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Reddit @lemmy.ml

Amju Wolf @pawb.social

11mo ago

Reddit purges all NSFW subreddits

Something big is happening, as Reddit seems to have purged literally every NSFW sub they know. Reason is always "unmoderated" despite some of the banned subreddits being fully moderated.

Edit: seems to have been a bug in automation (thanks @lefty7283@lemmy.world):

https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1ii67mt/_/mb3fewv

It's still a good reminder on how quickly a community (or communities) thousands of people enjoy and in some cases rely upon can disappear.

274 comments

Man, I hope lemmynsfw is ready, lol
- As a quick reminder: don't expect them to handle your load (lol) for free. If you are a gooner/goonette with some income, leave a tip for the server costs and consider volunteering for mod duties if you have time and some internet social skills. If you value your nsfw communities, they don't exist without work, like any other community.
- RIP lemmynsfw's inbox.
- They're gonna need so much money to host all the new content.
- Are they the only porn instance? I am surprised at little porn I see on here and when I do it's all lemmynsfw.
  
  Hosting NSFW content is an absolute ball-ache, so a lot of instances that are not NSFW focussed do not host it.
  In the early days of feddit.uk, we decided to go the path of SFW, to simplify things.
  I absolutely salute the lemmy-nsfw admins in taking that load on.
  And it makes a lot of sense: If you're going to deal with the headaches, you might as well focus entirely on them!
  
  Isnt it harder to host that kind of stuff, like you need certain providers, prob a removed to moderate

r/transgender_surgeries wasn't porn. It was a community outlet for results so people could understand what to expect. Queer folk always get swept up with porn, cishet only see us as a "kink" and assume our existence is entirely sexual.
It's fucking infuriating.
- Queer folk always get swept up with porn, cishet only see us as a “kink” and assume our existence is entirely sexual.
  This is the whole point of these porn bans is to remove queer people from the internet. The porn cover just allows it to happen. So whenever you see anything about porn bans think queer ban first and then some porn removal that comes right back
  
  it's telling that they target trans content; but leave gay content alone.
  
  The old ass fascists trying to hold together their plutocracy suppress anything that goes against their patriarchal values.
  Even looking at it as a fetish, trans porn has been skyrocketing in popularity
  https://www.pornhub.com/insights/transgender-searches
  And this terrifies right wingers
  The current patriarchy sees non-binary people as a threat to their heirachies. If the line between man and woman gets blurred then we start questioning why we aren't all actually equal, and that leads to us removing them from power.
- It's a shame. I'm not trans. I'm a cis male and I have no desire to be female. But I live in a very trans friendly community and as such I have many trans friends and they need outlets. I joined a meetup group which inadvertly became a trans safe space (original topic was anime) and many trans people just joined as it was the one space where they weren't judged. We just did it in the way of anime, like their only safe space is something not trans releated and this is despite living in a friendly city. I will be an ally to all my trans friends and support them in this time of need.
- I'm currently discussing with people about mirroring it somewhere on lemmy, but there is also Transbucket which already exists as its own independent website.
- You... see who's in charge, right? Republicans always target LGBTQ+ folks for "pornographic" violations.
- Well it is genitals but the purpose is entirely different. I don’t agree with it but I can at least see the logic.
  
  By that "logic", all obgyn's are sex workers. It's shit justification for bigotry and shouldn't be given any credence whatsoever.
- I mean, ffs. #notallcishet? I don’t get how people who are being oppressed and all lumped together under one description (which you all definitely are) can be so nonchalant throwing around broad strokes like that.
  
  Lol was that hashtag ironic? You know "not all men" is frequently referenced as a critique about men who can't hear criticism of gender equality because "not all men"? As a cishet dude: calm down, their point is valid and your reaction is cringe
  
  You got a problem with trans people? No? Then it wasn't talking about you. Christ, is that hard to understand?
  When a group of people makes an "us vs them" against a minority, it forces the minority to use that language back. As a cishet person, your identity is being used as a weapon to harm trans people regardless if you're doing anything. Ignorance of the minorities plight can be weaponized to do more harm and that ignorance can be shielded through appeals to normalcy and tradition.
  When you respond to that language with "not all cishet people" you signal that your support is contingent on you not losing anything (your ignorance is one of the things you can lose). Which can and will be used to weaponize more harm against the minority group.
  
