Journalists, attorneys, media researchers, and others have commented that such communities shape and promote biased views of international politics, the veracity of medical evidence, misogynistic rhetoric, and other disruptive concepts.
Eventually, Reddit administrators instituted usage rules to allow for the banning of groups and members who stole or exposed personal information/images or promoted illegal activity, violence, shaming, racial or gender hatred, harassment, or extremist speech.
Critics argue that while concerned Redditors and moderators often report these subs, they often remain open until a specific incident, or the actions of an individual, forces them to come under more intense scrutiny and requires administrators to decide between allowing distasteful content or suppressing dangerous or destructive communities.
Adrian Chen wrote a Gawker exposé of one of the subreddit's moderators and identified the person behind the account, starting discussion in the media about the ethics of anonymity and outing on the Internet.
[11] A study the following year revealed an abundance of unsourced and potentially harmful medical advice on Reddit for urinary tract infections, like suggesting fasting as a cure.
[12] Critics have argued that since 2019, Russian-sponsored troll accounts and bots have taken over prominent left-wing and right-wing subreddits such as r/antiwar, r/greenandpleasant, and r/aboringdystopia, "suggest[ing] a Russian-led attempt to antagonize and influence Americans online, which is still ongoing.
[38][39][40] r/Chodi, whose name is derived from a crude Hindi sexual slang term, was a right-wing Indian subreddit that claimed to be a "free speech sub for memes, jokes, satire, sarcasm and fun".
[55] Reddit CEO Yishan Wong defended the content Brutsch contributed to the site, arguing that it constituted free speech, while criticizing efforts to ban the Gawker link on the same basis.
[65] In PC Magazine, Damon Poeter stated that while he had defended protecting anonymity on the Internet, he supported Brutsch being outed and felt the doxing was justifiable, as he thought the various subreddits that u/violentacrez contributed to were serious invasions of privacy regardless of legality.
[64] The public outpouring of hostility towards Brutsch following the exposé prompted commentators such as Danah Boyd of Wired and Michelle Star of CNET to question the morality of outing as a way to enforce societal standards online.
[93] Following the Boston Marathon bombing in April of 2013, members of the subreddit r/FindBostonBombers wrongly identified several people as suspects, including a 17-year-old track athlete and a 22-year-old Brown University student who had been missing since March.
[98] Reddit general manager Erik Martin later issued an apology for this behavior, criticizing the "online witch hunts and dangerous speculation" that took place in these investigation-oriented communities.
The Times of Israel and The Daily Dot found numerous references in the subreddit to Holocaust denialism, the USS Liberty incident, and alleged racial crime statistics.
[120] The subreddit's users intermittently revered or hated "normies" and "Chads" for their courtship abilities, while some admired murderers such as Elliot Rodger, a self-identified "incel" who committed the 2014 Isla Vista killings.
[132] Critics of the ban, such as r/Jailbait's creator, charged that Reddit administrators used the thread as an excuse to close down a controversial subreddit following the negative media coverage it had attracted.
[133] Following the closure of r/Jailbait, The Daily Dot declared the community's creator, u/violentacrez, "The Most Important Person on Reddit in 2011", calling the r/Jailbait controversy "the first major challenge to the site's voluntary doctrine of absolute free speech".
"A number" of secret Facebook groups had been taking similar actions, engaging in illegal activity by sharing "obscene" photos of women and possibly child pornography.
r/GreatAwakening, which had a more active userbase with over 71,000 subscribers and an average of 10,000 comments per day, was banned in September that year for repeated content violations, such as harassing a user they misidentified as the suspect of the Jacksonville Landing shooting.
[177] In August 2014, Reddit users began sharing a large number of naked pictures of celebrities stolen via phishing from their private Apple iCloud accounts.
For example, a post stickied by one of the sub's moderators was titled "Here at uncensored news we love racism, bigotry, misogyny, hatred, xenophobia, transphobia, homo phobia [sic] etc."
[87] The subreddit r/WatchPeopleDie featured media depicting real-life human deaths, such as workplace accidents, vehicular manslaughter, gun violence, suicides, and various forms of homicide.
FDS posters must follow strict rules to avoid being banned, with support for consensual BDSM, pornography consumption, or casual sex being bannable offenses.
"Pickmeisha" has been used to label members that criticize the moderators or claim to enjoy banned behavior such as casual sex,[212] and it has been targeted at women in other subreddits for issues such as seeking advice on their partner's erectile dysfunction.
[215][216][217][218] According to Le Monde, "In its early days, HCA was primarily fueled by articles found in the press, [but] in recent months, the examples have been drawn directly from a Facebook page of COVID-19 victims.
"[219] F. Diane Bart, a psychotherapist writing for NBC News, described the subreddit as "a dark and sardonic corner of the internet" that "captures the rage and outrage of presumably vaccinated, mask-wearing individuals, many of whom have either been infected with COVID-19 in the past or have watched friends and family become ill—and even die.
[229] Media studies researcher Debbie Ging described the "extreme misogyny and proclivity for personal attacks" of several men's rights subreddits, including r/MensRights, as "the most striking features of the new antifeminist politics".
[231]: 645–6 In the spring 2012 issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) Intelligence Report (titled "The Year in Hate and Extremism"), r/MensRights was included in a section called "Misogyny: The Sites" along with 11 other websites.
The SPLC reported that "although some of the sites make an attempt at civility and try to back their arguments with facts, they are almost all thick with misogynistic attacks that can be astounding for the guttural hatred they express".
[235] They added: "it should be mentioned that the SPLC did not label MRAs as members of a hate movement; nor did our article claim that the grievances they air on their websites – false rape accusations, ruinous divorce settlements and the like – are all without merit.
[41] In April 2014, a Daily Dot article revealed that moderators of r/Technology were using automatic filters to remove submissions that contained certain keywords, including "Aaron Swartz", "Tesla",[249] "Comcast", "NSA", and "Snowden".