Recently, a prominent anti-pornography organization has been taking on some of the largest online adult content platforms — and winning. And now, it’s setting its sights on Reddit.
In November, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation successfully campaigned for Instagram to ban Pornhub from having a presence on its platform. And just a few months before that, the organization led support for Visa and Mastercard to suspend all card payments for advertising with Mindgeek, Pornhub’s parent company.
To top it off, there’s also currently a nationwide legislative push for strict age verification practices on porn sites happening in multiple states, including Louisiana and Utah, which have both passed always requiring adult content sites to do their due diligence in verifying users’ ages.
And now, NCOSE has its sights set on cleaning up Reddit, one of the world’s largest online platforms for pornography. The site is home to thousands of subreddits dedicated to adult content, and has faced problems over the years with non-consensual imagery and image-based abuse.
In 2019, after the criminal operation Girls Do Porn was charged with federal counts of trafficking, Reddit banned one of the biggest forums for sharing videos of its victims, but more popped up in its place within months. Adult performers have also reported for years that Reddit’s users repost their content from closed subscription sites like OnlyFans without their permission.
In March 2022, Reddit implemented a new policy known as “Evolving our Rule on Non-Consensual Intimate Media Sharing” to address any concerns that had been brought forward. However, NCOSE argues that it is not enough to prevent “image-based sexual abuse.”
“While these are steps forward, Reddit’s failure to enact meaningful age and consent verification practices and ineffective moderation strategy continues to allow such content to flourish on its platform,” the letter states.
Over 300 “anti-sexual exploitation and violence experts” associated with NCOSE signed a letter urging Reddit to “adopt strong policies against hardcore pornography and sexually explicit content, due to the inability for Reddit to ever sufficiently verify the age or consent of people depicted in such content.” It also calls on the platform to “ban users who upload sexually explicit material, especially if the material depicts child sexual abuse material or non-consensually shared intimate images, and prevent them from creating another account.”
Reddit has yet to respond to the letter, but NCOSE’s track record speaks for themselves. This is likely the first of many steps the organization will take to take down adult content on Reddit.
