Reddit owes its moderators more than an updated hate speech policy

Programming note: The Interface is off Thursday. Back on Monday.

I.

Should Reddit pay its volunteer moderators? The thought had not really occurred to me until last week, when I joined a call with CEO Steve Huffman and his general counsel, Benjamin Lee. The executives were briefing me and some other reporters about a significant expansion of the site’s content moderation policies, which were unveiled on Monday and resulted in the removal of 2,000 subreddits, including the notorious forum for hate speech The_Donald.

Reddit’s content moderation scheme differs sharply from the Facebook News Feed or the Twitter timeline. Instead of applying one set of rues for the entire user base, Reddit sets a “floor” of rules that no one can violate but...

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