Issues Database

Reddit interim CEO Ellen Pao resigned on July 10, 2015, after the surprise firing of popular talent director Victoria Taylor triggered a site-wide moderator revolt, and a petition demanding her ouster drew more than 200,000 signatures amid a torrent of sexist and racist abuse directed at her.

Joshua Ryne Goldberg, a prolific Reddit troll who created and moderated racist subreddits including r/CoonTown, was arrested by the FBI in 2015 after, posing as an ISIS supporter, he supplied bomb-making instructions for an attack on a Kansas City 9/11 memorial; he was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

On August 5, 2015, returning CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez) rolled out an updated content policy and banned r/CoonTown along with a cluster of openly racist subreddits, while introducing a new 'quarantine' tier for offensive-but-permitted communities.

Reddit banned r/beatingwomen in 2014 after its moderators were caught sharing users' personal information, and named r/rapingwomen among communities banned in 2015 for inciting violence and rape.

On June 10, 2015, Reddit banned r/fatpeoplehate and four other subreddits under an anti-harassment policy first announced in May 2015, triggering a site-wide revolt that flooded r/all and targeted interim CEO Ellen Pao with abuse.

Indonesia blocked Reddit in 2014 over nudity, and Russia's Roskomnadzor blocked the entire site in August 2015 over a single post explaining how to grow psilocybin mushrooms, illustrating how individual content disputes triggered nationwide bans.

Reddit became a primary hub for the 2014 'Fappening' celebrity nude-photo leaks via the r/TheFappening subreddit, removing it only under DMCA and child-imagery pressure; nearly six months later, on February 24, 2015, Reddit announced a privacy-policy change banning the posting of explicit images of anyone without their consent.

In August 2015 Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor blacklisted all of Reddit over a single post containing a guide to growing psilocybin mushrooms, then lifted the block a day later when Reddit restricted the content.

Reddit moved from tolerating 'witch hunts' to formal anti-doxxing and anti-harassment rules only after a string of high-profile misidentifications and harassment campaigns, culminating in its 2015 policy overhaul.

During the Bitcoin 'block size' war, r/Bitcoin's lead moderator 'theymos' deleted comments, banned users, and removed moderators who supported alternative software like Bitcoin XT — pushing dissenters to found the rival r/btc.

The abrupt firing of AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor triggered a revolt in which moderators of r/IAmA and more than a thousand other subreddits went private in protest.