Vanniall has been using Reddit for the past seven years, since she initially started her account in 2015. At first, she used it largely for fun, checking out subreddits like r/nosleep every night before bed and also fan subreddits for games like Elden Ring to get tips about gameplay. But when she started using it to share adult content of herself, she found that not only was it a tremendous confidence booster — “it was a big contributor, along with Tumblr, to my confidence in my body and with my gender,” says Vanniall — but also a significant source of income when people started offering to tip her for custom content or doing a video call.
At the time, Vanniall was working in retail, but she says Reddit subsequently became an essential part of her burgeoning adult content business, using the platform to interact with existing fans, recruit new ones, and promote her services on other platforms like OnlyFans or Chaturbate. Even as other platforms started changing their terms of service to ban NSFW content, Reddit was one of the few mainstays where the posting guidelines remained relatively lax. Last week, however, she logged onto her account and noticed that her posts were not getting as many upvotes as usual. She contacted Reddit support, which told her that her account had been marked as spam. Her fan subreddits, or subcommunities, were also removed, which Reddit explained was because she had been removed as a moderator — essentially, the head of the group who determines what content can and can’t be posted — due to restrictions on her account.
Though Vanniall got her account back, she still has no idea why it had been taken down in the first place. “These several day interruptions very quickly impact someone’s income — a week can feel like a month to waiting fans” looking to connect with their favorite creator, she says. Plus, “without a notification or any warning in advance, it means fans aren’t even left with a place to ask questions about where their stars or friends disappeared to.”
Vanniall is not the only adult content creator who has recently found themselves abruptly removed or had their Reddit account limited without warning. Sex workers have long been subject to deplatforming on most social media platforms, from Instagram to TikTok to Tumblr. Yet even though Reddit has a reputation for being relatively sex-positive compared to other Big Tech sites, sex workers are increasingly finding themselves restricted or even outright permanently banned on the platform, often without notice or any explanation from Reddit support. The site’s moderator-based system also provides little transparency and makes it difficult to know if content guidelines are being consistently applied.
“The fact that sex workers are reporting an uptick on Reddit is particularly concerning because it has been one of the last places where this type of content is allowed,” says Evan Greer, director of the digital rights organization Fight for the Future, citing Twitter as the only other example of a platform that still continues to allow NSFW content.
This is particularly surprising given that Reddit is a bastion of adult content, with various subreddits existing for virtually any kink, and creators have historically been free to post provided they abide by community guidelines and post in NSFW communities.
“They said that I broke Reddit’s content policy somehow. By posting pictures of feet on foot fetish-related communities,” adult content creator Sweet Toes 4 U tells Rolling Stone. She says she was permanently banned after Reddit sent her an email saying she had violated its content policy. “I personally didn’t even have a clue what I would have done, outside of creating a post on a message board on the internet to ‘lick my toes’ or ‘take a whiff,’” she says.
Content creator Tiny Toni also found herself banned without warning a few weeks ago after spending two years promoting her NSFW content on the platform without incident. She received a message saying she had “violated content guidelines,” but she had labeled her content NSFW and could not figure out exactly which guidelines she had violated. Toni says a number of her mutuals on social media have also found themselves banned on Reddit without explanation in recent weeks as well, with some even having their personal SFW accounts removed.
“I’m not entirely sure what to make of this but it’s scary,” she tells Rolling Stone.”It’s terrifying knowing people are having a form of their income ripped away with no explanation as to why.”
The issue has apparently gotten so bad that Ashley, a sex worker peer organizer who specializes in platform policy and working moderation cases, is partnering with Valerie Webber, PhD, a researcher in community health, sexuality, and sex work; to distribute a survey among sex workers to collect data on how many people are being banned and which communities are predominantly being affected. “When these policy changes happen, the platforms really rely on the hope that people are isolated and silenced in their experience through the process of deplatforming and not be able to note changes like this,” says Webber. “The reasoning here is to try and document trends across a larger group of people to get a picture of what is happening on the ground.”
Ashley says the loss for sex workers if Reddit officially issued a ban would be incalculable — not just to their incomes, but also from an organizing perspective. “It’s important to remember that what makes a site essential for sex workers is not that it simply allows sex work technically but that it allows sex workers to be a part of society and interact with other people,” she says.