Reddit’s mission is to empower communities and make their knowledge accessible to all, which requires ongoing efforts to keep Reddit safe, healthy, and real. As part of this, we regularly assess our platform and share insights and findings about the health of our communities, our efforts to foster safe interactions, and how we enforce our policies.

Our biannual Transparency Report provides insights and metrics about content moderation efforts by Reddit mods and admins – including content proactively removed as a result of automated tooling – as well as community-level actions, impact on user accounts, and legal requests we received from governments, law enforcement agencies, and third parties to remove content or disclose user data from around the world.

Prior Reddit Transparency Reports are available in our Transparency Center. You can see our other updates on the Reddit blog and on r/RedditSafety.

TL;DR

Redditors shared close to 6 billion pieces of content on Reddit from January through June 2025. 

Mods and admins removed ~2.66% of the total content created (1.41% by mods and 1.25% by admins), virtually identical to the last reporting period. As usual, spam accounted for the majority of admin removals (57.5%), with the remainder being for various Reddit Rules violations (41.9%) and other reasons, such as content manipulation (0.6%). Excluding spam and other content manipulation, admin removals for Reddit Rules violations made up 27% of total content removals in the first half of 2025, compared to 23.9% from last reporting period. This represents a steady increase since July 2023, coinciding with our work to improve automated tooling and processing.

As for global legal requests from government and law enforcement agencies, there was a 27% increase in legal requests to remove content from Reddit and a 12% increase in non-emergency legal requests for Redditors’ account information. Importantly, we caught and rejected 10 fraudulent legal requests (three requests to remove content; seven requests for user account information) purporting to come from legitimate government and law enforcement agencies. We rejected and subsequently reported these bogus requests to the appropriate authorities.

Read on for more details about all of the latest data and insights.

Our Approach to Content Moderation

Content moderation on Reddit happens through a layered, community-driven approach. This approach is akin to a democracy, wherein everyone has the ability to vote and self-organize, follow a set of common rules, establish community-specific norms, and ultimately share some responsibility for how the platform works.

The Reddit Rules are a set of principle-based policies that govern both content and users across the entire Reddit platform. Freedoms of speech and association are at the core of Reddit, and these rules apply regardless of a user’s viewpoint or belief. Users create their own communities (known as “subreddits”) and establish additional rules that are independently enforced by volunteer moderators (known as “mods”) based on each community’s unique and often highly specific needs.

Reddit employees (known as “admins”) are responsible for enforcing the Reddit Rules across Reddit with the help of mods, who apply the Reddit Rules to their communities in addition to their own specific rules. All of this is done through a combination of automated tooling and human review to prevent, detect, and remove violating content.

We also receive government and law enforcement requests from around the world regarding removal of content for alleged violations of local law. We review each of these requests carefully and object when appropriate. In situations where we find no underlying Reddit Rules violations, Reddit may restrict access to the reported content in the requesting country if it violates local law. For more information, please refer to the “Legal Removals” section of this report.

Every day, tens of millions of people around the world share content on Reddit. In the first half of 2025, Redditors shared close to 6 billion pieces of content in tens of thousands of Reddit communities. 

From the beginning, we have deployed a layered, community-driven approach to content moderation that empowers mods to enforce their community-specific rules as well as the broader Reddit Rules. In addition to our proactive moderation efforts, Reddit regularly receives and processes reports and requests to remove content from the platform. 

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• ~ 2.66% of the total content created on Reddit was removed across all content types (1.41% by mods and 1.25% by admins).
  • These figures include removals performed through automation by AutoMod, a scaled community moderation tool, as well as bespoke moderation bots built by community mods and internal automated tooling used by Reddit admins. 

Chart 1: Content created on Reddit (January - June 2025)

Chart 2: Pieces of content removed from Reddit for any reason including spam (January - June 2025)

This section provides an overview of content removed from Reddit between January and June 2025, broken down by mod removals and admin removals. It also includes the volume of user reports and the corresponding percentage of removal actions taken against those reports.

Content Removed by Moderators

Mods play a critical role in helping to curate and safeguard their unique communities. Notably, mod removals can be based on any reason specific to the rules of a given community, and are not necessarily an indication that content violates Reddit's sitewide rules. Mods use a combination of automated tooling and human review to keep their communities as safe and healthy as possible.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Mod removals accounted for 41% of all content removals on Reddit.
• When excluding spam (and other content manipulation), the portion of removals performed by mods vs admins rises to 73%. The majority of these removals – 71.3% – were the result of proactive removals by Automod, a customizable automated moderation tool available to all communities.
  • As mentioned, mod removals are not necessarily indicative of content in violation of the Reddit Rules, as they also include removals for violations of their individual community rules.  Such content may not be harmful, but could be merely off-topic or improperly formatted.
• Overall, the total volume of mod removals for this period decreased by 1.2% compared to the last reporting period.
  

Chart 3: Content removed by moderators (January - June 2025)

Content Removed by Reddit Admins

Admins regularly remove content from Reddit to enforce the Reddit Rules and protect the integrity of the platform. We use a variety of signals and enforcement tools to identify and remove violating content, including automated detection, human review, and user reports.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• 158,025,279 pieces of content (posts, comments, PMs and chat messages) were removed by mods and Reddit admins. 
• Admins performed ~46.9% of these removals, and were exclusively responsible for removals of violating PMs and chat messages.
• The majority of admin removals were for spam (57.5%) and other content manipulation. 
  • However, we've observed an overall decline in spam attacks over this period, resulting in a decrease in the volume of spam removals.
• The “content manipulation” category also includes vote manipulation (attempts to interfere with Reddit’s upvote/downvote tallies) and other attempts to artificially promote content, which collectively made up 0.6% of admin removals. 
• The remaining share of admin removals were for other Reddit Rules violations.
• Excluding spam (and other content manipulation), admins performed 27% of removals, which only include violations of Reddit's sitewide rules.

For a more detailed breakdown of admin removal actions by rule violation, please refer to the “Content Types” section below.

