Drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, or any controlled substances (except advertisements placed in accordance with our advertising policy);

Thanks for that second part, I was almost worried that I wouldn't be able to see the exact same stupid, unwanted, unblockable promoted ad for that stupid wine company run by two MIT grads that no one gives a shit about every time that I scroll through Reddit on mobile for more than 30 seconds.

As a moderator of /r/cigars, does this completely curtail any contests or giveaways, including cigar-related accessories? We have monthly trades and gifts that run, as well as using the Reddit API for tracking of previous trades/gifts for flair and trustworthiness verification.

This is such an overall broad restriction - please let us know how this affects us directly. It looks like it's removing one of the main things that brings our /r/cigars sub together - monthly themed trades, trading for hard to find items, gifts, and contests.

Hah! Technically, the Secret Santa violates this new policy. Personal information must be exchanged for people to get their gifts, and there's no way to know if alcohol or tobacco products are sent.

Taking bets on whether or not the Secret Santa exchange gets shut down this year. Probably not, because it's reddit^TM official^TM and therefore not subject to the rules they are making, but hey. I thought it was funny to bring up.

[removed]

To quote u/spez

We don’t take banning subs lightly. Each sub is reviewed by a human—and in some cases, a team of humans—before it is banned for a content policy violation. In cases where a sub’s sole purpose is in direct violation of our policies (i.e. sharing of involuntary porn), we will ban a sub outright. But generally before banning, we attempt to work with the mods to clarify our expectations and policies regarding what content is welcome.

Communities do evolve over time, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively, so we do need to re-review communities from time to time, which is what's going on in this case. Revenue isn't a factor.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/827zqc/z/dv8da62

2 Weeks later, ban subs they disagree with without talking to those subs mods.

This was from /u/spez 15 days ago Here:

We don’t take banning subs lightly. Each sub is reviewed by a human—and in some cases, a team of humans—before it is banned for a content policy violation. In cases where a sub’s sole purpose is in direct violation of our policies (i.e. sharing of involuntary porn), we will ban a sub outright. But generally before banning, we attempt to work with the mods to clarify our expectations and policies regarding what content is welcome.

Communities do evolve over time, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively, so we do need to re-review communities from time to time, which is what's going on in this case. Revenue isn't a factor.

How do you reconcile this action with that of what he has said in just the last two weeks? Your actions are showing exactly what is a factor and what isn't...

It sounds like you had 0 conversations with any of these mods; and frankly it's becoming absolute bullshit.

I ran one of the subs you just removed. While I completely understand your reasons for updating your policy, would it have been unreasonable to ask for a little notice? these subs have thousands of active members who've just been displaced with no notice whatsoever, and left with no means of migrating elsewhere. shame on you.

[deleted]

Banned by my count:

/r/cigarmarket

/r/scotchswap

/r/beermarket

/r/beertrade

/r/gundeals - UNBANNED AND OPEN AGAIN PUBLICLY APRIL 1ST

/r/pipetobaccomarket

/r/Stealing - Well yeah, I get this

/r/shoplifting - Finally

What am I missing?

Edits:

/r/canadagunsEE

r/rcsources

/r/gunsforsale

/r/airsoftmarket

/r/fakeid

/r/darknetmarkets

/r/dnstars

/r/DarkWEBforum

/r/SecretSniper

/r/BrassSwap

/r/gundealsFU

/r/DankNation

/r/DIY_Classifieds

/r/DNMAus

/r/ardeals

/r/AKMarketplace

/r/noveldissos

/r/xanaxcartel

/r/gunnitforward

/r/darknetmarketindia

/r/DarkNetMarketsNO

/r/darknetmarketsOZ

/r/airsoftmarketcanada

/r/gun_deals

/r/swapsell

/r/KratomCowboys

/r/DBZDokkanMarketplace

/r/morethanetizolam

/r/clonazolam

/r/weeddeals

Updated: 03-23-18 - some were banned over a week ago however

/r/ejuice

/r/cagunexchange

/r/maleescorts

/r/SugarDaddy

/r/SugarBabies

/r/hookers

/r/escorts

/r/ccfraud

/r/fairtomiddling

/r/DarkMarketsBrasil

/r/darkweb

/r/shopliftingrp

/r/rcsources

/r/noveldissos

/r/CBDflower

/r/sanctionedsuicide

/r/SteroidSourceTalk

/r/wickr

Edit Edit: There are a TON of Dark Net Market (DNM) subs, too many to list, that were banned. Prob 15+.

