On Thursday, reddit's new CEO Steve Huffman, a co-founder of the site, held an AMA (shorthand for “ask me anything”), promising that he would answer questions and use the time “to decide together what our values are,” in the wake of a “content policy update.”

Huffman, who goes by the username spez, posted a long note about how reddit would be moving forward, saying that its tagline, “the front page of the Internet,” was meant to be tongue-in-cheek and that while reddit "is a place to have open and authentic discussions,” sometimes those discussions must be moderated. “When our purpose comes into conflict with a policy, we make sure our purpose wins,” Huffman wrote.

The note from Huffman included a list of things that would no longer be allowed on the site and things that would continue to be barred from the site including:

Spam

Anything illegal (i.e. things that are actually illegal, such as copyrighted material. Discussing illegal activities, such as drug use, is not illegal)

Publication of someone’s private and confidential information

Anything that incites harm or violence against an individual or group of people (it's ok to say "I don't like this group of people."It's not ok to say, "I'm going to kill this group of people.")

Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people (these behaviors intimidate others into silence)

Sexually suggestive content featuring minors

reddit administrators also said that subreddits with adult content would be flagged as such, and that that classification “will require a login, must be opted into, will not appear in search results or public listings, and will generate no revenue for reddit.”

reddit has been dealing with a small mutiny since its administrators announced that harassing subreddits would be banned from the site. Although the decision was made by former interim CEO Ellen Pao, head of community and support Jessica Moreno, and reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Pao got the brunt of the backlash and harassing subreddits about her began popping up. Then, a well-liked reddit moderator, Victoria Taylor, was fired in early July, which in turn caused a large number of reddit's moderators to make their subreddits private in protest of perceived ongoing poor communication between reddit's management and its volunteer moderator force. reddit's administrators issued multiple apologies, and then last week Pao tendered her resignation, saying that she disagreed with the direction reddit's board was taking.

While some reddit users cheered Pao's resignation, others turned their suspicion toward Huffman, who posted an announcement about his upcoming AMA claiming “Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen.” Several reddit users took the opportunity to point out that Ohanian had, in fact, claimed that reddit was a place for unfettered speech several times in recent years.

Others challenged Huffman to address how reddit will move forward in dealing with particularly offensive subreddits like r/rapingwomen or r/coontown, which had not been banned as of this morning despite reddit's new policy against harassing subreddits. Still other reddit users just wanted the administrators to clarify why the changes were happening now. "It's the total lack of transparency and condescension that is fueling so much of this anger at reddit admins," one user wrote. "...The admins obviously aren't winning the PR war by trying to sneak stuff by us with double talk and press release template responses. THIS IS REDDIT, NOT COMCAST. JUST LEVEL WITH US."

In his AMA comment today, Huffman wrote about reddits' new guidelines for content: “We’ve spent the last few days here discussing and agree that an approach like this allows us as a company to repudiate content we don’t want to associate with the business, but gives individuals freedom to consume it if they choose,” he wrote. “This is what we will try, and if the hateful users continue to spill out into mainstream reddit, we will try more aggressive approaches. Freedom of expression is important to us, but it’s more important to us that we at reddit be true to our mission.”

Answering the questions

Predictably, the administrators' AMA exploded with comments, questions, and lengthy, pre-written diatribes almost as soon as it went up, with more than 500 comments appearing in the first seven minutes. Many users wanted more specifics on how subreddits would be banned, and how the site might change as it grew.

When asked how reddit would draw the line between two offensive subreddits, Huffman wrote: “/r/rapingwomen will be banned. They are encouraging people to rape. /r/coontown will be reclassified. The content there is offensive to many, but does not violate our current rules for banning.” He later added that “reclassified” meant something “Similar to NSFW but with a different warning and an explicit opt-in.”

Huffman also addressed the disparity between his comments that reddit is not “a bastion of free speech” and Ohanian's repeated comments about reddit being a bastion of free speech, saying “the common wording is unfortunate.”

”As I state in my post, the concept of free speech is important to us, but completely unfettered free speech can cause harm to others and additionally silence others, which is what we'll continue to address,” he added. In a response to another user, Huffman wrote, "While we didn’t create reddit to be a bastion of free speech, the concept is important to us. /r/creepshots forced us to confront these issues in a way we hadn’t done before. Although I wasn’t at reddit at the time, I agree with their decision to ban those communities." (The reference to r/creepshots comes from a 2012 controversy over a subreddit that posted sexualized images of women without their knowledge.)

A moderator for a couple of BDSM subreddits also chimed in, asking Huffman if those subreddits could be banned under the new rules because they could “incite harm or violence against an individual or group of people.” U/DarrSyn asked: “There are sections of the world, and even the United States, where consensual BDSM and kink are illegal. You can see where this is the type of announcement that raises more than a few eyebrows in our little corner of the world. At what point do the minority opinion and positions be accepted as obscene, offensive, and unwanted?”

”I can tell you with confidence that these specific communities are not what we are referring to. Not even close,” Huffman replied. “But this is also why I prefer separation over banning. Banning is like capital punishment, and we don't want to do it except in the clearest of cases.”

Another reddit user, u/Warlizard, asked “How much of the push toward removing "ugly" elements of reddit comes from the motivation to monetize reddit?” Although reddit never said why it moved to ban harassing subreddits when it did in May, many suggested that the decision was made to make the site more palatable to advertisers who might object to running their ads on a site that serves subreddits like r/fatpeoplehate. Huffman, without further comment, replied to u/Warlizard, “Zero.”

But yet another reddit user pressed Huffman, pointing out that comments made by Yishan Wong and Ellen Pao in the previous five days suggest differently. Pao wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that appeared today, in which she claimed that "A large portion of the Internet audience enjoys edgy content and the behavior of the more extreme users; it wants to see the bad with the good, so it becomes harder to get rid of the ugly. But to attract more mainstream audiences and bring in the big-budget advertisers, you must hide or remove the ugly." To this, Huffman replied, "Well, only one of us actually works here."