Chart 4: Content removed by admins (not including spam and other content manipulation) vs. content removed by mods both manually and through automation (January - June 2025)

Chart 5: Content removed by admins (content manipulation & spam removals vs. other Reddit Rules removals) (January - June 2025)

User Reports

Users may report content on Reddit via our Reddit Help Center, reddit.com/report, or by using the “Report” button directly on a post, comment, or message. By submitting a report, users can anonymously alert community mods or Reddit administrators to something that potentially violates a particular community’s rules or the Reddit Rules.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• 6.6% of these reports were found to be actionable, resulting in removal.
  • There are many reasons why a user report may not be actionable, including that it is a duplicate report or that, upon review, the content was deemed non-violating.

Chart 6: User reports - Posts, comments, PMs, chats  (January - June 2025)

This section breaks down admin removals, from January to June 2025, by content type, source of the report or flag (i.e., whether it was manually reported by users or proactively flagged by Reddit’s automated systems), and, where possible, by violation of the Reddit Rules.

Posts & Comments

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Redditors created 2,163,255,403 posts and comments, which is a 6.4% increase compared to the second half of 2024.
• During the period, we have seen a significant increase in posts and comments that have been removed for violation of our policies against incitement of violence. Partly due to real world events, we have had to rapidly scale up new automated systems to detect and action such content, and we have been working on improving the accuracy and capabilities of these systems over the period.

The charts below include posts and comments removed by Reddit admins between January and June 2025, broken out by Reddit Rules violation, volume of user reports or automated flags, and actionability rate. 

Chart 7: Posts & comments created vs. reported/flagged vs. removed  (January - June 2025)

Chart 8: Posts & comments - source of reports/flags (January - June 2025)

Chart 9: Posts & comments removed by Reddit Rules violation  (January - June 2025)

Private Messages

Private messages (PMs) are non-public direct messages sent between individual users that appear in an account’s inbox. To maximize user privacy, Reddit admins only review (and may remove) PMs that are flagged for potential Reddit Rules violations by automated detection systems, reported by one of the participants, or triggered by other investigative signals.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• In March 2025, we announced an initiative to replace PMs with Reddit Chat and inbox notifications. As a result, about 46% fewer PMs were sent on Reddit (280,543,370) this half compared to the prior reporting period.
• In total, admins removed 1,627,140 PMs for Reddit Rules violations–a 41.7% decrease compared to the previous half, and proportional to the overall decline in PMs sent. Spam remained the most common violation category (87.5% of PMs removed).

Chart 10: PMs sent vs. reported/flagged vs. removed (January - June 2025)

Chart 11: Private messages - source of reports/flags (January - June 2025)

Chart 12: Private messages removed by Reddit Rules violation (January - June 2025)

Chats

Redditors can send requests to other users to start real-time conversations in chats at any time, or exchange messages in chat channels.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• 3,501,651,291 chat messages were exchanged.
• Reddit admins removed 1,830,221 chat messages (0.05% of chat messages exchanged), with 92.9% initially flagged by Reddit automation.

Chart 13: Chat messages sent vs. reported/flagged  (January - June 2025)

Chart 14: Chat messages - source of report/flag  (January - June 2025)

Chart 15: Chat messages removed by Reddit Rules violation (January - June 2025)

Reddit is powered by a vast network of communities, aka subreddits. Reddit communities are created, led, and contributed to by Redditors – some help manage these communities as community mods, and play an important role in shaping each community's culture and norms.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• 792,167 new communities were created on Reddit. 

In this section, we bring our approach to community-level enforcement into focus. This includes sharing metrics and insights into Reddit admin actions taken to ensure that communities and mods adhere to the Reddit Rules and abide by the expectations laid out in the Moderator Code of Conduct.

Community Bans

Well-moderated Reddit communities are meaningful spaces for Redditors to engage on any number of topics. However, we ban communities that are spam-related, in violation of other Reddit Rules, or are not actively moderated. We aim to quickly detect and ban violative communities. On occasion, we may ban an established community if they repeatedly violate Reddit Rules and are not receptive to our requests to comply with our policies.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Admins banned 430,544 communities (newly created and existing) for Reddit Rules violations, representing a 12.4% decrease compared to the preceding 6-month period.
• Spam continues to make up the overwhelming majority of ban reasons in this period (73.4%), while the remaining bans (26.6%) were for non-spam related violations. These bans were largely due to communities being unmoderated (96.5% of the remaining bans).

Chart 16: Communities created vs. banned (not including spam-related bans) (January - June 2025)

Chart 17: Community ban reasons (January - June 2025)

Moderator Code of Conduct

The Moderator Code of Conduct outlines our expectations for community mods. Redditors can flag instances in which mods and/or communities might be in violation of the Code to admins. Additionally, Reddit monitors communities to ensure they are adhering to the Code, and engages with communities that are violating the Code.

Admins conduct outreach when we determine that a mod or mod team has violated the Moderator Code of Conduct—whether it be for allowing policy-violating content, interfering or encouraging interference with other communities, inactive moderation, or other issues. The intent of the outreach is generally to educate and rehabilitate, but if that doesn’t work, we may take further actions, detailed below.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit investigated and actioned 948 Moderator Code of Conduct reports. 2,754 messages were sent as part of educational and enforcement outreach.

A detailed breakdown of our actions is shared in Chart 18 below: these actions include sending educational resources, removing one or more mods, temporarily restricting a community, limiting posting functionality within a community, and other types of outreach and enforcement.

Chart 18:  Mod Code of Conduct Investigations by Rule (January - June 2025)

Chart 19: Geographic Breakdown* of Mod Code of Conduct Investigations (January - June 2025)

Chart 20: Mod Code of Conduct Outreach and Enforcement Actions (January - June 2025)

Account Sanctions by Reddit Admins

Reddit admins are responsible for ensuring that users adhere to the Reddit Rules. Different types of account sanctions are applied for behaviors that violate a given rule, including: warnings, temporary bans of 3 or 7 days, and permanent bans (depending on the severity and number of previous violations). 

