Lawsuit: Reddit Allowed Man to Repeatedly Post Underage Revenge Porn

Reddit, the self-proclaimed front page of the internet, is being sued by a woman for allegedly allowing an ex-boyfriend to repeatedly post revenge porn of her filmed when she was just 16 years old.

The Verge reports that Reddit is being sued by a woman for allegedly allowing an ex-boyfriend to repeatedly post pornographic images of has a 16-year-old. The lawsuit applies measures instituted in 2018 under FOSTA-SESTA to Reddit which has previously drawn fire for child sexualization problems.

The woman, identified under the pseudonym Jane Doe, argues that “Reddit knowingly benefits from lax enforcement of its content policies, including for child pornography.” The woman alleges that in 2019, an abusive ex-boyfriend posted sexual photos and videos that he took without her knowledge or consent, a form of revenge porn.

The woman alleges that when she alerted Reddit moderators, they could wait “several days,” before removing the content. Reddit administrators also allegedly allowed the woman’s ex-boyfriend to keep posting and creating new accounts on the platform.

The complaint reads:

Because Reddit refused to help, it fell to Jane Doe to monitor no less than 36 subreddits — that she knows of — which Reddit allowed her ex-boyfriend to repeatedly use to repeatedly post child pornography.

Reddit’s refusal to act has meant that for the past several years Jane Doe has been forced to log on to Reddit and spend hours looking through some of its darkest and most disturbing subreddits so that she can locate the posts of her underage self and then fight with Reddit to have them removed.

The woman is seeking a class-action lawsuit representing anyone who had similar photos or videos shared on Reddit while they were under the age of 18. She is further accusing Reddit of distributing child pornography, failing to report child sexual abuse material, and violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

The complaint cites FOTSA-SESTA, an amendment to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, as a key point in the lawsuit. Section 230 provides websites such as Reddit a broad legal shield for “interactive computer services,” limiting their liability for user-posted content. But, the 2018 FOSTA-SESTA bill removed protections for sex trafficking-related material.