Transparency Report 2020
The mission of Reddit is to bring community and belonging to everyone in the world. An important part of this mission is ensuring users’ safety, security, and privacy.
We publish this annual report to provide transparency about content that was removed from Reddit, accounts that were suspended, and legal requests we received from third parties to remove content or disclose private user data. This year, as we continue to incorporate guidance from The Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, we offer more insight into what we do about illegal or unwelcome content on Reddit (Content Removals), how we handle prohibited efforts to artificially promote content (Content Manipulation), and what we do with bad actors (Account Sanctions). We also spotlight a few changes we made to our Content Policy and our effort to understand the prevalence of hateful content on Reddit.
Reports for previous years can be found here.
Content moderation on Reddit happens through a layered, community-driven approach. This approach is akin to a democracy, wherein everyone has the ability to vote and self-organize, follow a set of common rules, establish community-specific norms, and ultimately share some responsibility for how the platform works.
Reddit’s Content Policy serves as a set of principles-based rules that apply to all users and content on Reddit. Users then create their own communities (known as “subreddits”) and establish additional rules that are tailored to a community’s unique and often highly specific needs.
Users who write and enforce these community-specific rules are volunteer moderators (known as “mods”), and they perform the majority of community moderation actions without involvement from Reddit, Inc. This self-moderation effort at the community level continues to be the most scalable solution we’ve seen to the challenges of moderating content online. Reddit employees (known as “admins”) are responsible for the Content Policy and enforce it across Reddit with the help of mods, who apply the Content Policy to their communities in addition to their own specific rules.
Content Policy Update
In 2020, we updated our Content Policy as part of our continuing effort to empower mods and their communities when dealing with issues like hate on Reddit. The announcement discussing these updates expressed our direct stance against hate and racism, which formed the basis for our update to Rule 1.
Rule 1:
“Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.”
In practice, the update provides a clearer position against hate and racism, and fundamentally supports efforts to make Reddit better, daily. The effects of this change are described in more detail in a post that discusses its impact, and are seen throughout the data reported below.
Every day, millions of people around the world submit posts, comments, and other content to Reddit, and Reddit regularly receives reports and requests to remove some of this content from the platform. The section below covers content that mods and admins removed from Reddit during 2020. This includes removals performed by a scaled community moderation tool known as AutoMod.
Chart 1: Total amount of content created vs. content removed from Reddit in 2020
(LPT: click charts to expand in a new tab)
Content Removed by Moderators
The numbers for 2020 once again highlight the importance of moderators and their tireless efforts to make Reddit a place where everyone can create community and belonging. The volume of content that was removed by moderators is broken down below by whether a removal was performed proactively by a mod or Automod, or whether it was done in response to a report from a user. Removals performed by mods can be for any reason specific to the rules for a given community, and are not necessarily an indication of content being in violation of the Content Policy.
The total number of removals by moderators rose notably in 2020, by nearly 61%. The increase has a few likely causes, one being more frequent use of automated actions to remove content from subreddits (primarily Automod), and another is that the overall number of pieces of content submitted to Reddit rose by 49% as well in 2020.
Chart 2. Pieces of content removed by moderators in 2020
NOTE: Proactive AutoMod removals are the result of automated actions set and configured by mods.
Content Removed by Reddit Admins
Admins also regularly remove content from Reddit to enforce the Content Policy and protect the integrity of the site. They do this through both manual review and action, as well as with the help of automated tools and user reports.
This section distinguishes between Content Policy removals and Content Manipulation removals. “Content Manipulation” describes things like spam, community interference (i.e., “brigading”), vote manipulation (attempts to interfere with Reddit’s upvote/downvote tallies), and other attempts to artificially promote content. In 2020, 99.2% of admin policy removals were for Content Manipulation, while the remaining 0.8% were for violations of our Content Policy. Numbers for both of these categories are broken out separately by subreddits, posts, comments, and private messages (PMs). The removal reasons listed reflect our current Content Policy.
