This image (without the logo) was found on Reddit Illustration by Business Insider Reddit is an amazing creation.

The news aggregator is a great startup success story. It's also a great community site that often bands together in support of worthy causes. It's also a live interview site: Politicians go on Reddit to answer questions from the community.

And it has vaulted past Digg and other social aggregators to become a huge site with more than a billion pageviews a month.

But Reddit also has a seedy side that most people aren't aware of.

Reddit lets anyone create their own Reddit-like site, and the company doesn't censor these sites except for illegal content.

These sub-reddits are known by "r/name" because their URLs are reddit.com/r/name. And the Internet being the Internet, the light moderation leads to some stuff that plenty of people would consider awful.

Examples include:

r/porn: Self-explanatory, and full of links to explicit porn. When we visited, the frontpage included a link to a hardcore pornographic image of Traci Lords, the notorious underage pornstar of the 80s, which is technically illegal.





Self-explanatory, and full of links to explicit porn. When we visited, the frontpage included a link to a hardcore pornographic image of Traci Lords, the notorious underage pornstar of the 80s, which is technically illegal. r/jailbait: in internet slang, jailbait refers to pictures of underage girls that are legal but still sexually suggestive in some ways (think pictures on the beach, etc).





in internet slang, jailbait refers to pictures of underage girls that are legal but still sexually suggestive in some ways (think pictures on the beach, etc). r/n---ers: this is perhaps the most offensive of the lot. It's mostly full of links to news stories and other items with commentary that can only be described as racist. For example, a link to a story about scientific genetic research is described as: "'Equal powers of reason' shared across racial groups is a delusion. Translation: Blacks be stupid."

Reddit is owned by Condé Nast, which is better known for high-end magazines. Reddit is Condé Nast's most highly trafficked digital property.

How aware is Reddit's hands-off parent of the site's darker side?

Well, Condé Nast is reportedly considering spinning out Reddit -- is this a reason why?

According to Alexa, around 9% of search traffic to Reddit comes from porn-related queries. Alexa statistics are probably not accurate because they rely on a toolbar, but they're a directional indicator that a significant part of Reddit's traffic is porn-related.

A Google Trends analysis suggests that porn, while a small part of Reddit's traffic, is also growing faster than the rest of the site. This means that if Reddit banned porn, their growth would be less impressive.

This information also suggests that Reddit may be harder to monetize than you would think. You can't sell ads against this stuff.

Some of the Reddit boards are explicitly labeled "trolling boards"; as on 4chan, there is an ironic component to the offensive stuff. "We're not aggregating links to Nazi memorabilia because we're Nazis, but because we enjoy shocking people!" Whatever. Pepsi isn't going to buy an ad against Nazi memorabilia, and 99% of regular people aren't going to notice the difference.

Reddit usually defends the presence of the boards on freedom of speech ground: Even though they would have the right to ban objectionable content, they have decided not to. This is admirable in a way. But it's a big departure for Condé Nast. And it's a big issue for Reddit's business and reputation, especially as the site becomes more important and more visible.

Below, we've provided screenshots of some of the seedier Reddits. We've obscured some (heinous) photographs, but left the language intact.

Condé Nast did not respond to a request for comment.