After commenters were seen asking for nude photos of underage girls, and under significant external scrutiny, Reddit shut down r/jailbait. Reddit rose to infamy in October 2011, when a report by CNN showed that Reddit was harboring the r/jailbait community, which was devoted to sharing suggestive or revealing photos of underage girls. In 2008, subreddit creation was opened to all users.
Subreddits were created later, but could only initially be created by Reddit administrators. When Reddit was founded in 2005, there was only one shared space for all links, and subreddits did not exist. Controversial Reddit communities sometimes receive significant media coverage. Some communities on the social news site Reddit (known as 'subreddits') are devoted to explicit, violent, or hateful material, and have been the topic of controversy. List of known controversial communities on Reddit