In general, the website grants subreddit moderators discretion in deciding what content is and is not allowed on their subreddits, so long as site-wide rules are not being violated. This relative freedom has allowed for a wide diversity of subreddits to exist, and some of them have attracted controversy.
Many of the default subreddits are highly moderated, with the "science" subreddit banning climate change denialism, and the "news" subreddit banning opinion pieces and columns. Reddit has changed its site-wide editorial policies several times, sometimes in reaction to controversies. Reddit has historically been a platform for objectionable but legal content, and in 2011, news media covered the way that jailbait was being shared on the site before the site changed its policies to explicitly ban "suggestive or sexual content featuring minors". Reddit also received controversy over hosting misogynistic content, including the doxing of erotic models and revenge porn. Following some controversial incidents of Internet vigilantism, Reddit introduced a strict rule against the online publication of non-public personally-identifying information (a common internet harassment tool colloquially known as doxxing) via the site. Those who break the rule are subject to a site-wide ban, which can result in the deletion of their user-generated content.
Due to Reddit's decentralized moderation, user anonymity, and lack of fact-checking systems, the platform is highly prone to spreading misinformation and disinformation. It has been suggested that those who use Reddit should exercise caution in taking user-created unsourced content as fact. Concerns have been raised in particular about dangerous medical misinformation on the platform. A 2022 study of 300 comments and posts discussing urinary tract infections found that fewer than 1% cited a source for their content, and several contained harmful medical misinformation that may dissuade readers from seeking medical care or lead to dangerous self-medication, such as proposing fasting as a cure for UTIs.
Reddit communities exhibit the echo chamber effect, in which repeated unsourced statements come to be accepted among the community as fact, leading to distorted worldviews among users. It has been suggested that since 2019, Russian state-sponsored troll accounts and bots have engaged in a broad campaign to take over subreddits, such as r/antiwar.
After the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, Reddit faced criticism after users wrongly identified a number of people as suspects in the subreddit r/FindBostonBombers. Notable among misidentified bombing suspects was Sunil Tripathi, a student reported missing before the bombings took place. A body reported to be Sunil's was found in Providence River in Rhode Island on April 25, according to Rhode Island Health Department. The cause of death was not immediately known, but authorities said they did not suspect foul play. The family later confirmed Tripathi's death was a result of suicide. Reddit general manager Erik Martin later issued an apology for this behavior, criticizing the "online witch hunts and dangerous speculation" that took place on the website. The incident was later referenced in the season 5 episode of the CBS TV series The Good Wife titled "Whack-a-Mole", as well as The Newsroom.
In August, private sexual photos from the celebrity photo hack were widely disseminated across the site. A dedicated subreddit, "TheFappening", was created for this purpose, and contained links to most if not all of the criminally obtained explicit images. Some images of McKayla Maroney and Liz Lee were identified by redditors and outside commentators as child pornography because the photos were taken when the women were underage. The subreddit was banned on September 6. The scandal led to wider criticisms concerning the website's administration from The Verge and The Daily Dot.
Read the full text
2015 CEO change and subreddit bannings
After Ellen Pao became CEO in 2014, she was initially a target of criticism by users who objected to the deletion of content critical of herself and her husband. Later on June 10, 2015, Reddit shut down the 150,000-subscriber "fatpeoplehate" subreddit and four others citing issues related to harassment. This move was seen as very controversial; some commenters said that the bans went too far, while others said that the bans did not go far enough. One of the latter complaints concerned a subreddit that was "expressing support" for the perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting. Responding to the accusations of "skewed enforcement", Reddit reaffirmed its commitment to free expression and stated, "There are some subreddits with very little viewership that get highlighted repeatedly for their content, but those are a tiny fraction of the content on the site."
On July 2, Reddit began experiencing a series of blackouts as moderators set popular subreddit communities to private, in an event dubbed "AMAgeddon", a portmanteau of AMA ("ask me anything") and Armageddon. This was done in protest of the recent firing of Victoria Taylor, an administrator who helped organize citizen-led interviews with famous people on the popular AMA subreddit. Organizers of the blackout also expressed resentment about the recent severance of the communication between Reddit and the moderators of subreddits. The blackout intensified on July 3 when former community manager David Croach gave an AMA about being fired. Before deleting his posts, he stated that Ellen Pao dismissed him with one year of health coverage when he had cancer and did not recover quickly enough. Following this, a Change.org petition to remove Pao as CEO of Reddit Inc. reached over 200,000 signatures. Pao posted a response on July 3 as well as an extended version of it on July 6 in which she apologized for bad communication and not delivering on promises. She also apologized on behalf of the other administrators and noted that problems already existed over the past several years. On July 10, Pao resigned as CEO and was replaced by former CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman.
In August, Steve Huffman introduced a policy which led to the banning of several offensive and sexual communities. Included in the ban was lolicon, to which Huffman referred as "animated CP [child porn]". Some subreddits had also been "quarantined" due to having "highly-offensive or upsetting content" such as r/European, r/swedenyes, r/drawpeople, r/kiketown, r/blackfathers, r/greatapes, and r/whitesarecriminals.