Content Policy Removals
In 2020, Reddit admins removed 202,749 pieces of content for Content Policy violations (excluding spam and other types of Content Manipulation removals). The graph below represents removals carried out by our teams, broken out by reason.
Chart 3. Total pieces of content removed by admins
NOTE: Violent content (26,986) includes 557 pieces of US-designated foreign terrorist organization content.
NOTE: This section does not adjust for reversals or reinstatement of content. For example, if a post is removed but reinstated later after an appeal, the initial removal is still included in the numbers in this section, and the successful appeal is indicated in the appeals section below.
Subreddits (excludes Content Manipulation and Copyright)
Reddit admins may remove entire communities that are found to be in violation of our Content Policy. Communities may also be removed if they lack active moderation, in accordance with our moderator guidelines. The removal of an entire community is always carried out by Reddit admins. In 2020, Reddit admins removed 82,858 communities.
Chart 4. Subreddit removal reasons (including unmoderated)
NOTE: This section of the report does not include community removals for repeated violations of copyright. Please refer to the Copyright Removals section of the report for more on this. It also does not include community removals for Content Manipulation (see below).
Posts
Reddit admins may remove posts that are found to be in violation of our Content Policy. There are different types of posts that can be created, including images, links, text, and video. The numbers below represent posts removed by our teams over the course of the year, broken out by reason for removal, and type of post removed. 378,796,540 posts were created on Reddit in 2020. Admins removed 65,359, or 0.017% of that total, due to Content Policy violations.
Chart 5. Posts removed by Content Policy violation
Chart 6. Posts removed by format
Comments
These numbers represent comments that were removed by Reddit admins for violations of our Content Policy, similar to posts above. In 2020, 2,473,610,855 comments were created on Reddit. Admins removed 112,452, or 0.045% of that total, due to Content Policy violations, which are broken out by reason for removal below.
Chart 7. Comments removed by Content Policy violation
Private Messages
Private messages (PMs) are direct messages sent between individual users that appear in an account’s inbox. Reddit admins may remove messages that violate the Content Policy, mostly for harassment as seen below. In 2020, 753,804,145 PMs were created on Reddit, and 24,938 or 0.0033% were removed by admins.
Chart 8. Private messages removed by Content Policy violation
Content Manipulation Removals
As mentioned above, 99.2% of admin removals were for Content Manipulation in 2020. This included 36,803,812 posts, 40,029,664 comments, and 8,194,658 private messages. Subreddits, or communities, may also be removed if they are found to be engaging in Content Manipulation (e.g., spam or vote/subscription cheating). 47,686 communities were removed for Content Manipulation in 2020. Vote or subscription cheating is when fake accounts are created and used to inorganically boost community subscriber volume. 12,417 communities were removed specifically for vote or subscription cheating and 35,269 were removed for spam.
Chart 9. Content Manipulation removals (subreddits, posts, comments, private messages)
Reddit admins are responsible for ensuring that users adhere to the Content Policy. Different types of account sanctions are applied for behavior that violates a given policy. These include warnings, temporary bans of either 3 or 7 days, and permanent bans, depending on the severity of the violation or abuse as well as previous violations. The section below covers the number of account sanctions applied by Reddit admins in 2020, organized by the policy that was violated. Note that multiple sanctions can be applied to a single account over the course of time.
Chart 10. Account sanctions for Content Policy violation, by type (not including spam or ban evasion)
Chart 11. Permanent account sanctions (spam vs. all other reasons)
Chart 12. Permanent account sanctions (not including spam)
Users may report content on Reddit via our Reddit Help Center or by using the report button directly on a post or comment. By sending a report, users can alert a community’s team of moderators (anonymously) and/or Reddit administrators to something that violates either community rules or Reddit’s Content Policy.
Reddit received 28,243,095 user reports for potential Content Policy violations in 2020. 3.59% of reports resulted in action being taken by admins. The remaining 96.41% of reports were either duplicates, already actioned, or the reported content didn't violate our rules.
