A spokesperson for Reddit, a popular social media website focused on sharing content, posted last Thursday on r/ChillingEffects, an announcement from the company saying that it had recently implemented two localized bans. Users of Reddit located in Russia will no longer have access to a post in r/rudrugs section. In Germany, users are banned for accessing the controversial community r/WatchPeopleDie.
In Russia, the ban relates to a post on how to grow psilocybin mushrooms also named magic mushrooms for the psychoactive drug extracted from them. The Russian government threatened to ban Reddit and even did that temporarily earlier last week over the post claimed to violate local laws. However, since then the post has been unbanned.
According to Reddit, The German ban of r/WatchPeopleDie was made in order to preserve its existence in those regions. Germany threatened a site-wide ban if the company would not take action.
This is the first time when Reddit has announced localized censorship. Reddit is a company registered in the United States, owned by Conde Nast's parent Advance Publications, and as an American company, it has no legal obligation to comply with such requests from foreign governments. However, if the company would have been failing to do so it could result in having its entire site being banned in certain countries. Other American tech companies including Google and Twitter also comply with localized removal requests considered valid.
What is strange in the case of the Russian mushroom post is the fact that it isn't even new since it was made in April 2013, more than two years ago. It wasn't even a popular post and it managed to receive just 1 upvote. At the time the Russian government has made its request to take down the post, it was already archived due to age. For this reason, it is unclear as to why it was only now that such has attracted the attention of Russian authorities.
The Russian government media watchdog responsible for the ban is Roskomnadzor (RKN). It is not the first time when Russia has been accused of internet censorship in the past. Russian authorities have banned websites on topics ranging from opposition activists to bitcoin. Russian regulations also require registration with authorities of blogs above a certain size.
