Reddit bans r/The_Donald and 2000 other hateful subreddits because it was about time – The Next Web

Reddits r/The_Donald has long been a thinly veiled breeding ground for racism, misogyny, homophobia, and all-around bigotry devoted to the 45th President of the United States. Today, after years of criticism, Reddit decided to take definitive action against the subreddit of 790,000 subscribers by banning it altogether.

The move is part of new policies and enforcement against hateful contentin the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that resulted in an initial ban of 2,000 communities today. Although only about 200 of these had more than 10 daily active users, other prominent subreddits banned today include r/chapotraphouse, a subreddit associated with a far-left podcast of the same name, and r/gendercritical, a subreddit for trans-exclusionary radical feminists.

Its about time.

To be clear, its not the first time Reddit has taken action against r/The_Donald. It was made an opt-in subreddit in 2019, was limited in features, and its posts were hidden from Reddits front pages. Still, the community continued to grow because ultimately it just took a couple of clicks to reach.

Reddit sites the subreddit as specifically having broken it rules 1, 2, and 8 of its newly refinedcontent policies. Number 1, specifically, reads as follows:

Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free ofharassment, bullying, and threats ofviolence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based onidentity or vulnerabilitywill be banned.

Yeah, r/The_Donald is was well beyond that threshold. If youre lucky enough to have never come across content from the subreddit, you can read this piece by my colleague Tristan Greene on what it was like reading r/The_Donald every day (spoiler: unpleasant). The subreddit didnt just give free passes to the occasional troll or bigot, it was a community that made attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups the norm.

While some will worry that the ban will stifle free speech and diverse political opinion, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said on a call that political speech continues to be safe but all communities, including our political communities, have to abide by our policies, according to The Verge. Lets not forget Reddit used to also allow communities featuring sexually suggestive content with minorsalso in the name of freespeech.

You might think well, arent the same people just going to go elsewhere? Of course.Reddit will probably lose thousands ofusers over its new policies, many of whomwill likely find other grimy corners of the internet to fester in. And todays ban is neither all-encompassing there remain many subreddits that are arguably more harmful than some on the list nor likely to be without a myriad of detractors.

But hate spreads when it is normalized and given a platform, especially one as large and young-leaning as Reddit. Deplatforming hatehas been shown to be effective. The previous attempts at curbing r/The_Donalds message just werent enough. Good on Reddit for finally taking a stance, even if theres still more work to do.

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Reddit bans r/The_Donald and 2000 other hateful subreddits because it was about time - The Next Web