Chart 13. User reports in 2020
Whether applied against an individual piece of content, an account, or an entire community, actions taken by Reddit in response to Content Policy violations may be appealed. Appeals are evaluated by Reddit admins, and are either granted (resulting in the reinstatement of the content/account/community), or denied. In 2020, Reddit admins received 42,517 appeals. 16,134 (37.95%) were granted, and the remaining 26,383 (62.05%) were denied.
Account Securing Transactions
If we have reason to believe that an account’s credentials have been compromised, we may force the user to reset their password. Affected accounts receive notices of the reset request through private messages, emails, and onscreen banners. Those accounts are locked until the password reset process is completed. In 2020, 6,701,894 accounts with matching historical third-party breaches were put through the forced password reset process.
Quarantined Subreddits
Under certain circumstances, Reddit admins may apply a quarantine to a community. In 2020, 72 communities were quarantined, which is notably fewer than the 256 quarantines in 2019. This is an effect of the updates to our content policies in 2020. Specifically, the change to Rule 1 resulted in more subreddits being banned in 2020 as opposed to being quarantined.
This section reflects legal removal requests received by Reddit in 2020 from governments, law enforcement, and private parties . One legal removal request may identify several pieces of content (URLs), so in this section we report both the number of requests and the total number of pieces of content removed in response to these requests.
Law Enforcement/Government Requests to Remove Content
This section includes both court orders to remove content and requests submitted on behalf of governments to remove content. Governments may request the removal of content for a variety of reasons, including alleged violations of local law. Reddit scrutinizes each request and may reject it for a variety of reasons, including that the request is overbroad or inconsistent with international law. All reported content is reviewed under our Content Policy and any violations are actioned by the appropriate team. In situations where there are no underlying Content Policy violations, Reddit may restrict access to the post in the reporter country.
Chart 14. Government requests to remove content by country
Chart 15. Reddit removals in response to Government requests (pieces of content)
NOTE: In one instance during 2020, the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority (PTA) alleged that 812 communities contained obscenity and nudity in violation of Section 37 of the Prevention of Electronic Crime Act (PECA) and Section 292 and 294 of Pakistan Penal Code. Out of the 812 subreddits reported to Reddit, 33 had already been removed. Following an assessment of the relevant local laws, we restricted access to 753 subreddits in Pakistan and took no action on the remaining 26. These local restrictions account for a large portion of the chart above.
Child Sexual Abuse Material
We have zero tolerance for content that sexually exploits and puts children at risk. When we find child sexual abuse imagery material (“CSAM”) on the platform, we purge it and permanently ban the user from accessing Reddit. We also take the steps required under law to report the relevant users to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and preserve any necessary user data.
Reports regarding CSAM are received in a number of ways:
- PhotoDNA technology for images;
- YouTube CSAI technology for videos; and
- User reports.
In 2020, we made 2,233 CyberTipline reports to NCMEC.
Legal Requests Submitted by Private Parties to Remove Content
Reddit also receives legal requests to remove content from private parties. Examples include requests from lawyers/solicitors, private individuals, corporations, and social organizations to remove content they believe is defamatory or otherwise violates private legal rights.
In 2020, Reddit received 173 legal demands for the removal of content citing local laws (not including requests under the General Data Protection Regulation, California Consumer Privacy Act, or Network Enforcement Act).
If we determine that the content at issue in a legal request violates our Content Policy, it is removed on account of the policy violation. As described above, when Reddit receives a removal request for content that violates local law but does not violate our Content Policy, Reddit may restrict the availability of that content in the country where it is alleged to be illegal.
Reddit complied in whole or in part with 46 private party legal removal requests in 2020. This resulted in 40 pieces of content being geoblocked in the reporter country and 25 pieces of content being removed entirely for violations of our Content Policy.
*Includes 595 requests received from private parties under the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG). For more on these requests, please refer to our bi-annual NetzDG report here (under “More information about Reddit’s handling of NetzDG reports”).
