Reddit Reprimands Its Technology Forum for Censorship

Last week, Reddit
user “Creq” blew the lid on the apparent censorship of hot-button
topics being discussed on the site’s technology page,
“r/technology.” Moderators responded in kind this week by banishing
the highly trafficked discussion board from the site’s front
page.

Backing up his claims with graphs that show sudden, conspicuous
silence on major issues, Creq
alleged that over the last eight months r/technology has been
automatically removing discussions for which the title features
words and phrases such as “National Security Agency,” “Obama,”
“Bitcoin,” and “Comcast,” among many others. The Daily Dot
points
out that “almost all of them have at least two qualities:
they’re commonly found in the intersection of technology and
politics, and they can be seen as controversial, or at least likely
to inspire anger in a few people.”

This came a surprise, since Reddit bills itself as a highly
democratic platform for information cultivation and the
r/technology board alone has over five million subscribers.

Why did the tech moderators censor posts? One of them, assuring
everyone that he never approved of the tactic,
explained that the volunteer staff turned an automatic filter
into an overzealous crutch when some of the moderators became lazy.
Still, discussions about some topics, such as Tesla cars, seemed to
be deliberately gagged
by moderators motivated by bias.

Reddit’s director of communications, Victoria Taylor,
has told the BBC that
r/technology will not be featured on the site’s main page or be
included among new users’ default subscriptions. “The moderation
team lost focus of what they were there to do: moderate
effectively,” she said. “We’re giving them time to see if we feel
they can work together to resolve the issue. We might consider
adding them back in the future if they can show us and the
community that they can overcome these issues.”