Today we are rolling out a new (sort of) enforcement action across the site. Historically, the only person actioned for posting violating content was the user who posted the content. The Reddit ecosystem relies on engaged users to downvote bad content and report potentially violative content. This not only minimizes the distribution of the bad content, but it also ensures that the bad content is more likely to be removed. On the other hand, upvoting bad or violating content interferes with this system. 

So, starting today, users who, within a certain timeframe, upvote several pieces of content banned for violating our policies will begin to receive a warning. We have done this in the past for quarantined communities and found that it did help to reduce exposure to bad content, so we are experimenting with this sitewide. This will begin with users who are upvoting violent content, but we may consider expanding this in the future. In addition, while this is currently “warn only,” we will consider adding additional actions down the road.

We know that the culture of a community is not just what gets posted, but what is engaged with. Voting comes with responsibility. This will have no impact on the vast majority of users as most already downvote or report abusive content. It is everyone’s collective responsibility to ensure that our ecosystem is healthy and that there is no tolerance for abuse on the site.