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Admins handed out 1,055,711 account warnings, as well as 2,613,473 temporary and permanent account bans.
  • Note that multiple sanctions can be applied to a single account over time.
• With the rapid scaling of our new automated systems to detect and action violent content, we saw a notable increase in accounts warned for violating our policies against incitement to violence. In addition, we rolled out a new enforcement action to warn users who upvote multiple pieces of violating, violent content within a certain timeframe.

Chart 21: User accounts reported or flagged to admins vs. actionability (January - June 2025)

In the graph below, account sanctions issued by Reddit admins are organized by rule violation.

To allow for better representation of other Reddit Rules reasons for account bans (including spam and other content manipulation), ban evasion numbers will not be included in this chart due to their disproportionate share (79.86% of all account bans). 

Chart 22: Account sanctions by Reddit Rules violation (not including ban evasion) (January - June 2025)

Chart 23: Manual vs. automated account actions by Reddit admins (including ban evasion) (January - June 2025)

Automated permanent bans can occur for a variety of reasons, for example:

• Spam: accounts that are initially identified and temporarily actioned as spam become permanent bans when certain behavior is verified during a probationary period.

• Users evading a community ban: when a user evades a ban, they receive sequential 3-day / 7-day / permanent bans if they continue their behavior.

• Users evading a sitewide ban: after a user is permanently suspended for violating the Reddit Rules, their alternate accounts are usually suspended too.

• Vote manipulation: when users participate in "vote manipulation," they receive sequential warning / 3-day / 7-day / permanent bans if they continue their prohibited behavior.

• Users sharing content that has previously been confirmed as illegal or severely violative, such as CSAM, non-consensual intimate media, or foreign terrorist content receive an immediate permanent ban, and where appropriate, are reported to the relevant legal authorities.

Users Banned from Communities by Mods

Moderators can also ban users from their community who are not following their community rules or are being otherwise disruptive to their communities. They can do this through automated tools or manual actions. While this type of ban can be temporary or permanent, it only applies to that specific community and not to the rest of Reddit.

Chart 24: Unique users who received at least one temporary/permanent ban by mods (January - June 2025)

When we remove a piece of content for violating the Reddit Rules or take an associated account-level sanction, the account that posted the content is notified of the removal reason and provided instructions for how to appeal. Appeals are evaluated by Reddit admins, and are either granted (resulting in the reinstatement of the account/content) or denied.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit admins received 426,527 appeals of content-level sanctions and 438,983 appeals for account-level sanctions, which respectively represent 20% and 3.5% of total sanctions in each category.
• With the scaling of new automated systems, we saw an initial increase in granted appeals–on average, 38.7% of appeals were successful. We have continuously been working to improve these systems and have seen a steady improvement in the accuracy of our actioning over the period.
  

Chart 25: Appeals of content-level sanctions issued by admins (January - June 2025)

Chart 26: Appeals of content-level sanctions issued by admins by reason (January - June 2025)

Chart 27: Appeals of account-level sanctions issued by admins (January - June 2025)

Chart 28: Appeals of account-level sanctions issued by admins by reason (January - June 2025)

This section covers legal removal requests sent to Reddit from governments, law enforcement agencies, and private parties (such as lawyers or NGOs) from around the world between January and June 2025. 

Note: A single legal removal request may identify several pieces of content (e.g., posts, comments). In this section, we report on both the number of requests and the total number of pieces of content identified in those requests.

Government and Law Enforcement Requests to Remove Content

This section covers legal requests submitted by government and law enforcement (Gov/LE) agencies to remove content on Reddit, either via court order or some other type of request.

Gov/LE officials may seek the removal of content for a variety of reasons, including alleged violations of local law. Reddit scrutinizes each request to determine its legal sufficiency. If there are any issues, we may push back, seek more context, or deny the request in whole or in part for any number of reasons, including that the request is overbroad or inconsistent with international law.

Process-wise, all reported content is first reviewed under the Reddit Rules, and any violations are actioned. The Reddit Rules are applied universally regardless of how we become aware of violating content or who submits a report. If there are no underlying Rules violations, we evaluate the legal request under both local and international law, including against human rights standards. If Reddit determines that the reported content appears to violate local law, we may restrict access to (aka “geoblock”) the content in the relevant country. Users in those countries will encounter a notice and explanation when trying to access the content. Additionally, the impacted user(s) will receive a Reddit Chat message that notifies them directly about the situation. For more information about our process, please refer to this Help Center article.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit received 154 Gov/LE removal requests from 23 countries to remove content from the platform
  • Representing a 26% increase since the previous report and a 27% increase in the volume of content reported in these requests.
• Half (50%) of the content identified in these requests was removed for Reddit Rules violations, whereas a small percentage of content (3%) was restricted locally in the requester’s country based on violations of local law.
  • This represents a 32% decrease in the overall action rate on removal requests received.
• The top requesting countries included India (37), the United Arab Emirates (21), Australia (16) and the United States of America (13). These four countries:
  • Submitted 56% of all Gov/LE  removal requests, and
  • Reported 81% of the total amount of pieces of content identified during this reporting period.

Notable Requests

• India: We geoblocked access to four posts across three separate 69A Blocking Orders for local law violations. The Orders were issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

• New Zealand: We received a name suppression order issued by the Auckland High Court and submitted by the New Zealand Police, reporting one post, which was subsequently geoblocked.

• Pakistan: We received a request from the Federal Investigation Agency reporting one subreddit and one user for sharing blasphemous content ahead of Draw Mohammed Day on 20 May. The request threatened to block Reddit access throughout Pakistan if we did not comply. We did not find any Reddit Rule violations and, thus, did not take any action on the reported content.

• Romania: We received two separate requests during the Romanian Presidential election period seeking the removal of two separate posts that allegedly violated local election laws. Both posts were geoblocked due to requirements under local laws.

• Turkey: We were forced to geoblock access to one subreddit in Turkey in response to an Article 8 order from the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK). Given the political nature of the subreddit, we are challenging the request in the Turkish courts. 

