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Reddit bans over 100 subreddits, including r/porn, r/drugs, r/transgender_surgeries, r/rule34, r/boobs, r/IsElonDeadYet. EDIT: admin claims it was a "bug", most subs restored now

https://www.reddit.com/r/BannedSubs/

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1ii6qa1/rporn_rrule34_are_banned_tissue_paper_sales/

edit: Reddit admin says "this is a bug and has been reversed".

r/IsElonDeadYet is still banned though and r/whitepeopletwitter is still under a 72-hour temp ban for "glorifying violence or doxing" against Elon's DOGE crew.

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83 comments

  • The porn ban has been inevitable for years, but Reddit did nothing about it. There's no proper age verification for posting nude content, mod abuse, spam everywhere, extreme fetish subs allowed to run rampant 4chan style with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and Reddit has just swept it all under the rug. They definitely had this ban ready to go. I think it'll be reversed, because without porn Reddit site traffic will crash. They'll just try hide it better, pornographic content is already shadowbanned from all and popular and default search for years now, so more measures like that.

    • I feel like this issue arises a lot more frequently then it should. Didnt Tumblr have similar problems years ago? How do major social media sites keep "accidentally" having almost 0 guardrails in place for nude content. Almost as if they dont want to fix the problem.

      • A lot of the time, the problem is that when you start putting specific systems in place that moderate porn explicitly, you're liable for those systems failing; whereas no bespoke moderation at all lets you wash your hands and only remove things when it's a problem.

        • You're actually not liable for those systems failing in the legal sense. As an "interactive service provider", you are protected under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, even if you are engaged in some moderation of the third-party content you are hosting. It also means that, as the provider, you have the right to "restrict access" to any content you deem objectionable. However, they have to balance this with the fact that they must also ensure that they do not distribute pornographic material to anyone under the age of 18. How they do that, however, isn't prescribed by the law I think, and so it's on a "good faith effort" kind of footing.

          No one likes Section 230. Progressives think that it allows for a site to be absolved of the crime of harboring dangerous people (Nazis). Conservatives believe that it allows for a site to harbor people spreading propaganda against traditional values and suppressing "whiteness" or whatever. Following 2016 and Covid, broadly, both political spectrums believe that the provision gives platforms no incentive to crackdown on "misinformation", or to partake in the curation of misinformation unrestricted.

          The reality is, Section 230 has been holding the door closed for more aggressive policing of speech and expression online since 1994. Everyone hates it, but no one wants to get rid of it because getting rid of it cuts all parties in the process.

          Rhetoric around removing Section 230 is often what drives sites to tighten their controls. Every time it comes up in the media, it is because there is something going on at the federal level. This could be a signal that the feds are going to start this "conversation" up again, but this time through the guise of more explicitly defining what counts as "pornographic" content (to include Trans content of any kind), or to attempt to mandate a federal porn ID system like they do in states across the country. Both of these things might be happening at the same time. I'm pretty sure Reddit doesn't require you to enter state ID information into their site to access it in those states, so somehow they're running just outside the bounds of those ID laws.

          • Pretty sure Reddit (and all the users posting) would still fall under Secondary Producers of 2257, no?

            • I could be wrong, but Reddit isn't a "producer" or a "secondary producer" of content because they do not have "other commercial interest in the sexually explicit material" and are strictly engaging in "the transmission, storage, retrieval, hosting, formatting, or translation (or any combination thereof) of a communication, without selection or alteration of the content of the communication, except that deletion of a particular communication or material made by another person in a manner consistent with section 230(c) of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 230 (c)) shall not constitute such selection or alteration of the content of the communication".

              [Edit] However, they are incentivized to ensure that they are not hosting CSAM because it is a crime to transmit that material. The language around what constitutes "transmission" is pretty broad. [/Edit]

              Reddit hosts explicit content, including pornographic content, but they do not promote that content, they do not run ads on that content, and they could argue that they do not profit from that content explicitly as part of their business model. They are simply providing people with the ability to transmit communications on a wide range of "explicit" or "sensitive" material and, as such, do not need to keep records of anything relate to 2257 and do not need to do hard age verification. If you notice, you do not have the option to say "I am over the age of 18" on your profile. You can simply opt in to flagging your profile as 18+ or flag your post, or flag your Subreddit as 18+. People can then opt in to seeing that content. Which they might argue is a form of age verification, since they state that the content they are opting into is for people 18 or older.

              Any user posting explicit material on Reddit though would be subject to these laws, and I think by extension anyone moderating a community that deals in explicit content would also be subject to these laws.

              But I'm not a lawyer.

      • Because it is deliberate. The whole appeal of posting porn on Reddit, is that unlike proper porn sites like onlyfans where you have to provide proper age verification such as an ID or drivers licence, which will then be linked to your real name, all you need to do is convince some Reddit mod that you're over 18 on a "verification post". It's a much lower barrier to entry, which is how Reddit gets people to post on there. The Reddit algorithm is also much easier to manipulate than other sites, so creators that want to make money can just spam their posts everywhere that link to a PayPal or paid onlyfans account in their bio. Extreme fetish content not allowed on mainstream sites is also just allowed to exist on Reddit. Such a system is ripe for abuse of course, but Reddit doesn't care because of the huge amount of traffic it generates for their website. They just try sweep it under the rug everytime. Look at what happened to Tumblr when they were forced to deal with the porn issue, the site was never the same afterwards.

    • what extreme fetishes are you thinking of?

83 comments