Reddit Banned 2,625 Subreddits For Excessive Copyright Infringement In 2021
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In 2021, Reddit's users created nearly 5.8 billion posts, comments, private messages and chats across the platform, with 297,161,752 later being removed by moderators (around 175.8k), removed by site admins (108.6K), and the authors themselves (12.6K). Content can be removed for a variety of reasons. 'Content manipulation' is the largest category and encompasses spam, community interference (so-call 'brigading'), vote manipulation, and similar issues. For the purpose of this report, however, we'll home in on the copyright issues faced by Reddit during the last year and how the site responded to them. In common with the vast majority of large companies based in the US, Reddit has to follow the requirements of the DMCA which means that when it receives a valid copyright notice, it must comply by taking the identified content down. On the other hand, when submitters send notices that are incomplete or invalid in some other way, Reddit does not. "In 2021, Reddit received 177,450 copyright notices reporting 920,672 pieces of content. This represents an increase of 104% from 2020. We removed 665,898 pieces of content in response to these takedown notices," the company reveals in the latest edition of its transparency report. Under the DMCA, Reddit is also required to take "appropriate action" against so-called "repeat infringers", which in the company's case can involve the termination of not only user accounts but also entire subreddit communities, especially ones where "excessive amounts" of infringing content keep getting posted. "In 2021, Reddit permanently suspended 2,813 users and banned 2,625 subreddits for excessive copyright infringement," the company writes. These figures represent a substantial increase over those published for 2020. In that year, Reddit banned just 303 users and terminated 514 subreddits. Although overall copyright complaints are up 104% on the previous year, the site's termination policy doesn't appear to have changed significantly. "With around 297 million pieces of content removed by Reddit in 2021, the 665,898 pieces removed on copyright grounds represent a small fraction of the overall problem," concludes the report. "However, with user accounts and entire communities on the line, consequences can be great when errant users repeatedly and intentionally overstep the line."
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