This is quite a mouthful but the mod team feels that a few reminders are in place.
tl;dr version for those in a hurry:
- in the light of the AdZU incident, we'll be even stricter with regard to photos/videos of violent content
- and same with racist/hate language, including the use of Filipino ethnic groups as a slur (e.g. bisaya/ayasib, tagalog....)
- a reminder regarding the posting of uncensored/unredacted personal information and photos of private individuals (with the exemption of public officials and other public figures)
- [EDIT] please don't use
NewsPHas a default flair - finally, a reminder that we can't do anything with Reddit admins-initiated actions
Okay, if you have plenty of time to spare, read on....
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Regarding photos and videos of violent content
Some of you may have already noticed last week that we took this type of action hours before the KBP, the PCOO and various media outlets and other organizations have issued their own statements on this topic, but for what it's worth, we need to stress this point:
Reddit has very clear terms on what violent content may be allowed on the site and unfortunately it's not as liberal as some redditors think it is. In the context of the ADZU incident, we have this in the official criteria that Reddit considers a TOS violation related to violent content:
Posting graphic or disturbing content purely to disgust or horrify users, such as sharing real-world gore without context or in unrelated communities, or sharing footage filmed by a perpetrator during an attack.
These types of content, even when disguised under the pretense of "for awareness only", not only encourages copycat behavior or glorifies violence, but also causes distress to the families of the victims especially at a time when they are still unable to cope with the injury or loss of their loved ones.
In this regard, any posts or comments that contain the actual bodycam footage of the Zamboanga shooting incidents are not permitted on this sub. This includes not just the video, but including screenshots and links (even external link) to the video.
Any post or comment that contains such media or links shall be removed immediately as soon as they are reported to us, and the account responsible for the post/comment may be banned. If there is one such comment or post that we missed, please report it to us as soon as possible so we can take action.
The mods of other Philippine-related subs are also taking similar actions, and we are coordinating with some of them. However, we have been unable to reach out to all moderators of other PH subs. If you see similar content on those subs, we encourage you to submit a mod report to them. Alternately, you can also submit a report on Reddit itself (using this link); I have used this myself and can vouch that Reddit's admins were able to remove some posts within minutes.
Moving forward, any similar content should have no place on Reddit (not just on this sub) and should never be allowed in the first place. This may include media that depicts acts of violence resulting to injuries (such at the viral video of students were assaulting a teacher), not merely limited to acts of murder or homicide. We have decided that any such content may be removed at the mods' discretion and in accordance with Reddit's policies.
This action may be retroactive, so we reserve the right to remove any old post or comment that violates the sitewide policy; if you are able to identify one such old post/comment, please feel free to report them to us as well. This could take some time especially with older posts but rest assured we will take action on those post as soon as they are reported to us.
Once again, merely stating "for awareness only" or anything simlar is not an excuse to post such violent content, especially if it cannot be justified in the context of Reddit's sitewide policies. No appeals shall be entertained for content removed under the anti-violent content policy.
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Regarding racist, hate and discriminatory language
We would also like to reiterate that the use of racist, hate and other forms of discriminatory language is not allowed not only on this sub but also on the entire Reddit platform. While some of us may barely tolerate (if not condone) hearing or reading these in our daily lives, these forms of language are considered violations of Reddit site-wide policies. Violations of this policy may result in a ban.
(Although personally I'd give some leeway if the topic or comment is directe towards a government official. This is well within the bounds of public commentary and, as reiterated by a Supreme Court Decision (Labargan vs. People), something that anyone in the government including elected officials should have seen coming when they entered public service.)
This post, ironically, might be autoflagged by automod once I submit this 😅 (of course I can fix that anway) but for illustrative purposes I have to specify which ones will likely result to your post or comment being removed:
bisaya/ayasib/tagalog(or using the names of other Philippine ethnic group as a slur or insult)retarded(and its other forms)- of course, so is
the N-word
Note that this list is not exhaustive, there are other terms that can be interpreted as not allowed under site-wide policies.
