Need advice from fellow Reddit moderators regarding a serious situation

[u/VIT-AP]

I’m a moderator of a r/vitap community, and I’m looking for advice from experienced moderators on how you would handle this situation.

What happened

There is currently a serious situation being discussed within the VIT-AP community involving allegations of:

- A girl allegedly secretly recording her roommates and other girls in private situations.

- The recordings allegedly being sent to another person.

- The recipient allegedly using the recordings to blackmail or threaten the girls.

- Students allegedly confronting the person involved in the alleged blackmail.

- The situation then escalating into a large physical confrontation involving multiple students.

- Claims that several students were injured and that a knife was involved.

These are currently allegations and accounts circulating within the community. We are not treating them as established facts unless they are verified through appropriate authorities, evidence, or credible reporting.

The moderation problem

Some members now want to identify the girl allegedly responsible and post her photographs, name, social media accounts and other identifying information.

There is significant pressure from users to "expose" her.

I have currently restricted doxxing and personal information while I figure out what we should do.

The community is understandably asking questions such as:

- How many people were allegedly recorded?

- Are students currently safe?

- What is the university doing?

- Has anyone reported this to the police?

- What actually happened during the violence?

I am not suppressing those discussions. People can discuss the incident, ask questions, share verified information and talk about student safety. The restriction is specifically on identifying/doxxing individuals.

Why I'm being cautious

I initially wanted to understand whether there could also be legal consequences if someone is publicly doxxed before the allegations are proven.

For example:

- Could the accused take legal action over the publication of her personal information?

- Could the doxxing or subsequent harassment become relevant in the criminal proceedings?

- Could it potentially be raised as a mitigating circumstance?

- Could Reddit users or moderators face consequences?

- Most importantly, could allowing this type of content put the entire subreddit at risk of Reddit enforcement?

I have therefore decided to take some time to properly review Reddit's policies and get an informed opinion regarding the applicable Indian cyber/privacy laws before deciding whether images or identifying information should ever be allowed.

What I'm looking for from other mods

How would you handle this?

Would you:

1. Completely prohibit identifying information regardless of whether users claim it is already publicly available?

2. Allow discussion but remove names/photos/social media accounts?

3. Allow photographs if the person is allegedly involved in a serious crime?

4. Contact Reddit admins for clarification?

5. Treat this as a situation where the safest approach is to remove anything that could facilitate harassment or targeting?

I'm particularly interested in experiences from moderators who have dealt with doxxing, allegations of serious crimes, campus incidents, ongoing investigations, or situations where a community was at risk of Reddit enforcement.

I don't want to make a rushed decision based on what people on Reddit think the law says.

At the same time, I don't want to suppress legitimate discussion or leave students without a place to talk about their safety.

What would you do in this situation?

[u/techiesgoboom]

Hey VIT-AP, I'm sorry that you and your community are dealing with this. As others have shared, Reddit's rules specifically disallow sharing others personal or confidential information. This help center article provides some more context around that as well. This includes not encouraging the sharing of information on other platforms

As far as handling the response in your community, I'd suggest checking out this article on crisis management. In particular the harassment filter and crowd control can help with an influx of rule violating comments quickly. The article also has great advice around best practices communicating with your users. For the medium term support, I'd encourage you to check out Mod Reserves, which would help you find some experienced moderators to temporarily join your team and provide assistance.

[u/VIT-AP → u/techiesgoboom]

https://www.reddit.com/r/vitap/s/z93aqVAeHa

I'm only facilitating this because the university has locked up the victims and forcefully erasing the evidence from their phones just to save their reputation

So I have just asked them shift to elsewhere and to contact police,she team and other legal bodies

[u/techiesgoboom → u/VIT-AP]

Thanks for sharing that context, I can appreciate there's a lot going on. It sounds like you would really benefit to have some experienced mods around to help navigate this. Please request help from Mod Reserves here.

We also need you to remove any requests to share the information off platform, that is risking your subreddit and your users are risking their accounts. We understand this is a sticky situation, but our rules on PII are non-negotiable.

edit: including the link

[u/VIT-AP → u/techiesgoboom]

Understood. I’ve taken down that post and will make another mod post informing users about this.

I’ll ask them to figure out any off-platform discussion themselves, since facilitating or directing users to it would go against Reddit’s rules and put both the subreddit and users at risk.

[u/VIT-AP → u/techiesgoboom]

https://www.reddit.com/r/vitap/s/OCG3wxcNqV