Fraudulent Government and Law Enforcement Removal Requests

Reddit protects the rights of our users to create, consume, and share a wide variety of content on the platform. We take this responsibility seriously, and an important part of this duty is to scrutinize each legal removal request that identifies user content to ensure validity and legitimacy.

We identified three fraudulent requests submitted by individuals falsely claiming to be Gov/LE officials. In one request, the requester claimed to be a German authority responsible for regulating online gambling. The other two requests came from a single email domain allegedly belonging to the municipal government of Moyahua de Estrada, a town in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico. We rejected all of these requests, reported them to authorities, and continue to keep an eye out for similar requests to protect our users from bad actors.

Chart 29: Government and Law Enforcement Content Removal Requests (January - June 2025)

Chart 30: Government and Law Enforcement Content Removals by Content Type (January - June 2025)

Chart 31: Reddit Actions in Response to Government and Law Enforcement Content Removal Requests (January - June 2025)

Chart 32: Government and Law Enforcement Content Removal Requests (2022-2025)

Chart 33: Reddit Actions in Response to Government and Law Enforcement Content Removal Requests (2022-2025)

Child Sexual Abuse Material

We have zero tolerance for content or interactions that involve the sexual exploitation of minors. In our ongoing fight to combat child sexual exploitation (“CSE”), we use a combination of automated methods (including hash-matching technology, which applies a unique digital fingerprint to each media file to help identify violative content uploaded to Reddit), human review, and community reports to detect activities potentially related to CSE on Reddit. When we find child sexual abuse material (“CSAM”) on the platform, it is removed immediately and the offending user is permanently suspended from Reddit. We also take all steps required by U.S. law to report the relevant users/content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and preserve relevant account data.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit issued 32,759 Cybertips to NCMEC (a decrease of 71%).
• Reddit removed 46,414 pieces of content based on CSAM reports (a decrease of 76%). A single enforcement action against an account may affect multiple pieces of content.
• The continued trend of significant reductions in both reports and removals reflect our ongoing commitment and investment in detection and blocking capabilities to deter attempts to disseminate CSAM content on Reddit.

We remain steadfastly committed to preventing and disrupting the sexual exploitation of children. For more information on our efforts to combat this type of violative content, please refer to our article on How Reddit Fights Child Sexual Exploitation.

Chart 34: CSAM Report Sources (January - June 2025)

Chart 35: Cybertip Report Volume Trending 

Terrorist Content Removals

Reddit has zero tolerance for the dissemination of terrorist content on our platform. When we become aware of violative content, we remove it and take appropriate action against the account that posted it.

The Reddit Rules explicitly prohibit content that glorifies, incites or calls for violence or physical harm, including content that promotes or supports the activities of terrorists or designated terrorist organizations. Violative content includes: material posted by terrorists or designated terrorist organizations and their supporters, expressions of affiliation or support for terrorists or designated terrorist organizations, and glorification of terrorist acts. It also includes content that solicits or incites a person or group to participate in, commit, or contribute to terrorist activities.

Reddit uses a combination of automated technologies, user/community/external reports, and internal escalation processes to identify or flag potentially violative terrorist content on our platform. 

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• 1,150 pieces of terrorist content were removed from Reddit.
  • The vast majority of associated accounts were permanently suspended and one subreddit was also banned.
• Automated tools flagged 2,223 pieces of content, which were then human-reviewed.
  • 907 flagged pieces were removed by Reddit admins for violating the Terrorist Content policy.
  • 74 pieces of violative terrorist content that matched previously human-confirmed violative content were  removed directly by automated tools.
• 174 human reports received for possible terrorist content, resulting in a 97.1% removal rate (169 pieces of content removed).
• Notably, Reddit received its first TCO Regulation removal order under Article 3 of the (EU) 2021/784 Regulation from Netherlands’ Authority for the Prevention of Online Terrorist Content and Child Sexual Abuse Material.
  • The reported post was sharing a mass shooter’s propaganda and was removed for violating Rule 1, and the user was permanently banned from Reddit. 

More information about how Reddit fights the dissemination of terrorist content is available here.

Chart 36: Terrorist Content Report Sources  (January - June 2025)

Chart 37: Terrorist Content Report Sources (2023-2025)

Legal Requests Submitted by Private Parties to Remove Content

Reddit also receives legal requests from private parties to remove content. Examples include requests from companies, private individuals, or non-governmental organizations (or lawyers/solicitors writing on their behalf) to remove content they believe is defamatory or otherwise violates their private legal rights.

As described above, all content identified in these requests is first reviewed under the Reddit Rules, and violative content is removed globally. When there are no underlying Rules violations, but the content appears to violate local law(s), Reddit may restrict access to (aka “geoblock”) the content in the country where it is alleged to be illegal. In these cases, users in that country will encounter a notice and explanation when trying to access the content.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit received 182 legal demands from private parties (including NGOs) for content removal in the first half of 2025, a 44% increase from the previous period.
• The majority of these requests originated from the United States (71), the United Kingdom (34), and Germany (20).
• 21% of the identified content was removed for violating Reddit Rules, a 66% decrease from the previous report.
• 79% of the remaining content identified resulted in no action, either because it did not violate Reddit Rules or local law, or the legal request was incomplete.
• A small percentage (0.7%) of content was geoblocked in the requester's country due to violations of local law.

Note : This section does not include requests from users to remove or delete their own content under the EU General Data Protection Regulation or the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Notable Requests

• Brazil: A Brazilian court ordered Reddit to remove a post containing a negative review of a computer technical assistance company. While the post has been geoblocked in Brazil per the court's directive, Reddit is appealing this decision because providing honest feedback about businesses does not violate our rules. 

• New Zealand: We received an order from the District Court of Palmerston North under the Harmful Digital Communications Act, claiming that specific content on Reddit had caused reputational, financial, and emotional harm to two business owners. Reddit reviewed 1,277 posts and comments, and nine comments were ultimately removed for violating Rule 1. We pushed back on the remaining content to protect our users' right to engage in discussions relating to products, services, and businesses. 

