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Reddit temporarily bans links to The Atlantic, Phys.org, Businessweek, and others after spamming violations

Reddit temporarily bans links to The Atlantic, Phys.org, Businessweek, and others after spamming violations

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Today Reddit debuted a new subreddit called r/BannedDomains that currently lists The Atlantic, Phys.org, Businessweek, and ScienceDaily among others

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Reddit Bans 2
Reddit Bans 2

Last week Reddit announced that it would begin banning links from certain domains for misuse of the service, and today debuted a new subreddit called r/BannedDomains that currently lists The Atlantic, Phys.org, Businessweek, and ScienceDaily among others. According to Reddit general manager Erik Martin, the bans will be temporary, serving as a warning for terms of service violations.

The bans are being doled out to sites deemed "spammy, malicious, or involved in cheating shenanigans" and users that submit a link to any of the listed sites receive an error explaining why the domain was banned. All but one of the sites currently listed return the message "this domain has been banned for spamming and/or cheating." Although spamming is considered a "gray area" in the site's FAQ, Reddit says accounts that primarily use the service to promote a particular publication without active participation in discussion are guilty of spam.

Forbes reached out to The Atlantic and received this response from a spokesperson:

Reddit contacted us earlier this year with concerns that a member of our staff was submitting Atlantic stories in violation of Reddit’s guidelines for content promotion. We took steps to address the problem. Reddit informed us Tuesday that some irregularities have recurred and that, as a result, the site is temporarily banning submissions with The Atlantic’s domain. We take this issue very seriously and are looking into it further.

We at The Atlantic remain big fans of Reddit and the kind of Internet it represents.