Reddit has released its 2020 Transparency Report showing the number of requests that required the platform to remove content or disclose private user data. Of the 3.37 billion content created on Reddit in 2020, 233 million were removed for various reasons. Most were spam, but other reasons include harassment, sexualization, and violence.
The report also contains some interesting facts about governments around the world that make the most content removal requests.
Like other platforms like Twitter, Reddit has become an important medium for political discussion, debate, and generating comments towards the government, something that may upset some world leaders.
His growing influence was recently revealed when a group of Reddit investors made a move on Wall Street, boosting Gamestop stock. Governments are wary of Reddit’s growing power, and the company received hundreds of requests from government entities to remove or restrict access to certain content in 2020. The report notes that such requests are made for various reasons, including alleged violations of local law, But each request is scrutinized by Reddit and may reject it if it is excessive or inconsistent with international law.
Russia is well known for trying to suppress criticism from the government and last year it ranked first in takedown requests, with 89 requests in total, of which Reddit complied with 37 and took no action on 52.
The other governments that asked Reddit to download content were South Korea with 60 requests, Pakistan with 33, India with 23, the UK with 13, Turkey with 10 and lastly Australia and Denmark with 7 posts.
Reddit also reported that of the hundreds of removal requests that governments asked to remove, only 71.4% were removed, while 18.6% remained online and in total 5,000 pieces of content were reported.
Reddit and meme shares, where it all began
The maelstrom for GameStop started on a famous online forum: Reddit, where there are sub-forums that address different topics. One of them is WallStreetBets, where a person named Keith Gill participates.
This user, known on Reddit as ‘Deepfuckingvalue’ or ‘Roaring Kitty’, has been buying GameStop shares since 2019 with a total investment of around $ 50,000. After detecting that Gamestop was one of the stocks most predicted to fall, the game began. He focused his efforts on trying to raise the price of the shares. How do you do that? Convincing a lot of people to buy them.
The discussion on Reddit spread to other forums, and more and more retail investors, who are ordinary people, started buying GameStop shares. The joint movement between a large number of people raised the price of the shares and a new term began to be heard: the ‘meme actions’.
