For nearly a decade, Reddit, the huge online message board, has been known for its freewheeling stance on letting its users govern themselves. That has resulted in an outpouring of user-generated content — for better or, sometimes, for worse — that attracts nearly 160 million regular users to the site.
Now, Reddit is starting to change its views, if only ever so slightly. Reddit announced a change to its privacy policy on Tuesday that prohibits posting nude photos or videos of people engaged in sex acts without their prior consent to have it posted.
The policy shift will likely upset members of a number of Reddit communities, some of which use the site to trade illicit photos taken of others without their permission. A few years ago, Michael Brutsch created a large sub-community called “Jailbait” dedicated entirely to posting and trading photos of underage girls.
Reddit has undergone a series of changes over the last year, including the departure of its chief executive and a fresh $50 million round of venture capital. The company has re-dedicated itself to proving it can build a long-lasting, sustainable business on top of the huge amount of traffic it regularly attracts, which has caused some degree of self-scrutiny.
“I really want to believe that as we enter the next 10 years of Reddit life, essentially the most trafficked media site on the Internet, the opportunity here to set a standard for respecting the privacy of our users,” Alexis Ohanian, Reddit’s co-founder and executive chairman, said in an interview.
