Reddit Removes 85M Pieces of Content in 2020, Up 62% Year Over Year

Reddit removed some 85 million pieces of content in 2020, up 62% compared with 2019, mostly for spam and content manipulation and not counting legal or copyright removals, which are tracked separately. The platform released its Transparency Report 2020 Tuesday, detailing changes to its policy that took effect last year and actions that were taken as a result. Reddit said 82,858 communities were removed in 2020, up 26% year-over-year, with 77% of that total removed for not being moderated. The company added that 202,000 pieces of content were removed for content policy violations. Government entities submitted 253 requests for content removal, and Reddit complied with 63% of those. Reddit also fielded 935 requests for user account information from law enforcement and government entities, with 324 of them emergency disclosure requests (down 11% year-over-year), mostly from the U.S., and 63% of them complied with, as well as 611 non-emergency requests (up 50%), mostly U.S. subpoenas, 69% of which were complied with. The platform received 374 requests to temporarily preserve certain user account information, up 67% from 2019, complying with 79% of those requests. Reddit wrote in a blog post, “Last year was funky … but things are getting better. As a community, we adapted to the challenges we faced and continued to move forward. 2021 has already brought its own set of challenges, but we have proved to be resilient and supportive of each other. So, in the words of Bill and Ted, be excellent to each other.” The company reiterated in the introduction to its Transparency Report 2020 that content moderation on its platform occurs via a layered, community-driven approach, and its content policy provides a set of principles-based rules for volunteer moderators and all Redditors to follow, with the help of Reddit employees, known as admins. Reddit’s updated first rule, aimed at providing a clearer position on hate and racism, now reads, “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.” Other key statistics from Transparency Report 2020 include: 378,796,540 posts were created on Reddit in 2020, and admins removed 65,359, or 0.017% of that total, due to content policy violations.2,473,610,855 comments were created on the platform last year, with admins removing 112,452, or 0.045% of that total, due to content policy violations.753,804,145 private messages were created on Reddit in 2020, and 24,938, or 0.0033% of them, were removed by admins.99.2% of admin removals in 2020 were for content manipulation, representing 36,803,812 posts, 40,029,664 comments and 8,194,658 private messages.12,417 communities were removed specifically for vote or subscription cheating, and 35,269 were removed for spam.Reddit received 28,243,095 user reports for potential content policy violations last year, with admins taking action on 3.59% of them, while the remainder were either duplicates, had already been acted on or did not violate the platform’s rules.Reddit admins received 42,517 appeals in 2020, granting 37.95% of them (16,134) and denying 62.05% (26,383).6,701,894 accounts with matching historical third-party breaches were put through the forced password reset process last year.72 communities were quarantined in 2020, down from 256 in 2019.Reddit made 2,233 CyberTipline reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last year regarding content that sexually exploits and puts children at risk.The platform received 86,866 copyright notices in 2020, reviewing 517,054 pieces of content and removing 375,774 of them, up compared with 2019 (34,989 copyright notices, 124,257 content removals) and 2018 (9,534 copyright notices, 26,234 content removals).303 users and 514 subreddits were removed last year for excessive copyright infringement removals.