Australia: eSafety Commissioner published transparency report summarising Reddit's responses on measures relating to online terrorist and extremist content

On 6 March 2025, the eSafety Commissioner published the transparency report summarising Reddit's responses on tools, policies, and measures to detect and prevent terrorist and violent extremist (TVE) content and mitigate online radicalisation risks. The report evaluates Reddit's approaches, including proactive detection, user reporting, moderator resourcing, and risks associated with artificial intelligence (AI) and recommender systems. The report outlines Reddit's approach to detecting and removing TVE content, as well as child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) material. The report applies to Reddit’s trust and safety operations, covering its policies, enforcement mechanisms, and automated detection tools. It was highlighted that Reddit enforces permanent bans for terrorist and CSEA content, while lesser violations receive temporary suspensions or strikes. It employs hash-matching, AI-based classifiers, and keyword detection to identify TVE and CSEA material across public and private subreddits, chat, and channels, but profile pictures remain largely uncovered. Third-party application programming interface services must comply with safety standards but are not mandated to provide TVE-specific reporting. Reddit's recommender systems limit the spread of TVE content through suitability scores and community rating restrictions, while automated and human moderation review flagged material. It was highlighted that the platform collaborates with law enforcement and trusted flaggers but lacks dedicated reporting channels for civil society groups. Reddit maintains a zero-tolerance policy on CSEA, proactively removing over 90% of such content in chat but detecting less than 20% in channels.