Reddit’s 2018 Transparency report includes copyright removals, restorations, and more!

Yesterday, the Reddit community released the Transparency Report for the year 2018. The report includes additional information on copyright removals, restorations, and retractions as well as removals for violations of Reddit’s Content Policy and subreddit rules.

In 2018, Reddit received more than half of governmental requests--around 310. Reddit carefully reviewed each request for compliance with legal standards and followed the procedure. Of the 752 requests submitted by governmental entities:

• 171 were requests to preserve user account information; and
• 581 were requests to produce user account information.

According to the report, “In 2018, Reddit received 171 preservation requests, a 116% increase over the 79 preservation requests received in 2017. Reddit complied with 91% of the preservation requests received.”

Source: Reddit report

In 2018, Reddit received 752 requests for the preservation or production of user account information from governmental entities. Reddit carefully reviewed each request for compliance with legal standards and followed the procedure described in Reddit’s Privacy Policy.

Reddit also sometimes receives a request from a governmental entity to produce information. On receiving such a request, Reddit reviews the request to ensure it is consistent with ECPA and that is otherwise legally valid.

In 2018, Reddit received a total of 581 requests to produce user account information from both United States and foreign governmental entities. This represents a 151% increase compared to the number received in 2017.

Source: Reddit report

Reddit received 319 non-emergency pieces of legal process from United States governmental entities seeking the production of user account information such as subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants. It also received 28 requests for the production of user account information from foreign governmental authorities (excluding emergency requests).

It also received a total of 234 Emergency Disclosure Requests, globally. Reddit disclosed user account information in response to 162 (69%) of these requests.

Along with governmental requests, Reddit also received 15 requests for private user information from non-governmental entities. This is an increase from the 5 non-governmental requests received in 2017.

Reddit also received content removal requests from:

• governmental entities and other civil legal demands, for reasons such as alleged violations of local laws;
• copyright owners regarding alleged copyright infringement; and
• users or Reddit administrators regarding violations of Reddit’s Content Policy.

One of the request to remove content from a government entity in the US which had nothing to do with copyright. “The request was for the removal of an image and a large volume of comments made underneath it for potential breach of federal law," the report says. "As the governmental entity did not provide sufficient context regarding how the image violated the law, did not provide Reddit with valid legal process compelling removal, and the request to remove the entire post as well as the comment thread appeared to be overbroad, Reddit did not comply with the request."

According to the report, prior to 2018, each piece of content that was requested to be removed was counted as a distinct DMCA notice. This resulted in the DMCA notice numbers reported in previous Transparency Reports (i.e. in 2016 = 3,294 “notifications”, and in 2017 = 7,825 “notifications”).

The report states, “The number of notices Reddit received in 2018 more than tripled from the 3,130 DMCA notices (and the 7,825 removal requests) received in 2017, and increased by over 8 times from the 1,155 notices (and 3,294 removal requests) received in 2016.”

Source: Reddit report

When asked about the Reddit’s 2018 transparency report, Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman said, “This year, we expanded the report to included details on two additional types of content removals: those taken by us at Reddit, Inc., and those taken by subreddit moderators (including Automod actions). We remove content that is in violation of our site-wide policies, but subreddits often have additional rules specific to the purpose, tone, and norms of their community. You can now see the breakdown of these two types of takedowns for a more holistic view of company and community actions.”

To know more about the report in detail, read Reddit’s Transparency report 2018.

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