Yesterday, Imgur banned all NSFW content from its image hosting platform. Imgur has been the go-to site to save and send funny memes, gifs, and pictures of any kind. It has also been the preferred site to host images for Reddit. Reddit's large number of NSFW communities has also led to an increase in using Imgur to host those NSFW content. Reddit has not had the feature to post NSFW images on the desktop browser, and because of this, Redditors have turned to Imgur to host images. This dependency has created panic amongst Redditors ever since the announcement of the ban. Hence, this conversation is more about Reddit, than it is about Imgur.
Following the ban, Reddit has announced that they would now allow NSFW images to be uploaded to NSFW communities on the desktop browser.
With all these new developments, it sheds light on Reddit and the potential problems and dangers of the site. More specifically a conversation needs to be had on the morality of nudity, pornographic, and other NSFW media on not Reddit.
Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman, has been very open about why he thinks Reddit should allow such content. In an interview, he publicly stated that
"There are difficult decisions to make in this sphere, but we think they're worth making. As opposed to saying 'no sex at all,' for example".
"[exploitative pornography] is not the content that we want on Reddit."
"But I think there's another aspect that's empowering, and these are people sharing stories of themselves, pictures of themselves, and we are perfectly supportive of that.
It is evident from these statements that Reddit is not planning on banning porn and nudity on the site, but is that the right thing to do?
Pornography has undeniably negative effects on the human brain. Pornography is hyper-stimulating resulting in temporary but high spikes in dopamine resulting in an effect similar to addictive drugs.
It has also been linked to deterioration of the prefrontal cortex. For men, specifically, it can result in PMED (porn and masturbation-induced erectile dysfunction) and a lower sex drive. For everyone else, it sets false expectations and realities as to what sex is. This can also lead to the objectification of men and women and negatively impact the way that porn addicts interact with the opposite sex.
Is allowing sex and porn on the site worth the negative side effects that it has on the human brain is a decision that Reddit should reassess. All we know for certain is that with the Imgur ban, lots of porn has already been taken off the site. It’s up to Reddit whether they will take the rest down too.