Reddit confirmed it has banned a number of subreddits, including the popular r/The_Donald pro-Trump subrredit, for breaking its content rules. This represents the latest instance of a social networking site opting to actively enforce changes that have recently been made to curb the use and effects of hate speech and harassment.
Over the past few weeks, many tech platforms have been making clear statements of intent by be making changes, following an advertising boycott that already seems to be impacting on the company.
Following those other instances, Reddit today confirmed that it has banned a popular pro-Trump subreddit, r/The_Donald. According to the announcement, the r/The_Donald subreddit had routinely opted to not abide by the platform’s content policies. Citing examples, Reddit says the r/The_Donald subreddit “hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average,” as well as “antagonized us and other communities,” while accusing mods of having “refused to meet our most basic expectations.” The announcement goes on to explain that Reddit had offered the subreddit multiple opportunities to change its behavior before making this decision.
Reddit Banning More Than Just The_Donald
While r/The_Donald is arguably the most noteworthy (enough for Reddit to specifically address the subreddit on its own in the announcement), it wasn’t the only community that’s now been banned. In total, Reddit says it has banned around 2,000 subreddits as part of this latest wave of moderation. However, that number does come with the caveat that a “vast majority” of them were inactive communities to begin with. Besides r/The_Donald, Reddit also banned the r/ChapoTrapHouse subreddit as well, although the company made the point of how this is a “smaller” community than r/The_Donald. Regardless of the size discrepancy, r/ChapoTrapHouse was banned for the same primary reasons. Namely, the hosting of rule-breaking content and a lack of sufficient moderation by mods.
Although this looks like a major and sudden move, Reddit announced changes to its content policies a few weeks ago with the main rule change being a crackdown on Reddit in general. In closing out the announcement, Reddit did make the point that it is not looking to curb free speech or opinion, but simply ensure content falls within the boundaries set by its recent policy changes.
Source: Reddit