Why Reddit Declined to Remove 173,280 Pieces of Content

Reddit, like any other large site that hosts content uploaded by users, received a massive number of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices. 

In fact, according to their most recent transparency report, that includes some 176,959 notices covering some 738,010 pieces of content in just the first six months of 2022. According to Reddit, these notices resulted in some 564,730 pieces of content being removed, resulting in a “content actionability rate” of 76.5%.

While that rate is typical among hosts of its type, that still leaves some 173,280 pieces of content that were reported as copyright infringing but were not removed. 

Here, Reddit went the next step and offered a breakout of those works, including giving reasons for why no removal took place. For new DMCA filers, this information could be a boon to help spot common pitfalls. 

To that end, let’s take a look at the reasons Reddit easy that they rejected copyright notices, and understand how filers could avoid similar issues in the future.

Problems with the Notice

When looking at the reasons Reddit gave for declining to remove notices, one reason stands out: The content was already removed.

Of the 173,280 works not removed, some 130,436 were not removed because they were already removed. That represents over 75% of all rejections. 

This can happen easily on Reddit. Content on the site is posted on Subreddits, which are usually managed by moderators. Those moderators are not official Reddit employees, but volunteers heading that particular community.

As such, if something infringing is uploaded, it’s entirely possible that it would be deleted by a moderator before a DMCA notice could be acted on. In short, it’s possible for a rightsholder to spot the infringement, file a DMCA notice with Reddit and, while the notice is being investigated, the content be removed.

When you subtract the situations where the work was removed, that leaves just 42,844 works where the content in question was online at the time the notice was investigated and was still not removed.

When looking at that subset, another 12,495 cases were rejected because the URL failed to identify a specific piece of content. 

Though Reddit isn’t clear, it’s likely because a link pointed to a Subreddit when only one post was at issue or pointed to a post when it was a specific comment in that thread.

This is an easy mistake to make, especially for new filers. It’s important to test links to make sure that they go to the specific URL where the alleged infringement is.

In addition to that, another 1,688 were rejected because the URL didn’t point to Reddit, meaning that it should have been sent to another site, and another 4,188 simply identified as “other.”

This leaves another 24,473 works that were not removed due to legal issues with the notice itself. 

Copyright Reasons

Of the remaining works that remained online, the vast majority were rejected for a simple reason: The issue wasn’t a copyright one.

According to Reddit, the most common issue is that people were using the copyright process to target works that were not infringing copyright. These represent cases of privacy and harassment, most notably. While Reddit has policies to address these issues, the copyright system is not the correct tool.

This leaves another 1,131 works where other legal issues came into play. In some 610 cases, Reddit declined to remove the work due to, what they claim, is fair use. In another 521, there was suspicion of fraud. 

Obviously, both of these things difficult to pin down. Reasonable people can and do disagree about what is and is not fair use. Likewise, suspicion of fraud does not mean that there was fraud, just that there was enough concern that Reddit declined to act on the notice.

However, these are both ultimately edge cases and make up just 0.5% of all the rejections and less than 0.2% of all pieces of content in total.

By far, the vast majority of rejections were from either honest mistakes or from works being removed first by another means. This includes people using the copyright system for non-copyright issues, failing to clearly identify the work at issue and filing against non-Reddit content.

Even if we assume that all the fair use cases and suspected fraud cases were filed in bad faith, which they almost certainly were not, that makes up just a small fraction of a percent of all notices Reddit sees.

Bottom Line

For DMCA filers, the message is simple: Make sure that your notices are complete, are dealing with copyright issues and that the content was not removed by other means.

Reddit, in my personal experience, has always been cooperative when removing infringing material and, even though nearly 25% of their notices are rejected, that number is not out of line, especially considering that many filing with Reddit may have limited experience.

That said, the numbers don’t paint a picture of widespread fraud or other attempts to outright abuse the DMCA. The vast majority of notices that are rejected are likely due to an accident or honest mistake that can be corrected or refiled a different way.

There are other interesting details from Reddit’s numbers. For one, this represents a mammoth jump from last year, where only 665,898 were reported in the whole of 2021. Reddit gave no reason for this sharp increase.

Also, Reddit mentioned that it received a total of 567 counternotices during that time. However, only 228 of those notices were found to be valid, resulting in the restoration of just 1,250 pieces of content. Reddit did not say why so many counternotices were rejected.

Clearly, counternotices are still extremely rare and are much more likely to be flawed than takedown notices. 

All in all, the Reddit transparency report paints a picture of a DMCA system that has hiccups and flaws, but is largely working as intended. While filers still need to be careful to ensure their notices are proper and complete, it’s clear that Reddit is complying while still making sure that the relatively rare issues are caught whenever possible.