
Reddit has quarantined /r/The_Donald - danskeren
https://old.reddit.com/r/the_donald
======
sho
I was actually very disappointed when Reddit banned r/WatchPeopleDie. Sure,
there were some idiots there - there always are, insensitive comments
sometimes, and a lot of gallows humour - sometimes literally. But there were
thoughtful comments as well, and the content itself could be... well,
educational, in a brutal kind of way. I visited occasionally as a kind of
_memento mori_ , and I feel like gained a lot of appreciation for the
fragility of life from that sub - as well as a very healthy respect for safety
around industrial machinery, and a resolve to never again ride a motor scooter
in South East Asia.

Sweeping it away - sure, they likely made their lives easier. But what's the
real outcome? The real freaks who get off on that stuff will go off to some
horrible other site to ferment and radicalize away from the normalising
influence of the more well-adjusted participants there, and regular people,
who just might have been curious, have been deprived of whatever insights they
might have found. I think it's a real shame.

And for what it's worth, I don't think The_Donald should be banned either.
People have a right to speak, and we can ignore them if we want - or we can at
least try to engage. I don't buy the "private company, they can do what they
want!" argument. The age of the internet has introduced powerful network
effects into where we can conduct our public discourse with any efficacy -
Reddit is huge and there's no real competitor. It's basically a monopoly, in
its niche. "Deplatforming" whole groups because of their political views,
however nutty, is a very slippery slope. Unless you also support speech you
don't like - you don't really support free speech!

~~~
Daishiman
> Reddit is huge and there's no real competitor. It's basically a monopoly, in
> its niche. "Deplatforming" whole groups because of their political views,
> however nutty, is a very slippery slope. Unless you also support speech you
> don't like - you don't really support free speech!

Unlike Facebook and Google, which exert truly horrendous amounts of power over
very significant aspects of people's lives, Reddit is, fundamentally, just
another forum. It even has its older versions open-sourced.

In fact, There are reddit clones where these things are perfectly allowed.

And those clones are cesspits of schizophrenics, fascists, and deeply
disturbed people.

~~~
noobermin
To be honest, you could say HN is just another forum (although it's more like
a news & comment site with less self-posts by character) but Reddit's place in
the social media landscape gives it a lot more power in addition to the loss
of a community when it is banned from there.

~~~
asdff
This is one of the most moderated sites on the web

------
nilkn
I suspect this isn't going to accomplish much of anything and may even
backfire. According to published statistics by Reddit as of this writing, this
subreddit has 755k subscribers and over 45,000 members online right now. For
comparison, the official politics subreddit has 5.2 million subscribers but
fewer online members (42,000). r/the_donald has an extraordinarily high level
of activity and engagement. So long as r/the_donald exists and is maintained,
it can act as a sort of black hole so that official subreddits can be heavily
moderated to support certain platforms, politicians, and advertisers. If it
were actually shut down, though, the users there are so numerous and active
that it probably wouldn't be possible to maintain r/politics or other official
subreddits in their current moderated state.

Perhaps worse, this quarantined state -- which really doesn't accomplish or do
anything of substance -- just creates a sense of martyrdom in the already
extremely active userbase there. I suspect this will energize them 10-fold.

~~~
Chardok
I thought that would have happened too when other subreddits were quarantined
or banned (and it briefly did when fatpeoplehate was banned) but honestly the
banned discourse does not show up on the front page or /r/all, as they
intended.

However, because of this, Reddit is becoming increasingly sterile, single-
minded, and most importantly ad-friendly to the point where its fairly
difficult to have an honest discussion about anything remotely controversial.

Unfortunately their selective banning of communities that I would associate
with the "far-right" has seriously hurt any attempt to migrate away from
Reddit (specifically Voat.co is unbearable for me trying to participate).

