Abstract
Reddit quarantined: can changing platform affordances reduce hateful material online?
Highlights
This paper is part of Trust in the system, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guestedited by Péter Mezei and Andreea Verteş-Olteanu
This paper studies the efficacy of the Reddit’s quarantine, increasingly implemented in the platform as a means of restricting and reducing misogynistic and other hateful material
Reddit has frequently found itself in an uncomfortable position, straddling a fine line between maintaining a culture of free speech, while at the same time not allowing the flourishing of violence and hateful material (Copland, 2018)
Summary
On 28 September 2018, Reddit announced a revamp of their quarantine function (u/landoflobsters, 2018). The implementation of the quarantine was part of a broader sweep of policy changes from the platform, ones which shifted Reddit away from their unlimited free-speech ethos. These shifts occurred primarily for two reasons. Davis and Chouinard propose that affordances request, demand, allow, encourage, discourage, and refuse: Requests and demands refer to bids that the artefact places upon the subject. The quarantine function represents an attempt from Reddit to use the architecture of the platform to both discourage and encourage particular behaviours from users. This both forces subscribers to reconsider their behavior and incentivizes moderators to make changes. (u/landoflobsters, 2018)
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