When you think of places on the Internet where racists like to congregate, there are probably a few obvious locales that jump to mind: the explicitly white supremacist Stormfront, the hipster-racist Takis Magazine, the comments at YouTube, the comments at the Daily Caller, the comments at almost any local news website So basically every comment thread on every popular or conservative website. But according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center(SPLC), the arguably vilest, ugliest, nastiest and most unapologetically hateful space on the Internet is not in some comment thread you werent going to read anyway but at one of the most popular websites there is: Reddit.

Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Keegan Hankes, a research analyst at SPLC and the author of the piece. Our discussion touched on the white supremacist forums (known as subreddits) hes found at Reddit, why the folks running Reddit have not done anything to remove them, and how they complicate the free speech absolutist stance thats long characterized Reddits approach to moderation. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.

Why did you look at this? What sparked this idea?

I actually spend a whole lot of time investigating Stormfront, which is probably the largest white supremacist forum on the Internet. Its been around for going on 20 years Ive noticed some of the people Ive tracked on there, some of the people who participate on other white supremacist websites, had mentioned Reddit in the past. So Ive kind of in passing been watching it. As I watched these networks of racists websites develop, I got more interested, especially once I found some of the more violent ones.

Could you give me a sense of how large these communities are?

Stormfront is going to be, by the numbers, since its a membership website, the largest. Its been around and the accounts arent deleted; its been accumulating them for 20 years. They have over 200,000 registered users. Now, the Reddit community theres one subreddit that has 5,500 subscribers right now which puts it just into the top 5,000 subreddits, which is relatively small compared to other subreddits that are active. But that does not figure in the audience of the site. So these do not include outside audience members that are perusing it. Id say its a small community; but its significant in the fact that it does drive a lot of traffic to websites outside of Reddit.

Your piece notes that these subreddits are often full of racist snuff films. Do you have any idea where these videos are coming from? Or are they originating on Reddit?

One thing thats distinct about Reddit that drew our attention was very violent videos typically of black men being killed very graphically that you cant even put on Stormfront or other white supremacist sites. They will get taken down. And thats one of the things that sets Reddit apart the fact that it has much less oversight in some ways than Stormfront and what youd typically consider the nastiest white supremacist forums on the Internet.

As far as where theyre getting the content from, it depends on exactly what the video is. The more graphic and explicit ones, some of this stuff cant even be posted on YouTube. But some of the more simple YouTube videos that theyre putting up links to are from some other third-party hosting site that has looser restrictions on what you can upload and host Its coming from many different members, its not just one guy up there every day posting a nasty video. Its from a wide variety of sources.

Do the people at Stormfront ever mention these subreddits? How do they feel about them?

Read more:

Reddits ugly, racist secret: How it became the most hateful space on the Internet