The Front Page of the Internet.pptx

The Front Page of the InternetA Closer Look At Reddit’s Terms of Service AgreementA Presentation By Ben Rowdon

What is ?

Google Search I’m Feeling Lucky

What is ?Reddit is a social networking platformIt was founded in 2005By Steve Huffman and Alexis OhanianReddit has amassed over 36 million user accounts

Unlike social networking sites such as Facebook Reddit places emphasis

on anonymity.

The content on Reddit’s site is submitted by it’s users. Users are able to

either “up vote” or “down vote” the link in accordance with their views of the content.

This is what the ‘front page’ can look like, with users able to modify what sort of links appear on their ‘front page’. They are also able to engage in conversation on any given post.

Reddit is made up of thousands of “subreddits”. Each subreddit is a

community with its own content, rules and moderators.

One of Reddits most famous Subreddits is r/AMA (Ask Me Anything) where celebrities

and other persons of interest allow Reddit users to ask them

questions. One of the most notable of these was the AMA with President Barack Obama

in 2012

This is Reddit’s sign up page All that is required is a

username and a password of your choosing, while an

email is optional

As part of this very easy process you are also agreeing to Reddit’s

terms and that you have read their privacy policy and content policy.

This is stated like so in fine print at the bottom of the sign up page.

This is Reddit’s ToS (Terms of Service)

Assuming you haven't read it let us break

it down for you.

& Privacy PolicyUser Agreement

Reddit community and forums revolve around

an impression of anonymity, but exactly

how private is their privacy policy?

They state to “Please read this privacy policy carefully”

However it is unlikely that many Reddit users do

“We also log, and retain indefinitely, the IP address from which the account is

initially created.”(Reddit)

“Reddit stores the IP addresses associated with specific posts,

comments, and private messages for 90 days after they are made or

sent.” (Reddit)

This means that any of your posts can be traced back to you or back to where you originally signed up from

It is worth noting that your IP address that Reddit collects can and will be turned over to law enforcement when needed

Should you choose to delete your Reddit account your profile is no longer visible. However your posts and content are not

automatically deleted

This means that deleting your account will still leave many traces of your presence on Reddit

Infact

“This means that, by default, they are not deleted from our

servers – ever” (Reddit)

This includes both content and simply messaging others on Reddit. So make

sure to be careful what you post because you can't take it back or remove it

completely, ever.

Content Policy

“We take no responsibility for, we do not expressly or implicitly

endorse, and we do not assume any liability for any user content

submitted by you to reddit.” (Reddit)

You may be fine with Reddit taking no responsibility for anything you post to their site, this is of course if you are not Frederic Lambert

Frederic was sued for defamation for

comments he left about the car

manufacturer Saleen on a subreddit he

frequented. When he received this news he was handed a binder

full of his posts on Reddit (Paul, 2015)

Reddit states that “You retain the rights to your copyrighted

content or information that you submit to reddit ("user content")

except as described below.”(Reddit)

However

This is what is below:“By submitting user content to reddit, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive,

unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly

display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to

authorize others to do so.”(Reddit)

This gives Reddit the right to sublicense your content that you share on their website

So if you have taken a picture you particularly like you may not want to share it on Reddit otherwise you could see it

turn up elsewhere

The forms of content that is prohibited from Reddit are:• Illegal content• Involuntary pornography• Content that Encourages or incites violence • Content that threatens, harasses, or bullies or encourages others

to do so• Personal and confidential information• Content that Impersonates someone in a misleading or

deceptive manner• Spam

These are some of the ways Reddit enforces their rules

Asking you nicely to knock it off

Asking you less nicely

Temporary or permanent suspension of accounts

Removal of privileges from, or adding restrictions to, accounts

Adding restrictions to Reddit communities, such as adding NSFW tags or

Quarantining

Removal of content

Banning of Reddit communities

Previously Reddit has been recognised for it’s laid back attitude towards administration, however recently they have tweaked some of their policies due to debates over where free speech

becomes abuse or illegality (Robertson, 2015).

There has been a recent update to Reddit’s policy regarding harassment which now states:

“Harassment on Reddit is defined as systematic and/or continued actions to torment or demean someone in a way that would make a reasonable person conclude that

reddit is not a safe platform to express their ideas or participate in the conversation, or fear for their safety or the safety of those around them.”