• Turkey: We received a court order from the Mersin 3rd Civil Court of First Instance requesting removal of a post containing a video of a public figure interacting with police. We took no action as the post was linked to a newsworthy event involving a public official, and similar coverage was available on Turkish media. 

Fraudulent and/or Inauthentic Private Party Legal Removal Requests

As mentioned above, an important part of our process is to carefully review each and every legal removal request to ensure validity and legitimacy.

Between January and June 2025, we received one private party legal removal request that was allegedly from a law firm in the United States reporting harassment and defamation of an individual. The request did not originate from the official law firm email address. Due to this and other indicators, no action was taken on the reported post.

Chart 38: Private Party Legal Removal Requests (January - June 2025)

Chart 39: Reddit Actions in Response to Private Party Legal Removal Requests (January - June 2025)

Copyright Removals

Reddit’s Copyright Policy prohibits users from making unauthorized use of another’s copyrighted work in a way that infringes the copyright owner’s rights. To deal with these types of issues, we follow a notice-and-takedown process that is consistent with the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). When Reddit receives a valid copyright takedown notice, we remove the violative content and notify the account holder where appropriate. For more information, please read our Copyright Policy.

This section covers the volume of copyright notices received and the content removed from Reddit in response to valid notices, as well as the volume of content we declined to remove due to invalid notices. We also include data about content we reinstated after the original poster submitted a valid appeal or the rightsholder withdrew its copyright takedown notice.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• 58,920 copyright takedown notices received (+8% from previous reporting period).
• 40,128 notices were actioned in whole or in part, resulting in a 68% notice actionability rate.
• 362,639 pieces of content identified (-21% from previous reporting period).
• Reddit removed 220,233 pieces of content, leading to a 60% content actionability rate and a 3% decrease in total content removed from Reddit since the last report.

Chart 40: Copyright Takedown Notices (January - June 2025)

Chart 41: Copyright Takedown Notices Trending

Copyright Repeat Violator Bans

In appropriate circumstances, Reddit bans user accounts that repeatedly violate our Copyright Policy. Reddit may also ban subreddits after multiple removals of violative content or where it is clear that the subreddit is dedicated to sharing violative content.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• 837 user accounts were banned for repeat Copyright Policy violations, a decrease of 73% compared to the last half of 2024.
• 709 subreddits were banned during this reporting period, an increase of 117% compared to last report.

Invalid Copyright Takedown Notices

When Reddit receives an invalid copyright takedown notice, we reject the notice and do not take any related action on the identified content.

A copyright takedown notice may be invalid for a number of reasons, such as:

• Failing to include all the required elements of a copyright takedown notice (e.g. failing to include a description of the copyrighted work) 

• Confusing other Reddit Rules issues for copyright infringement, such as privacy violations or harassment

• Requesting the removal of content that uses a copyrighted work in a manner allowed by copyright law, such as for educational, commentary, or parody purposes (“fair use” in the United States or “fair dealing” in the UK, for example)

From January to June 2025, Reddit rejected 18,792 invalid copyright takedown notices (a 32% notice rejection rate) and did not take any related action on 100,308 pieces of content.

For more information about copyright takedown notices, please visit our Copyright Policy.

Notable Requests:

• United States: We received a removal request from the creator of multiple poems, for a Reddit image post featuring said poems. The Reddit post also contained interpretations and criticism of the author’s intent. We declined to remove this content because we believe it made fair use of the poems.

• United Kingdom: We received a removal request from the owner of a certificate of authenticity in connection with a hand-signed Diego Maradona Argentina 1986 World Cup jersey. The requester claimed ownership of the information contained in a photo that was shared on Reddit as part of a discussion about sports memorabilia online. The reported post didn’t violate our Copyright Policy or the Reddit Rules (no private information was shared), and, as such, we declined to remove it. 

Chart 42: Content identified in copyright takedown notices that we declined to remove  (January - June 2025)

Counter Notices and Withdrawals

Reddit receives appeals, including counter notices under the DMCA, from users whose content has been removed in response to a copyright takedown notice. A valid appeal usually results in the reinstatement of the content to Reddit. More information on counter notices can be found here.

Reddit may also restore content that was removed as a result of a valid copyright takedown notice if the party who submitted the notice later withdraws their claim of copyright infringement. Someone might withdraw their claim of copyright infringement after resolving the issue directly with the user who posted the reported content, or because they reported the content by mistake.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• 500 appeals received (+3.8% from the previous reporting period).
• 114 were valid, leading to the restoration of 230 pieces of content.
• 20 withdrawal requests were processed, resulting in the restoration of another 39 pieces of content.

Trademark Removals

Reddit’s Trademark Policy prohibits users from making unauthorized use of another’s trademark in a way that may confuse or mislead others about the source of goods or services, or their affiliation with the trademark owner. 

We process trademark takedown notices following a notice-and-takedown procedure. When Reddit receives a valid trademark takedown notice, we remove the violative content identified in the notice and notify the account holder where appropriate. For more information, please visit our Trademark Policy.

This section covers the volume of trademark reports received and content removed from Reddit in response to valid trademark takedown notices, as well as the volume of content we declined to remove because the notices were invalid.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• 609 trademark takedown notices received (-1% from the previous reporting period).
• 3,331 pieces of content identified (- 67% from the previous reporting period).
  • The significant decrease in identified content was largely due to the absence of a few high-volume reporters submitting duplicate, non-violative trademark notices that Reddit had previously declined to remove. These reporters were responsible for 3,641 reported URLs in our last report but only submitted 931 URLs in this one.
• Reddit actioned, either in whole or in part, 57 notices (a 9.4% notice actionability rate) and removed 151 pieces of content (a 4.5% content actionability rate).

Chart 43: Trademark Takedown Notices (January - June 2025)

Chart 44: Trademark Takedown Notices Trending

Trademark Repeat Violator Bans

Under certain circumstances, Reddit may ban user accounts that repeatedly violate Reddit’s Trademark Policy. We may also ban subreddits after multiple removals of violative content or where it is clear that the subreddit is dedicated to sharing violative content.

