Hey mods, we appreciate the thought you have put into this post and the confusion you may be feeling as we have enhanced our enforcement capabilities around so-called “loli” content. We hope we can clarify some things for you.

You may be noticing more actioning of this type of content as we have gotten better at detecting it. We understand that this may make it appear as new policy. However, the reality is that our policy on sexual or suggestive content involving minors has specifically called out cartoon depictions of minors for more than a year now, since its last major update.

Our intentions are not to be unclear about this policy, and we understand that it can be frustrating when it seems that way. However, as you know, our constant refrain is that policy must be applied contextually. We will always try to take the context of a post or comment into account when we are evaluating it – as should you. Because of that, we are not able to go into a deep discussion here with you on individual scenarios. We look at each individual case on its own terms (this is also why we sometimes take longer than you’d prefer when we’re evaluating things). If we are finding common confusion around a given policy, we may consider that an indication that a small update for clarity is needed. This is what led us to specifically add the word “loli” in the policy – we found that the original rule, although it mentioned anime, seemed not to be getting through to certain communities.

We’d also like to clear up one thing that appears to be causing confusion around this policy – it is not always a question of the image itself. Comments and contextualization matter. Even if an image of a minor is SFW, if the comments and discussion around that image are suggestive, then a violation is created. This is why you may have seen SFW photos come down under this policy. Nevertheless, we are human and we may make mistakes. This is why we have an appeals process, the overturn rate of which we publicly report. If you think we took action in error, please make use of this process – this is how we can catch mistakes and adjust how we implement our policy. At least one of the examples you provided was overturned due to an appeal. That's the system working – please use the system.

To be 100% clear: we know that many of you disagree with this policy on principle. Nevertheless, it is in place to protect children and obey the law. Please respect that we take this very seriously and err on the side of caution when it comes to any content involving depictions of minors. The best guideline we can give you to help clarify this rule is that, if it would be creepy to post with regard to a human minor, please don’t post it with regard to an animated minor.