In its efforts to eliminate illegal activity taking place on the site, Reddit has banned several subreddits dedicated to illegal activities.
This includes the biggest darknet subreddit R/DarkNetMarkets and other communities that discuss products and services in popular darknet markets. These are the places where users exchange information about products and services on the dark web and also on the surface web.
As a result, users attempting to access the community will simply be met with a message stating that the subreddit has been banned due to a violation of Reddit’s community standards.
Before the ban, the subreddit has had 160,000 readers. That makes it one of the most popular subreddit on Reddit. But since it promotes illegal activities, and also due to the fact that the users were not shy about the fact that they made use of Silk Road and other dark web black markets to buy drugs, guns, and other illegal goods, the subreddit was a controversial part of the wider Reddit community.
By giving the ban hammer to the subreddit and other similar communities on its site, Reddit crackdown on illegal activities is in line with Reddit's updated community guidelines that prohibit users from using the site to "solicit or facilitate any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services."
Among other things, this includes drugs, guns, and prostitution.
"Moving forward, we are prohibiting transactions that are either illicit or strictly controlled," said Reddit on its statement. "Communities focused on such transactions and users who attempt to conduct them will be banned from the site."
Reddit's DarkNetMarkets and other related communities have become a notorious place, attracting even the law enforcement that would often browse the community in hopes of gathering evidence of crimes. For example, back in 2015, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security went so far as to subpoena Reddit for information regarding some of the community’s members.
These subreddits aren't anything new. Known as "the front page of the internet", Reddit is known as one of the dark places on the surface web, with many information surrounding the deeper parts of the web, as well as some gateways to the deep web.
But Reddit’s recent crackdown is indeed something else, as it is new.
It is likely that Reddit was motivated by concerns that the government may hold its website accountable for the actions of their community members. This is similar to Craigslist in the past when it shut down its Personals section, one part of the site sometimes used to facilitate prostitution.