cyberbullying

"Over the years, the site has been condemned by critics because users have shared inappropriate images and content that has included hate speech against particular groups. Reddit users have posted pictures of dead children. Moreover, people are often harassed for who they are based on their religion or their ethnicity. For example, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks hate groups, at least 46 active subreddits are devoted to white supremacy, the racist idea that white people are superior to all other races."

"There is also a dark side, communities whose purpose is reprehensible, and we don't have any obligation to support them. And we also believe that some communities currently on the platform should not be here at all."

"The board approved removing r/fatpeoplehate, r/HamPlanetHatred, r/transfags, r/NeoFAG, and r/ShitN---ersSay. Notably not on this list was the overtly and enthusiastically racist r/CoonTown, which had about ten thousand subscribers. … Within minutes, the banned communities popped back up, having been reregistered by moderators using different names. The sequel subreddits weren't particularly creative: r/fatpeoplehate2, r/fatpeopleantipathy, r/wedislikefatpeople."

"By late October, Huffman's policy team, along with trust and safety and legal, had solidified their tougher policy on violent posts. The new rule: "Do not post content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people; likewise, do not post content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals." It opened the door for Reddit to ban another extensive list of subreddits. These were mostly far-right-leaning and Nazi-sympathizing forums and those that glorified harm or death, such as r/selfharmpics and r/PicsOfDeadKids. … Also banned were r/europeannationalism, r/nazi, and r/killthejews, and a few sites that mocked, parodied, or stemmed from r/CoonTown. Animal abuse, harm, or bestiality comprised another significant subset of the list."

"Reddit's administrators had just deleted a subreddit called r/Pizzagate, a forum for people who believed that high-ranking staffers of Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, and possibly Clinton herself, were trafficking child sex slaves. The evidence, as extensive as it was unpersuasive, included satanic rituals, a map printed on a handkerchief, and an elaborate code involving the words "cheese" and "pizza." … The conspiracy theorists, in turn, claimed that they'd been banned because Reddit administrators were part of the conspiracy."

"But let's take the infamous picsOfDeadkids example. The actual content of that subreddit is mostly autopsy photos. Obviously it's a troll subreddit and created to get a reaction, and I'd guess 98% of redditors think it's gross/offensive etc. But what if the name of the subreddit was r/autopsyphotos or r/doyoureallywanttogointocriminalforensics and they were sincere in their discussion of these images? Would some of that 98% now be ok with it? I would bet at least some would. What if it wasn't kids but adults? Or historical autopsy photos only? The point is I don't want to be the one making those decisions for anyone but myself, and it's not the business reddit is in."

"/r/MensRights—the "Men's Rights Activism" hub mentioned earlier—professes to be a site of measured social advocacy, but other subreddits make little effort to sugarcoat their misogyny, opting instead to engage in open, unapologetic bullying. /r/TumblrInAction mocks the left leaning, feminist "social justice warriors" said to populate Tumblr. /r/SRSSucks critiques the vocal feminism of /r/ShitRedditSays. /r/TheRedPill—reappropriating a metaphor for awakening from the 1999 film The Matrix—advocates for hegemonic masculinity and a return to traditional gender roles. /r/FatPeopleHate—until it was banned in June 2015—described itself as a space for "shitlords oppressing fatties" and housed photos of individuals deemed worthy of mockery due to their weight."

"Subreddits that represent clear ideological agendas (r/TheRedPill, r/FatPeopleHate, r/The_Donald) tend to have higher Gini coefficients as well. … Typically, the top 10% of contributors' comments garnered between 70% and 85% of the total vote scores for comments in a subreddit in a given month."

"[Robert] Fisher seemed obsessed with the negative effects feminism was having on his dating experience. … It was this plight of navigating a post-feminist sexual marketplace, one where "the entirety of the male experience [is] wrought with rejection and ego-destroying experiences," that led Fisher to establish The Red Pill."