  Can you please learn and understand that when people are frustrated they often use a little hyperbole? It's very selfish to respond to people like this.

Unironically devastating for Reddit financially and could see a gooner exodus to Lemmy.
- As far as I remember they weren't monetizing NSFW subs, so I guess their reasoning is that banning them reduces server costs while not impacting their ads revenue.
  Now what will be interesting is to see how much of Reddit's userbase was there at least partly for the porn, and how many users will leave Reddit altogether because of this move
  
  I'm curious if the pro bono porn increased the traffic for the monetizes subreddits. So this might lead to a gross loss instead of pure savings from the server costs.
  Anyhow. R/all is among the worse places on the internet. It can get fucked.
  
  it's a loss leader and is an important part of most business models
- Man, like I'll welcome new people, but I don't want all flooded with porn. I already had to block a bunch of communities/ profiles, and I'll have to work more to fix my feed. Having said that
  Give me your tired, your goons, Your huddled masses yearning to goon free, I guess.
  
  Try jerboa, you can just block the nsfw instance instead of doing it piecemeal. Total game changer. (Some of the other apps probably have this functionality but I don't know which.)
  
  We will be a melting pot where goon and righteous will mingle in the everlasting hope of prosperity and freedom… for all.
  
  think programming.dev blocks nsfw and political stuff
- I'm against the ban, but I also don't want that gooning here. Although that's what drives like half of the internet so maybe it's a good thing for the fediverse.
  
  pretty much just lemmynsfw, and nsfw can easily be turned off here
  
  It'll be constrained to pro-gooning instances, most seem to be defederated from porn but the influx of users in general will spill over to the non-gooning instances.
  
  https://youtu.be/c_o8vYUU-jo?t=16
  Dr. Cox has joined the chat
  
  You can just block that instance
  
  Many technologies lived and died based on what the gooners chose, e.g. VHS vs betamax. I welcome them
- Gross

Remember when tumblr got rid of porn and everyone stopped using it.
- Reminds me of an old favorite CollegeHumor video comedy skit series - "A Message From Your Favorite CEO" featuring the Tumblr CEO...
  
  Miss that series so much
- Shockingly it's still alive, and even moreso there's still porn, albeit softcore and/or censored with links pointing to Bluesky and/or patreon. There are also pornbots that pop up and follow me every now and again.

This has been predicted for many years. Most were expecting it to happen before the IPO, since investors are afraid of porn.
They had also been gradually heading down this path for a long time, making porn harder and harder (heh) to find and view.
- It's not only porn. Today i google-image searched a skin condition. Most results were reddit links, but i wasn't able to open any of them without their app as the subreddits were apparently 18+!
  I wasn't able to view any of the information as i refuse to install the app. Google should deprioritize the results that can't be viewed in the browser.
  
  You should still be able to navigate to those posts by changing the link to old.reddit.com. But I assume that will go away at some point too.
  
  Just request desktop mode, that bypasses it.
  
  In the top right of your internet browser, there should be a menu button. If you hit that, there should be a "Desktop Site" button. If you check that, the app prompt goes away. It's annoying that it's required, but at least you won't be locked out
- It's only a matter of time. They don't display any ads on nsfw subreddits currently, so management likely sees these subreddits as nothing but a cost, especially because they tend to be heavily image/gif based. what they are unsure about, which is why they haven't been purged yet, is likely how much traffic to non-nsfw subreddits nsfw subreddits drive. I think we are likely to see purges of them when/if ad money dips or plateaus and they turn their eye to minimizing operating costs.
- Are they going to revert the changes in a few weeks when Musk loses interest? Seems like a huge loss of website traffic for some Elon virtue signaling.
- It did happen before the IPO. It's been happening for several years. They have not been doing mass bans all at once. They've been surreptitiously taking down subreddits over the years. Mostly smaller ones that woujldn't draw much attetnion. Looks like they went for the bigger targets now.
  This isn't a sudden change to ideologically align with the current US administration either. They have been at this for a long time.

