Recently Reddit decided to ban the biggest darknet subreddit, /r/darknetmarkets, used by crime communities to discuss producta and services in the most popular darknet markets.

Darknet markets have a crucial role in the cybercrime underground, they are excellent places of aggregation for the demand and the offer of illegal products and services.

Communities around principal Darknet markets use to exchange information about products and services also on the clear web, for example using the Reddit social media platform.

Now Reddit decided to ban the biggest darknet subreddit, /r/darknetmarkets, used for darknet-related conversation.

Officially, Reddit maintainers banned the subreddit because the community violated Reddit’s illegal transaction rules.

“this subreddit was banned due to a violation of Reddit’s policy against transactions involving prohibited goods or services.” states Reddit,

Reddit forbids direct deals related to illegal products and services, in the specific case, subreddit violated rules about the sourcing of illegal drugs.

The moderators initially deleted posts containing drug sourcing. but the subreddit was considered a source of darknet drug market addresses.

This isn’t the first ban related to darknet markets, Reddit banned in 2015 the subreddit Evolution and the recent ban of the DNM UK and DNM OZ subreddits.

“In addition to the main subreddit, Reddit banned two subreddits for sourcing research chemicals (r/EU_RCSources and RCSources); a second UK darknet market subreddit (r/DarknetUK); and subreddits specific to individual darknet markets (r/RaptureMarket, r/dreammarket2, and r/dream_dnm).” states a blog post published on deepdotweb.com

“The era of discussing darknet markets on the clearnet has likely ended.”

Even if Reddit has banned the subreddit, operators of the black markets will simply migrate to other platforms to share their content.

If you are searching for more info on Darknet markets and cyber criminal communities in the dark web give a look at my new book, titled ‘Digging the Deep Web: Exploring the dark side of the web“.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Darknet markets, Dark Web)

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