I don't know if there will ever be a straw to break the camels back, but I
have been actively searching for reddit alternatives for years and have not
found a truly viable replacement.

~~~
leereeves
> its fairly difficult to have an honest discussion about anything remotely
> controversial.

Like most media companies, reddit wants to promote its political agenda. It's
natural and common (and expected of the traditional media), but since reddit
doesn't pay for their own content, can only be done with censorship.

So they're making it difficult to have an honest discussion about anything
they have an opinion about.

That's particularly concerning because reddit seems to be a natural monopoly,
having operated for years with no successful competition. Perhaps this
censorship will be the impetus that finally allows some competition to break
through.

------
empath75
[https://thenextweb.com/opinion/2019/06/25/you-cant-offer-
to-...](https://thenextweb.com/opinion/2019/06/25/you-cant-offer-to-murder-
cops-on-reddit-unless-youre-on-r-thedonald/)

This article is probably what triggered it.

~~~
egwynn
Interestingly that article continuously refers to the sub as ‘r/TheDonald’
(which is about Donald Glover) instead of ‘r/The_Donald’ (which is the sub
that’s been quarantined).

~~~
sdinsn
Looks like it's been corrected

~~~
egwynn
Hmmm mostly yeah. The title + 4th from last paragraph still have it wrong
though.

~~~
bduerst
Probably auto-formatting that removes underscores.

------
digsy
In the thread that allegedly lead to the ban (you can see an archived version
here - [http://archive.is/vpvb4](http://archive.is/vpvb4)), The_Donald users
post comments like:

\- 'get a rope' \- 'So, firing squad time right?' \- 'If he is not fired for
this then wtf do we do next? Take matters into our own hands?'

What was Reddit supposed to do? Tolerate death threats on its platform? Then
get sued if the person gets murdered?

And this isnt an isolated example.

~~~
filoleg
>what was reddit supposed to do?

Probably treat the situation the same way they do in other subreddits. The
whole “taking matters into our own hands” and calls for violence against
politicians happen in other subreddits, and yet they don’t get quarantined
(looking at you, r/politics). Either quarantine them all or none of them.

~~~
pizzazzaro
r/politics perma-bans those commenters with a quickness, unless I'm out of
date.

Meanwhile, r/LateStageCapitalism, a sub whose premise is to induce lust for
the guillotine, has been quarantined before because one user was running
around yelling about Guillotines in the comments. This would happen
periodically.

So the admins changed up the mod team. They kept the Anarchist/Communist
asthetic, but Social Democrats run the sub now. And they keep the space
guillotine-free.

------
bhouston
Hmmm... I think that the_donald is on its way to get banned. I wish I knew how
much was real and what wasn't on that subreddit. I worry that the sentiment on
that subreddit is genuine and by banning it we draw lines as to what is
acceptable discourse that excludes a large segment of the population.

Of course I am not referring to the worst stuff on that subreddit, there is
shit there, and much more than average, but if a sizeable part of the
population has views like this is banning it really fair? I worry that banning
public speech by a large segment of the population fractures the population
that makes things even worse. And once fully separate it leads to even more
echo chambering and divergent realities and more problems, not less.

But again that is assuming it is genuine and not trolls or foreign
interference and it is truly sizable and not fringe.

~~~
root_axis
> _by banning it we draw lines as to what is acceptable discourse that
> excludes a large segment of the population._

I don't think reddit is the measure of acceptable discourse. If the_donald was
banned it would just mean that its users would have to find another subreddit
or site to use, it says nothing about what type of discourse is generally
acceptable. Further, I think it's pretty obvious by now that reddit's problem
with the_donald is not related to their political ideas since there other
subreddits supportive of the president that have had no conflicts with the
site admins (e.g. /r/conservative, /r/republican).

------
Miner49er
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain /r/The_Donald already
didn't have ads on it as the article implied it did. Reddit only allows ads in
white-listed subs and T_D was never white listed AFAIK.

Edit: Found where I read this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/85vdwo/gro...](https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/85vdwo/groundrules_for_this_community/)

Edit 2: my comment was moved from a different thread that was on a TechCrunch
article on this. TechCrunch claimed that this quarantine would mean that ads
would no longer run on T_D.

~~~
ixtli
As far as I know ads are served on all subreddits until they are quarantined.
According to [https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/205701245-Quara...](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/205701245-Quarantined-Subreddits) they totally demonatize, meaning
even reddit gold doesn't generate profit for reddit.

~~~
Miner49er
Found my source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/85vdwo/gro...](https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/85vdwo/groundrules_for_this_community/)

This source also shows T_D wasn't on the whitelist, since it was on of the
subs being protested by /r/stopadvertising.

