10% of hate content targeted people’s gender, 6% of this criticism was based on religion, and 1% was based on targeting the ability of people. 7% of hate content had an unclear target.
Reddit says that collecting all this data was difficult because hate content comes in various ways. Sometimes it is subtle and has unclear targets. Recognizing and then removing it can be challenging. Other times is it loud and clear, and removing it is not difficult. But the company hopes to collect more detailed data in the future.
Read next: Global Consumers Spent 1.6 Trillion Hours On Their Smartphones During The First Six Months Of 2020
This may not be a huge number, but it shows that there is success and the mission did not fail. Almost 7000 subreddits were banned by the company and many communities were blocked to get rid of hate speech, violence, religious and racial partiality, and other forms of discriminatory content on the platform.
Many of the Reddit users are happy and satisfied with the progress. It is believed to be a part of some strict policies that Reddit had introduced to ban hate content. As per its new stance and mission, Reddit has claimed that before the banning spree began in June, the company had to see more than 40,000 overtly and subtle pieces of hate content being shared in the communities daily. This is a staggering figure and comprises of 0.2% of the overall content. Now, in comparison to the total content, it looked like a small percentage, but this hate content including posts, comments, photos, and messages received more than 6.47 million views or roughly 0.16% of the overall daily views. But even this small viewership meant that in respective communities, this content was popular and could have gained more reach if Reddit had not initiated the banning policies. Also, the view percentage was smaller because Reddit’s moderation bots were already at work and removing some content before it got public.
The company has reported that 48% of all the hate content on the platform was on the basis of racism, targeting people belonging to a certain nationality or ethnicity. 16% of hate content was based on political bias, 12% of the total hate content targeted the sexuality of people, 10% of hate content targeted people’s gender, 6% of this criticism was based on religion, and 1% was based on targeting the ability of people. 7% of hate content had an unclear target.
Reddit says that collecting all this data was difficult because hate content comes in various ways. Sometimes it is subtle and has unclear targets. Recognizing and then removing it can be challenging. Other times is it loud and clear, and removing it is not difficult. But the company hopes to collect more detailed data in the future.
Read next: Global Consumers Spent 1.6 Trillion Hours On Their Smartphones During The First Six Months Of 2020