Copyright Removals
Reddit respects the intellectual property of others and requires that users of our services do the same. When Reddit receives a complete and valid copyright notice, it complies with the notice and removes the infringing content identified in the request.
This section of the report provides data on the volume of content removed from Reddit in 2020 in response to valid copyright notices, as well as data on the content we declined to remove in response to incomplete or invalid notices. We also include data on content that was reinstated by reason of the original poster submitting a copyright counter notice or the rightsholder retracting its removal request.
In 2020, Reddit received 86,866 copyright notices, reviewed 517,054 pieces of content, and removed 375,774 pieces of content. In 2019, Reddit received 34,989 copyright notices, which resulted in 124,257 content removals. In 2018, Reddit received 9,534 copyright notices, which resulted in 26,234 content removals.
User and Subreddit Copyright Bans
We have a policy that includes the removal of any infringing material from the Services and for the termination, in appropriate circumstances, of users of our Services who are repeat infringers.
In 2020, Reddit removed 303 users and 514 subreddits for excessive copyright infringement removals.
Incomplete or Invalid DMCA Notices
When Reddit receives an incomplete or invalid copyright notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it rejects the notice and declines to remove the content identified in the request.
A request may be incomplete or invalid for many reasons, including:
- Failing to include information required by copyright law, such as the copyright owner’s (or their authorized representative’s) physical or electronic signature
- Confusing other issues for copyright infringement, such as privacy or harassment
- Failing to include enough information about the copyrighted work that the claimant alleges is being infringed
- Targeting an entire subreddit/community or entire user profile instead of specific infringing content
- Targeting content that makes a “fair use” of the claimant’s work as allowed by copyright law
- Targeting content that does not copy the claimant’s work
- Targeting content that is not hosted by Reddit
- Targeting content that has already been removed from Reddit at the time of review
In 2020, 120,927 pieces of content did not qualify for removal due to invalid or incomplete copyright notices.
Chart 16. Content identified in copyright notices to Reddit in 2020 that we declined to remove
Counter Notices and Retractions
When Reddit removes content pursuant to a copyright notice, Reddit sends a message to the user who posted the content. This message informs the user of the removal and provides them an opportunity to submit a “counter notice” swearing their belief that the rightsholder’s notice is mistaken. Copyright law prescribes the statutory counter notice procedure, which results in Reddit reinstating the content unless the rightsholder files a lawsuit.
Reddit may also restore content that was removed as a result of a copyright infringement notice if the copyright owner who submitted the notice simply retracts their claim of copyright infringement.
Reddit complies with counter notices and retraction requests that are complete and rejects those that are incomplete or invalid.
In 2020, Reddit received 143 counter notices and 9 retraction requests.
Reddit discloses specific user information in response to requests from government entities (including law enforcement agencies) and private parties (e.g., potential civil litigants and criminal defendants) only where required by law or to prevent imminent bodily harm. We also attempt to notify our users if and when their personal data is subject to such a request, except when we are specifically prohibited from doing so. Reddit reviews each request and legal process for facial validity and legal sufficiency, and objects when appropriate.
This section of the report provides information on the volume of requests received in 2020 and our rate of compliance.
Private Party Requests for User Information
While law enforcement or other government entities submit most of the requests for user information that Reddit receives, private parties also issue legal process (e.g., subpoenas) for Reddit to disclose information for use in civil litigation and criminal defense proceedings. Reddit only accepts legal requests issued under applicable law.
Under US law, non-governmental entities may not obtain the content of communications with a civil discovery demand. This means that such demands may only require Reddit to disclose basic account information, which includes username/subscriber identity, IP logs (including registration IP), the user’s name (if any), email address (if any), and billing information (if any).
Reddit carefully reviews each request it receives. If we determine that a request is invalid, overbroad, or in violation of applicable law (e.g., law regarding unmasking anonymous speakers), Reddit will object to or challenge the request.
As with requests from law enforcement/government entities, Reddit attempts to notify the relevant user(s) whenever we receive a valid legal request from a private party.