2023 API changes
In April 2023, Reddit announced its intentions to charge large fees for its application programming interface (API), a feature of the site that has existed for free since 2008, causing an ongoing dispute. The move forced multiple third-party applications to shut down and threatened accessibility applications and moderation tools. On May 31, Apollo developer Christian Selig stated that Reddit's pricing would force him to cease development on the app. The resulting outcry from the Reddit community ultimately led to a planned protest from June 12 to 14 in which moderators for the site would make their communities private or restricted posting. Following the release of an internal memo from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman and defiance from Reddit, some moderators have continued their protest. Alternate forms of protest have emerged in the days following the initial blackout. Upon reopening, users of r/pics, r/gifs, and r/aww voted to exclusively post about comedian John Oliver. Multiple subreddits labeled themselves as not safe for work (NSFW), affecting advertisements and resulting in administrators removing the entire moderation team of some subreddits. The protest has been compared to a strike.
/r/place had its third launch on July 20, 2023; however, the launch was heavily protested by users and developers due to the event following the 2023 Reddit API controversy; Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's decision to make it prohibitively expensive for third-party app developers drew widespread condemnation.
Subreddit bans
In February 2017, Reddit banned the alt-right subreddit r/altright for violating its terms of service, more specifically for attempting to share private information about the man who attacked alt-right figure Richard B. Spencer. The forum's users and moderators accused Reddit administrators of having political motivations for the ban.
After the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, Reddit banned the subreddit r/DonaldTrump in response to repeated policy violations and alluding to the potential influence the community had on those who participated in or supported the storming. The move followed similar actions from social media platforms, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and more. The ban was criticized by those who believed it furthered an agenda and censorship of conservative ideologies. The subreddit had over 52,000 members just before it was banned.
Steve Huffman
In May 2016, CEO Steve Huffman said in an interview at the TNW Conference that, unlike Facebook, which "only knows what [its users are] willing to declare publicly", Reddit knows its users' "dark secrets" at the same time that the website's "values" page was updated regarding its "privacy" section. The video reached the top of the website's main feed. Shortly thereafter, announcements concerning new advertisement content drew criticism on the website. In September, a user named "mormondocuments" released thousands of administrative documents belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an action driven by the ex-Mormon and atheist communities on Reddit. Previously, on April 22, the same user had announced his plans to do so. Church officials commented that the documents did not contain anything confidential.
On November 23, Huffman admitted to having replaced his username with the names of r/The_Donald moderators in many insulting comments. He did so by changing insulting comments made towards him and made it appear as if the insult were directed at the moderators of r/The_Donald. On November 24, The Washington Post reported Reddit had banned the "Pizzagate" conspiracy board from its site, stating it violated its policy of posting personal information of others, triggering a wave of criticism from users on r/The_Donald, who felt the ban amounted to censorship. After the forum was banned from Reddit, the words "we don't want witchhunts on our site" now appears on the former page of the Pizzagate subreddit.
On November 30, Huffman announced changes to the algorithm of Reddit's r/all page to block "stickied" posts from a number of subreddits, such as r/The_Donald. In the announcement, he also apologized for personally editing posts by users from r/The_Donald, and declared intentions to take actions against "hundreds of the most toxic users" of Reddit and "communities whose users continually cross the line".
In March 2018, it was revealed that Huffman had hidden Russian troll activity from users.
Censorship concerns and protests
In February 2019, Chinese company Tencent invested $150 million into Reddit. This resulted in a large backlash from Reddit users, who were worried about potential censorship. Many posts featuring subjects censored in China, such as Tiananmen Square, Tank Man, and Winnie the Pooh, received popularity on Reddit.
In late August 2021, more than 70 subreddits went private to protest against COVID-19 misinformation on Reddit, as well as Reddit's refusal to delete subreddits undermining the severity of the pandemic. A 2021 letter from the United States Senate to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman expressed concern about the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on the platform.
In January 2025, over 100 Reddit communities banned users from posting links from the X social media site after Elon Musk, its CEO, made an arm gesture at a speech which critics claimed was a Nazi salute. The Verge reported that Musk had "privately pressur[ed]" the CEO of Reddit Steve Huffman to moderate content critical of him and the Trump administration, and that after their exchange, Reddit took action and temporarily banned r/WhitePeopleTwitter due to "policy violations".
On March 5, 2025, Reddit announced that it will be issuing warnings to users who upvote "violent content", and "may consider" taking other actions against the users. The Verge reported two days later that Reddit's automatic moderation tool has been flagging the word "Luigi" as "potentially violent", including in comments or context unrelated to Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. The moderator of r/popculture, a subreddit with over 125,000 members, stated that Reddit's AutoModerator system flagged a comment about Nintendo video game Luigi's Mansion because it included the word "Luigi", and instructed them to "check for violence"; other comments that mentioned "Luigi", even in non-violent context, were also flagged.
Hate speech
In April 2018, WhiteDate, a white supremacist dating website, ran an advertisement on Reddit encouraging white women to join the website. A Reddit spokeswoman said the ad had slipped past human reviewers and was taken down the next day. As of April 2018, WhiteDate had a Reddit account, but it stated it had been banned from advertising on Reddit.
