Sanctioned Suicide: A Pro-Suicide Forum Born From a Banned Subreddit
March 2018 onward
After Reddit banned r/SanctionedSuicide in March 2018, its founders launched a standalone forum that journalists and regulators later linked to dozens of deaths and the spread of a specific poisoning method.
What happened
On March 14, 2018, Reddit banned the subreddit r/SanctionedSuicide under its rules against the promotion of self-harm and violence. Four days later, two of its principals launched a standalone website of the same name, which continued the community outside Reddit's reach.
A December 2021 New York Times investigation identified at least 45 members who had died by suicide in connection with the site and documented how the forum popularized a previously obscure method using a meat-preservative chemical, including in cases involving minors. An October 2023 BBC News investigation linked at least 50 deaths in the United Kingdom to the site. (Method details are deliberately omitted here.)
The case illustrates a recurring limit of platform moderation: removing a community from Reddit did not end it but instead displaced it to an unmoderated venue where harm allegedly intensified. Reddit's ban is best understood as ending its own hosting of the community, not as the cause of, or a remedy for, the deaths later associated with the independent site. Regulators in the UK (Ofcom, under the Online Safety Act) and Canada continued to scrutinize the site into 2025.
Impact
Journalists and regulators have linked dozens of deaths across multiple countries to the successor forum. UK internet providers added the site to default safety filters, and in 2025 Ofcom opened an investigation under the Online Safety Act. The episode is frequently cited as evidence that banning a community can displace rather than dissolve harm.