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Highlights:
- Reddit’s COVID crackdown revisited: Five years after Reddit quarantined 54 communities and banned r/NoNewNormal over alleged COVID-19 misinformation, new research and expanding drug advertising are renewing questions about who controls health discussion on the platform.
- No single rulebook: Enforcement of Reddit community rules relies on site-wide rules, volunteer moderators with their own stricter standards, automated tools and user voting — so a claim allowed in one forum may be removed in another.
- Critics allege bias: Some users, including a researcher banned in 2023 for posting a COVID-19 lab-leak theory, say aggressive moderation stifled legitimate debate.
- Drugmakers pay to reach Reddit users: Some drugmakers are reaching patients through targeted ads on Reddit. On Sept. 2, the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority ruled a paid Reddit ad for weight-loss service SheMed violated advertising rules; Reddit was not accused of wrongdoing.
Five years after Reddit restricted communities accused of spreading COVID-19 misinformation, new research and growing pharmaceutical advertising are renewing questions about who controls medical discussions on the platform.
A recent preprint examining more than 133,000 health-related Reddit posts identified 1,730 cancer-related posts that two artificial intelligence (AI) models agreed contained misinformation.
Nearly half of the posts combined information-seeking with information-sharing, and questions were more common than direct endorsements of false claims.
Unproven or alternative treatments were the most common misinformation topic. However, the authors cautioned that their conservative classification system wasn’t designed to estimate the overall prevalence of misinformation.
“Overly aggressive moderation may suppress legitimate health concerns, while insufficient moderation may allow misleading narratives to normalize,” the researchers wrote.
The study hasn’t undergone peer review. However, the findings highlight the difficulty of regulating medical speech on Reddit — which attracts 130.3 million users daily — a platform where company policies, automated systems and volunteer moderators determine what users may discuss.
A spokesperson for the company said in a statement to The Defender:
“Reddit is a place that’s dedicated to open and authentic conversation, where people can ask questions and share personal experiences about whatever is on their mind, including health matters. We welcome a range of perspectives and good-faith debate, as long as conversations follow our site rules.”
Reddit quarantined 54 communities over ‘COVID misinformation’
In August 2021, moderators of several large Reddit communities demanded the platform remove forums they accused of spreading COVID-19 misinformation.
In response, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman wrote, “Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy,” describing the platform as a place for “open and authentic discussion and debate.”
Days later, moderators of 135 communities made their forums private — after which Reddit quarantined 54 communities.
The platform also banned r/NoNewNormal, a large forum that challenged masking, vaccination and other pandemic policies. According to Forbes, the company said it banned r/NoNewNormal for repeatedly interfering with other communities, not simply for challenging prevailing medical guidance.
Joseph Reagle, Ph.D., an associate professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University, told The Defender that Reddit banned the group for “rules related to misbehavior,” not misinformation.
But he said the line between factual and scientific information on Reddit is murky.
“There is no discussion or rubric for distinguishing between reputable information and misinformation,” Reagle said. “When it comes to specific subreddits, you are dealing with whatever policies its specific moderators have come up with.”
In an October 2021 letter, three Democratic senators urged Reddit to act against posts promoting ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, calling the claims “a serious threat to public health.”
“It is highly likely Reddit was subjected to the same government pressures as Twitter and Facebook, but without discovery in court, brave whistleblowers, FOIAs [Freedom of Information Act requests] or other evidence to prove that claim, it remains speculation,” writer Margaret Anna Alice told The Defender.
Medical forums set their own rules — do they suppress legitimate debate?
Reddit’s safety teams enforce the companywide Reddit Rules. But volunteer moderators set additional standards for individual communities — which means a vaccine claim permitted in one forum may be removed in another.
Reddit says its system combines company safety teams, community moderators, automated tools and user voting. Misleading or low-quality material may become less visible when users downvote it.
Reddit’s r/AskDocs rules prohibit COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation, pseudoscientific treatments, dangerous advice and AI-generated answers. The forum limits top-level responses to verified professionals.
A University of Michigan study found that Reddit moderators consider factual accuracy, a poster’s apparent intent and potential harm when deciding what to remove. Nearly half of those interviewed preferred signals from users or other moderators over professional fact-checkers, while about a quarter distrusted fact-checking organizations.
Stevie Chancellor, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, told The Defender that Reddit monitoring of topics is often “done locally by volunteer content moderators.”
“They are allowed to establish rules for their subreddits that go beyond what Reddit corporate requires for the whole site,” Chancellor said. “So one community could require all posts are personal experiences, and another could completely disallow personal experiences and only allow peer-reviewed research to be posted.”
This type of site monitoring was heightened during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Jennifer Cole, Ph.D., a biological anthropologist who moderated r/Coronavirus during the pandemic, said moderators initially tried to correct users rather than remove them.
“If their information is wrong, we explain why it’s wrong,” Cole told Science News in 2021. She said users could still be banned if they repeatedly returned and appeared to push a narrative.