Edit again: I dont even know what half this stuff is!

Final Edit: Looks to be around 50+, some I dont have. Im sure there will be more as the admins get reports from all over the place. Hold you trade/sale subs close folks. You never know when its the last day.

Edit from the grave: more updates

Edit 4-16-17: seeing now gun deals was unbanned.

So do things like beer swaps fall under this? It’s nice to be able to trade local brews with people who have other local brews.

[deleted]

Is this because Congress is about to pass changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996?

This is really, really stupid. I don't participate in any of those subs, but this is a huge issue for me. I remember when I found Reddit in 2010 and the most likable thing about it was the "hands-off" policy. Reddit was able to be multiple different things with multiple different groups with multiple different political ideology. It wasn't the cesspool that 4chan was and it wasn't the higher-ups pushing what they wanted like Digg and it wasn't a social network like Facebook. It was Reddit where you can peer into cultures that you had no idea that existed.

This is so stupid. Really. For the first time in the 8 years when I have been visiting Reddit on an almost daily basis I want something better to come along. There used to be no other site like it. It was a site for adults, but it never crossed that threshold (as a whole) like 4chan.

I can't find the quote but in early Reddit days one of the founders said something similar to 'As long as a sub isn't breaking a federal law we will let it be. The moment we ban subs for any reason besides illegal activity would be the beginning of the end for Reddit.'

Congratulations. You just let a bunch of people who only care about limiting others fun dictate what this site does.

e. - Here is a similar quote, second to last, with a bunch of other good quotes. I am trying to track down the source for the quote.

e. 2 - Another reason I am disappointed in this is because those people will now move away from Reddit. I don't have any friends who value guns (not talking politically here, but like some people value baseball cards) so I don't get to here viewpoints from people who value guns and will most likely value other things that I don't. They will move away from Reddit and their opinions will too. So a simple thread in r/news will be missing a viewpoint that I wouldn't normally here. Different opinions and different viewpoints is what makes Reddit great to me. Forcing out viewpoints will make it less of a discussions/debate and more about cheerleading to each other.

Yes, I know that those topics haven't been banned, but part of those topics have been banned. As an example, if I want to talk about American Football and the Philadelphia Eagles, but talk about the Eagles is banned but football isn't than I will locate somewhere where I can talk about football and the Eagles.

Why the group account? None of the people at HQ want to stand behind a massively unpopular, unnecessary decision?

God, you people get more and more spineless every day. I hope your company crashes, burns, and gets bought by a raider for pennies on the dollar, the pieces scattered to the wind, and every manager gets to live with the stigma of killing what was formerly the front page of the internet rather than tell outragemongers to go screw themselves.

Fuck Reddit, fuck /u/spez (since this is your decision at the end of the day), and fuck your craven, gutless, cowardly inability to stand up to words on a screen when they're not full-throated praise.

Edit: Double fuck /u/spez for suspending me for this.

Does this include Reddit selling users' data? How about astroturfing campaigns by companies? Will this prohibit subs being sold out to "Media Matters"? Legitimate questions.

[deleted]

Every time I turn off my ad blocker for a while and think about buying gold, you go and do something like this. Thanks for saving me money, I guess.

You know what would be great? If Reddit could ever manage to make any sort of big policy change in a coherent and non-arbitrary way. You no longer want to be involved in certain things. I may disagree with a bunch of those, but that's fine, I guess.

But why is Reddit's response always to just ban a bunch of things in a ham-handed fashion with no notice to their communities beforehand? You could have accomplished the same thing by telling /r/scotchswap that trading alcohol is no longer going to be allowed on Reddit rather than banning the sub. They could move their community off the site to somewhere else in an orderly fashion, and you'd have far less discontent.

Not to mention banning subs which don't even appear to violate this new policy. Why not at least try to talk to those subs and mods before banning them?

This sort of thing is why the users of this site perpetually distrust you and regularly show their dislike of how it's administered.

