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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

Reddit also has a flag inside of their api called `nsfb`: Not Safe For Brand. They'll let you post it, and they'll host it, but they don't want most people to know that they'd host it, so they hide it from public, not-logged-in sections of the site.

It's really shameful; they need to stop the hypocrisy and either become a content-neutral host and own the consequences, or censor arbitrarily, and own the consequences. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too, and it's entirely unfair, much in the same way shadowbanning is.

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> Reddit also has a flag inside of their api called `nsfb`: Not Safe For Brand. They'll let you post it, and they'll host it, but they don't want most people to know that they'd host it, so they hide it from public, not-logged-in sections of the site.

I think you are confusing NSFB (brand_safe) with quarantining.

Quarantining is used for subs which are borderline being banned. Subs with frequent racism, subs with very fringe ideas (like 9/11 conspiracy theory). You need to login to view them, so they don't turn up in Google search etc. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/911truth (try that link in a private browsing window if you are logged in to Reddit)

I don't think the brand_safe field is exposed in the public API any more (I presume it probably still exists behind the scenes). But my understanding of what it means, it is supposed to mark subs which are not advertiser-friendly. For example, subs that discuss controversial topics such as politics or religion. Anonymous users can view these subs fine and they turn up in Google. But, Reddit will display their own ads instead of third-party advertiser ads. Most companies don't want their advertising to pop up in the middle of a debate about whose religion is more correct, or what the Bible/Quran/etc has to say about sexual morality, it is bound to create a bad association in someone's mind.

While logged on to Reddit, I noticed a particular post would not load due to HTTP error 500. I didn't see anything about an outage on downdetector, so I copied the URL into ceddit and the page pulled up fine, and it was there that I noticed the NSFB tag. I've seen this same behavior on a few other posts since that time, which makes me wonder if this is intentional. At this time I've been unable to locate any reading that would back up that theory.

What is shameful about it?

It's a realistic approach to navigating the real world where there are bills to pay, Reddit Gold isn't going to cut it, and advertisers don't want their brand associated with random NSFW/NSFL content.

I don't get this obsession with browbeating every content provider not living up to these Stallmanistic extremes.

Reddit should not have to give up any sort of protection for allowing advertisers to not have their ads show up on certain subreddits, or censoring Nazis.

If Reddit of all sites is what we're calling shameful, there is no hope.

This isn't about NSFW/NSFL. Those are a different tag. This is about censorship of entirely-SFW stuff that Reddit simply doesn't like.

They have tons of porn. They just don't have tons of political variation.

It’s not stuff Reddit doesn’t like, it’s stuff advertisers don’t like.

In fact, iirc every single subreddit is “Not Safe For Brand” by default. How does that jibe with trying to avoid “political variation”

Subs get whitelisted for advertising with it. That’s it.

Signaling to advertisers something is a safe choice for ads or not is not censorship, and it’s not unreasonable.

What else can you do? They're happy to host communities they don't like but don't want them as part of their public image.

The kind of content that's quarantined (because nsfb is an advertising thing) isn't "political variation." They're absolute cesspools hate, doxxing, threats of violence. Were these communities gathered in a physical room I would genuinely feel unsafe.

Reddit actually has a good amount of political variation and opinion. A staggering amount of Redditors are authoritarian conservatives by their opinions given how often people say Reddit is full of bleeding-heart liberals, but they would never associate themselves with the Republican party or "conservatives".

as we've seen in recent years, social media is a highly effective platform for influencing people. in general, the platform is immune to legal repercussions for stuff that users post, because it isn't construed as the company's own message. this leaves the door open for a "neutral" platform to influence people through selectively moderating certain content.

people here aren't demanding that reddit (and other sites) let people post whatever they want. they are asking for sites of a certain size to actually be neutral as a condition of safe harbor protections. to me this seems pretty fair. if you have millions of users and exercise editorial control over the content, you should be on the hook for what's left.

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