The subs are back up for the record. According to an admin, it was a glitch.
- The glitch being they got caught and people complained
  
  How were they ever not getting "caught" lol
  
  Eh no need to get tin foil hat, imho.
- 😂 like that Facebook "glitch" that banned any inclusive terms and force-followed Trump on people's profiles? Lol these fuckers
- I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out they're making a ban list for all these communities, but the 'glitch' was that someone turned it on before whatever PR move/manufactured scandal they were going to use to justify it was ready to go.
  Or this was just a test fire to see how people would react.
  
  both I bet
- That's a pretty big glitch. 1. You have a nuclear button. 2. The omega thermal nuclear cluster bombs are pointed at a particular target
- Uh huh. Like the glitch that put T_D on the front page - the entire front page.
  One of those funny coincidences that keeps happening.
- Lmao, somebody said to do it and got called on the carpet by their shareholders.

Reddit is preparing to surrender to somebody who does not want NSFW content on their site in an attempt to appease advertisers. Possibly Musk.
- The anti-porn conservatives have always been about controlling women.
  That woman who founded OnlyFans driving around in 10 different Lamborghinis, that's their worst fucking nightmare.
  Before that, it was that one lady whose husband died and then she discovered massive oil reserves under her land.
  That kind of stuff is an existential threat to the patriarchy, which conservative control freaks must preserve at any cost.
  They cannot allow women to become self-sufficient and thereby self-determinative. Otherwise, who will take care of the men, and raise the men's babies?
  
  Literally why witch hunts existed. It was just a way for authorities to expropriate the wealth of some random dowager who won't remarry (and therefore automatically cede all property to her new husband).
  
  Also, frankly, I think sexual repression is just a HUGE part of the control mechanisms these people employ. Basically, "joy" is seen as a "sin" because there should "only be joy in God" or some stupid bull shit. You are supposed to take bride in being as missrable as possible so in the afterlife you will get eternal joy or whatever.
- Could be going for IPO finally.
  Edit: didn't realize it already happened, I haven't been on Reddit in a long while.
  
  reddit ipo was last march
  https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/investing/reddit-ipo/index.html
  
  Reddit went public a year ago...
  
  Actually, it went on the market last year.

I see they're following the Tumblr model:
Get bought at overinflated values.
Ban all NSFW content.
Users leave and seek NSFW content elsewhere.
Valuation plummets.
"Actually, moderating NSFW is really hard you guys. We're just going to try best efforts moderation only."
Sell at near total loss.
There is still NSFW content on the platform, and the policy is used as a cudgel against LGBTQ accounts.
- https://youtu.be/TVuaKJx4PA0?IA_mb4b2tnyftJgx

I don't care about NSFW subs per se, but they're useful canaries in the coal mine. If they're gone gone, it's a fine indicator of what's about to come next.
- No, your canaries are already long dead. It's long been a process when Reddit admins don't want a sub to exist but it isn't actually breaking any rules to laser focus on the moderators, ban them the moment they have an excuse, immediately ban the sub for being unmoderated, refuse to give it to a new mod via reddit request and ban any replacement subs for recreating a banned sub. Hell, r/GamingCircleJerk has been laughing about some right wing gaming memes sub having that done to it just a few weeks ago.
  They only care about it not looking like they are just nuking subs they don't like is because they don't want to scare off other users who might get antsy about having a community under those sorts of capricious admins.
  This sounds a lot like an automation of that process that misfired. That they were all specifically banned for being "unmoderated" is what jumps out to me as telling.

Spez: "Daddy Elon wants me to get rid of all the twitter critical and trans related subs. How can I do it without it being too obvious?"
Snoo Lackey: "Easy. What we'll do is ban a load of morally grey subs like porn and drug related ones along with the twitter critical and trans ones. Then, when the predictable uproar kicks off, we'll wait awhile then announce it was all a terrible mistake and we'll reactivate all the porn ones. We just won't reactivate the twitter critical or trans ones. Because lets be honest - no one really cares and as long as the simpletons have their wank bank back, they'll neither notice nor care either!"
Spez: "Brilliant!"
- Good theory, but it looks like they all came back including the transgender related subs.

OK but how the FUCK did r/forcedcreampie survive the purge?
- Under the New Founding Fathers, forced cream pies are ok, willing abortions are not.
  
