Reddit becomes the latest social media platform to escalate efforts to crack down on hate speech. On Monday they announced the removal of about 2000 subreddits, including the very popular r/The_Donald, citing new rules against the promotion of hate based on “identity and vulnerability.”
Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman said the r/The_Donald subreddit was shut down because “the community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations.”
” All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith,” Huffman said, according to Politico. “We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity.”
The_Donald had over 790,000 members. This makes it one of the platform’s biggest pro-Trump groups. The users often share racist, homophobic and conspiracy content, which resulted in the moderators frequently clashing with Reddit administrators.
They must have seen this ban coming because the moderators set up a new site off Reddit last year and urged their followers to meet up there. As a result, the r/The_Donald subreddit has been inactive for some time.
Reddit also removed some popular subreddits on the left, including r/ChapoTrapHouse which had over 160,000 subscribers. The forum was a spinoff of the popular left-wing podcast Chapo Trap House. Huffman said they “consistently” post rule-breaking content and their moderators “have demonstrated no intention of reining in their community.”
