Reddit updated its policies yesterday banning the impersonation of an individual or group in a misleading or deceptive manner.
The change won’t affect deceitfully doctored videos alone but would take into account for penalties, simple lies made by people impersonating others online.
The new policies expand upon the platform’s 2018 ban on deepfake porn videos and were made just days after Facebook updated its own platform policies to ban deepfake videos.
A post on Reddit’s website on the new policies reads:
“If you’ve been frequenting this subreddit, you’re aware we’ve been doing significant work onsite integrity operations as we move into 2020 to ensure that we have the appropriate rules and processes in place to handle bad actors who are trying to manipulate Reddit, particularly around issues of great public significance, like elections. To this end, we thought it was time to update our policy on impersonation to better cover some of the use cases that we have been seeing and actioning under this rule already, as well as guard against cases we might see in the future.
“Impersonation is actually one of the rarest report classes we receive (as you can see for yourself in our Transparency Report), so we don’t expect this update to impact everyday users much. The classic case of impersonation is a Reddit username pretending to be someone else– whether a politician, brand, Reddit admin, or any other person or entity. However, this narrow case doesn’t fully cover things that we also see from time to time, like fake articles falsely attributed to real journalists, forged election communications purporting to come from real agencies or officials, or scammy domains posing as those of a particular news outlet or politician (always be sure to check URLs closely– .co does NOT equal .com!).
“We also wanted to hedge against things that we haven’t seen much of to date but could see in the future, such as malicious deepfakes of politicians, for example, or other, lower-tech forged or manipulated content that misleads (remember, pornographic deepfakes are already prohibited under our involuntary pornography rule). But don’t worry. This doesn’t apply to all deepfake or manipulated content– just that which is actually misleading in a malicious way. Because believe you me, we like seeing Nic Cage in unexpected places just as much as you do.
“The updated rule language is below and can be found here, along with details on how to make reports if you see impersonation on the site, or if you yourself are being impersonated.
“Do not impersonate an individual or entity in a misleading or deceptive manner.
“Reddit does not allow content that impersonates individuals or entities in a misleading or deceptive manner. This not only includes using a Reddit account to impersonate someone, but also encompasses things such as domains that mimic others, as well as deepfakes or other manipulated content presented to mislead, or falsely attributed to an individual or entity. While we permit satire and parody, we will always take into account the context of any particular content.
“If you are being impersonated, or if you believe you’ve found content in violation of these guidelines, please report it here.
According to reports, Reddit in 2018 had spotted 944 “suspicious” accounts that were suspected to be linked to the Internet Research Agency. Some of the most popular posts from those accounts were negative articles about Hillary Clinton, linked to broader misinformation campaigns around the 2016 election.
