A popular and controversial section of the link-sharing site Reddit dedicated to sexualized pictures of underage girls has been shut down after an "internal power struggle" between moderators. Poor mouthbreathers.

Reddit is much beloved among internet denizens for its top-notch coverage of viral videos, and for providing a safe space for male libertarian undergraduate computer science majors to complain about women. It's soared in popularity in recent years, garnering more than a billion pageviews a month thanks to its reliably fascinating "Ask Me Anything" section.

But it's also got a seedy side that rivals 4chan, with disgusting subsections devoted to Nazism, pictures of dead kids and beating women. (You may not want to click on any of those links!)

One of the most popular of these sections was Jailbait, with over 20,000 subscribers. Jailbait featured pictures of tween girls in various compromising positions, many apparently taken from social networking profiles without their knowledge. There were rules, like "please don't post pictures of girls with tattoos": "Generally, girls have to be of the age of consent to get a tattoo, so if she has a tattoo, she's probably also of legal age, and therefore not jailbait."

All was well in internet pervert land, until Reddit admins abruptly shut down the controversial board yesterday, according the Daily Dot. Outraged cries of "censorship!" have the swept the site, whose users love free speech almost as much as they do Stephen Colbert. Conde Nast is Reddit's rather unlikely corporate parent, and it's not unreasonable to wonder if maybe Vogue editor Anna Wintour stumbled upon Jailbait one evening, spilled her wine in shock, then pulled the plug.

"For Reddit as a business entity… /r/Jailbait was just trouble waiting to happen," wrote Reddit user Krelian. "I'm pretty sure they just used the first opportunity they had to shut it down without the community crying 'censorship!'"

But according to Reddit Administrator Erik Martin, the whole debacle was prompted not by a crackdown, but rebellious moderators. (Yes, a forum dedicated to jailbait has moderators.) As of this writing, plenty of other subsections devoted to underage skin are alive and well on Reddit. The Founding Fathers may rest easy in their tombs.

[Image of computer screen via Shutterstock.com, screenshot via Business Insider]