From January to June 2025, Reddit banned one user account and three subreddits for repeatedly violating our Trademark Policy. Subreddits and users reported in trademark takedown notices that were actioned for violating other Reddit Rules are not included in this section of the report.

Invalid Trademark Notices

When Reddit receives an invalid trademark takedown notice, we reject the notice and decline to remove the reported content.

From January to June 2025, we rejected 552 trademark takedown notices (90%) and declined to remove 3,180 pieces of content because the notices were invalid. 

A trademark notice may be invalid for a number of reasons, including:

• Failing to provide information sufficient to assess whether or not a trademark policy violation has occurred, such as failing to identify a valid, registered trademark

• Requesting the removal of content that makes a “fair use” of the claimant’s trademark, as allowed by trademark law

• Confusing other policy issues for trademark, such as copyright infringement, impersonation, privacy, or harassment

• Reporting duplicate URLs that have already been removed in previous notices.

Notable Requests:

• Saint Kitts and Nevis: We rejected a notice from a medical university in St. Kitts that identified a post that was critical of the university and provided data about medical exam pass rates. The post didn’t violate our Trademark Policy or the Reddit Rules and no action was taken. Reddit users are empowered to share their honest opinions about products and services, provided they do not violate our Rules. 

• United States: A brand reported discussions of replica goods in multiple comments made on a subreddit and the subreddit’s wiki page. We declined to remove the reported comments because the Reddit users were merely discussing the replica goods without promoting or enabling the sale of counterfeit goods. We did, however, remove the wiki page because it contained direct links to confirmed counterfeit sellers of the reporter’s brand. 

• United States: We rejected a notice that identified content critical of an online IQ test service. Specifically, Reddit users were flagging their concerns about how easy it was to sign up to a paid trial of the service. The identified content did not violate our Trademark Policy or the Reddit Rules and no action was taken.

Trademark Appeals and Withdrawals

Reddit receives appeals from user accounts whose content has been removed in response to a trademark takedown notice. A valid appeal usually results in the reinstatement of the content to Reddit.

Reddit may also restore content that was removed as a result of a valid trademark takedown notice if the party who submitted the notice withdraws their claim of trademark infringement. Someone might withdraw their claim of trademark infringement after resolving the issue directly with the user who posted the reported content, or because they reported the content by mistake.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit didn’t receive any trademark appeals.
• We received one withdrawal request, which resulted in one piece of content being restored.

Platforms like Reddit receive a variety of requests for account information, including legal process (e.g., a warrant or court order) related to government and law enforcement (Gov/LE) investigations, private party legal requests related to civil litigation or criminal defense, and user requests for their own data under applicable privacy regulations.

At Reddit, we believe that privacy is a right. By default, we collect and retain limited information for most accounts as outlined in our Privacy Policy. Should we be legally compelled to disclose account information, we will produce only the limited information required by law.

This section covers the volume of global information requests received during the first half of 2025, along with our rate of disclosure and other insights. 

Legal Requests for Account Information

Reddit may disclose specific account information in response to valid legal requests from Gov/LE agencies or private parties (e.g., civil litigants and criminal defendants) when required by law and in certain emergency situations. A specialized Reddit team carefully reviews every information request for procedural validity and legal sufficiency, and objects when appropriate.

User Notice

To promote due process and maximize transparency, Reddit attempts to notify our users when their account data is subject to legal information requests before any disclosures are made (i.e., pre-production notice), unless we are legally prohibited from doing so, or under certain other counterproductive circumstances (e.g., exigent emergency situations, child safety matters).

If Reddit is legally prohibited from providing notice to an account holder before disclosing account information to Gov/LE officials,, we will attempt to notify the user upon expiration of the legally enforced non-disclosure period (i.e., post-production notice).

For more information regarding user notice, please refer to Reddit’s Guidelines for Law Enforcement.

Government and Law Enforcement Agency Requests for Account Information

Reddit regularly receives legal requests for the disclosure of account information from global Gov/LE  agencies. These requests are typically one of two varieties: non-emergency (standard) disclosure requests or exigent emergency disclosure requests.

• Non-emergency (standard) disclosure requests require the issuance of formal legal process, such as a warrant or court order, which is then submitted to Reddit for processing.

• Emergency disclosure requests involving threats of imminent death or serious bodily harm do not require formal legal process due to their exigent nature, but must be submitted in accordance with applicable law.

Standard Government and Law Enforcement Agency Requests for Account Information

Reddit carefully reviews each request for compliance with applicable laws. If we determine that a request is not legally valid (e.g., missing legal requirements; seeking information outside the scope of the issued legal process), Reddit will challenge or reject it. If we consider the request to be overbroad or unclear, we will ask the requesting entity to modify or refine the request.

All requests for account information must be narrowly tailored, identify the account(s) at issue (e.g., u/name or email address), and specify the information sought (e.g., IP addresses).

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit received 1,179 (+12% from the prior report) standard legal requests for account information from global Gov/LE agencies. This is the highest volume of information requests that Reddit has received in a single reporting period.  
• Reddit received information requests from a total of 35 (+17%) countries, including our first requests from Estonia, Mongolia, Panama, and Uruguay.
• Reddit disclosed account information in response to 813 (69%) of these global legal requests, a decrease of 5% in compliance rate. These disclosures included data from 1,283 accounts.
• The U.S., our largest requesting jurisdiction, accounted for 777 requests (66% of global volume), and Reddit disclosed data in response to 640 (82%) of them.

Chart 45: Global Government and Law Enforcement Agency standard request volumes and disclosure rate  (January - June 2025)

Chart 46: Global Government and Law Enforcement Agency standard request trending

Types of Investigations

The following table details the types of investigations associated with law enforcement’s  global requests for account information.

Chart 47: Investigation Types for Global Government and Law Enforcement Agency standard requests (January - June 2025)

User Notice for Government and Law Enforcement Agency Requests

Reddit attempts to notify users about legal requests seeking disclosure of their account information unless prohibited from doing so by law, or under limited exceptions where notice would be counterproductive. However, Gov/LE requests are often subject to non-disclosure orders (NDOs) or other prohibitions that restrict or delay our ability to provide user notice. In those cases, we push back when an NDO does not specify an expiration or otherwise impedes on Redditors' rights.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit provided user notice to 311 users in response to global Gov/LE requests.

