Reddit has unleashed its newest tool to assist in censoring speech on its platform: artificial intelligence. 
The platform’s CEO Steve Huffman revealed the Orwellian news during an interview with Fast Company. Fast Company (Fast Co.) absurdly headlined its December interview: “As the AI era begins, Reddit is leaning into its humanity.” Yet this supposed emphasis on “humanity” includes a new method of preemptively censoring user content before it’s posted, using artificial intelligence (AI) — and apparently never involving a human moderator in the action.
“Reddit is an open platform, and we love that,” Huffman asserted to Fast Co. “I think community is a fundamental part of being human, and I think authenticity is nearly synonymous with the concept.” Yet the company now has a prototype for something called “post guidance,” according to Huffman. It’s a preemptive measure to crush speech before it even gets to a human moderator who could then potentially censor it again.
The AI prototype is set to flag content that supposedly violates a subreddit’s rules before that content can be published. “The new user gets feedback, and the mod[erator] doesn’t have to deal with it,” Huffman told Fast Co., indicating that the measure will cut down on the amount of work a volunteer moderator will have to do. It was unclear if the content would then not be allowed to publish, or whether the feedback will simply provide an obstacle to posting. The outlet also cited Huffman as listing vague concepts such as “willful bad behavior” and “bullying and hate speech” as being within its new AI censorship tool’s sights.
Reddit has a history of allowing moderators to promote rampant censorship of free speech when it doesn’t comport with leftist dogma. For instance, in July 2022, Reddit moderators attempted to ban the label “groomer” after LGBTQ activists called for increased censorship online. An MIT Technology Review piece on the COVID-19 lab leak origins theory was also censored by a Reddit moderator in March 2021.
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