When rightsholders spot these, they can send a DMCA takedown notice to Reddit, which then decides whether to remove it or not. The company reports this takedown activity in its biannual transparency report, of which the latest version came out last week.
More Removals, Fewer Takedown Notices
The latest transparency report covers the first half of 2026. During this period, Reddit received 66,221 copyright takedown notices, 4% fewer than in the second half of last year.
While there were (marginally) fewer notices, they targeted more posts, comments, and other content. In the first half of the year, rightsholders identified 465,803 pieces of content, an increase of 9% compared to the previous reporting period.
Reddit removed 258,855 of these items. That’s 55% of all reported content, up from 51% in the second half of 2025.
Looking at the longer trend, we see that the number of notices and flagged posts and comments remains on a lower level than in 2022 and 2023. This, despite the fact that Reddit’s active users continued to grow.
Copyright-Related Bans Plunge
Although Reddit removed more content than it did last year, it banned fewer repeat infringers. In the first half of 2026, Reddit banned 1,266 user accounts for repeat copyright violations, which is a 21% drop compared to the six months before.
This might in part be reversion to the mean as last year the number of user bans had nearly doubled.
The decline is even steeper for communities. Reddit banned 118 subreddits for repeat copyright violations, down 79% from 563 in the second half of 2025. In the first half of 2025, that number was still 709.
Reddit doesn’t explain this recent drop. However, zooming out reveals that these numbers are also far below 2022 levels. In the first half of that year alone, Reddit banned 3,859 user accounts and 1,543 subreddits for repeat infringement.
Counter-Notices and Fair Use
Meanwhile, Redditors are also pushing back against takedown notices more often. In the first half of this year, Reddit received 688 counter-notices, which is 60% more than in the previous period. Of these, 221 were valid, resulting in 599 pieces of content being restored. That’s a big jump compared to the second half of 2025, when just 34 of 430 counter-notices were valid.
Reddit also rejected 20,143 takedown notices outright, 30% of the total, leaving 109,706 pieces of content in place. The company explains that takedown notices can be invalid for various reasons, including when the targeted content makes fair use of a copyrighted work.
The report highlights a few notable requests. A religious organization, for example, tried to remove two posts that reproduced the text of an internal announcement, together with extensive commentary and criticism.
“We declined to remove the posts because they make fair use of the original work,” Reddit writes.
Another notice came from an individual in Australia, who objected to a Reddit user’s photo of their business card. The card had allegedly been handed to the sender’s partner in a public park.
“Because the business card (stating: “Gentleman of Leisure”) did not contain personally identifiable information or any creative elements, we declined to remove the content,” Reddit notes.
The next transparency report will be the first report to cover a full six months after the Supreme Court’s Cox ruling, which cleared the Internet provider of liability for not disconnecting repeat infringers.
Whether this will have an impact on the repeat infringer bans has yet to be seen.
