With its new antiharassment policy, the social-networking and news site Reddit says it wants to "balance the free expression of ideas with privacy and safety."

As such, Reddit has taken a number of steps over the past few months to become more transparent and responsive to its users' concerns. The company released its first Annual Transparency Report in January, banned revenge porn in March and yesterday provided a more complete explanation about what content admins remove for legal reasons. Today, the company defined harassment as:

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“Systematic and/or continued actions to torment or demean someone in a way that would make a reasonable person (1) conclude that reddit is not a safe platform to express their ideas or participate in the conversation, or (2) fear for their safety or the safety of those around them.”

Founded in 2005, Reddit, which had nearly 170 million visitors to its site last month, has long seen itself as a venue where people could share whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. That emphasis on freedom of expression has attracted people who've weighed in on everything from politics to food to sports. The site has more than 9,000 active communities, called subreddits, where participants can discuss topics and share content.

In its blog post, Reddit emphasized its free-speech roots. The new policy "will have no immediately noticeable impact on more than 99.99 percent of our users," the company said.

"It is specifically designed to prevent attacks against people, not ideas. It is our challenge to balance free expression of ideas with privacy and safety as we seek to maintain and improve the quality and range of discourse on Reddit,” additional information from its statement.

Users that feel they are being harassed -- in-thread, via a private message, or even through an external site that links back to Reddit -- are urged to contact the mods at contact@reddit.com.

TagsReddit Introduces New Anti-Harassment Rules for Users' Safety, Reddit, Anti-Harassment Rules, Anti-Harassment, Redditors, subreddits