Issues Database

Germany's Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) imposed strict 24-hour removal timelines and transparency reporting on large social platforms, with fines up to €50 million, setting an early template for the content-moderation duties now binding on platforms including Reddit.

Reddit shut down r/DarkNetMarkets, the platform's largest discussion-and-review hub for dark-web drug marketplaces, under a new March 2018 content policy banning communities that facilitate transactions in prohibited goods.

On September 12, 2018 Reddit banned r/GreatAwakening — the largest QAnon hub — and roughly 18 related subreddits for inciting violence, harassment, and doxxing.

Reddit banned r/MillionDollarExtreme — the community tied to Sam Hyde's comedy troupe — on September 10, 2018 for violating its violent-content rules, two days before the QAnon sweep.

Reddit removed r/shoplifting, a community of roughly 80,000 members dedicated to discussing theft techniques and posting stolen-goods 'hauls,' as part of its March 2018 content-policy crackdown.

In August 2018 Reddit became inaccessible in mainland China, joining Google, Facebook, and Twitter behind the Great Firewall, with the platform remaining blocked into the 2020s.

On September 27-28, 2018, Reddit formalized and expanded its 'quarantine' mechanism — gating offensive subreddits behind an opt-in warning page, stripping ad revenue, and hiding them from search — then applied it to more than 20 communities including r/CringeAnarchy, r/WatchPeopleDie, r/TheRedPill, and r/Braincels, triggering accusations of censorship and inconsistent enforcement.

On March 21, 2018, Reddit revised its content policy to prohibit transactions involving firearms, ammunition, and explosives, banning subreddits including r/GunsForSale, r/GunDeals, and r/AKMarketplace that connected buyers and sellers.

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.

Reddit's first full visual overhaul in years rolled out in April 2018 to widespread complaints about wasted space, slower load times and a more app-like card layout, prompting a large cohort of users to retreat permanently to old.reddit.com.

The creator and top moderator of r/KotakuInAction abruptly set the 100,000-member community private and stripped its other moderators, only for Reddit administrators to reverse the takeover within roughly an hour and later remove him entirely.