Running man subreddit Continue List of well-known controversial communities on Reddit See also: Reddit § Controversies The social news site Reddit has occasionally been the subject of controversy due to the presence of communities on the site (known as subreddits) dedicated to explicit or controversial material. In 2012, Yishan Wong, the site's ceo at the time, declared: We stand for free speech. This means we're not going to ban unsavory subreddits. We will not ban legal content, even if we find it abhorrent or if we condemn it personally. [1] However, numerous subreddits have since been banned on the basis of ideology. [2] The subreddit r/jailbait, dedicated to suggestive or revealing photos of underage girls, was one of the most prominent subreddits on the site before it was closed in October 2011 following a report by CNN. [3] The controversy surrounding r/Creepshots, dedicated to revealing or suggestive photos of women taken without their knowledge or consent, occurred a year after the closure of the R/Jailbait. The r/Creepshots controversy led to a Gawker exposé by one of the subreddit moderators by Adrian Chen, who revealed the real-life identity of the user behind the account, Michael Brutsch. This started discussion in the media about the ethics of anonymity and outing on the Internet. [4] Quarantining In 2015, Reddit introduced a quarantine policy to make visiting certain subreddits more difficult. Visiting or participating in a quarantined subreddit requires bypassing a warning prompt. Since 2018, subreddits are allowed to appeal in quarantine. [6] Some subreddits are banned after failed quarantines. Banned subreddits Beatingwomen On June 9, 2014, a subreddit called r/beatingwomen was closed by Reddit. The community, which featured graphic depictions of violence against women, was banned after its moderators were found to share users' personal information online, and to work together to protect each other from sitewide bans. After the ban, the founder of the community rebooted the subreddit under the name r/beatingwomen2 in an attempt to circumvent the ban, but was subsequently banned. [7] [8] Braincels r/Braincels was the most popular subreddit for incels, or involuntary celibates, after r/Incels was banned, and gained 16,900 followers in April 2018. The leaders of the subreddit decided to ban persons who plead for murder. [9] However, the subreddit promoted rape and suicide. [10] The subreddit was banned on September 30, 2019, after violating Reddit's Content Policy regarding harassment and harassment. [11] ChapoTrapHouse r/ChapoTrapHouse was a subreddit dedicated to the left-wing podcast Chapo Trap House which is associated with the term dirtbag links. [12] [13] The had 160,000 regulars banned before being banned on June 29, 2020 because they have consistently demonstrated host rule-breaking content and their mods have shown no intention of reining in their community. [14] Previously quarantined for content that promotes violence. [13] CreepShots A year after the conclusion of r/jailbait, another subreddit called r/CreepShots attracted controversy in the press for hosting sualized images of women without their knowledge. [15] In the wake of this media attention, u/violentacrez was added to r/CreepShots as moderator,[16] and reports emerged that Gawker reporter Adrian Chen was planning an exposé that would reveal the real-life identity of this user, who moderated dozens of controversial subreddits as well as a few hundred general-interest communities. Several major subreddits banned links to Gawker in response to the impending exposé and the U/Violentacrez account was deleted. [17] [18] [19] Moderators defended their decisions to block the location of these sections of Reddit on the basis that the impending report was doxing (a term for exposing the identity of a pseudonymly person), and that such exposure threatened the structural integrity of the site. [19] When Chen informed u/violentacrez about the impending exposé, the user pleaded with Chen not to publish it because he was pristine about the potential effects on his employment and finances, indicating that his wife was disabled and he had a mortgage to pay. He also expressed concern that he would be wrongly labeled a child pornographer or anti-Semite because of some of the subreddits he created. Despite u/violentacrez's offer to delete his posts and leave Reddit, Chen insisted that he would still publish the piece. [4] [20] Gawker exposé Chen published the piece on October 12, 2012, which showed that the person holding the u/violentacrez account was a middle-aged programmer from Arlington, Texas named Michael Brutsch. [4] [21] Within a day of the article being published, Brutsch was fired by his boss, and the link to the exposé was briefly banned from Reddit. [22] [23] He stated on Reddit after the article was published that he had received numerous death threats. [24] Reddit