Reddit will now issue warnings to users who “upvote multiple pieces of content that violate our policies” over a “period of time,” starting with violent content, the company announced Wednesday.
“This will have no impact on the vast majority of users, as most of them are already downvoting or reporting offensive content,” a Reddit employee said in a post. In the comments section of the post, one user expressed concern that the new policy could make people “paranoid about voting,” but the employee says “that would be an unacceptable side effect, which is why we want to monitor this closely and enforce it thoughtfully.”
“We’ve done this in the past for quarantined communities and found that it really helped reduce the impact of bad content, so we’re experimenting with it site-wide,” the main post says. In the future, Reddit “may consider” expanding the warning system to cover re-votes for other types of actions, as well as taking other types of actions in addition to warnings.
