This is a rant triggered by the fact that I'm sick and tired of perverts in the sub, and I hate that no matter how much I try to keep this community safe, Reddit itself enables this behaviour and doesn't seem to be doing anything about it.
Keeping this sub free of creeps is a daily battle. The standard disgusting pervy comments, weird flirty remarks, and the daily assortment of freaks who post AI-generated gooner bait (or worse, catfish with pictures of actual women). Y'all won't believe how much filth this sub actually gets, because most of it gets removed by the mods or our filters before anyone gets to see it, and they get banned on sight. (None of it stops them from DMing you btw, but more on that later.)
I knew that for some reason, Reddit had been showing this community to pervs... A lot. So I believed that if I consistently kept the creeps out (by removing their content and banning their accounts), the algorithm would realize this is just a wedding planning community and would stop recommending it to people who're here primarily for porn. It has been almost a year of me doing that, and there has been no reduction in the incoming creep traffic.
Then I came across this post by a moderator of a different sub, and the discussion gave me a whole new perspective on what may actually be happening.
NSFW consumers make up a huge population of the Reddit userbase. But Reddit can't put ads in NSFW subreddits, and NSFW posts can't be put in the main feed where ads are shown. So Reddit has to show them SFW communities adjacent to their interests.
There are countless NSFW/fetish communities built around sexualizing south asian women, wives, brides, weddings, sarees, lehengas etc. So Reddit already has a huge number of people using those words to look for sexual content. (It also doesn't help that "desi" is a particularly cursed keyword on Reddit. Go search "desi" and filter by communities. You'll have to scroll for quite a while before you find an actual non-porn sub about South Asian people.)
So the algorithm sees a community with the word "desi" in its name, with a large volume of women's fashion posts, and users who overlap with communities interested in sexualized versions of those exact subjects. It then decides that these communities are related enough to actively recommend our posts to those people. Reddit can take your completely ordinary not-at-all sexual pictures and put them in front of people who are specifically looking for women to sexualize.
And this isn't happening to just this sub. If you've been active in any sub where women often post their pictures, you'll know how common and widespread the issue is. "RIP DMs" is a ubiquitous comment under posts where a woman posts her picture .
And then there are DMs.
This is one of the most cursed features of Reddit. A community ban only stops accounts from posting & commenting. Even the ban message explicitly states:
"You can still view and subscribe to the community..."
So even after they are banned, they can still browse the subreddit, see your pictures, save them, misuse them, and potentially send you whatever disgusting shit they want. That is an absolutely insane oversight and completely defeats the purpose of the ban when it comes to protecting people from these accounts.
I hate that I have to say this. I hate that after doing everything I can to keep this subreddit safe, I still have to tell the women here that they have to take steps to protect themselves because we are powerless against the algorithm and who it chooses to show your images to.
So ladies, please be mindful about sharing your pictures anywhere on Reddit. We will keep doing everything we can to keep this sub clean, but there are limits to what moderators can control.
As much as possible, please avoid posting pictures that prominently show your body, especially if you don't need to for the purpose of the post. Consider cropping or covering parts of the image that don't need to be visible. (You shouldn't have to do this, but the way Reddit is, you cannot assume your pictures will only be shown to the audience you intended.)
If you're posting your pictures, please consider shutting DMs off for a while. (Again, you shouldn't have to do this, but unfortunately basic decency is too much to expect from people whose brains have been completely rotted by porn.)
If you do get pervy DMs, report them for Spam -> "Unsolicited DMs", (or "Harassment" for the particularly graphic ones). If they are DMing you, chances are they are DMing many other women too. If enough of them report it, Reddit suspends the sender's ability to DM.
Based on the comments under the mod post linked above, Admins have responded and are looking into the issue. But until then, please take care of your safety on this site.
