Still, I strongly suspect this isn't purely about legality. Reddit has come under fire (first, in the press regarding jailbait, and more recently by somethingawful users) for having content that's not necessarily illegal, but rather just creepy. Most of the top comments on this post share this interpretation, and most seem to approve of banning creepy content. If other commenters are to be believed, it also appears that many of the banned subreddits contained fairly "standard" pornography and either had strict "no minor" or "no nudity/sex" policies.

What a subreddit's policy says is less important than what actually gets posted there and/or what people expect to find there. Would you go to /r/truejailbait, /r/lolicon, or /r/preteen_girls expecting to find pictures of adults in non-revealing outfits? No, the expectation is that those subreddits will contain child porn or something similar.

> What a subreddit's policy says is less important than what actually gets posted there and/or what people expect to find there.

What's the line? What if someone posts a single nefarious link on /r/nsfw, or for that matter, something completely unrelated like /r/askscience? It seems like you're proposing that outlier illegal content should result in the banning of a subreddit if the subreddit is "creepy," but not if the subreddit is "normal."

> the expectation is that those subreddits will contain child porn or something similar.

You're hinting at the important problem of defining child pornography. Are pictures of minors in swim suits child pornography? Sure, it's creepy to think about adults surfing for those pictures, but is it even borderline illegal? I don't think so. I think reddit has every right to ban whatever they want (although it seems to go against the stated purpose of their site), but it seems a bit disingenuous to claim that it's at all about legality unless it truly is.

But I still don't think this means that reddit from now on will readily bow to public accusations of creepiness. This time, illegality, administrative burden, creepiness, and moral principles all happened to coincide. I don't think the same set of circumstances will easily obtain with respect to /r/trees or /r/atheism, which @alecco worries about. Illegality alone would not justify blanket censorship of "grey area" stuff. Creepiness alone, or moral qualms alone, would not justify censorship, either.

From the announcement: We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal.

When somebody else says things like that, we are often sceptical about that, and for good reasons. But I think reddit admins have earned enough trust among its regulars over the years to merit a more charitable reading. I doubt that they would ban entire subreddits for a small number of nefarious links if the subreddits themselves had other legitimate purposes. Maybe they'll tell the mods to take better care of their communities, but delete them unilaterally? Unlikely. That's the point I was originally trying to make; sorry for the diversion.

Yes, the good reason is that this announcement is doing exactly what that sentence promises they won't do. Of course, they have the right to do whatever they want with their site, but that line is a blatant lie without the added clause "except for this case."

The administrative burden excuse seems half-hearted and almost a throwaway line. Also, regardless of the reddit admins' views, the views of many top commenters is that this is an appropriate moderation whether or not it's illegal.

That's not what they did. What they did was to say that suggestive content featuring minors is prohibited. I feel like a broken record, but I guess I need to keep reiterating this: Romeo and Juliet is suggestive content featuring minors.

> You could download kiddie porn on /r/jailbait

No you couldn't. Nothing pornographic or illegal was ever allowed on /r/jailbait. It might have gotten posted a few times, but the submitters would have been banned.

And there's a lot of rules broken on /r/trees so it's far from safe. Like meetups to exchange or people giving tips. That's not legal in US and happens quite often there.

Same with /r/atheism, a lot of their content can be labeled hate speech under US law. (IANAL)

There are (dubiously) "hate crime" laws, but they pertain to violent crime.

In a similar vein, I'm not so sure about your legal analysis about "arranging meetups" and "providing tips" on marijuana forums. The reason mj forums don't want people arranging meetups probably has more to do with not creating an easy venue for sting operations.

(Disclosure: it's sad it took Reddit this long to apply this rule, and more than a little repulsive to see people up in arms about it.)

On this particular thread, I'd like to make sure my comments are as clear as I can make them: Reddit did the right thing, and the only complaint I can make is that they took too long and their reasoning wasn't great.

I don't agree with the decision because it's apparent that it was a simple reaction to pressure from, well, lots of different places. I disagree with it because there isn't a solid brightline defense of this decision in light of other subreddits that they not only tolerate, but openly endorse.

To write a post discussion the speech implications of this decision and to end it with "repulsion" of those who disagree is insulting.

So in the spirit of most people in this thread, you're going with "you disagree with my moral framework so you're wrong".

Except it's even worse than that because no one (I think) thinks that these pictures are a good thing, we're just not comfortable with installing a select fews' morality as guidelines for censorship. But rather than have that discussion, you drag it into "well you either agree or you like pedophilia".