In 2020, Reddit received a total of 19 User Information Requests from private parties in the United States, and one (1) User Information Request from private parties in another country (France). This is a decrease from the 32 requests received in 2019.
Law Enforcement/Government Requests for User Information
Reddit receives requests for the disclosure of user information from law enforcement (“LE”) or government entities on a regular basis. In 2020, 611 of these requests were standard, non-emergency law enforcement/government requests and 324 were emergency disclosure requests (“EDRs”).
Standard Non-Emergency LE/Gov Requests for User Information
Reddit received 611 non-emergency requests for user information from law enforcement and other government entities in 2020. This represents a 50% increase compared to the number of requests received in 2019 (406). Reddit disclosed user information in response to 424 of these requests (69%).
US: 506 requests
- Subpoenas: 302
- Court Orders: 50
- Search Warrants: 102
- Pen Register / Trap and Trace Orders: 1
- Non-Disclosure Order Extensions: 51
International:
- International law enforcement/government requests: 105
Reddit carefully reviews each request for compliance with applicable laws and regulations. If we determine that a request is not legally valid, Reddit will challenge or reject it. If we consider the request to be overbroad or unclear, we will ask the law enforcement or the government entity to modify or refine the request.
Chart 17. Compliance rate for standard non-emergency LE/Gov requests
Chart 18. Compliance rate for International User Information Requests, by country
NOTE: In 2020, requests for user information from India often accompanied content removal requests. This trend resulted in the higher volume for India seen above as compared to previous years.
Emergency Disclosure Requests
Emergency disclosure requests are law enforcement requests seeking disclosure of limited user information without legal process in emergency situations. Reddit only grants such requests if we have a good faith belief that disclosure is necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily harm to a person.
Reddit evaluates these requests on a case-by-case basis.
In 2020, Reddit received a total of 324 emergency disclosure requests worldwide. Of these requests, 254 were from US law enforcement and 70 were from international law enforcement. Reddit disclosed limited user account information in response to 203 (63%) of the requests received. The number of emergency disclosure requests received in 2020 decreased by 11% from the number of requests received in 2019 (366). In a continuing trend from 2019, Canada submitted the highest number of international emergency disclosure requests again in 2020 (38).
Chart 19. Compliance rate for International Emergency Disclosure Requests, by country
Chart 20. Compliance rate for Emergency Disclosure Requests, US vs. International
Preservation Requests
Government entities also send legal requests directing Reddit to temporarily save certain user account information. These preservation requests can only demand retention of information already in the account when the request is received; they cannot be used to compel Reddit to preserve information preemptively. Government entities send these requests in anticipation of obtaining legal process (e.g., a subpoena, court order, or warrant) to ensure the user’s data is not edited, altered, or destroyed in the meantime. A preservation request may result in information being retained beyond its standard retention period.
Reddit will not disclose the preserved information to law enforcement unless and until Reddit receives valid legal process. After the requested preservation period lapses, Reddit purges the preserved data unless it receives a request to extend the preservation.
In 2020, Reddit received 374 preservation requests, a 67% increase over the 224 requests received in 2019. Reddit complied with 79% of these requests. Of these requests, 313 were from US law enforcement and 61 were from international law enforcement.
Chart 21. Preservation requests received, US vs. International
Chart 22. Compliance rate for International preservation requests received, by country
Chart 23. Compliance rate for preservation requests received, US vs International
US National Security Requests
Unfortunately, we are prohibited from reporting exact numbers of National Security Letters or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders received. The USA FREEDOM ACT of 2015 (50 U.S.C. § 1874) sets forth large bands of numbers that a company must use if it wants to report its receipt of national security legal process (and only by using even larger bands can we differentiate between receipt of NSLs and FISA orders).
We can share, however, that Reddit has never received any national security requests for bulk data.
These reporting rules may work for larger companies that receive large numbers of national security requests, but they do little for smaller companies like Reddit that receive few, if any, national security requests. As others have pointed out, these disclosure rules undermine the effectiveness of this transparency report and diminish the trust our communities are able to place in us.
