Recently our moderation team has decided to move to a photo verification system. It wasn't a step we really wanted to have to take but with the way Reddit's automated DMCA strike system exists currently we're kind of over a barrel and it comes down to whether we want to impose a photo verification system or if we want the sub to get banned and cease existing.
I created a thread over on /r/ModSupport that talks about the issue we and other NSFW subs are currently facing.
I'll try to boil it down as much as I can... Essentially there's an automated system that sends out DMCA strikes against a subreddit. Currently these can be years old posts, and apparently even includes removed and spammed posts which is outright absurd. Hopefully we can at the very least get Reddit to change that otherwise there's literally nothing any NSFW sub can do that didn't start out restricted with photo verification only. After a certain threshold of strikes the sub gets banned. It's all automated, and in most cases there's not a damn thing you can do. They won't even let you or anyone else reclaim it. Just SOL.
Last year over 2400 NSFW subs were banned as as result. Last month many subs with hundreds of thousands, even millions of followers were banned. To name just a few:
Even /r/ass with 1.6 million followers was banned this week. Though they managed to get unbanned. For how long, who knows. But they're the exception rather than the rule. They got extremely lucky.
Though our sub hasn't gotten very many strikes as of yet, through being in contact with other NSFW sub moderators or owners it's gotten to the point that we're extremely concerned and feel that we have to take steps to ensure the continued existence of our sub.
The first thing we've done is changed the sub's posting permissions to restricted which means only approved users can submit content to the sub.
The next thing we're doing is going through the past 2 years of the sub's content (which is as much as we can actually access as humans) and flairing the users and posts that we reasonably believe were OC from that actual Reddit user. This part may take a couple weeks, maybe a month.
Once that part is finished we'll be running a script to nuke literally everything else. That means everything posted over 2 years ago will be removed. Everything we didn't flair as a self-post will be removed. We're going this far in the hopes that Reddit will change their DMCA system and not continue to strike subs for removed content as there's literally nothing else we could possibly do after doing our utmost due diligence to try to remove it. And if you're wondering... a bot script is necessary to nuke the rest as this sub has been around for 8 years yet we as humans are only able to see 2 years. A script however would be able to access the entire history using Reddit's API. It's really unfortunate but we don't have much choice.
So in the coming weeks or month if you see a lot of posts vanish that's what happened to them and why.
As for how to post now, you should be able to still comment as usual. But if you want to submit content then it'll need to be your own content. You can find a link on our sidebar for how to send in a verification.
Even if you're a user flaired as a self poster you'll need to submit a verification to actually get approved to post.
It's not ideal. It's not what we wanted. But weighing between doing this or potentially seeing a sub we've put so much work into for so many years possibly ceasing to exist... we'd rather do this than see that happen.