(Source: Flickr.com/kinopix)

Seems like the folks over at Reddit don't take too kindly to spammers. The Daily Dot reports that at least five news source domains, including some media heavyweights like The Atlantic and Businessweek, have been banned from Reddit. That doesn't just mean employees at those companies can't post links--it means that users can't post links that include atlantic.com or businessweek.com domains.

The Daily Dot writes that upon attempting to post a link from one of these domains, Redditors are "greeted with the following message: 'this domain has been banned for spamming and/or cheating.'"

Reddit admins are on the defensive: "This type of action is a last resort," wrote alienth. "Before taking such a severe action we make absolutely certain that the domains that would be affected are truly at fault."

Erik Martin, Reddit's general manager, also chimed in, writing, "These bans are temporary."

Redditors in r/BannedDomains are tossing around some interesting conspiracy theories about conflict of interest: "I wonder if we would ever see reddit ban The New Yorker (owned by Condé Naste/Advance Publications) based on the actions of one low-level editor working within extremely vague guidelines," wrote one commenter named cityroasted. "Seems like a conflict of interest for reddit to be owned by publisher and then banning their competitors."

As we wrote in today's profile of Reddit's general manager Erik Martin, Conde Nast has little control over Reddit, which was recently spun out as an independent subsidiary--but clearly the two are still experiencing some growing pains. Given the fact that the social news site nets 2.5 billion page views a month, and is a major traffic-driver, would Conde Nast really stand by if Reddit decided to again buck the wishes of its parent company and ban Wired?