  Oh that's the most vile and gut wrenchingly nauseating comment i read all year. Well done and well said.
  
  A baby is a cream pie that has finished cooking.
  
  New Founding Fathers sounds too distinguished. I vote for Foundling Man-babies.
- Porn is made by actors who sometimes roleplay scenes that aren't actually real.

First they came for the NSFW, and I did not speak out—because I was not NSFW.

Wonder how this move went for tumble
- Same as it went for HDDVD, Laserdisc, and BetaMax.
- To be fair I don't think that many people go to Reddit for porn. With Tumblr it seemed almost exclusive. But it's still an odd move.
  
  Porn on Reddit used to be good but has been awful since the rise of OnlyFans. Now almost every post on porn subreddits is someone shilling their onlyfans using the same 5 second tease clips across dozens of tenuously related subreddits. If the exodus happens to Lemmy, that is what it will be here.
  OF killed good amateur porn
  Edit: Boobs is banned because it was unmoderated apparently. i haven't checked the others in the OPs list. i've logged into my porn account and there's plenty of large and small porn subreddits still around so i don't think this was a porn purge
  
  Why does anyone go anywhere?

Yeah this worked out great for OnlyFans, Tumblr, and Flickr. At least OnlyFans was smart enough to remember which side their bread was buttered on.
- the tumblr one is so funny because yahoo promised not to screw it up and then they did
  
  And now there's still tons of NSFW content, they just started labeling it as NSFT (not safe for Tumblr) to get around the auto censors
  
  All thanks to Apple's censorship of their forced App Store, which is arguably the worst thing to ever happen to computing. Zero percent joking.
- What would be left if onlyfans got rid of porn? Wtf. I'm not paying to watch someone fix rust on their car.
  
  I'm watching someone fix the rust on their car, sexually.
  
  Exactly.
  
  I think that was temporary and something to do eith their parent company or payment processor and not a real policy change, but I may be misremembering.

this was literally why i still kinda used reddit. welp hello lemmynsfw!

So is there gonna be more porn on lemmynsfw now?
- Certainly.
  
  Nice.

Might be some bug in automation?

https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1ii67mt/_/mb3fewv
- Ai iS ThE fUtURe
  Lmao ok sure. Any money says they tried to plug an LLM into AutoMod.
  
  If LLMs were actually intelligent they would have done it to all of reddit
- That's what it looks like. There are a lot of NSFW subs that didn't get banned, and some that got banned that weren't NSFW like /r/narcissisticabuse. All marked as for "being unmoderated". If they were actually banning NSFW subs, you'd think they'd say so.

I welcome all the porn y'all want to post ....
- Typo

My guess is that they’re expecting some new federal anti-porn legislation and are prepping for that. Porn is already basically outlawed in much of the south, (if not explicitly, then implicitly due to how many hoops porn makers need to jump through), and republicans have made it clear that they want to bring conservative policies at the federal level so liberal states can’t overrule them.
- It’s on the list for project 2025.
- No porn. No weed.
- Just a reminder that pornhub is a Canadian site and is not subject to the US's increasingly stupid rules.

Thankfully /r/cumsluts has been spared... for now!
- thank god all the niche fd up ones that make me question why reddit is public are still there
  
  I thought they got rid of those ones years ago?
- Quick, web.archive all xD

<tinfoil hat> Other corporate social media has also had "bugs" that delete or hide advertiser unfriendly content, with staff scrambling to go "oopsie!". That ain't a bug, they're testing something. </tinfoil hat>
- I don't think this is really tinfoil hat. I'd like to see they explain how it just happened to remove that subset and not other things.

I sure am grateful for how easy it is to avoid porn on lemmy, may that continue to be the case with the certain upcoming influx of it.
- There's porn here?
  
  It's segregated to lemmynsfw.com, which most instances don't federate with

No porn = more horny people = more births
No abortion = more births
The logic driving US legislation everyone, it's not so much "protect the children" thinking as "make the children have children" thinking.
Honestly, they've guaranteed that the US therapy industry is going to have patients for decades to come!
- No abortions can equal less births. Women aren't going to want to take the risk of getting pregnant if there isn't a safety net if things go wrong.
  
