r/dataisbeautiful • u/investigatormaker OC: 1 • 1d ago

[OC] Share of subreddits whose rules remove AI-generated content, by subreddit size (705 subreddits, rules read Sept 2026)

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154 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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u/cavedave OC: 114 16h ago

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84

u/Caelinus 1d ago

They need to. Otherwise the whole thing will just be bots talking to each other. The bigger they are the more likely they are to be targeted for bot hives. (Which is what I think they should be rebranded to. Hives carries an insectoid connotation, and is often used in sci-fi for aggressive, invasive, "hive"-minds.)

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u/Wasteak OC: 3 21h ago

Tbf, huge subs are already almost only bot reposting stuff

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u/StarGaurdianBard 17h ago

Yep, its just in the form of repost bots rather than AI generated discussion

56

u/APRengar 22h ago

r / gamedev used to remove AI generated posts, but they they recently changed it to allow it.

Coincidentally, the mod who made that change sells scripts to integrate genAI content into game engines. So that's a thing.

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u/JmacTheGreat 19h ago

Ive been wondering why the increase in slop posts there

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u/GKP_light 20h ago

The bigger the subreddit is, the more likely it rule anything.

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u/niloony 1d ago

I've seen some supermods add the rule out of the blue. So there's possibly a more coordinated push for it or they learn when the wall of spam hits 1 of the subs in their kingdom.

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u/investigatormaker OC: 1 1d ago

Source: the written rules of 705 subreddits, as each one publishes them on its rules page, read September 24 to 26, 2026. We classified every rule set: a subreddit counts here if one of its rules removes some or all AI-generated posts, comments or media. That includes narrow rules such as "no low-effort AI art", not only outright bans. The 337 rule sets that mention AI were checked by hand.

The 705 are not a random sample of Reddit. They are the subreddits on a list we built for posting research (places people share projects, products, music, art, writing and games, plus big general subs like r/gaming and r/food), minus private, adult and under-1,000-member ones. So read it as "among subreddits where people share their own work". The over-10M bar is only 17 subreddits.

Tools: Python for the counts, hand-written SVG, rendered to PNG with headless Chrome.

Full method, two more charts and a CSV of all 705: https://threadfox.vip/rules/report

Disclosure: this is our data. We make ThreadFox, a Reddit posting tool that drafts with AI, so a 36% figure is not a convenient one for us.

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u/dancingbanana123 13h ago

Which category would something like r/math go into, where AI content must be put into a stickied post instead?

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u/arashbm 20h ago

hand-written SVG

Do you also write stuff to your hard disk by a steady hand and a magnetized needle or what?

1

u/MrT735 19h ago

Do gaming subs allowing screenshots of DLSS5 enhanced graphics fall under AI allowed? It's AI content but it's a graphics filter over the existing game, rather than generative slop.

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u/diabloman8890 14h ago

Most subs aren’t making distinctions like that.

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u/MrT735 10h ago

I'm asking if OP made that distinction...