Reddit shuts down Deepfakes subreddit

When it comes to the nonconsensual stitching of women's faces into porn videos, it turns out Reddit has finally had enough.

On Feb. 7, the company banned the subreddit known as r/deepfakes. The community, which had gathered over 80,000 subscribers in its short existence, promoted a form of face-swap technology that allowed people to realistically superimpose one face over another in a video clip, prompting many to depict celebrity women in hardcore pornography they hadn't consented to.

SEE ALSO: A guide to 'deepfakes,' the internet's latest moral crisis

The technology has some scary implications, and allowing a community to thrive around it was apparently just one step too far for Reddit. Though the company did not respond to requests for comment from Mashable or Motherboard in the past two weeks, a message posted to the deepfakes page makes its intentions clear.

"This community has been banned," the subreddit page now reads. "This subreddit was banned due to a violation of our content policy, specifically our policy against involuntary pornography."

The r/deepfakes page. Credit: reddit

Reddit was initially slow to act — letting Pornhub seize the moral high ground and declare it would ban deepfakes from its platform while Reddit appeared to twiddle its thumbs. Twitter also beat Reddit to the punch, banning deepfake videos on Tuesday.

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In a statement issued today, Reddit clarified that it had updated its site-wide rules against posting involuntary pornography.

"Reddit prohibits the dissemination of images or video depicting any person in a state of nudity or engaged in any act of sexual conduct apparently created or posted without their permission, including depictions that have been faked," read the new rules in part.

In the end, it seems Reddit finally thought better of allowing non-consensual porn on its platform — at least the stuff that's highly publicized, anyway.

H/T Motherboard

This post has been updated to include Reddit's new rules on involuntary pornography.

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