  You might want to crack a sex education reader with special attention to possibilities of error.
  Unfortunately, young and uninformed people will keep falling in love and getting tingly about it.
  
  What do you mean no safety net? They just live with and serve their husbands. He is the safety net.
  /s
- As with anything thiose Nazi does if therapy still exist when they are done with the health sector it will be to make sure the child are well brainwashed after the education camp ( or whatever will replace education in most red state )

Good news to me. I can watch reddit and twitter self destruct from the comfort of the Fediverse. Welcome home, fellow refugees.
- They would rather hop into another corpo boat instead of choosing an instance.
  
  Some would, some would rather go to Lemmy.

This is hilarious. There's no other reason to have Reddit

You mean all my reddit porn is now gone?
Fuck it. They all should migrate to Lemmy. There was some hard to find porn that I haven't saved yet...

Thats actually very good advertisement for Lemmy done by reddit. Very good news tbh.

Overwatch r34 ban
So you have chosen death by a thousand exoduses

Just following in Tumblr's footsteps. They have to sanitize it to fully monetize it.
- Hmm, delicious pasteurised reddit.
  
  https://www.reddit.com/r/Milk/

Couldn't have happened to a scummier hive of villainy. I wil unironically applaud every bad thing that happens to the site.
Nothing of value lost, there are uncountable alternatives.

Terrible choice caving into the pseudo-moralists, but they've been going down a bad path for a long time. They should've looked at the cautionary tale of Tumblr before committing this own goal. Making sweeping changes to fit in with corporate agendas may be popular among their own class, but it also has the longer-term effect of sacrificing the user base. And they've been hemorrhaging for a while anyway. Where do they think their future profits will come from?

Lol RIP reddit

Reddit is run by big business and greedy corporate America. When it went public for the stock price to make even more money then it did before, I left that place.

EO on federal porn ID requirement incoming?

Imagine all these OF models with their bots posting all over NSFW communities, it will be dead! How they will promote? Lol
If all this people go over Lemmynsfw, it won't handle all of this, that's why more NSFW instances should be maid IMO.
- Monkey’s paw has granted your wish, 53 new nsfw communities based on maids will now be founded.
  
  Go on...

Hmm, maybe they reverted? Everything still seems accessible right now
Edit: the ones on the screen seem down but there are definitely still some nsfw subreddits still open. Either the purgening has just begun or those fit some kind of criteria for a ban.

It doesn't look like all the NSFW subs are banned yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if that happens soon.
- Looks like maybe they're starting with the main ones‽

Did they? I just looked and my porn multi is still full of everything I expect it to be.

I always had a feeling this was gonna happen. I don’t think they can put ads on nsfw subreddits so they are effectively a leech on resources. Gotta get those profits.

Let's goon

r/nsfw is still around https://www.reddit.com/r/nsfw/
as well as a subreddit I created:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics4/

According to a post from our Admin, in the small instance I'm in there has been a sudden influx of new users (about 200) in the last day or so (as new users have to be approved, somebody is getting cramps on their approve finger).
(Guess Anarchism and Piracy could technically count as NSFW in most workplaces, especially the latter)

I am glad that I left this piece of shit place 2 years ago.

They have been coming back. /drugs being one that is back. Don't know wtf happened, but glad I'm here.

that is called a dictatorial show of force
- Uhm... interesting hyperbole during a time where America is literally facing down a fascist dictator.

Reason is always “unmoderated” despite some of the banned subreddits being fully moderated.
Well, that's a lie, because /r/programming still has mods. Pretty sure they did nothing in the last 10 years. I guess it's because the sub wasn't NSFW, I guess.

I know people here probably don't want to jump back across, but people are actually wondering if this isn't just NSFW and if it's political..
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1ii6qa1/rporn_rrule34_are_banned_tissue_paper_sales/

Wait until they find out that conservatives also jerk off

The gooners are coming!
- Literally

that's funny because I was banned for saying fireworks in Brampton Ontario

The only thing I use Reddit for is porn, and my feed isn't empty, so either they're doing this in stages or there's some other criteria they're using beyond just being NSFW.
- Seems to have been a bug and they reverted the bans.

274 comments