On the other hand, it can be incredibly expensive to take legal action. Somethingawful.com has had hilarious legal threats in the past. They remain my favorite for frivolous letters. Go to for customer support calls that go in this direction. “I`m sorry, but now that you`ve threatened legal action, I can`t help you anymore because I don`t legally represent the company.” Remember the human being. Reddit is a place to create community and belonging, not to attack marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has the right to use Reddit without harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence. Communities and users who incite violence or promote hatred on the basis of identity or vulnerability will be banned. In fact. I was on the other end, doing my best to give the individual a way to resolve the issue amicably, hence the warning, but when that didn`t work, I was forced to go through the legal system.

Each year, Reddit produces a transparency report to inform users of the types of requests we receive from third parties who want Reddit to disclose user data or remove content from the platform. Reddit takes the privacy of its users seriously. Reddit therefore insists on compliance with procedural requirements, reviews requests and legal procedures for apparent validity and legal sufficiency, and refuses to process them if necessary. This year, we`ll be sharing with you additional information about copyright removals, restorations, and revocations, as well as removals, for violating Reddit`s content policy and subreddit policies. This additional information not only increases transparency for our users, but also helps align Reddit with Santa Clara`s Principles of Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, whose goals and spirit we support as a starting point for further conversations. Reports from previous years can be found here. Disclaimer: Reasonable care has been taken in compiling the information provided in this report, however, given the volume of requests, our report may not be 100% accurate. In 2018, Reddit received 752 requests to retain or publish user account information from government agencies. Reddit carefully reviewed each request for compliance with legal standards and followed the procedure outlined in Reddit`s Privacy Policy. Reddit`s approach to content moderation is community-driven. The vast majority of content removals on Reddit are done in individual subreddits by subreddit moderators — volunteer users who are either self-appointed or appointed by the community and not Reddit employees. These distances are largely based on individual subreddit rules that are unique to each community and set by moderators and communities themselves.

While there may be some overlap between the enforcement of these rules and Reddit`s content policy, the moderator`s actions are completely independent of the distances made by Reddit admins. Lol, my lawyer`s first piece of advice is: “Put it in writing” if something goes wrong, not “Don`t talk to the other party”. I deal with people who file lawsuits every month, it`s 99.999% a bluff, so I partially agree. I work in the claims business and I am threatened with legal action every day. My ready-made answer is, “OK, since you told me you were seeking legal action, I will wait for your lawyer`s letter of representation and respond appropriately at that time. While I don`t even seem to be giving legal advice on whether or not to seek the advice of a lawyer, I`m going to end the conversation now. Once they realize I`m the person making the check, I get a reminder that says “Oh whatever” This might be the case for some people, but I personally warned one person that if X isn`t corrected by Y, it becomes a legal matter – and then I succeeded. I believe Reddit`s standard answer of “lawyer, delete Facebook and go to the gym” applies here. Reddit`s response to these requests is shown in the graph below. Note that all requests from the European Union came from Europol, with the exception of 1 from Germany (content that was not made available by the requesting country for legal reasons) and 1 from Denmark (content that was completely removed from Reddit due to content policy violations). It reminds me of a court case in Sweden years ago.

A man went to the social welfare office and asked for financial support. The employee refused his request for assistance. He got angry about it and said, “I`m going to fuck you tonight.” She filed a complaint with the police and threatened to rape her. In the criminal trial, he was acquitted because the court considered it to be a promise of sexual relations (consensual, I suppose) and not a threat of rape. Reddit regularly denies subpoenas from private parties and attempts to restrict them in order to obtain subscriber or transaction information that is not accompanied by a court order. Reddit also regularly contradicts a legal process with private parties designed to expose anonymous speech online and attempts to restrict it.