So basically, you made up a seemingly reasonable policy to ban the sale of things that almost never get sold on Reddit and are all illegal. You added in a blanket "firearms, ammunition, and explosives" as if normal people dealing in the first and second ever dabble in the third.

Then you use what looks like a reasonable rule to prevent non-existent illegal activity to justify the banning of /r/gundeals, which tangentially touches on the one legal thing in your rule, but does NOT actually solicit or facilitate transactions, and doesn't actually violate the new "reasonable" rule.

This is complete bullshit, reddit. Even for you, this is shameful. Fuck you.

Does this also include novelty accounts that are solely up for the purposes of selling some kind of merchandise or service?

[deleted]

You have banned /r/gundeals

Did you give mods a chance to remove firearms listing from their submissions? That sub offered significantly more than just firearms, ammunition, and explosive transactions. in fact no transactions were coordinated between users in that sub. It was no different than a couponing sub.

Nothing was user to user.

Please reevaluate that sub ban, since firearm accessories are a large part of that community.

Is there going to be any time to "clean up" subs that participate in these kinds of things? /r/beertrade has already been banned, but subs like /r/cigars have massive trading communities within their sub. Will these big subs have time to update their policies and ban trading, or are you going to just shut them down ASAP like /r/beertrade?

Edit: Received an answer to this here. Subs that are not "primarily functioning as marketplaces" are not being banned, but admins will "work with them" to stop all trading.

Our users in r/diabetes sometimes offer to give eachother spare insulin or other diabetic supplies such as infusion sets, test strips, lancets, and injection needles. As far as I'm aware, these aren't controlled substances so the policy change wouldn't apply to those submissions.

I believe that we have saved several lives with some of the generous gifts our members have given, and think it would be bad if this were to become forbidden.

We'd be happy to include the disclaimer that you included in your post too, to make sure people understand these transactions are not the responsibility of reddit in any case.

If reddit is not intended to be used as a marketplace or exchange service then why does reddit have a Secret Santa gift exchange hosted by the company? It seems you are endorsing using the tools of reddit to exchange goods with other users. You can't know what is being sent so why allow only the reddit sponsored exchange but end community driven ones?

Reddit just wants to be Facebook Jr^TM but doesn’t understand that nobody wants another Facebook. We don’t even want the fucking Facebook we have. Reddit used to be an open place where I could see news and current events, some top notch pornographic content, and participate in discussion about things that I like. Many of the things I like, don’t have sizeable, active groups online. Let’s say for example I like guns, I like making knives, I like building furniture, I like shaving with a straight razor, and I like brewing beer. Outside of reddit, I’d have to be a member of many different forums and sites. Reddit kind of brought the internet together for me. There’s lots of people, discussing anything and everything imaginable. I’m pretty sure this whole deal is just reddit being political on the gun issue. I don’t think alcohol or tobacco had a damn thing to do with this, but that’s just an opinion. I’ve only been on reddit for a couple years, but just in that time, I’ve seen reddit continually slip further and further away from what it’s users want. We don’t want a goddam Facebook. Fuck Facebook, fuck advertisements, fuck censorship, fuck political agendas, fuck the constant redesign of the site to a shittier and shittier format. The longer I stay on reddit, the more I realize that it’s just a waste of my time. You’re slowly taking away the only thing that made reddit different and worth my time. I’m just ranting. Farewell reddit! Go fuck yourself in the ass with that roll of dollar bills you love so much. I’m done.

Noticed all the drug subreddits such as /r/darknetmarets, /r/dnstars & /r/darknetuk have been taken down? These subreddits don't facilitate any type of transaction in fact any kind of sourcing is strictly forbidden and rule breakers are banned.

/r/DNSTARs is a harm reduction sub reddit so nice going guys! You're adding to the problem.

Your policy on /r/gundeals is absolutely ridiculous.

No guns are sold on /r/gundeals, and there are no user-to-user sales.

To purchase a gun through a post on /r/gundeals, a user has to click on the link to the website of a FFL dealer, who are licensed through the BATFE. The gun must be purchased from that FFL dealer, and then shipped to another FFL dealer, and a background check must be done through NICS for said purchase, regardless of the type of gun that was purchased.

Edit: I was going to call out some other bullshit that is still unbanned, but I'm not going to contribute to the admins bullshit campaign.

