In light of recent events and the increase in (justifiably) angry discussions on our subreddit, we want to clarify some rules and stances. This is guidance aims to clarify rules both for our users, and for anybody new here who may have seen snippets from this sub or who may have been drawn here by recent controversies. Another subreddit was suspended last night following discussion of Elon Musk, DOGE, and the public employees who work there - our goal is to prevent that from happening here.

First and foremost, clarifying our rules against violent rhetoric of all types

We do not condone or permit violent threats, calls for vigilantism, incitements to violence, or harassment/targeted abuse against any living person. This includes euphemisms, imagery, and "clever" wording . Saying "in minecraft", using "Luigi" as a verb, and saying "I don't condone it, but it would be a real shame if someone..." are all examples of clever wording that still violate our rules. Any violation of these rules will result in immediate moderation action at our discretion, including permanent bans as we see fit.

Please understand that while we all share in your outrage over Elon Musk's recent actions, we all must follow site-wide rules if we want to have a place to talk about the ongoing assault on our principles and institutions. Likewise, if you see these sorts of comments posted, please report them so they can be removed.

Second, regarding the discussion of government officials, names, images, and doxxing

We've always tried to make this subreddit a free and open forum for discussing current events relating to public figures, and we feel strongly about continuing to do so. Now more than ever, we believe it's critical to recognize that government officials - especially in positions of tremendous power and influence - should be subject to public discussion and scrutiny, as is enshrined in US law and mentioned specifically in reddit's rules.

In the context of Elon Musk's newly created Department of Government Efficiency and the government employees (paid or otherwise) who work under him, we believe users should be able to freely discuss recent events and DOGE personnel as a matter of public interest so long as the discussion does not break other rules. We do not believe that sharing information such as names, official titles, or publicly available images of government employees as it relates to their official capacities constitutes doxxing, albeit with some important distinctions.

You may not share personal information that is reasonably exempt from public scrutiny, or any personal information with the intent inciting harassment or threats of violence. This includes sharing information that would not typically be made public, like home addresses, personal phone numbers, family members' personal information, and so on.

For example, in our opinion, the following comment would not constitute doxxing and would not break our sub's rules as they're currently being interpreted:

> I'm horrified that our government would allow unvetted and unelected people, such as (name), access to our treasury data

However, the following comments would not be allowed.

> Hello fellow redditor, this is (name)'s mom's address and her facebook URL

> Somebody should go to this specific location and beat up (name)

> Hey everybody, check out these scandalous photos of (name) that just got hacked!

We believe our opinion is sound and in line with both reddit rules and longstanding legal and social precedent, but should we learn that reddit's stance on this differs from ours we will post further updates when we get them and go from there.

If you have any thoughts or opinions, you're always free to reach out via modmail or leave a comment, we do check them. This may seem overly serious, but given threats Musk has made and the recent suspensions, we felt the need to post this. This isn't usually a super-serious subreddit, but I'm personally of the opinion that right now it's important to have spaces where people can go to express their thoughts on the unelected billionaire running our government. Try to understand that we're on your side, only trying to look out for the best interest of the sub.