As long as you're proud of that, more power to you. I looove people preaching morality and especially absolute morality. There's a lot of people who would love to see a LOT of subreddits banned. Hell, there are people that would see me KILLED for how I live aspects of my life. You going to tell me "oh well" when that becomes the popular sense of morality?

I'm not interested in this conversation at all. I'm not interested in debating moral relativism in the context of child pornography.

I have a sore spot regarding NTTP/Usenet, because the abuse inflicted on it to make it "anonymously" "publish" "binaries" killed Usenet, and Usenet was a far more valuable resource than Reddit is today. As a card carrying nerd (and former Usenet admin), I have trouble walking away from comments about Usenet.

But like I said, I'm not interested in the rest of this "debate". I opt out. I told you what I think, and, in the interest of clarity, I repeat: arguments in favor of retaining forums constituted for the purpose of sexualizing children are repellent.

> I'm not interested in debating moral relativism in the context of child pornography.

Fine. But kindly take the rest of your judgmental, condescending insults to those of us who are having a more mature conversation elsewhere. If all you want to say is "CP BAD", fine, you shouldn't have bothered in the first place; as I've said repeatedly, we all agree with that sentiment. If you don't want to have the rest of the conversation, then your opinion is irrelevant.

>I repeat: arguments in favor of retaining forums constituted for the purpose of sexualizing children are repellent.

Jesus. Do you not get the point, do you not care, or are you incapable of defending your point so this is all you can resort to? Not a single person here is arguing that, in anything even close to that form. You are being entirely disingenuous, you know that and I don't think you care.

But breaking rules in a subreddit is different from having a subreddit where the only possible means of participation is to break the law by posting links to CP. If everybody obeyed the rules in /r/trees, that subreddit might still contain interesting content. If everybody obeyed the law in /r/jailbait, that subreddit simply could not exist. It's a fine difference, but it makes all the difference.

Also, FYI, the U.S. Constitution offers very strong protections for hate speech. It's not like some other countries (cough Germany cough Canada cough) where you can get fined for uttering racial slurs.

That being said, none of the jailbait subreddits had any CP on them. Those who claim that this was a move against child pornography and child exploitation are being disingenuous. There was no child porn nor exploitation. What there was was suggestive pictures of minors. The content was distasteful, not illegal.

Now, I firmly support reddit's right to ban those subreddits on whatever grounds they choose. What's more, I think it was the right move to make. I am disheartened, however, to see people conflate the content that was removed with child porn. The images on those subreddits were largely pulled from facebook and the like. Yes, there were a couple subreddits devoted to the so-called "model" agencies where clothed children were photographed in suggestive poses, and I find that creepy and distasteful in the extreme, but it is not porn, any more than the Victoria's Secret catalog is porn.

It doesn't do anyone any good to use disingenuous language to conflate the issues we're talking about. Reddit got rid of about a dozen creepy and distasteful, but fully legal subreddits devoted to suggestive pictures of clothed minors. Despite my misgivings about censorship and free speech, I support this decision. That does not, however, mean that I am willing to use dishonesty to make those subreddits seem worse than they were, or argue that this was a decision about preventing child exploitation. It simply wasn't. This was about removing subreddits that the majority of redditors found distasteful and a black mark on reddit. It was about avoiding another PR boondoggle like the one that followed Anderson Cooper's report. That's all. It need not be any more than that for it to still have been the right decision.

Never once have I seen this. I've seen ONE meetup and it was in a state where medical use is legal and even then, there's no law against conspiring to meet up to talk about and or consume marijuana. "conspiracy to get high".

Give tips about what? Stupid ways to make a bong out of a gatorade bottle? Scandalous!

>Same with /r/atheism, a lot of their content can be labeled hate speech under US law.

I just spit onto my keyboard a bit. Besides the fact that hate speech is not illegal, I can't think of anything that is purely hateful enough to be deemed hate speech in that subreddit.

I've heard of the same thing in /r/trees; Eg. seed exchanges and more.

FWIW, that's just speculation. I think a more plausible explanation is the bad publicity from CNN.

Except for that now the Obama administration is trying to charge anyone who speaks out in favor of drug reform under the RICO laws, which carry a possible death penalty. Some Montana legislator was just charged a couple weeks ago.

Apparently she hasn't been charged yet, she's currently being investigated, but it seems that RICO is the framework that they are considering using to charge her.

You've extrapolated from a single question from a single investigator to a nonexistent death penalty case and pinned it all on an imaginary Obama administration mandate to charge everyone involved in medical marijuana advocacy. That's not the story here.