Patrick Doherty, a biotech research scientist who also moderated the community, said refuting a short false claim could require several sources and a lengthy scientific explanation.
“Misinformation is really hard to combat,” Doherty said. “Someone can post two sentences of made-up stuff” in seconds, while a credible response takes considerably longer.
Some users say moderation suppresses legitimate debate. Curtis Matthew Sharkey, Ph.D., told The Defender he was permanently banned in 2023 after posting that COVID-19 likely originated from a lab leak.
“The whole site became unusable — due to aggressive moderation — over the pandemic years,” Sharkey said. “I used to love Reddit, and these days I wouldn’t read that site if you paid me.”
Journalist Joshua Walkos also accused Reddit of political bias.
“I generally think Reddit is censorious when it comes to anything vaccine- or medical freedom-related,” Walkos told The Defender. “It’s clearly a place that is run by leftists and used to push leftist politics, especially when it comes to vaccines, transgenderism and climate change.”
The conflicting findings illustrate a central problem: Reddit is not a single conversation. Its communities have different audiences, rules and political cultures, making enforcement around medical free speech difficult — if not nearly impossible — to maintain.
Drugmakers find an audience on Reddit
Questions about possible commercial influence have grown as pharmaceutical companies increasingly use Reddit to communicate with patients. The platform lets advertisers target users by keyword and place advertisements within discussion threads.
According to EMARKETER, Novo Nordisk promoted an “Ask Me Anything” discussion featuring a patient taking the weight-loss drug Wegovy. Eli Lilly held a Reddit discussion about Zepbound that addressed cost, insurance coverage and dosing. And Gilead used an unbranded Reddit account to promote an HIV prevention campaign.
Reddit’s Moderator Code of Conduct prohibits moderators from accepting money, products, services or favors for enforcement actions.
Its moderator code does not, however, eliminate the possibility that users may mistake advertising, corporate outreach or paid testimonials for independent discussion.
Alice said pharmaceutical employees or contractors posing as ordinary users to promote products could violate federal disclosure rules. A 2016 study found that undisclosed pharmaceutical affiliations can influence how consumers evaluate and share drug information.
Reddit has not publicly disclosed whether pharmaceutical companies, medical associations, government agencies or industry-funded groups help develop standards used to evaluate vaccine content.
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Reddit violated advertising rules, UK regulators allege
Americans increasingly are turning to social media for medical guidance. A KFF poll conducted in May found that 31% of adults used social media at least monthly for health information or advice, often to hear from people with similar conditions.
In September 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced enforcement action against deceptive direct-to-consumer drug advertising, including promotions involving influencers and patient testimonials.
The agency targeted claims that overstated benefits, omitted safety information or failed to disclose financial relationships, according to ProPharma Group.
The FDA more recently sent warning letters to 30 telehealth companies on March 3 over allegedly false or misleading claims about compounded GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. The agency said some companies improperly suggested their products were equivalent to FDA-approved drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound.
Regulators have acted directly against drug-related advertising on Reddit. On Sept. 2 the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority ruled that a paid Reddit advertisement for the weight-loss service SheMed violated advertising rules.
The ad directed users to a website displaying Wegovy and Mounjaro injection pens. The ruling did not involve the FDA or accuse Reddit of wrongdoing, but it showed that pharmaceutical advertising on the platform is drawing regulatory scrutiny.
Reddit’s history presents a tension: The company restricts some vaccine claims as harmful misinformation while selling drugmakers access to audiences discussing health conditions and treatments.
No public evidence reviewed for this story establishes that a pharmaceutical company directed Reddit to suppress vaccine criticism. But decentralized moderation, government pressure, automated enforcement and expanding drug advertising leave a question unresolved: Who decides which medical discussions are legitimate debate, dangerous misinformation or marketing?
“While individual Reddit communities are legally permitted to discriminate, we can use the power of the press to shame companies that engage in such vile practices,” Alice said.
“Throughout history, boycotting has served as the people’s weapon of defense against abhorrent practices that are constitutionally protected. The free market is our court of justice, and people can cast their verdict by taking their presence elsewhere — and this is precisely as it should be.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Maine Doctor’s Lawsuit Against State Medical Board Can Go Forward, Judge Rules
- Experts Warn Lab Leaks ‘Surprisingly Common’ After NIH Confirms Possible Exposure to Deadly Virus at Montana Lab
- Maker of Ozempic, Wegovy Failed to Report Strokes, Suicidal Ideation and Deaths
- Facebook Dumps ‘Fact-checkers’ One Day After CHD Asks Supreme Court to Hear Censorship Case Against Meta
- FBI Contractor Created Fake Online IDs to Join Chatrooms Run by Groups Organizing Against Vaccine Mandates
- ‘Crisis of Trust’: Journalist Unravels Government’s Secret Campaign to Censor Critics on Social Media
- Three Justices Dissented in Landmark Censorship Case — Here’s What They Said and Why It Matters