This has lead to the removal of five subreddits each of which

were highly discriminatory, the most popular of these being

r/fatpeoplehate(Dewy, 2015)

Pew research center found that 92% of internet users agreed that people were more likely to be critical of each other online and those who had

experienced harassment found that 81% indicated their incident involved name calling or purposeful

embarrassment. (Duggan, 2014).

Harassment can come in many different forms and when spread on reddit it can be wide reaching

and irrevocably damaging to one's livelihood and to one's family.

Tragically after the Boston Bombings in 2013 some

reddit users had deduced that missing student Sunil Tripathi

was responsible. Soon his face had spread all over the

internet for all the wrong reasons, much to the distress

of Sunil’s family (Shontell, 2013).

Reddit has over 800,000 subreddits, this is a lot of content to monitor, so some things are left

to individual moderators which “Reddit provides tools to aid

moderators…”

These moderators are just people so things can go wrong or get missed

You need to be aware that by joining Reddit you are agreeing to these terms of service.

From here on out you are responsible for your own actions and Reddit can not be responsible

for others actions either so unfortunately there is potential for harassment to occur.

Reddit emphasises that it is for fun:“reddit is intended to be a place for your

entertainment”

Hopefully you now have a better understanding of what you agree to when signing up

to Reddit. If you endeavour to abide by

their policies, try and get along with others and are careful

about the information that you share you should still be able

to enjoy yourself

Thank You For Watching

Reference List

Baumann, A., Fabian, B.. Privacy on Reddit? Towards Large-Scale User Classification. European Conference on Information Systems. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/publication/272828012_Privacy_on_Reddit_Towards_Large-Scale_User_Classification

Dewy, C. (2015). These are the 5 subreddits Reddit banned under its game-changing anti-harassment policy-and why it banned them. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/06/10/these-are-the-5-subreddits-reddit-banned-under-its-game-changing-anti-harassment-policy-and-why-it-banned-them/

Duggan, M. (2014). Online Harassment. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Retrieved 1 October 2015, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/

Paul, K. (2015). A Redditor Is Getting Sued by a Car Company for Comments on the Tesla Subreddit. Retrieved 1 October 2015, from http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-redditor-is-being-sued-by-a-car-company-for-comments-on-the-tesla-subreddit

Privacyrights.org,. (2015). Online Privacy: Using the Internet Safely | Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Retrieved 2 October 2015, from https://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs18-cyb.htm

Robertson, A. (2015). Reddit Announces New Anti-Harassment Rules. The Verge. Retrieved from http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/14/8606923/reddit-anti-harassment-policy

Shontell, A. (2013). What It's Like When Reddit Wrongly Accuses Your Loved One Of Murder. Business Insider Australia. Retrieved 1 October 2015, from http://www.businessinsider.com.au/reddit-falsely-accuses-sunil-tripathi-of-boston-bombing-2013-7

Images used under creative commons licence

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Reddit.svg/500px-Reddit.svg.pnghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Brownsville_Herald_Newspaper.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Kitten_and_partial_reflection_in_mirror.jpghttps://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7397/11890753246_05f8a866f8.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Google_wordmark.svg/2000px-Google_wordmark.svg.pnghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Ic_mic_48px.svg/2000px-Ic_mic_48px.svg.pnghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Anonymous_emblem.svg/2000px-Anonymous_emblem.svg.pnghttp://img02.deviantart.net/a926/i/2011/218/e/0/reddit_bookmarks_by_inaimathi-d45pbgo.jpghttps://www.flickr.com/photos/undergroundbastard/8849976970https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/33/68076579_0bf088fabb_b.jpghttps://pixabay.com/p-159252/?no_redirecthttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/President_Barack_Obama.jpghttps://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2583/3709203268_1f8afc8392_b.jpghttps://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4063/4687262861_afdd31b3b1_b.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Shared_IP.svg/388px-Shared_IP.svg.pnghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Saleen_S7_(8228619567).jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/No-Symbol.svg/2000px-No-Symbol.svg.pnghttps://pixabay.com/p-719066/?no_redirecthttps://pixabay.com/p-455747/?no_redirecthttps://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6120/6238711264_541d1fd3be_b.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/New_Kings_and_laid-back_modern_art_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1075733.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Big_smile.pnghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Handshake_(Workshop_Cologne_'06).jpeghttp://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/54/65/2546585_d3cbce55.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Exclamation_mark_red.png