Reddit’s problem isn’t the bans, it’s the nuclear approach it’s taking

Wired this morning has a piece on the issues Reddit’s interim CEO is causing with the company’s enforcement of “community guidelines.”  

The bigger issue at hand is that Reddit’s leadership is changing the ships direction and expecting not to lose users in the process.  As Wired points out

 For so long, the quality that has defined the community has been its rigid commitment to an ideal of free speech and, in step with that, its hands-off approach to moderating content. Occasional trolls and morally questionable content, Reddit’s staunchest advocates would say, are the unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of upholding those values. And if those values are not to be compromised, the thinking goes, some offenses must be tolerated.

I think it’s more nuanced than even that.  CEO Page is allowing a tactic that is too broad in it’s approach.  I believe that many, if not most, of Reddit’s users would understand bans against USERS who are found to take such actions that they cross the line from free speech to harassment.  But that’s not the tactic.  Instead, they are banning entire communities because of the participation of a few activists.  They’re banning communities of ideas, rather than banning the individuals who act on those ideas in poor ways.

And so for users of Reddit, the scary question is, who’s next?  Which community will be the next to be obliterated because a few members take it too far?

Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand that my idea is harder.  Identifying and signing out the uniquely bad actors in a large community takes more work, more time, and more effort that simply wiping out the neighborhood.  It’s carpet bombing versus door-to-door combat.

But when we compromise our principles of the easy path, it’s the most painful compromise of all.  And that’s what Reddit users are feeling right now.  They’ve watched the company level an entire community to dig out a few bad apples.  And within their own communities, they must be wondering “who’s next?"

And that’s not a way to keep people on your site.