WARNING: Graphic content

ONE of Reddit’s most unsavoury communities has finally been banned by the site’s moderators as the company becomes increasingly worried about bad press.

The NoMorals subreddit has been the latest forum to be shut down by the social media giant — the fifth most frequented site among Australians — as it struggles to walk the line between freedom of expression and maintaining a “family friendly” environment for users and advertisers.

The NoMorals subreddit had hosted confronting and violent images and memes in which users tried to take macabre or harrowing subject matter and turn it into something funny.

“The point is to take things that aren’t supposed to be funny and make them funny,” the forum’s guidelines stated before it was pulled down.

“Just make sure it’s funny. Pointless gore belongs in /r/gore. Stupid s*** that has no punchline can go elsewhere. If the image isn’t funny then give it a funny title.”

A meme showing a picture of a young couple being hanged in a Middle Eastern country with the words “Hanging out with your boyfriend” was posted.

Another confronting post titled “Transexual Mouse” showed a live mouse being strung up while someone held scissors, threatening to cut off its genitals. The user who posted it reportedly had their account banned after other users reported the post.

Unlike similar sites like 4Chan and 9Gag, which host just about anything under the sun, Reddit polices its users content quite heavily.

However the NoMorals sub seemed to fly under the radar of the site’s administrators but as the company found itself in the hot seat following revelations about the extent of Russian propaganda hosted on the site leading up to the 2016 US presidential election, Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman felt compelled to post a message about the site’s integrity.

“In the past couple of weeks, Reddit has been mentioned as one of the platforms used to promote Russian propaganda,” he wrote before detailing the difficulty in combating various types of “Russian influence” that appeared on the site.

“I wish there was a solution as simple as banning all propaganda, but it’s not that easy. Between truth and fiction are a thousand shades of grey.”

One of the top responses to the post queried the CEO about why he was so caught up with Russian propaganda and seemingly OK with forums like /r/NoMorals.

“What about images of dead babies/corpses and harming animals on /r/nomorals?” the user asked.

“We are aware, and this community is under review,” Mr Huffman replied.

The next day it was taken down.

It comes shortly after Reddit banned its DeepFakes community where subscribers produced and shared fake celebrity porn videos created using sophisticated AI software — something that has begun to proliferate around the web.

The company has shown an increased tendency of late to shut down communities when controversy and public outcry kicks up.

A number of subreddits have been pulled down recently. The subreddit PicsOfDeadKids was banned four months ago meanwhile r/SexyAbortions was “quarantined” and then banned about a month ago.

The subreddit r/AnimalGore has also been quarantined due to “shocking content” meaning it’s only visible to logged-in users who explicitly consent to visit them. Quarantined subs also don’t earn any ad revenue.

In December, Reddit said it would be more proactive about banning content that “glorifies” violence and subsequently banned SexWithDogs, DylannRoofInnocent, KillTheJews and SelfHarmPics.

However at the time of writing other controversial subs such as /r/WatchPeopleDie remain up and running — some subscribers have previously said it exists to help people realise “just how fragile human life truly is”.

Mr Huffman went on the explain that the original creator of the sub “nuked it about two months ago” but the NoMorals sub quickly popped back up.

“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,” the Reddit CEO wrote to users.

“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.”