Reddit has published its transparency convey for 2020, showing various earnings release relating to removed content, government conditions and other administrative actions. The largest burden by far — in terms of volume, either way — is spam, which actually made up nearly all content taken down. Legal demands for content takedown and custom information were far fewer, however, not trivial, in number.
The full report is quite readable, but a bit long; the main points to understand are summarized below.
Of nearly 3.4 billion pieces of content created on Reddit (which is to say posts, comments, hosted images, etc.), 233 million were removed. These numbers are both up by 20%-30% from 2019. Of those 233 million, 131 million were “proactive” removals by the AutoMod system and 13.6 million were removed after user reports by subreddit moderators.
The remaining 85 million were taken down by Reddit admins; 99.76% of these were spam or “content manipulation” like brigading and astroturfing, with around 50,000 each of harassment, hate and sexualization of minors, smaller amounts of violent speech, doxing and so on.
Image Credits: Reddit
82, 858 subreddits were cleaned, nearly four times more than 2019. The majority of these were for lack of small amounts, followed by hate, harassment and prohibition veto evasion (e. g., r/bannedsub unwraps r/bannedsub2).
When it came to furnishings comments, hate, violence and being a nuisance were much more prevalent. And 92% of private messages removed (of as regards to 25, 000 total) were with regards to harassment.
Outside of spam and content manipulation, hate speech resulted in far more ?uvre than any other infraction; more trading accounts were permanently banned for do not like in 2020 than for all generates combined in 2019. (But miles fewer for content violations when compared to for spam and ban evasion. )
Government asks to remove content were relatively amount. Overall Reddit received a couple $ 100 or so requests covering about 5, 1000 pieces of content or subreddits. Like 753 subreddits had their entree restricted to Pakistani users due to anti-obscenity laws there.
Requests from individuals or companies unpick things numbered in the hundreds, and simply copyright takedown notices asked for most a million pieces of content to be removed (375, 774 were), more than occasions 2019’s. Only a handful of DMCA counter-notices were received.
Police arrest came to Reddit 611 times to produce user information, up 50% manufactured by last year, and the company granted 424 of those requests. These are mostly subpoenas, court orders and search aval. Since Reddit isn’t really a online social networking and accounts can be essentially private or throwaway, it’s hard to assume what level of disclosure this by chance represents. Emergency disclosure requests designated about 300 and were largely complied with — these are apparently, purportedly life-or-death situations in which a Reddit levels is concerned.
Lastly Reddit received somewhere between 0 and 249 secret requests for data, targeting somewhere between 0 and 249 computer ownsers, same as last year. Sadly, federal policies prohibits them from saying no more than this regarding FISA orders furthermore National Security Letters.
Overall the picture painted of Reddit in 2020 is of a growing online plagued by spam and inauthentic training, plus a significant and growing depending of hate, harassment and other disallowed content (though last year was certainly an exceptional one for this). Without much fundamental access to or utilization of personally identifiable data, Reddit isn’t a target for three-letter agencies yet law enforcement. And with “free speech”-focused brethren to Reddit and other platforms showing up, it’s likely that the hate and consequently harassment that were deplatformed will roost elsewhere in 2021.
