Following Facebook’s decision to ban deepfake content on its platform, Reddit updated its policy around the impersonation of entities or individuals. The site will decrease the amount of misinformation by banning or removing the considerate majority of deepfakes as well as other kinds of manipulated content and accounts that impersonate others.
Even though Reddit banned manipulated videos back in 2018, it is extending its policy to more types of malicious content to ensure “appropriate rules and processes” in the run-up to the forthcoming presidential election in the USA.
The original statement reads:
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.
Although impersonation reports only make up 2.3% of all reports, the platform is already taking action to try and prevent such content from spreading.
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.
However, the ban does not apply to all kinds of deepfakes – only to those that can mislead maliciously. Besides, satire and parody will still be permitted. Still, the company says, “We will always take into account the context of any particular content,” which makes it hard to understand what particular content will be considered inappropriate because deciding on that will be up to Reddit’s moderators.
Reddit also asks its community to contribute to fighting misinformation by reporting any impersonation content they may see on the platform.
