No. They can't. It's like making 4chan politically correct. It's ridiculous and would eliminate everything that make these sites unique, not to mention piss off all current users.
Indeed, the very problem is that they can. The community should be trying to stop them if they want to keep enjoying what's left to enjoy. "The front page of the internet" isn't a claim to be universally accessible to everyone who uses the internet, reddit won't last if they try to make it so.
Let me expand a bit on my original thought as well, since I wrote my original comment while still in bed. :) The biggest problem reddit is going to encounter is the fundamental ways that different users and demographics view reddit. You have the new users who come for the pix, you have people who solely use it for the darker side, you have moderators who have been around forever and have a much wider knowledge of how reddit actually operates, you have privacy minded folks who like the deeper insights some of reddit produces and the outlet it provides, you have trolls and people who don't take it too seriously but holy shit do they take it seriously, you have the media (like Guardian and Buzzfeed) who see it as a place to get top stories and nothing else and always seem to be comparing it to fucking twitter, and you have investors who are trying to make some money because there has got to be some way to make fucking money when you have 100 bazillion users, and you have the reddit admin team who has always been hands off but is now being forced by the fact that they are playing in the 'real social media site' circle now. The goals and expectations of all these parties are too too different to keep everyone happy, but reddit (especially now that Alexis is back) will try their damned hardest. As reddit has grown, the comparison to real social networks like twitter and facebook have also grown and the expectation that they take action (like facebook and twitter) in moderating some of the more offensive content has become a must-have. However, these media outlets that are pushing this agenda fail to fully grasp what reddit was and still currently is: a place for people to make communities, share links, and talk amongst themselves about whatever they want. I find it a bit funny that the media, who prides itself with constant talks of first amendment and free speech, can't see the hypocrisy. Yes, there is a difference between 'breaking a news story' free-speech and 'The Fappening' free speech, but it doesn't even seem like these media agencies are even attempting to see any view but "porn = bad" and "omg their are subreddits for dead kids." While Conde Naste, for the most part, let reddit exist as it was, the more and more media coverage they get, the more they are forced to take action. Jailbait wasn't shut down until Anderson Cooper did a breaking news piece on it and the world was outraged. This story as well pokes at the reddit admins and ownership to take action. As for where that “leadership” comes from, Strudelle says “I don’t care if it’s Advance Publications or if it’s [Reddit co-founder and chairman] Alexis Ohanian or Ellen Pao, but there are hate movements that use Reddit as a propaganda organ… and someone needs to step up and get rid of them.” Literally. ^ This bullshit right here is utterly pointless except to poke at the admins/owners of reddit. Guardian is essentially saying "Hey - you guys - you own this site - why aren't you doing anything - here - we're publishing your goddamn name in a typically worthless article - do something now? We are the media. We have power." Hey Guardian. You can shut down the darker sides of reddit, most likely causing it to speedily race downhill and utterly be the demise of reddit. But you know what is going to happen? All those people will go to others site to get their darker content, and you won't have any bullshit to pull from reddit.com to put on your homepage. Also, I find it hysterically that the Guardian is quoting SRS mods on reddit as a source of propaganda. lulz.ts largest shareholder is US media conglomerate Advance Publications, a family-owned company best known for owning magazine firm Condé Nast, not for hosting hardcore pornography. Reddit was formerly owned outright by Condé, but the company transferred ownership sideways in 2011 within its corporate family, while diluting selling a portion of the company back to Reddit itself.
The biggest problem Reddit has encountered, is encountering, will continue to encounter is that it's an architecture masquerading as a website. It does this because it has to: the architecture underlying Reddit requires centralization and constant hand-tweaking to function. Fundamentally, Reddit is an algorithm designed to aid and magnify viral market spread operated for the benefit of a community with a vehement hatred for viral marketing. Reddit is metaphorically a kid with Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Syndrome choosing to clean public latrines in Bangladesh. Go go, li'l dude but as soon as your bubble suit gets punctured you're fucked. It's not even Reddit's fault. Conde Nast bought them for their architecture, not their community, then discovered the previously-mentioned scalability nightmare rendered their new toy incompatible with their old empire so they put it in a corner to see if it would sort itself out. Anyone with a passing understanding of social media would predict that a hand-coded "virulence engine" is likely to mutate into something uncontrollable if you don't tend it carefully. Meanwhile, all the effort was expended building Reddit into a "community" rather than a "method" for other communities to propagate. Think about it: If your karma and your profile didn't follow you from /r/shitredditsays to /r/realgirls, what would the problem be? No one ever talks about the "PHPBB" community because it's an architecture, not a website. If, say, the SFWPorn Network were its own autonomous community, with its own admins, its own spam engines, its own policies and its own mechanics... would anyone care what happens on /r/shitredditsays? If /r/creepshots had to find its own host, its own admins and its own interface to deal with the FBI... would it persist? Eventually, Reddit will fragment into unrelated communities. It hasn't yet because Reddit has even less of a chance of monetizing that than what they have now; as the Webtoid guys figured out, back when Reddit was open source, it's really tough to keep an open petri dish of agar from developing only the bacterial colonies you want. So they keep it going until they can figure out how to make it work. np links pretty much show how far they are from accomplishing it yet how badly they need to.
The Guardian and feminism go hand-in-hand, it seems, and it does annoy its readers at times. Look at how badly their article proposing an 'eco-feminist Top Gear' went down, especially on Facebook; all because the Guardian forgot that people watched Top Gear because it's an entertainment show and not because they are car enthusiasts.
Thats not really true. Having a baseline of human decency doesn't strike me as something a community should be trying to stop. The only thing Tidder cares about stopping is getting their nudies from being taken away. There's a reason the only subreddits I hang out on are blackladies, blackfellas, and hiphopheads. The opposite of "universally acceptable" for Reddit is straight white males that are taking STEM classes. If you're going to claim to be the front page of the Internet, herpderp, then you should claim responsibility. Insomnia's comment in particular strikes me as surprising because she's talked about how prolific and widespread of a reach Reddit has in the real world. Shouldn't that be something you want to keep just a tiny bit in check?
Err, i dont know, I don't think anyone is serioisly tryong to defend things like Fappening like they have a right to invade people's privacy. What I'm worried about is having to use reddit with a conscience- next thing you know CNN reports on r/spacedicks or r/morbidreality and it gets taken down just from social pressure.Having a baseline of human decency doesn't strike me as something a community should be trying to stop. The only thing Tidder cares about stopping is getting their nudies from being taken away.