CEO Yishan Wong defended the content Brutsch contributed to the site as free speech and criticized attempts to ban the Gawker link on the same basis. [25] Wong stated that staff had considered a site-wide ban on the seal, but rejected this idea for fear it would create a negative impression of the site without getting results. [26] Brutsch later briefly returned to Reddit on a different account and criticized what he stated were numerous factual inaccuracies in the Gawker exposé. [27] A week after the exposé, Brutsch held an interview with CNN that aired on Anderson 360 °. In the interview with journalist Drew Griffin, Brutsch was apologetic about his activity on Reddit. He explained that he was most fond of the appreciation he received from other redditors, and that Reddit helped him relieve stress. Brutsch also described the support he had from directors, stating that he had received an award for his Reddit noted that the award was for winning a community vote for Worst Subreddit, and stated that they regretted sending it, as well as claiming the u/violentacrez account had been banned on several occasions. [28] [29] Brutsch later noted on Reddit that he regretted doing the interview and criticized the accuracy of the statement Reddit gave to CNN. [30] Chris Slowe, a lead programmer at Reddit until 2010, said of the relationship between Brutsch and the Reddit staff: We just stayed away and let him do his thing and at least we knew he was getting rid of a lot of things that weren't particularly legal. [4] Ethics of Outing Further Information: Gawker's doxing and Internet privacy outing of Brutsch as you/violentacrez led to contentious discussion about privacy and anonymity on the Internet. [31] Such discussions included claims that the outing, or doxing, was necessary to draw attention to offensive content so that it could be removed, while others claimed that it hindered the ability for people to exercise their right to legal free speech online because of fears of public retribution. [32] [33] Sady Doyle, writing in The Guardian, compared it to amanda Todd's alleged extortionist's outing and suggested that such outings could be justified, but that they can also unfairly focus attention on individuals without facing the underlying problems by engaging in sensationalism at the expense of cultural reform. [34] In PC Magazine, Damon Puter stated that, while he has defended protecting anonymity on the Internet, he still supported Brutsch being let out because he felt the various subreddits he was carrying were serious invasions of privacy, regardless of legality, and that it was therefore justified to reveal his personal data. [33] The public outpouring of hostility toward Brutsch after the exposé prompted commentators such as Wired Danah Boyd and CNET's Michelle Star to question the ethics of expression as a way to enforce societal norms online. [35] [36] Several commentators have expressed concern that Brutsch's public shaming to serve as an example to others legitimizes online vigilantism and exposes individuals such as Brutsch to mass retaliation. [35] [36] [37] [38] CringeAnarchy r/CringeAnarchy was a subreddit theme around cringe and edgy, politically incorrect content, that far right content. Originally an uncensored (hence anarchy) spin-off of r/cringe,[39] it later shifted to far-right, with anti-transgender and anti-SJW content taking over. [40] [41] [42] The subreddit was quarantined in September 2018, after which it more than subscribers. [43] [44] [45] Following the Christchurch Mosque shootings (March 15, 2019), more anti-Muslim posts were created on the subreddit. [46] The subreddit was banned on April 25, 2019 for violating Reddit's content policy regarding violent violent DarkNetMarkets The subreddit r/DarkNetMarkets, a darknet discussion forum, included participation from their owners, allowing the US authorities to request personal information behind various accounts. [47] [48] This subreddit was banned on March 21, 2018. [49] [50] Deepfakes See also: Deepfake Deepfakes was a controversial subreddit that put famous female actresses on pornographic videos, made using FakeApp, without the permission of the actresses over each other. [51] Such actresses include Emma Watson and Daisy Ridley. [51] [52] After the subreddit gained prominence from the press, the videos of subreddit were banned from Gfycat and Discord. On February 7, 2018, the day after Pornhub banned the videos, the subreddit was also banned. [53] FatPeopleHate On June 10, 2015, Reddit banned five subreddits, citing an anti-harassment policy. [54] [55] The largest of the banned subreddits, r/fatpeoplehate, had an estimated 151,000 subscribers at the time of its banning. [54] The other four subreddits were r/hamplanethatred, r/neofag, r/transfags, and r/shitniggerssay. [54] A Reddit administrator said, We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don't take action.