Reddit is a huge and complicated beast that does not deserve the bad rap it sometimes gets, but in its darker corners, you can still find all manner of morally, ethically and legally dubious shit, including nude pictures posted without their subjects’ permission or knowledge.
In the past, Reddit has taken a hands-off approach to this, letting its tens of millions of users govern themselves, but all that changed this week, when the site posted an updated privacy policy, which will come into effect next month.
The site caught some major heat last year when a massive cache of stolen celebrity nudes was posted on the internet, many of them appearing on Reddit threads.
The post announcing Reddit’s new privacy policy doesn’t specifically mention this event, which came to be known as The Fappening, but alludes to it pretty strongly:
Last year, we missed a chance to be a leader in social media when it comes to protecting your privacy — something we’ve cared deeply about since reddit’s inception. At our recent all hands company meeting, this was something that we all, as a company, decided we needed to address.
No matter who you are, if a photograph, video, or digital image of you in a state of nudity, sexual excitement, or engaged in any act of sexual conduct, is posted or linked to on reddit without your permission, it is prohibited on reddit. We also recognize that violent personalized images are a form of harassment that we do not tolerate and we will remove them when notified
The new rules will come into effect March 10, and Reddit have promised to be somewhat transparent, saying that they will let users know how often these takedowns occur in the annual privacy report.
“I really want to believe that as we enter the next 10 years of Reddit life, essentially the most trafficked media site on the internet, the opportunity here to set a standard for respecting the privacy of our users,” founder Alexis Ohanian said of the changes.
It’s also worth noting that many of the images linked to on Reddit are actually posted on hosting sites like Imgur, whose privacy policy already technically forbids posting obscene or threatening content, and who have their own takedown procedures.
Photo: Frederick M Brown via Getty Images
