Reddit finally moved into the modern age on Sunday night, banning certain forums where sexualized content of minors ran rampant. What took them so long?

Reddit finally moved into the modern age on Sunday night, banning certain forums where sexualized content of minors ran rampant.

It's about time.

Reddit notified its user base in a post that claimed the site had always dealt with images that "might be child pornography along strict legal lines."

"We have changed our policy because interpreting the vague and debated legal guidelines on a case by case basis has become a massive distraction and risks reddit being pulled in to [a] legal quagmire," the Redditors wrote.

Oh dear. A legal quagmire?

There have always been bastions of free speech on the Internet, from those that focus more on policy than content, such as the EFF, the ACLU, and blogs like BoingBoing. Reddit has always straddled the line, launching the popular "Ask Me Anything" interviews with celebrities and other notables, where anything (usually) goes. Reddit has also served as an informal replacement for Digg, highlighting quality content from other sites amid lively and humorous commentary from its members. The majority of Reddit's members have contributed positively to the Internet community.

But Reddit also hides some dark places, "protected" by this flimsy barrier: "Are you over eighteen and willing to see adult content?" If you are, Reddit grants you access to a wide variety of topics on what it calls "reddits," or subforums: men and women supposedly having sex with octopi, pictures of dead children, and "images of prepubescent boys bound and gagged with ducktape," according to one member.

The funny thing is, out of those three links, only one was removed: the last one. You get the idea.

Reddit supposedly last August, when the site's editors apparently removed the "jailbait" reddit entirely. But "jailbait" returned last September, after site moderators apparently worked out their differences.

That changed Sunday night.

"As of today, we have banned all subreddits that focus on sexualization of children," Reddit wrote. "Our goal is to be fair and consistent, so if you find a subreddit we may have missed, please message the admins. If you find specific content that meets this definition please message the moderators of the subreddit, and the admins."

As my colleague Sebastian Anthony of ExtremeTech notes, Reddit has begun sliding down a slippery slope of what is permissible behavior: "It is now not a question of if Reddit will swing its ban hammer again; it's merely a matter of what it will ban."

Correct. And the "gray areas" that Sebastian examines are, as he says, what complicate the issue, including the wide variance in mores across national, state, gender, age, and cultural lines.

The term "society" itself doesn't necessarily reflect the size or diversity of its population; instead, it represents a common set of values, beliefs, and institutions. The United States represents a society, as did the Fiji cannibals of 150 years ago. Or those that consider a 14-year-old in a bikini fair game for lewd comments.

Some may find the humiliation and bondage of women abhorrent, others find it arousing. As a society, we've agreed to certain constraints on behavior, including the stipulation that the participants must consent. We've also agreed that, in the United States, minors under the age of 18 can't legally give that consent.

Personally, I find much of the "subreddit" content disagreeable, repulsive, or frankly abhorrent. But I can acknowledge a world where a vegan finds my love of a thick, juicy steak both physically and morally disgusting. I'm happy living in a society, either online or in real life, where individuals are allowed to discuss the merits of various hallucinogenic drugs and even try them in the privacy of their homes - even if I choose not to participate. California has nude beaches; I've joined in. To each his own.

But we also agree, as a society, that certain behavior is out of bounds. That behavior is not sharply defined. It is not fixed. It evolves, over time, contracting and expanding. Reddit acknowledged that.

"We understand that this might make some of you worried about the slippery slope from banning one specific type of content to banning other types of content," Reddit wrote. "We're concerned about that too, and do not make this policy change lightly or without careful deliberation. We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal. However, child pornography is a toxic and unique case for Internet communities, and we're protecting reddit's ability to operate by removing this threat. We remain committed to protecting reddit as an open platform."

I don't believe that banning child pornography is a "unique" case for Internet communities; it's merely a topic that virtually all members of society believe should be expunged. And that now includes the broader society of Reddit at large, rather than the few members of the underground sub-Reddits. Yes, Reddit still houses pornography of the "18+" variety.

Going forward, I hope that Reddit can also make the case that an "acceptable" level of violence in American culture is way out of proportion to an "acceptable" level of nudity or sexualized content. Frankly, I don't believe that society needs any of the "Hostel" or "Saw" sequels, nor should be exposed to some of the lines Takashi Miike crosses. I can hope that disturbing images of the victims of violence Reddit hosts will eventually fall into what Reddit calls a "threat," too.

I do wish however, that Reddit had simply eliminated the "legal quagmire" clause. Yes, Reddit is owned by Advance Publications, which owns Conde Nast and its glossy windows into the high life  Vogue and The New Yorker, among others. But the argument should have been strictly a moral one, not driven by liability.

Here's the central truth: Reddit took an inevitable and necessary step forward  just too late, and for the wrong reasons.