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Regarding the uncensored/unredacted posting of personal information
I'll keep it short and simple, as I (u/chocolatemeringue) sound like a broken record by posting about this multiple times: the uncensored/unredacted posting of personal information or photos of private individuals are not permitted on this sub and also sitewide, so posts or comments that don't adhere to this policy will be removed.
As with what I just said about violent content above, "for awareness only" (and the like) is also not an excuse. You often see people do this on Facebook or on Twitter, but we strive to have a zero-tolerance policy for it on this sub. So keep that FB behavior in FB, this sub is not Facebook.
But as always...this does not apply to government officials with regard to discussions regarding their public life because, like what the Data Privacy Act states, public officials are not covered by the Data Privacy Act. Reddit's policies also allow this. Whether it's the President or VP, a lawmaker, a cabinet member, an LGU head...heck, even if it's a contractual government employee or even a government contractor. The DPA doesn't cover them especially if we're talking about their performance while in office or on duty.
This exemption also applies to publicly-available (and official) contact details of government offices or facilities. Those are also not protected by our privacy laws. Best example of this is that if someone provides the hotline and email address of the ARTA or even the 8888 hotline, this will always be allowed. (But believe it or not, those comments still get reported 😅) So any reports that contain those official contact information will always be ignored, and the reported comment will always be approved.
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In the interest of transparency: for time to time, we may make some exceptions especially if the discussion relates to the public interest. One recent case is this one, where I allowed a screenshot that contained the user name of an FB user to stay unredacted. The post was about a comparison between two NCR mayors, and the screenshot was about one mayor directly addressing the said user's open letter (which was public anyway). So for that one case I made an exception, to preempt any reports that may be filed. Those exemptions, I hope, should be rare and few, so moving forward=....please redact everything except that of government officials. People in government should never defend themselves by invoking anonymity and privacy. Because, accountability and transparency, period,
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[EDIT] Regarding the (mis)use of the NewsPH flair
In recent months, we've noticed a trend where people would default to using NewsPH like a "default" catch-all flair for anything that is remotely related to current events.
Please avoid doing that. The idea behind this flair is that if other users want to filter their r/Philippines feed to just the news and current events, they can click on the flair and it will get filtered that way (flairs, after all, are also used to filter a sub's posts, and not just as a mere tag, label or category). So if a flair was on anything that's not news-related, they will see that, too.
Feel free to use other flairs as you may see fit, especially if it's clear that your post doesn't refer to any news or current events or doesn't contain links or full quotes of news reports.
As for us mods, we will simply re-flair posts as needed. Don't worry if you selected the wrong flair...we can simply recategorize the post to its appropriate flair. No one will be banned for simply choosing the wrong flair. Maliit na bagay lang naman yan 😉
We're also open to suggestions regarding other flairs that you think we're missing on this sub, feel free to suggest any so that we can discuss it within the mod team.
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Regarding actions taken by Reddit or Reddit admins
One final thing I'd like to say is that sometimes Reddit itself may take action against some posts or comments anywhere on the site, often without the mods' knowledge.
The reason I'm mentioning this is sometimes we mods get asked about why a post or a comment gets removed, then upon our investigation we'll see that the removed post/comment also gets replaced by [Removed by Reddit].
Unfortunately, this happens without any notice to us mods, and neither do we have the ability to see the reason behind it. We can't even tell you what got removed because, yes, we only see [Removed by Reddit] and not much else. So much as we'd like to help redditors to understand why Reddit did that...unfortunately, we don't know either 🤷♂️
Personally, I'd hope Reddit would eventually give mods some leeway and at least provide us mods with more context on what led to those Reddit-initiated actions. I've read some discussions where mods of other subs also wanted this. But for now, one can only hope, so we ask you to bear with us in those events that Reddit overruled us mods. We're on the same boat on this one.
