r/deepfakes: Birthplace of Deepfake Porn and Reddit's 2018 Ban

In late 2017 a Reddit user operating under the handle 'deepfakes' began posting AI-generated pornographic videos that swapped celebrities' faces onto adult performers, initially in r/CelebFakes and then in a dedicated subreddit, r/deepfakes, which gave the technique its name (a blend of 'deep learning' and 'fake'). The community grew to roughly 90,000 subscribers and circulated tutorials and download links for FakeApp, a consumer tool that let users generate face-swapped video from training images, sharply lowering the technical barrier to producing non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII).

On February 7, 2018, Reddit updated its site-wide rules to explicitly prohibit 'involuntary pornography,' defined to include faked depictions, and shut down r/deepfakes along with r/deepfakeNSFW and older fake-image communities such as r/CelebFakes and r/YouTubeFakes. Reddit framed the action as enforcement of its content policy against sexual imagery created or posted without the subject's permission. Parallel bans followed the same week at Pornhub, Discord, and Twitter.

While the ban removed the originating community from Reddit, the FakeApp technique and code had already spread, and the harm did not stop. The r/deepfakes era is widely identified as the seed of an ongoing criminal-harm problem: a sprawling market in deepfake pornography and NCII that continues to target both celebrities and private individuals through 2024–2026, driving later platform crackdowns and new laws.