"The popular social networking and news-sharing site Reddit once hosted a group called Game of Trolls. Its rules were simple: if you successfully upset someone on Reddit without them realizing they were being trolled, you won a point. If you were identified as a troll, you lost a point. The highest scorers were listed on a leaderboard. … Game of Trolls was eventually banned by Reddit; a highly unusual step for the otherwise liberal site, but testament to the pervasiveness and persistence of the Reddit trolls."

"After the Isla Vista massacre, a subreddit called 'Elliot Rodger Fans' was quickly created, though it was banned by Reddit soon afterwards."

"/r/MensRights content is unrestricted on Reddit, and so it occasionally makes its way into the /r/all feed, or into the suggested subreddits of users. With over 288,000 members, participants are active in many parts of Reddit, and other users are likely exposed to /r/MensRights content through their comments, user pages and post histories. /r/TheRedPill has a different path, as content from the subreddit no longer appears in the /r/all feed or other non-subscribed aggregate feeds since being quarantined in 2018."

"There were a half dozen or so subreddit communities that I had never heard of before that had posts sitting on the front page of Reddit. The common thread among all of them seemed to be rooted in getting angry at or mocking other people. … The first one that I noticed was /r/MurderedByWords, which featured screenshots of social media interactions containing a "response which completely destroys the original argument in a way that leaves little to no room for reply." There was /r/PublicFreakout, "dedicated to people freaking out, melting down, losing their cool, or being weird in public." Perhaps needing the least explanation was /r/IAmATotalPieceOfShit, where users post social media screenshots or videos of others who they think fit the namesake for the community. Meanwhile, over in /r/IAmVerySmart, the users mock "people trying too hard to look smart.""

"The Daily Beast, in an exhaustive report, investigated a forum known as "Red Pill" on Reddit.com. It found that [Robert] Fisher, writing as "pk_atheist," created the forum in 2012, posting: "Let's talk about exactly what it means to be a sexual man in the era of feminism," and, "In a culture where the only thing standing between you and prison is whether the last girl you (expletive) decides to lie about rape, these are REAL questions that I think are being ignored.""

"Due to the younger demographic of many of Reddit's users, some of its content can seem immature, crude, or inappropriate. There is very little censorship on the site and pictures containing nudity or grotesque injuries are posted regularly (although they can be easily hidden)."

"Founded by Joshua Moon, a former 8chan administrator, Kiwi Farms evolved into a popular platform for creating harassment campaigns. Its users often fixated on transgender people, relentlessly stalking and doxing them. At least three of its victims died by suicide."

"Named for their ability to be milked for laughs, lolcows are Kiwi Farms’ raison d’etre and site owner Joshua Moon has devoted the majority of the last 10 years to cataloging the names, faces, and online activity of the people he deems worthy of public ridicule."

"On Kiwi Farms, every trench-coat wearing stereotype is catered for, including boards where users share videos of people being killed. No act is too extreme and the Farmers [users of Kiwi Farms] wear their homophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia with pride."

"Kiwi Farms bills itself as a "community dedicated to discussing eccentric people," though researchers who study extremist communities say it's notorious for degrading and harassing its targets – often those they perceive as deviant and many of whom struggle with existing mental health issues."

"To the people of Kiwi Farms, this is a videogame. That the people on the other side of the screen are real makes no difference. They delight in the kill counter going up just like an FPS [first person shooter video game] player would. Lacking in any empathy, they have no regard for the damage they inflict on others."

"Kiwi Farms harvests anguish. It thrives on pain and revels in death. Users of the innocuously named forum prey on the vulnerable and marginalized—people who are transgender, neurodivergent, disabled, financially struggling—with persistent and twisted harassment campaigns. Despite its penchant for destroying lives, Kiwi Farms has been mostly overlooked by the media for much of the site’s existence. That is partly because of who it attacks, but also because reporters are wary of becoming targets themselves. The users call their victims “lolcows” because their pain can be milked for laughs. The group made its purpose clear on its Twitter page before it was taken down: “Gossip and exploitation of mentally handicapped for amusement purposes.”"

"Kiwi Farms specializes in harassing people they perceive as being mentally ill."