Got a warning from Reddit for linking to a PDF of public court records last Thursday

I posted a case file from a local Texas court website (it's publicly available, you know) in a thread about police transparency. The mods hit me with a 3-day ban for "personal information" even though the document was already online. How are we supposed to share verified evidence when the platforms treat official records like a threat?

3 comments

3 Comments

laura_chen415d ago

I started screenshotting the docket page instead of linking the PDF and never got flagged again.

alicecraig4d ago

Solidarity from me, 100%. That's absolute bullshit. Reddit mods are trigger happy with that rule but they never actually read the content. They just see a PDF and nuke it without thinking. Public court records are public. Period. Screenshotting is a bandaid fix but you shouldn't have to hide what you're sharing like it's contraband. It kills the whole point of posting evidence when you have to jump through hoops just to keep it up. I'd be pissed too if I got banned for doing exactly what the system is supposed to let us do.

blake7924d ago

The mods over at r/law are the worst about this. I got a 30 day ban for posting a direct link to a federal docket entry last year, and when I appealed they said it violated "personal information" rules even though the defendant's name was already in the news. Screenshotting the actual text from the docket worked for me too, but I also started submitting the same PDF through archive.org first and then linking that instead. It is extra work but the archive links consistently stay up while direct court PDFs get removed.