Reddit is rejecting a call for it to remove COVID-19 disinformation, citing the need to permit dissent and debate on the social media platform.
On Wednesday, hundreds of volunteer moderators from various sub-forums on Reddit signed an open letter demanding that it take down “dangerous medical disinformation.” According to the moderators, Reddit has done little to stop the problem when infections and deaths from the virus continue to surge in the US.
“We could have been better off months ago, but disinformation and lies have been allowed to spread readily through inaction and malice, and have dragged this on at the cost of lives,” the letter says.
However, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman responded by defending the platform’s practices. “Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy,” he wrote. “Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate. This includes conversations that question or disagree with popular consensus. This includes conversations that criticize those that disagree with the majority opinion.”
According to Huffman, Reddit itself supports the COVID-19 vaccines and mask-wearing. But he disagrees with the need to ban sub-forums “that challenge consensus views on the pandemic.”
“We continue to believe in the good of our communities and hope that we collectively approach the challenges of the pandemic with empathy, compassion, and a willingness to understand what others are going through, even when their viewpoint on the pandemic is different from yours,” he wrote.
Huffman added: “Given the rapid state of change, we believe it is best to enable communities to engage in debate and dissent, and for us to link to the CDC (US Centers for Disease Control) wherever appropriate.”
The statement isn’t sitting well with critics. They argue the COVID-19 dissent on Reddit has nothing to do with debate about facts, but instead involves deliberate lies crafted to mislead the public. “I can’t stand how absolutely blatant and disingenuous misinformation is considered ‘the other half of the conversation,’” wrote one user in response to Huffman’s post. “It’s not a conversation, one half is entirely evidence backed, the other is not.”
Nevertheless, Huffman’s response isn’t surprising veteran users of the site. Reddit has a long history of permitting controversial sub-forums on the platform, despite the alleged hate speech and conspiracy theories that can circulate through them. In 2017, Huffman notoriously said racism wasn’t necessarily against the rules on the site. Instead, he believed open dialogue could help the Reddit community collectively defeat it.
“I believe the best defense against racism and other repugnant views, both on Reddit and in the world, is instead of trying to control what people can and cannot say through rules, is to repudiate these views in a free conversation, and empower our communities to do so on Reddit,” he said at the time. Three years later, Huffman pledged to take a stronger stance against racism on the site, but even then his statement elicited doubts from some users.
In his latest post, Huffman said although Reddit won’t ban fringe views regarding COVID-19, it will crack down on some forms of misinformation that go too far. “Manipulating or cheating Reddit to amplify any particular viewpoint is against our policies, and we will continue to action communities that do so or that violate any of our other rules, including those dedicated to fraud (e.g. fake vaccine cards) or encouraging harm (e.g. consuming bleach),” he wrote.