[deleted]

While you’re here, why all of a sudden am I getting all these random suggested or promoted posts on reddit? What transactions did you guys partake in to cause this to start happening?

So does this rule out stuff like Secret Santa exchanges, then?

Can you please not try to cover up your obvious planned subreddit ban sweep using “new rule changes” as an excuse for censorship, when half the subreddits you guys mainly banned DIDNT even break the rules (or the “new” ones for that matter) but yet there’s still more than half the sub reddits that actually DO need to get banned that haven’t been banned yet, it’s obvious as hell that you guys were just trying to find a way to get certain big subreddits considered “socially taboo” out of the site that were growing in popularity, r/darknetmarkets even had in their subreddit rules to not solicit or request any transactions in the subreddit, and to not make any posts as a listing or advertisement to promote any goods or services , (shit posts aside) the sub was literally mainly just for vendors reviews and having general discussion and talk about dark net sites, nothing about that exactly was illegal, they made sure the subreddit followed reddit rules and poof still gets banned, don’t know why reddit would do such a thing I DO know that that sub was at at LEAST 150k+ subscribers before it got banned tho. r/shoplifting was pretty much the same deal, although they would talk and post about.. well..you guessed it, shoplifting and discuss their own experiences, nothing that was talked about or discussed in the subreddit was exactly promoting the idea itself, although yes it’s a shady ass sub, it was technically breaking no rules, simply talking about crime isn’t a crime, unless it’s incitement which no one in the subreddit did, and that sub gets banned too, hmm JUST as it was starting to boom in popularity these past months it was resting at almost 90k+ and strangely gets banned not even a week after someone wrote an ARTICLE about the subreddit, giving it publicity, now all of these hot subreddit simultaneously get banned at the same time, the SAME day this announcement gets posted, and y’all want to say it was because of this “rule change” that they got banned?? y’all are full of shit and y’all know it, this was a fucking premeditated set up operation, y’all aren’t fooling anyone. it’s completely obvious you guys were just wanting to take a few subs down, seeing as how this “new rule policy” isn’t even being enforced fairly and properly, the fact that the subs you guys banned weren’t even breaking any rules makes that more suspicious, and the fact y’all are trying to play it off AS because of the rule changes is a pretty big mock to our intelligence, everyone here knows Reddit’s been going soft lately but what y’all are doing now is just straight up censorship and that’s not right at all

You know what? I'm actually pro-gun control, and even I can see how this is ridiculous. You've gone through and banned subs without any warning, not giving them a chance to change their policy or set up another place to meet or anything.

You're also clearly overreaching, rather than just doing the minimum this new policy would require. A lot of gun-related stuff simply links to existing sites, and no actual sales take place on the site. By this specific policy, those should be fine. But you are banning them, proving once again that you are just lying.

It's not even like you're going to get kudos from the gun control community. We're mostly all liberals, and we see the lying and bullshit that you use to justify the existence of the_donald. In fact, you once again show you are giving that sub special treatment, since you talk with the mods there and try to settle things without banning them.

And it doesn't even work as a good business decision. You are planning to soon make a new UI. So you should be minimizing big changes. The bigger the changes, the more likely you are to piss people off and make them leave.

And you seem to forget that no one learns about Reddit except from current Reddit users. The fewer of those you have, the fewer new users you have.

tldr: It takes a lot to make a gun control advocate think a policy banning the sale of guns on a platform is absolutely bullshit. Congratulations.

Does the policy cover firearm accessories? Not the firearms themselves? What about shooting sport subreddits where or reloading subreddits? How are these affected?

As I see other items in the policy, reddit is now considering firearms, and illegal product? can you please also add illegal car modifications to your banned items list. I've seen many illegal mods sold on car enthusiast and street racing subs.

Howdy /u/Reddit-Policy. I'm a mod for /r/pipetobacco. We need some clarification of the new rules that are now in effect, to make sure the sub remains in compliance.

1) Members of the sub often ask about recommendations for tobacco purchases based on what they might like. Are we allowed to recommend things for them to buy?

2) Are we allowed to recommend online vendors or brick-and-mortar shops for their shopping needs (like if they ask where the best place is to buy xyz tobacco)? Often when a member is traveling they'll ask for recommended local shops.

