Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
- Reddit CEO Steve Huffman on Sunday was asked whether the company plans to change its policy allowing porn.
- Reddit doesn’t plan to ban pornography, he said.
- Huffman said Reddit provides a valuable forum to talk about sex, which he said as a topic is often “not well-served.”
During an interview broadcast on Sunday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman explained why the company allows pornography on its platform.
When asked during an Axios interview whether hosting pornographic content on Reddit would ever change, Huffman replied: “Sex is universal, and like many topics on Reddit sex is one of those topics that’s often not well-served online or offline.”
He said pornography can be exploitative, and “that’s not the content that we want on Reddit.”
“But I think there’s another aspect that’s empowering, and these are people sharing stories of themselves, pictures of themselves, and we are perfectly supportive of that.
“We want people to be safe, we have rules on Reddit – no involuntary sexualization. And if anybody makes those sorts of reports to us we take those very seriously,” Huffman said, adding that the site also has rules banning the sexualization of minors.
Reddit’s policy on “involuntary pornography” includes content “depicting any person in a state of nudity or engaged in any act of sexual conduct apparently created or posted without their permission, including depictions that have been faked.”
Reddit also requires users to tag any content containing nudity or pornography with a NSFW (Not Safe For Work) tag.
“There are difficult decisions to make in this sphere, but we think they’re worth making. As opposed to saying ‘no sex at all,’ for example,” he said.
Here are Huffman’s comments on pornography on Reddit:
Other big social media companies, including Facebook and Instagram, ban pornographic content – although a range of users have complained in the past that they do not enforce their rules consistently.
Adult industry professionals accused Instagram of unfairly deleting their accounts in November 2019, and the company revised its nudity policy in October 2020 after a Black model campaigned against double-standards.
