For those of you who thought you’d never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than Reddit, the site is taking baby steps in a better direction: an update to their privacy policy bans the sharing of nude or sexually explicit images without the subject’s consent.

The provision comes under a brand new section of their privacy policy which covers “involuntary pornography” and states (emphasis mine),

Reddit is committed to your privacy. If you believe that someone has submitted, without your permission, to reddit a link to a photograph, video, or digital image of you in a state of nudity or engaged in any act of sexual conduct, please contact us (contact@reddit.com), and we will expedite its removal as quickly as possible. Reddit prohibits the posting of such content without consent.

Of course, it doesn’t take things as far as the AMA section of the site, which is supposed to have proof before an AMA is posted, but at least now there’s an official policy in place to prevent things like last year’s “The Fappening” stolen celebrity photo leak from taking so agonizingly long to be dealt with. The addition to the privacy policy is a move to help Reddit evolve with an eye towards its place in the future of the Internet, according to a New York Times interview with Reddit co-founder and executive chairman Alexis Ohanian:

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.

After last week’s news that the founder of the largest revenge porn site on the Internet is going to jail and now this, the future of the Internet is looking a little brighter. Or at least a little less like a cesspool.

(via engadget)

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