SAN FRANCISCO — Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stated during an interview with newsmagazine Axios HBO that his platform is “perfectly supportive” of pornographic content, as long as there’s no involuntary sexualization or sexualization of minors.
In a video posted last week, Huffman answered a direct question posed by Axios HBO's Chief Technology Correspondent Ina Fried about Reddit’s approach to adult content.
“So, sex is universal,” Huffman began. “And like many topics on Reddit, sex is one of those topics that’s not often well-served online or offline.”
“I think with pornography, you can look at it as exploitative, and indeed much of it is, and that’s not the content that we want on Reddit,” he qualified. “But there’s another aspect that’s empowering. And these are people sharing stories of themselves, pictures of themselves and we are perfectly supportive of that.”
Huffman noted that the company wants “people to be safe.”
“We have rules on Reddit,” he added. “No involuntary sexualization, and if anybody makes those sort of reports to us, we take them very seriously. Obviously, no sexualization of minors — it’s against our rules and the law.”
Clearly differentiating his company from Facebook (which has a longstanding anti-sex stance, even among consenting adults) and Twitter (which tolerates porn although it states it is against their terms of service), Huffman embraced his sex-positive position that “there are difficult decisions to make in this sphere, but we think they are worth making, as opposed to saying ‘no sex at all,’ for example.”
To watch the exchange, visit Axios HBO.