Hate speech, Censorship, and Freedom of Speech: The Changing Policies of Reddit

TL;DR

This study analyzes Reddit user comments to understand how content policies and attitudes towards hate speech and censorship have evolved, reflecting societal changes and legal influences.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the shifting discourse on Reddit regarding content restrictions and hate speech moderation through topic modeling analysis.

Findings

Shift in user discourse correlates with societal upheaval

Increased focus on hate speech and violence incitement

Changes linked to new laws and regulations

Abstract

This paper examines the shift in focus on content policies and user attitudes on the social media platform Reddit. We do this by focusing on comments from general Reddit users from five posts made by admins (moderators) on updates to Reddit Content Policy. All five concern the nature of what kind of content is allowed to be posted on Reddit, and which measures will be taken against content that violates these policies. We use topic modeling to probe how the general discourse for Redditors has changed around limitations on content, and later, limitations on hate speech, or speech that incites violence against a particular group. We show that there is a clear shift in both the contents and the user attitudes that can be linked to contemporary societal upheaval as well as newly passed laws and regulations, and contribute to the wider discussion on hate speech moderation.