Graphic : Reddit

Reddit’s bread and butter may be links and comments, but the site has a long history as a facilitator of gift swaps, and a backwoods marketplace. New site rules enacted today make much of that behavior prohibited.




A post in Reddit’s site announcements community (aptly titled r/announcements) states:

As of today, users may not use Reddit to solicit or facilitate any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services, including: Firearms, ammunition, or explosives;



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



Paid services involving physical sexual contact;



Stolen goods;



Personal information;



Falsified official documents or currency



It’s unclear how much of this illicit activity was actually going on within Reddit, though it seems enough for it to be codified as a new content policy. Recently, new site rules have been rolled out in advance of (or in conjunction with) small-scale community bans, which so far have affected subreddits organized around such charming subjects as bestiality, ethno-nationalism, and drug-buying.


In the comments of the announcement, it was further clarified that relatively benign activities like beer trades and e-cigarette giveaways are also likely to fall under the purview of this rule, which encompasses not just purchases but transactions of any sort. While “paid services involving physical sexual contact” are now against policy (and likely state or federal law), the use of Reddit to facilitate the purchase of sexually explicit photos and videos remains unscathed, to the relief of the site’s many horndogs, one imagines.

Affected communities so far include the more above-board r/beertrade, r/cigarmarket and r/scotchswap, as well as r/gunsforsale, r/airsoftmarket, r/shoplifting, r/stealing, and r/DarkNetMarkets, a community that informed its tens of thousands of users of (often illegal) items for sale on dark web marketplaces.

This rule change arrives as Reddit—the fourth most-visited site in the US—prepares to overhaul its aging design and change a number of its features.

Reddit employees who interact with the community for clarifications and rule announcements do so pseudonymously, but typically from their personal site accounts—and while some aliases, like CEO Steve Huffman’s u/spez monicker, are widely known by the community, many are not. Interestingly, this new rule change comes via a day-old account simply named u/Reddit-Policy.