Reddit Transparency Report Details Government Data Requests

Turn the home page of the Internet and you will discover that Reddit users are not the only ones interested in what is going on behind the scenes.

The company released its annual transparency report on Feb. 13, providing a comprehensive overview of government data disclosure requests from around the world and content removal numbers from Reddit administrators. The data provides an internal snapshot of how often the company decides to play ball with government officials, as well as the frequency with which it tells them to stop talking.

This report covers the entire year 2018 and continues a practice that began in 2015.

For starters, it should be noted that Reddit reported receiving 752 requests from the government requesting "preservation or production of user account information" last year. Of these, 171 had to keep the user account information and 581 had to produce it.

"Reddit has responded to 91% of the conservation requests received," the report notes. "Reddit disclosed the user account information in response to 447 (77%) of these [production] requests. "

In particular, this does not include so-called urgent requests – which Reddit clbadifies in its own category.

"In 2018, Reddit has received a total of 234 emergency disclosure requests worldwide," the report continues. "Reddit disclosed the user account information in response to 162 (69%) of these requests."

Interestingly, this represents a 470% increase over the number of such applications received in 2017.

But the report does more than just inform users of the frequency with which government entities require their information. It also discusses the speed at which Reddit administrators – and not volunteers – subreddit mods – remove user posts for content policy violations. And, perhaps not surprisingly, that's a lot.

Specifically, administrators removed 173,347 items of content. In particular, that makes do not include deleted content for violating the spam content policy rules. The reason for these referrals ranged from "Identity Borrowing" (2.3%) to "Harbadment" (18.6%) to "Encouraging Violence or Self-Harm" (15.9%).

The report also contains additional information that Reddit adds, which provides valuable information about its content moderation rules: the success rate of user calls. The company accepted only 29% (12,881) of appeals for moderation decisions, while rejecting the remaining 71% (32,535).

It is difficult for a redditor to violate the content rules. But hey, they probably already knew it. For the rest of us? Well, when it comes to pbading our Reddit user data to the government, we probably have no chance.