Image: Wikipedia
Instead of banning the site outright, Russia and Reddit are taking the middle ground: restricting access to content the country finds unlawful. The site announced on its ChillingEffects subreddit that it would be complying with countries' local laws insofar as blocking geographic IPs for certain threads.For instance, the entire /r/WatchPeopleDie subreddit wouldn't be viewable on German IPs, and that two-year-old post on growing psilocybin mushrooms that got site in hot water with Russian officials would not be viewable by Russian viewers. Viewing those pages will return a 403 message stating: "This content is not available in your country.""We want to ensure our services are available to users everywhere, but if we receive a valid request from an authorized entity, we reserve the right to restrict content in a particular country," the post stated. "We will work to find ways to make this process more transparent and streamlined as Reddit continues to grow globally."The policy follows a rash of decisions to make the site more palatable for the average user. Some users have said that the changes fly in the face of the site's original ethos of being a bastion of free speech. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman denies allegations that the changes were made for advertorial reasons.The site already removes illegal content—the rules state that that includes, but isn't limited to, copyrighted material and illegal sexual content. But the vague language lends itself to expansion: there's no reason Reddit couldn't comply with entire countries on censoring unlawful posts.