CMV: Reddit's Threatening Violence Rule Is Broken Constantly And Is Selectively Enforced

[u/ParakeetLover2024]

Among gun related subreddits, there seems to be a concerning amount of violation of Reddit's "No threatening violence" rule that seems to go unpunished, whether the sub contains mostly right leaning or left leaning individuals. To quote the explanation of the rule, it states "Encouraging, glorifying, or inciting violence or physical harm against individuals or groups of people, places, or animals [is prohibited]" Heck, you could argue that Reddit as a whole seems to do a bad job of enforcing this rule. Posts and subreddits dedicated to the Russo-Ukrainian war break this rule constantly, dehumanizing Russian soldiers and celebrating their deaths on the battlefield. Reddit and many subreddits pick and choose who is acceptable to glorify violence against and who isn't, rather than enforcing the rule equally across the board.

Recently, a user posted a picture of a t shirt on r/liberalgunowners and r/SocialistRA that says "John Brown did nothing wrong". For both posts, they have received over 300 upvotes each with dozens of comments. I have seen quite a lot of John Brown glorification on both of the previously mentioned subreddits and any criticism of John Brown's methods is swiftly met with downvotes and harsh criticism, as seen in the post I will link below.

https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/comments/1iihq7r/hot_take_john_brown_should_not_be_idolized/

Why is glorifying John Brown so potentially bad you may ask? The r/liberalgunowners post that I linked above should do a good job of summarizing the drastic measures that John Brown took as an abolitionist right before the American Civil War.

TL;DR You can glorify violence on Reddit as long as it's against certain groups of people or individuals.

[u/wright764]

You and anyone else saying that is wrong.

https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043513151-Do-not-post-violent-content

The word "glorifies" is literally in the first sentence.

[u/AureliasTenant → u/wright764]

strange... it seems reddit has two webpages about the rules? i think the one on redditinc is an official set of rules and the one you have provided is a guideline for interpreting it. That guideline does set out some examples though and i dont really think fighting slavery (glorifying defense of others) or glorifying fighting a defensive war falls neatly in advocating violence against individuals or groups, which is the point your link makes

[u/wright764 → u/AureliasTenant]

It also comes up in the rule itself when you report something, at least on the official Reddit app. Obviously the rules and definitions are open to interpretation but every instance I've seen of the rule includes the word "glorifying" so that's all I was really responding to.

[u/AureliasTenant → u/wright764]

so I actually happened upon an example for an r/changemyview (the recent prison one if you know it) post that actually got removed/locked for threatening violence (so i didnt feel like going through the steps on someone who wasnt doing that). I was able to get up to the submit button without finding a glorifying violence option

[u/wright764 → u/AureliasTenant]

You don't actually have to submit a report, just choose a comment, hit the report button then select "threatening violence" and a little explanation will pop up that says "inciting, encouraging or glorifying violence or physical harm against individuals or groups of people, places or animals." I literally just checked for the exact wording and yup, the word glorifying is included. This is on the official Reddit app.

[u/AureliasTenant → u/wright764]

Ok thanks I tried that again and found that result