Chart 48: User Notice* for Government and Law Enforcement Agency Requests (January - June 2025)

Standard U.S. Legal Process Types

The majority of global requests to disclose account information continue to originate from U.S. Gov/LE agencies.

The type of U.S. legal process served on Reddit determines the categories of historical data that Reddit may be compelled to disclose. In general:

• U.S. subpoenas may compel disclosure of basic subscriber information (BSI), which may include:
  • the account holder’s email address;
  • IP addresses;
  • phone number; and
  • financial information associated with the account.
• U.S. court orders may compel disclosure of BSI and other non-content records about the account, such as account preferences and communication header information (e.g., the to/from fields of a Private Message or the participant list for a chat discussion).
• U.S. search warrants may compel disclosure of BSI, other non-content records, and the contents of communications (e.g., information about a user’s posts, comments, PMs, chats, votes, and other information regarding the substance of a user’s communications).

In addition to U.S. legal process that may compel the one-time disclosure of historical data (listed above), U.S. pen register / trap and trace (PRTT) orders may compel multiple ongoing disclosures of IP logs and communication headers for a strictly defined and limited period of time. PRTT orders may not compel disclosure of the content of communications.

For more information regarding the types of data collected by Reddit, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

Chart 49: U.S. Government and Law Enforcement Agency standard disclosure requests by type of legal process (January - June 2025)

U.S. Requests under a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT)

Reddit may receive legal requests under a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT). The MLAT process enables non-U.S. law enforcement agencies to work with U.S. law enforcement to issue legal requests under U.S. law in order to “obtain evidence, information, and testimony abroad in a form admissible in the courts of” their own country. This means that any disclosed data may be shared with non-U.S. law enforcement in the context of a criminal investigation or related proceeding. Requests received under MLAT are subject to the same scrutiny and user notice policies as all other U.S. requests.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Four requests explicitly stated that they were issued pursuant to an MLAT.

Chart 50: U.S. Government and Law Enforcement Agency MLAT requests (January - June 2025)

U.S. Requests - State Breakdown

U.S. information requests are issued pursuant to federal or state/local law. We provide this breakdown to help contextualize where these requests come from, particularly because U.S. states and territories have their own laws for obtaining account information, which often differ from federal standards.  

Additionally, we provide details about the disclosure of the content of communications (e.g., posts, comments, chats) for U.S. legal requests because of their inherent constitutional (e.g., potential First Amendment) implications.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit disclosed account information in response to:
  • 82% of U.S. federal requests
  • 83% of U.S. state/local requests
• Reddit received the most U.S. federal requests from agency offices located in:
  • District of Columbia - 44
  • California - 37
  • New York - 35
• Reddit received the most U.S. state/local requests from:
  • Florida - 49
  • Texas - 33
  • New York - 30

Chart 51: U.S. State/Territory Requests (January - June 2025)

Chart 52: U.S. Government and Law Enforcement Agency standard request trending

Notable Standard Information Requests

We take pride in protecting user privacy and freedom of speech by carefully scrutinizing all information requests, particularly in the context of legal requests to unmask anonymous account holders. The following represent some notable examples where we intervened based on these principles between January and June 2025:

• United States: We received a subpoena from city police in New Jersey involving a threat made on Reddit. The subpoena sought information for two accounts. The first account appeared to make a threat by referencing the location of a murder that had already occurred, and Reddit disclosed responsive information for that user. However, the second account simply explained the threat to another user. Reddit contacted the police to discuss the second account, and law enforcement withdrew the request for that account.
• United States: We received a summons from the Department of Homeland Security seeking information for a Reddit account. The summons indicated that the investigation was for immigration enforcement, but there was no related content or activity within the account. Reddit contacted the requester for more information, and the summons was withdrawn.
• United States: We received a subpoena from city police in Nevada seeking account information for a Reddit user that reportedly made violent threats against law enforcement. However, a review of the content showed the user was planning non-violent protests against law enforcement operations. After contacting the police regarding user notice, law enforcement withdrew the subpoena.
• Germany: We received four requests related to discussion of the Israel/Palestine conflict. The targeted users discussed positions for and against parties of the conflict, as well as the German government’s posture. No account information was disclosed.
• Germany: We received three requests related to the use of “unconstitutional symbols.” However, the users were either condemning usage of the symbols, or using the symbol satirically to express political opinions. No account data was disclosed.

National Security Requests

U.S. law prohibits us from reporting exact numbers of National Security Letters (NSLs) or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders received. The U.S. FREEDOM ACT of 2015 (50 U.S.C. § 1874) sets forth large bands of numbers that a company must use if it wants to report on the receipt of national security legal requests. Furthermore, companies are required to use even larger bands to differentiate between receipt of NSLs and FISA orders.

These reporting rules may work for larger companies that receive large numbers of national security requests, but they do little to provide meaningful transparency for smaller companies like Reddit that receive few, if any, national security requests. These disclosure rules undermine the effectiveness of this section of our transparency report and diminish the trust our communities place in platforms like ours.

Chart 53: U.S. National Security request volumes (January - June 2025)

Requests Under U.S. CLOUD Act

The U.S. Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act) changed U.S. law to allow foreign jurisdictions who meet certain requirements to more easily obtain user data from U.S. companies with legal process..

In the absence of the CLOUD Act, U.S. law requires non-U.S. Gov/LE agencies to use the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty or Letters Rogatory process to obtain information from U.S. providers. The intent of the CLOUD Act is to permit these agencies to enter into bilateral agreements with the United States, under which foreign governments that maintain adequate protections for privacy and civil liberties may obtain direct access to electronic evidence in order to fight serious crime, including matters of national security and terrorism.

To date, Reddit has not received any requests under the U.S. CLOUD Act.