On July 12, 2018, the creator and head moderator of the GamerGate subreddit, r/KotakuInAction, removed all of the moderators and set the forum to private, alleging it to have become "infested with racism and sexism". A Reddit employee restored the forum and its moderators an hour later.
During the George Floyd protests in early June 2020, over 800 moderators signed an open letter demanding a policy banning hate speech, a shutdown of racist and sexist subreddits, and more employee support for moderation. Bloomberg News pointed out the company's slow reaction to r/watchpeopledie, a subreddit dedicated to videos of people dying in accidents and other situations, and the harassment that accompanied new unmoderated features like icons for purchase and public chats.
On June 29, 2020, Reddit updated its content policy and introduced rules aimed at curbing the presence of communities it believed to be "promoting hate", and banned approximately 2,000 subreddits that were found to be in violation of the new guidelines on the same day. Larger subreddits affected by the bans included r/The_Donald, r/GenderCritical (the platform's largest and most active anti-transgender radical feminist subreddit), and r/ChapoTrapHouse (a far-left subreddit originally created by fans of the podcast Chapo Trap House). Some media outlets and political commentators also condemned the banning of the r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse subreddits as a violation of the right to free political expression.
A 2022 Time article listed Reddit as "The Most Xenophobic Social Media Site" after the Anti-Defamation League denounced Reddit for allowing public communities to engage in racism, antisemitism, and routine hate speech without consequence.
Advertising
In February 2013, Betabeat published a post that recognized the influx of multinational corporations like Costco, Taco Bell, Subaru, and McDonald's posting branded content on Reddit that was made to appear as if it was original content from legitimate Reddit users. PAN Communications wrote that marketers want to "infiltrate the reddit community on behalf of their brand," but emphasized that "self-promotion is frowned upon" and Reddit's former director of communications noted that the site is "100 percent organic." She recommended that advertisers design promotions that "spark conversations and feedback." She recommended that businesses use AMAs to get attention for public figures but cautioned "It is important to approach AMAs carefully and be aware that this may not be a fit for every project or client." Nissan ran a successful branded content promotion offering users free gifts to publicize a new car, though the company was later ridiculed for suspected astroturfing when the CEO only answered puff piece questions on the site. Taylor described these situations as "high risk" noting: "We try hard to educate people that they have to treat questions that may seem irreverent or out of left field the same as they would questions about the specific project they are promoting."
Hiring practices
In March 2021, Reddit users discovered that Aimee Challenor, an English politician who had been suspended from two UK political parties, was hired as an administrator for the site. Her first suspension from the Green Party came for retaining her father as her campaign manager after his arrest on child sexual abuse charges. She was later suspended from the Liberal Democrats after tweets describing pedophilic fantasies were discovered on her partner's Twitter account. Reddit banned a moderator for posting a news article which mentioned Challenor, and some Reddit users alleged that Reddit were removing all mention of Challenor. Many subreddits, including r/Music, which had 27 million subscribers, and 46 other subreddits with over 1 million subscribers, went private in protest. On March 24, Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman said that Challenor had been inadequately vetted before being hired and that Reddit would review its relevant internal processes. Huffman attributed user suspensions to over-indexing on anti-harassment measures. Challenor was also removed from her role as a Reddit admin.
Trading and cryptocurrency
The GameStop short squeeze was primarily organized on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets in January 2021.
In October 2023, Reddit Moons (a site-specific cryptocurrency launched in May 2020) had seen a surge of value in 2023, at one point in mid-2023 rising past 50 cents per moon, but it crashed by more than 90% after it was announced on October 17 that the token would be "wound down" on November 8, allegedly due to scaling and regulatory issues; Reddit-centric coins DONUT and BRICK also crashed upon the news.
Data breach and collection
In June 2023, The BlackCat hacker gang claimed responsibility for a February 2023 breach of Reddit's systems. On its data leak site, it claimed that it stole 80 GB of compressed data and demanded a $4.5 million ransom from Reddit. This attack did not involve data encryption like typical ransomware campaigns.
In September 2024, the Federal Trade Commission released a report summarizing nine company responses (including from Reddit) to orders made by the agency pursuant to Section 6(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 to provide information about user and non-user data collection (including of children and teenagers) and data use by the companies that found that the companies' user and non-user data practices put individuals vulnerable to identity theft, stalking, unlawful discrimination, emotional distress and mental health issues, social stigma, and reputational harm.
University of Zurich AI-generated content study
In 2025, researchers from the University of Zurich conducted an experiment on the debate subreddit r/changemyview. The researchers deployed AI-run Reddit accounts to pose as humans and actively push desired viewpoints in order to study how AI could influence opinions among human participants. The experiment was run without the consent or knowledge of the subreddit moderators for four months until one of the researchers informed them. Critics of the experiment argued it was unethical as it involved impersonation and involuntarily used Redditors as experiment participants.
Australian lawsuit
In December 2025, Reddit filed a lawsuit in an attempt to overturn Australia's social media ban for children, as Australia was one of Reddit's biggest markets, and the ban would prevent people under 16 from accessing the site.
