Reddit has a choice: it can either detox its increasingly loud racist, sexist, backwards quarters, or slowly die. An announcement by the site’s new CEO says a change is on the way.

From CEO Steve Huffman:

Hey Everyone,

There has been a lot of discussion lately —on reddit, in the news, and here internally— about reddit’s policy on the more offensive and obscene content on our platform. Our top priority at reddit is to develop a comprehensive Content Policy and the tools to enforce it.

The overwhelming majority of content on reddit comes from wonderful, creative, funny, smart, and silly communities. That is what makes reddit great. 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.

Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen: These are very complicated issues, and we are putting a lot of thought into it. It’s something we’ve been thinking about for quite some time. We haven’t had the tools to enforce policy, but now we’re building those tools and reevaluating our policy.

We as a community need to decide together what our values are. To that end, I’ll be hosting an AMA on Thursday 1pm pst to present our current thinking to you, the community, and solicit your feedback.

PS - I won’t be able to hang out in comments right now. Still meeting everyone here!

Emphasis added. Could Reddit finally decide that it doesn’t want its operating budget to include running websites dedicated to creepshots and /r/CoonTown? We might find out on Thursday.

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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