Emergency Disclosure Requests

During emergencies, law enforcement officials may submit Emergency Disclosure Requests (EDRs) seeking disclosure of limited account information to assist with preventing or mitigating the exigent situation. EDRs may be submitted without first obtaining legal process to compel disclosure, as is required under ordinary circumstances. Under U.S. law, Reddit may grant such requests if we form a good faith belief based on information provided by law enforcement that disclosure is necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily harm to a person.

Reddit evaluates these requests on a case-by-case basis. We may request additional information from law enforcement for a variety of reasons, including to further contextualize the nature of the emergency, clarify overly-broad requests, or validate the identity of the law enforcement official that is seeking data. Requests that do not meet the emergency disclosure threshold may be denied, and the requester may be directed to obtain standard (non-emergency) legal process, such as a subpoena or warrant.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit received 186 EDRs from law enforcement agencies in 18 different countries
• Reddit disclosed limited account information in response to 77 of those requests (41.3%).

Chart 54: Emergency Disclosure Request volumes and disclosure rate (January - June 2025)

Chart 55: Emergency Disclosure Request Trending

Fraudulent Information Requests

Fraudulent Standard Information Requests

As previously noted, Reddit carefully reviews all legal requests for account information to ensure that, among other things, they are properly issued and submitted by legitimate and authorized law enforcement agencies. If we identify fraudulent requests, we reject them and notify the appropriate authorities.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit identified one fraudulent standard legal request purported to be from an Australian Gov/LE agency; however, the source of the request appeared to be inconsistent. We independently verified that the request was fraudulent and subsequently rejected it.

Fraudulent Emergency Disclosure Requests

Emergency disclosure requests require companies like Reddit to enact a high degree of vigilance and scrutiny, as they neither follow a standard format nor include the same level of oversight as formal legal process. Over the past few years, the tech industry has faced an increase in targeted attempts to obtain account information through fraudulent EDRs and impersonation of law enforcement officials. If we receive a fraudulent EDR, we reject it and report the fake request to law enforcement for further investigation.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit identified six fraudulent emergency requests. Two requests purported to be from Italian law enforcement, while others claimed to be Gov/LE agencies in Germany, Italy, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam. We independently verified that each requests was fraudulent and subsequently rejected them.

Preservation Requests

In addition to requesting the disclosure of account information, Gov/LE entities also send legal requests directing Reddit to temporarily save certain account information. These preservation requests are ordinarily issued in anticipation of obtaining legal process (e.g., a subpoena, court order, or warrant) and require companies like Reddit to make a copy of the existing account information to ensure the data is not edited, altered, or destroyed in the meantime. Notably, preservation requests can only require retention of information already in the account when the request is received; a preservation request cannot compel Reddit to preserve new data on an ongoing basis, or capture data that is no longer contained in the account. A legally valid preservation request may result in account information being retained beyond Reddit’s standard retention period.

Independent of whether Reddit preserves data pursuant to a preservation request, we will not disclose the preserved information to law enforcement unless and until Reddit receives valid legal process. After the requested preservation period lapses, Reddit purges the preserved data unless it receives a request to extend the preservation.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit received 592 preservation requests from Gov/LE agencies across the globe.

Chart 56: Preservation request volumes (January - June 2025)

Private Party Requests for Account Information

While Gov/LE agencies submit the vast majority of the legal requests for account information that we receive, private parties also send Reddit legal process (e.g., subpoenas) seeking disclosure of information for use in criminal defense or civil litigation.

Reddit carefully reviews each request for compliance with applicable laws and regulations. If we determine that a request is invalid, overbroad, or in violation of applicable laws, Reddit will object to or challenge the request.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit received 28 private party requests for account information (-24%) from 3 different countries. Of these, 25 requests originated from the United States (-24%).
• Reddit disclosed account information in response to 14% of these global requests (-5%).

Chart 57: Private Party information request volumes and disclosure rate (January - June 2025)

Chart 58: Global Private Party Request Trending

User Notice for Private Party Requests

In cases where Reddit receives a valid private party request that requires Reddit to provide responsive data, Reddit will attempt to notify impacted users prior to disclosing data. Reddit does not typically provide user notice regarding invalid or otherwise inactionable private party requests.

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit provided user notice to five users in response to private party requests. We provided pre-production notice for two private party requests, and account data was disclosed in response to both requests.

Chart 59: User Notice* for Private Party Requests (January - June 2025)

User Access Requests

Reddit users can request a copy of their own Reddit account information (known as “access requests”). These requests may include EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) data subject access requests and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) consumer information requests. Reddit responds to access requests from across the globe and does not limit requests to these jurisdictions. 

Insights (Jan-Jun 2025):

• Reddit received 21,894 access requests (-7.8%) 

The below tables show the global distribution of user access requests for the first half of 2025.

For more information on this process, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

Chart 60: User Access Requests by Continent (January - June 2025)

Chart 61: User Access Request Trending

Links to previous Transparency Reports (HERE)

• Transparency Report : Jul - Dec 2024 (LINK) (PDF)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Jun 2024 (LINK) (PDF)
• Transparency Report : Jul - Dec 2023 (LINK) (PDF)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Jun 2023 (LINK) (PDF)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Dec 2022 (LINK) (PDF)
• Transparency Report* : Jul - Dec 2022 (LINK) (PDF)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Dec 2021 (LINK) (PDF)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Dec 2020 (LINK) (CSV)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Dec 2019 (LINK)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Dec 2018 (LINK)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Dec 2017 (LINK)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Dec 2016 (HTML)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Dec 2015 (HTML)
• Transparency Report : Jan - Dec 2014 (HTML) (PDF)

* Legal Requests only

Link to Quarterly Security Reports 


• Q3 2024

• Q2 2024

• Q1 2024
  

• Q4 2023

• Q3 2023

• Q2 2023

• Q1 2023

• Q4 2022

• Q3 2022

• Q2 2022

• Q1 2022

• Q3 2021

• Q2 2021

• Q1 2021

Data available for download

Transparency Report: January - June 2025 (PDF)