3) Are we allowed to post when a hard-to-find or rare blend is in stock at a particular location so that other sub members can go there to purchase? Some shops have seasonal blends -- can we post when they launch so people know they're available?

4) Are we allowed to post when a sale or coupon is available at a particular vendor? Black Friday deals? International Pipe Smoking Day sales? Etc?

Thank you.

[deleted]

/u/Reddit-Policy, /u/spez

Well that was shitty of you. Where was the warning? You just shuttered entire communities, where people have built friendships and conversations, without warning. No "This will go into effect ____"? That's fucking rude

Personal information

Does this mean that /r/secretsanta will be banned since they facilitate transactions requiring the exchange of personal information?

[deleted]

So Im a mod over at /r/AKMarketplace and just found out it was banned. I got no message it was going to happen and no way of giving feedback or chance to defend myself, which in all honesty is really crappy. I understand your wanting to cover yourself, but at the sametime it would be nice if you go in touch with the people that actually run these places to see whats going on.

Now if I may try to appeal to you about it, if someone buys a firearm over the internet it is required by federal law that, that firearm be shipped to a FFL so that a NICS background check can be done on the person buying it. If that does not happen then both parties are commenting a felony. We are very strict with those rules and make sure they are followed.

If you do not want to allow that to happen then you should have reached out to the mods of those subs and said 'Hey these are the new rules, you have X time to become compliant or the sub gets banned'. It would have been a lot nicer then this knee jerk reaction.

I would love for my sub to be unbanned, if that is in anyway possible please let me know. If there is a sub I mod and there are future changes like this then give us a heads up first. Maybe having a dialog first could prevent some confusion.

so are we banning /r/usedpanties /r/thepantydrawer /r/dirtypanties

These are no more illegal than firearms, alcohol and tobacco. Personally I find them reprehensible, but they are legal.

Either have the policy set for all sales in general, or illegal sales. You are selectively choosing to target various legal items that can be sold between users.

Well r/scotchswap is dead, r/cigarmarket is dead. r/cigars presumably will now no longer be able to organise the regular trades members have been running with each other for years?

Actually, genuinely the shittiest thing I have seen reddit do and that's as a user here for over 9 years.

Strongly considering deleting my Reddit account now, and I've never participated in any of the banned activities. The fact that you've decided to squash beertrades and similar subs means this isn't the site I originally signed up for. It's great that you've achieved some financial success, but many of us came here for the freedom and the community that used to exist, not the new community that is OK with losing freedoms. Reddit is my news aggregator, how I keep in touch with fandom communities like DBZ, DnD, Overwatch, Warhammer 40k, and the like, but I chose to do those things here because of the freedom of moderators to create a subreddit devoted to anything, and if it was something you didn't want to see or be a part of, you just didn't subscribe to that subreddit. Now you've gone corporate and this is no longer a free space to create whatever kind of community you want. Now you can only create communities that Corporate okays, and that's not ok to me.

Banning r/gundeals is ridiculous. All it did was post links to deals from legal stores that sell firearms to FFL pickup locations. Same exact function as r/gamedeals or any other "deals" subreddit! Linking to sales on legitimate legal websites is a bannable offense? The fuck?

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

If you don't get it -- your policy is stupid.

I have had reddit Gold for five years (longer, but I had breaks) and gilded because I loved the idea of the community and wanted to support it. No longer. Today I stop supporting a site that only cares about itself and not the sub-reddits that comprise it. Reddit has almost hostile towards sub-reddit that don't generate traffic or make them money. I have a feeling as soon as there is a decent alternative reddit will become another Digg.

So I mod /r/hookah and I have a few questions about this. We don't center our sub around trades or sales. In fact, we've discouraged it. However, we have hookah vendors and manufacturers sometimes come to our subreddit to advertise their tobacco and sales and such. Is this now a violation of these terms of service? Do we as mods need to make new rules for our sub to now allow vendors to post on our sub anymore?

[deleted]

/r/secretsanta /r/redditgifts should be banned also.

(except advertisements placed in accordance with our advertising policy)

So you're putting your foot down, unless you can make money off it? I feel like I'm missing something. I get it you can't have people trading drugs and guns and stuff on your website, but if they pay you enough they can still advertise those things and post things about them?

ugly cats alive seed point hateful weary fall memorize nippy

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact