Image caption Reddit chief Steve Huffman says racism is allowed on site

Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman has been accused of supporting racism in his commitment to free speech. And PostimusMaximus referred to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional grilling: “Zuckerberg is sitting over here getting grilled for not removing hate-speech fast enough due to AI limitations and yet you find yourself passing hate speech off as okay.”

Thursday, Huffman updated his remarks, saying that “While racism itself isn’t against the rules, it’s not welcome here.”

However, he seemed to stick to the spirit of his Wednesday response when he added: “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.”

Previously banned Reddit groups include ones called “CoonTown” and “raping women.” Last year, the site banned two high-profile white nationalist groups. In his opinion: “It’s not.”

He went on to clarify the point by saying: “On Reddit, the way in which we think about speech is to separate behaviour from beliefs. “This means on Reddit there will be people with beliefs different from your own, sometimes extremely so.”

It’s unclear if Huffman’s comments are representative of Reddit’s company policy, but protection of hate speech can — and do — lead to online harassment and cyberbullying. When users actions conflict with our content policies, we take action.”

That resonates in 2018, in the aftermath of the fatal Charlottesville white-supremacist march last year, and as racists feel more emboldened to say what they want online and offline. When he took over after Ellen Pao’s brief, tumultuous time as chief executive, Huffman pledged to ban the “dark side,” which he defined as “communities whose purpose is reprehensible.” He said then that Reddit had “no obligation to support” such communities, which provides an online discussion board that has about 330,000 monthly users, more than 138,000 communities, and an average 14 billion views according to the About page on its website.
Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit, says racism is allowed on the website. Some users criticize his position, while others praise Huffman for defending free speech.