Reddit並沒有真正決定它在網際網路的一角是如何運作的，但是CEO黃奕山對於處理最近的事件有一些強烈的建議：“我們不會禁止合法的內容，即使我們發現它令人厭惡或者我們個人譴責它，”他在今天釋出的一份洩露的備忘錄中寫道，這份備忘錄由Gawker獲得。當然，他指的是正在進行的Violentacrez爭議。上週，同一個目瞪口獃的人揭開了Reddit最討厭的巨魔之一的面具，把他的真實身份公佈給所有人看。據稱，這讓維奧倫塔克雷茲失去了工作。與此同時，Gawker的姐妹網站Jezbel發表了一篇文章，指出命名是與r/Crevelshots（一個釋出“技術上合法的”郊區照片的地方）等討厭內容作鬥爭的唯一方法。

對於Reddit來說，這些報道是嚴重的違規行為：網站不允許釋出使用者的個人資訊（又稱“doxxing”）。然而，Reddit的版主們更進一步，試圖對Gawker網路進行全網站的禁止，並禁止一個使用者，甚至一個公開反對這種做法的版主。

現在，Reddit執行長黃奕山正在制定法律。。。或者至少強烈建議未來的適度原則。”我們主張****，”他寫道。他說，雖然該網站將繼續禁止Reddit本身的doxxing（披露個人資訊），也可以禁止連結到明目張膽doxxing的外部網站，但也有合法的新聞報道可能涉及個人資訊，他希望Reddit尊重這些文章。

這是完整的備忘錄，以及TL；DR版本：

TL;DR: We stand for freedom of speech. We will uphold existing rules against posting dox on reddit. But the reality is those rules end at our platform, and we will respect journali** as a form of speech that we don't ban. We believe further change can come only from example-setting.

Hi everyone. There sure has been a lot of trouble lately for reddit, and I'd like to talk a bit about that before I nip off for a spot of tea. I know the admins have been silent during a lot of the recent crisis, and we have been putting together a complex decision. We'd like to chart the right course for reddit's future, and we are taking this seriously.

We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it - but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on reddit. Now it's just reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse (cat pictures are a form of discourse).

We also know that this will be a difficult course to take. We know that some will not agree with us. And we even know that we may not succeed, or that we may even be forced to compromise. But, we also think that if someday, in the far future, we do become a universal platform for human discourse, it would not do if in our youth, we decided to censor things simply because they were distasteful.

Our rules today include the following two excepti***:

1. We will ban illegal content, and in addition sexualized pictures of minors, immediately upon any reports to us. We gave our rationale for that back when that issue was resolved, and we will maintain that policy for the same reas***.

2. We will ban the posting of personal information (doxxing), because it incites violence and haras**ent against specific individuals.

The current events have made it clear that the implementation of #2 requires some development. Those of us who've been around are familiar with the reas*** behind that rule, the destructive witchhunts in reddit's past against both users and mods - even people who had no idea what ‘reddit' was - prompted by suspicion and ire, and often ending with undeserved haras**ent, death threats, job loss, or worse for the affected individual. Even reddit's favorite journalist Adrian Chen once wrote an article decrying the practice and mob mentality behind it (see: http://gawker.com/5751581/misguided-internet-vigilantes-attack-college-students-cancer-fundraiser).

But our ability to enforce policy ends at the edges of our platform. And one of the key functi*** of our platform is the sharing of content on the internet. I'm sure you see the problem.

So we must draw a line, and we've chosen to do the following: 1. We will ban doxxing posted to reddit. 2. We will ban links to pages elsewhere which are trivially or primarily intended for the purposes of doxxing (e.g. wikis or blogs primarily including dox).

But, we will not ban things which are legitimate investigative journali**. Free speech is expressed most powerful through the press, and many times throughout history a bad actor has been exposed by an enterprising (even muckraking) journalist, and it has been to the benefit of society. We include in this definition blog posts that a reasonable person would c***ider a piece of journali** that happens to include a link to #2 above.

We recognize that there will be a continuum between trivially obvious doxxing sites (e.g. a wiki page entitled "Collect the dox here!") and "true" journali**, but the world requires judgment calls so the area in between will be where we focus our efforts in adjudication. I do believe that reddit is in some ways like a city-state, and we need to move towards transparent and codified systems of enforcement. We hope to make these calls together in a helpful, precedent-setting manner.

We know that some of you may not agree with where we've drawn the line. But this is our best judgment given the competing principles at stake. We want to do it openly and honestly, even if it is imperfect, and we do it because reddit needs a decision in order to move forward. We ask that you support us.

There is another thing.

Let's be honest, this ban on links from the gawker network is not making reddit look so good.

While the ban was originally being discussed by mods, we were discussing it internally too. We even briefly c***idered the c***equences of a site-level ban on the entire gawker network, and realized three things about it:

1. It would ultimately be ineffective at stopping off-site doxxing. People who want to go after someone off-site would still do it. They have plenty of other megaphones besides reddit.

2. It would definitely raise the profile of the issue with the general public, and result in headlines like "gawker exposes creepster; reddit engages in personal vendetta to defend pedophile." This would hardly help us explain the problem of irresp***ible release of personal information to the general public.

3. Practically speaking, it wouldn't really deter or hurt gawker anyways. This is in contrast to domain banning spammers, where it is not just punitive, it literally stops the spam.

We do believe that doxxing is a form of violence, rather unique to the internet. Even innocent individuals can be accidentally targeted due to mistaken identities - a key difference between online mobs versus with journalists who have a system of professional accountability. And we believe that while we can prohibit it on our platform, we can only affect the opinion of others outside of reddit via moral suasion and setting an example. From the time when reddit first banned doxxing on its platform, I feel that there has been a change in the general attitude towards doxxing on the internet. It's still widespread, but we made a clear statement that it was a bad thing, worth exercising restraint over.

TL;DR: We stand for freedom of speech. We will uphold existing rules against posting dox on reddit. But the reality is those rules end at our platform, and we will respect journali** as a form of speech that we don't ban. We believe further change can come only from example-setting.

All of us at reddit work here because we think that reddit is a community like none other. We think it can be a powerful force to change the world for the better. There are numerous examples of how we - all together - have already begun to do this in **all and large ways. And I think that part of our ability to do so lies in our ability to set an example with our acti*** and decisi***. In our case as admins, we chose to recognize that opponents have the right to criticize us, to expose us, to tell a story about us - even if we don't like that story or we feel it's wrong. So we reversed the site-level ban on Chen's gawker piece.

The mod-implemented ban on the gawker network is still in place, and we know that some of you disagree. We seem to have a difference in opinion, and we hope you'd like to share with us why.