This week, Reddit began cracking down on people posting spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens by banning anyone posting key plot points or details from the movie.
The film's premiere happened earlier this week, which means that some people have now seen it. And some of those people are intent on ruining the experience for other fans. Reddit, however, now makes it clear that it will not tolerate spoilers on its site.
Reddit moderators have begun looking through reports of spoilers and seeking out anyone posting such information. When they find a user ruining Star Wars for someone else, they ban them. This doesn't just include threads on the site, but also private messages (because some people are just that mean).
"We've banned dozens of users so far for this," TheGreatZiegfeld wrote on the site. "I think all the mods have had it spoiled for them by now. We'll do our best to make sure you guys don't suffer the same fate."
The site suggests that anyone seeing spoilers on the site in threads and comments should report it immediately. In the meantime, it also suggests staying away from downvoted comments. It's probably taking a lot of time and effort, and most Reddit users seem appreciative of the work that the moderators do on the site.
With many people not seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens immediately upon release, the expectation of spoilers has resulted in many swearing off social media until they see the film. However, there's also a browser extension that makes avoiding spoilers easy, although it might make Facebook, Twitter and other sites seem like virtual ghost towns because that's pretty much the hot topic this week.
There is also one group that plans on posting spoilers, should their demands not get met by Disney and Lucasfilm. The Facebook group The Alliance to Preserve the Expanded Universe plans on throwing up spoilers everywhere it can unless Disney and Lucasfilm decide to take the now-abandoned Star Wars expanded universe and make it canon again: the two companies decided to get rid of the expanded universe moving forward with the new films so that it could gain control over the stories to keep their continuity and focus.
Needless to say, at this point, the only way to avoid spoilers is to see the movie as soon as possible or stay off the Internet, remain locked inside your house and ignore all phone calls and text messages.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters Dec. 18.
