Earlier this week the popular forum website Reddit made a move to ban uploading "deepfake" generated pornography, administrators of the website unrolled new site-wide rules on Wednesday banning involuntary pornography and updating its restrictions of images sexualizing minors.
The updated rules include explicitly illegal content like child sexual abuse imagery and content that is deemed as promoting pedophilia, child exploitation, or otherwise sexualizes minors. The rule includes fantasy content and directly states that anime images are included. The rules also state that nudity is not necessary and "in some cases include depictions of minors that are fully clothed and not engaged in overtly sexual acts."
A Reddit administrator and the site's community discussed the new rules in a public thread. Some accused the rule change as simply a PR move and that finding the correct link to report content is buried in a multi-step contact menu.
Users in the thread have also pointed out that despite rolling out these new rules, subreddits dedicated to lurid photos of underage girls playing sports and those containing graphic, violent images of dead children and animal abuse are still hosted on the site, some with over 17,000 subscribers.
Individuals have previously been prosecuted in the U.S. and abroad for owning or downloading anime and manga depicting minors in sexual situations. A Canadian man was arrested in Canada in 2005 after attempting to import 15 books containing sexually explicit manga featuring adults having sex with children. A New Zealand man was sentenced to three months in jail in 2013 for possessing and viewing Japanese anime that depicted fantasy creatures having sex. A man in Maine was initially arrested but not formally arraigned for "anime" depicting children in sexual situations in 2011.
What are your thoughts on the news? Do you think Reddit made a step in the right direction? Let us know what your thoughts on the subject are in the comments down below!