About & Methodology

Every entry in this archive is sourced. We prioritize primary sourcesin roughly this order: court documents and legal filings; Reddit's own official statements, blog posts, and transparency reports; contemporaneous reporting from established news organizations; and reputable academic research. Where a claim cannot be supported by such a source, we either omit it or clearly mark it as unverified.

Each source is labeled by type (news, official/Reddit, court, academic, or other) so readers can weigh it appropriately. We link directly to sources wherever possible and welcome corrections when a link breaks or a better source exists.

Our stance is neutral but critical. We document real, sourced problems plainly and without euphemism — but we also include Reddit's responses, official positions, and relevant transparency-report data wherever they exist. The goal is an accurate record, not a polemic.

We avoid loaded language, present competing accounts where the facts are disputed, and distinguish clearly between what is documented and what is alleged. When an issue is ongoing or unresolved, we flag it as such rather than implying a settled conclusion.

Some entries concern real-world harm, harassment, and misidentification. We treat these with particular care. We use precise, sourced causation languageand do not overstate Reddit's role where the evidence is limited. We avoid republishing private information, naming wrongly-accused private individuals gratuitously, or amplifying harm.

For example, in documenting the 2013 Boston Marathon misidentification, we are explicit that the student wrongly named by Reddit users had already died before the bombing — and we focus on the documented harm the misidentification caused his family, using only sourced facts.

Reddit Watch is maintained as a structured database. Entries are added and updated over time, drawing on public reporting and documents. The public can submit new issues or corrections, which are reviewed before publication.

This is a living archive: the ongoing-issues category in particular covers situations that are still developing, and those entries are updated as events unfold.