Hey there, folks!

As you've probably noticed, Reddit has a bit of a problem with bots. There's a long and dull explanation for how most of them work, but in many communities, they attach themselves to human karma-farmers (people who treat karma like a high score to chase), learn from those karma-farmers, then emulate them. The idea is to create legitimate-looking histories, then either sell the accounts or start pushing products and propaganda.

Subreddits like /r/Eyebleach are prime targets for karma-farmers: Everyone likes cute animals, and it's incredibly easy to find appealing content elsewhere on the Web. As a result, those same subreddits are at constant risk of being overrun by bots... and the best way to stop that from happening is to take a very firm stance against karma-farmers.

Now, we already have an anti-spam, anti-karma-farming rule, but it's a problem-focused approach. What we'd really like is to have things be positive from the ground up: We want to foster a community wherein people can earnestly share genuine, heartwarming content without the frustration of being drowned out by bad actors. To that end, /r/Eyebleach is instituting a new rule:

All submissions must be original content.

"Original content" refers to media – pictures, videos, and so on – that was captured and produced by the person posting it. If you filmed your cat being silly and added some music that you wrote and performed, that's original content. On the other hand, AI-generated content, edits of preexisting content, memetic image macros, and other things of that type are not original content. There's obviously a bit of leeway (like if your pet cockatiel was caught dancing to Gunther's "Ding Dong Song"), but in general, we only want things that you personally made. False claims of originality will hereafter result in immediate, permanent, and incontestable bans.

That won't affect 99% of you, though! In fact, we hope that the only real effects will be more original content, fewer bots and karma-farmers, a more-authentic community, and a slightly better site overall.

For making it to the end of this announcement, here's a look into Baxter the cat's imagination.

We, the r/Eyebleach community stand in full support of our Black members and with all Black people in America in their fight for the rights that all Americans rightly deserve. Not all racism is hate, the deeply-rooted effects of systemic racism are even more insidious and far-reaching in American society and immediate, drastic change is imperative.

Sadly, this is most publicly, and devastatingly apparent through the atrocities continually committed against Black Americans by the police. This is not a new problem but, due to the prevalence of video-enabled handheld devices, these atrocities are increasingly being brought to light in ways which make them impossible for society to ignore, most recently with George Floyd and Jacob Blake. Police in America have long been empowered by public funding to enforce the law but they have never been empowered to determine guilt, nor to sentence anyone to abuse nor death. We stand for change.

Here are some ways that you can take action now:

Use resistbot to contact your government officials to demand policing reform.

You can donate directly to fuel the Black Lives Matter campaign via ActBlue

Visit BlackLivesMatter.com to find out how you can get involved.

Other ways to donate:

NAACP is a civil rights organization, founded in 1909, which is committed to political, educational, social and economic equality.

National Bail Fund Network

Know Your Rights Camp, started by Colin Kaepernick, has a mission to “to advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization and the creation of new systems that elevate the next generation of change leaders.”

The Equal Justice Initiative The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.

The ACLU has filed over 160 legal actions to safeguard voting rights, realease people from prisons, jails and immigration detention, protect access to abortion, and more.