Reddit has finally decided to ban sexually suggestive and exploitive images of minors, after a long tenure of criticism and controversies.
The social news site has announced that it would ban all sunreddits that emphasize on the sexualization of children. This is a result of years of dealings with many cases on child pornography.
The site’s managers have come to know from the illegal content and the large amount of other unusual content on the legal grey area that the previous policies of the site had become indefensible. Interpreting the unclear and debated guidelines had become a huge distraction for the company and posed a legal threat in front of the social site. Owing to this, the company has brought a necessary change in its policy.
The action was taken in response to the high criticism on the community chat boards of the site over a subreddit named r/preteen girls. An anonymous user wrote in the controversy that according to his guess. This is similar to /r/jailbait, which was a mix of photos of sneaks creeping around on Facebook from the seedier corners of the Internet, and a few tamer photos that could be seen in /r/pics. It might not be illegal but it is disturbing like anything and might break the rule of not posting your personal info.
The administrators of the Reddit shut down the “Jailbait” section in the last October when some exploitative pictures of a 14 year old girl were posted to the section and more surprisingly, the list of its subscribers reached up to 20000. The subreddits are created and moderated by users.
The administrators say that the decision to ban all the sections which discussed the child sexuality issues was not that easy. They add that child pornography is dangerous for Internet communities.
The site’s statement read ad “We understand that this might make some of you worried about the slippery slope from banning one specific type of content to banning other types of content”. Further it continued as “We’re concerned about that too, and do not make this policy change lightly or without careful deliberation. We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on Reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal.” Internet is not only about bad things, but good as well. For example: Sprint coupon amongst others offer high discounts on the most acclaimed smartphones.
