>historically that has only served to push users to other services.

But this is exactly what you want - get rid of the low-quality users and offload them somewhere else. reddit has gotten itself quite a questionable image tolerating pornographic jailbait, necrophiliac porn, stolen nudes and domestic abusers on its platform for very long.

And who is to say these users are inherently low quality? Enjoying any anything socially unacceptable doesn't preclude them from creating content you may enjoy in another subreddit.

I'd argue that personality traits cluster, so that someone who frequents a fappenings-subreddit is way more likely to doxx your users, troll or cause other disturbances than people who don't.

And of course, junk traffic breeds more junk traffic. Even if the first generation of a shady subreddit might make this up with quality in other parts of your site, it will invariably attract generation 2 and later which will create a mini-eternal September.

I'd argue it's orthogonal.

>And of course, junk traffic breeds more junk traffic. Even if the first generation of a shady subreddit might make this up with quality in other parts of your site, it will invariably attract generation 2 and later which will create a mini-eternal September.

You can argue both ways, the quality increase will attract more quality users.

While those users are creating and posting dog porn they are of low value to me. They're creating noise not signal; consuming resources; and creating negative brand associations. By asking them to take their dog porn elsewhere I risk losing them altogether (which currently isn't much loss) or they start posting other content.

>They're creating noise not signal

Signal to people who care.

"They shouldn't be posting X because I don't like X" sounds extremely entitled to me.

"They are damaging the brand value of the site" which has nothing to do with you. When I criticise Apple (and you use Apple products), there is no need to take it personally.

A company is free to care about users who want dog porn. That company should not be surprised when other users, or advertisers, steer clear of that company or its brand.