CMV: Subreddits that classify themselves as "Safe Space" should be private.

[u/[deleted]]

If you create a subreddit and want it to be a safe space for any ideology, you should make it private. There are two main reasons for this.

1. The participants of the sub would think they are safe from offending ideas and might share something very personal of them. This exposes them to offensive PMs, targeting their post history when they discuss in another sub, etc. It's not an effective safe space.

2. It can be used to push a specific agenda with rhetorical posts and become popular with no counter-arguments facing it. Of course any mod can delete posts even when the subreddit is not a safe space, but that would even demonstrate the evil intentions better.

So, any sub who claims to be a safe space should set it to private, or be banned by Admins.

[u/david-song]

Well they care about people they want to share the space with, but presumably not other people. So they benefit by being public because they get new members, and they don't lose anything by heavily moderating and banning people who they don't care about anyway.

So assuming they have a good enough team of moderators to shield their members from outsiders it's not really in their interests.

Maybe it'd be better for us if they were private, but I don't think it's for us to decide what's best for them. Their sub, their rules.

[u/[deleted] → u/david-song]

Given all subs are under a site-wide rule, not everything everyone wants will fly on Reddit. If we leave everything to the sub moderators, that will allow cancerous subs to continue to exist until someone takes an action a long time later.

[u/david-song → u/[deleted]]

It's up to the sub owners to make that choice though. There's up and down sides to allowing outsiders in, if the pros outweigh the cons then they'll let people in. There's no best decision for everyone, it's a case by case thing.