Reddit announced that they are banning their site’s biggest pro-Donald Trump message board, along with 2,000 other groups, as part of a crackdown on hate speech.
For years, the r/The_Donald subreddit has been one of the most prominent online locations for memes, videos, conspiracy theories and other forms of content supportive to the president. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a statement the subreddit repeatedly violated the site’s content policies and will be purged along with other channels that have amplified violent, hateful or harassing content.
“Reddit is a place for community and belonging, not for attacking people. ‘The_Donald’ has been in violation of that.” Huffman said. The website explained in a statement, “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.”
The Reddit ban comes after several other social media platform have taken steps against the president or content favorable to him. Twitter has started to apply warnings and fact-checks on Trump’s tweets, and Facebook has said they are going to start taking similar steps.
Among the other 2,000 channels about to be purged, most of them have gone dormant, but one of the more active ones is a subreddit devoted to the left-wing podcast, Chapo Trap House. Other active channels that will be terminated for policy violations include r/darkhumorandmemes, r/darkjokecentral, r/gendercritical, r/cumtown, r/imgoingtohellforthis2, and r/soyboys.
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