Photo Credit: Brett Jordan
Reddit banned over 700 subreddits for repeated copyright infringement in the first half of 2025—a 117% increase from the company’s last report.
Reddit’s latest transparency report highlights the sheer number of subreddits banned in the first half of the year for repeat copyright violations. That number is surprisingly more than double what the company reported in the same period last year, with 709 subreddits banned, alongside 837 user accounts banned over copyright violations.
In the first half of 2025, Reddit received 58,920 copyright takedown notices—a 5% increase over the same period last year. However, despite receiving more takedown notices, the platform actually removed less content overall due to notices containing fewer links. Reddit removed 220,233 pieces of content in the first half of the year, down 31% from the same period last year.
Meanwhile, as subreddit bans have increased, bans against individual users for repeat copyright infringement grew at a slower rate. Reddit banned 837 user accounts in the first half of the year, up from 757 in the first half of 2024.
One of the most visited websites on the internet, Reddit celebrated its 20th anniversary over the summer. What started as a hobby site run by two college roommates has grown into a billion-dollar company—but with great power comes great responsibility.
Reddit’s meteoric rise in popularity over the past two decades has also brought with it a slew of bad actors. Copyright infringement was a relatively minor issue on the platform ten years ago; the company’s first transparency report noted 176 takedown requests over an entire year. And most of those notices did not lead to removals, with Reddit explaining that the infringing content was usually hosted on an external site.
This is because, at the time, Reddit’s copyright policy viewed that links did not “generally infringe copyright.” But the company’s current policy states very clearly that links can indeed trigger copyright violations.
That said, Reddit’s reasons for declining to remove some content this year reveal an odd trend: the number of instances in which the company declined to remove content for fair use reasons increased by over 1000%. Reddit is apparently devoting more attention to defending user-generated commentary and critique.
But fair use remains a relatively rare reason to decline a takedown request—usually when Reddit takes no action, it’s because the content was either already removed, or no infringement was found.