------
gfosco
The subreddit moderators provided the admin logs, showing that on average, 1
post per day was actioned on by reddit admins. "Biggest headache" yeah, right.

~~~
AaronFriel
The members of the the_donald had a history of breaking rules and crying foul
any time any sort of administrative action was taken against them for it.
Whether it was for brigading and harassment, or flooding modmail in other
subreddits, or other actions.

The result was that after the banning of the just as toxic "fatpeoplehate",
admins were loathe to interfere with t_d. Any administrative response was met
with charges of politicization, "liberal bias", and more rule-breaking.

I'm surprised it's taken this long, but it appears that Reddit's staff waited
until they had an obviously non-partisan reason for doing it. In this case,
threatening police officers. I think they wanted to wait until they had a
reason that would be difficult for people to turn into a partisan brawl that
would give Reddit bad publicity.

Imagine if you will the difficulty conservative sites may have in threading
the needle that t_d is simultaneously being persecuted here for their
conservative, pro-Trump political views, and that the particular views they
were banned for were making violent threats to law enforcement.

~~~
gfosco
I don't think there are many subreddits that praise and love law enforcement
more than the_donald. They used a Media Matters hit piece to censor and
contain one of the most popular subs, for purely partisan reasons.

~~~
bduerst
Did you read the Media Matters piece? Here it is in case you hadn't:

[https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/06/24/A-pro-
Trump...](https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/06/24/A-pro-Trump-
subreddit-is-full-of-calls-for-violence-in-support-of-Oregon-
Republicans/224018)

Scroll down and read the screenshots. It doesn't quite matter what the
subreddit praised before when they still broke the rules.

~~~
DuskStar
If I make a sockpuppet and post the same comments in r/politics, does that
mean it should get quarantined?

A lot of those screenshots are "1 point, 11 minutes ago" or "2 points, 17
minutes ago". If that's being expanded to cover an entire subreddit, then no
sub would be safe when applied consistently.

~~~
bduerst
If you look at these accounts, many are 1+ years old. Calling them sock
puppets is confirmation bias to avoid reading the article.

~~~
DuskStar
Age is not a good determination of sockpuppetness, at least with competent
opponents. Past activity might be, since that at least costs _something_ ,
while age just costs prep time.

~~~
bduerst
Okay, did you look at the age _and_ the comment activity of these accounts?
Because they're not sockpuppets accounts.

You're making a textbook _No True Scotsman_.

~~~
DuskStar
I don't doubt that many of the accounts screenshotted in the article linked
are actual, active accounts on /r/The_Donald. I doubt that you can usefully
distinguish real accounts from fake ones for the purposes of identifying false
flag attacks in other subreddits.

------
yread
So many of the users defending The_Donald here (as if it was a serious
political platform) are users that seem to comment mostly on political threads
or submit only political articles. At least the form they've used so far is a
bit more acceptable than average T_D post.

~~~
cannonedhamster
I kind of dislike when Reddit bleeds onto HN. Any comment not fanatically
supporting extreme right wing narratives gets downvoted to oblivion. We're
generally not a toxic community and the mods and community here does a pretty
good job at keeping a it's on things. It's why I prefer this as pretty much my
primary social network. I learn useful things here, have meaningful
disagreements that don't end in name calling, and learn tons.

------
thinkingemote
A little observation: this subreddits posting and commenting habits were not
like other subreddits. The users used the system more like chat than a forum
with no long threaded discussions, very short one line replies and new posts
being created instead of comments in an established one, for example.

There are a few other subreddits like this and they all appear to work in a
similarly ephemeral way. It's odd to me how they use the system. It's similar
to 4chan in the ephemerality but it's more like IRC.

------
mdorazio
I feel like reddit ends up playing whack-a-mole with toxic subreddits because
it's not like the problem users disappear - they just move onto another
subreddit and slowly turn it into some flavor of the place that got
banned/quarantined. This might be an unsolvable problem long-term without
something like real IDs tied to user accounts, which brings its own slew of
problems.

~~~
msbarnett
> I feel like reddit ends up playing whack-a-mole with toxic subreddits
> because it's not like the problem users disappear - they just move onto
> another subreddit and slowly turn it into some flavor of the place that got
> banned/quarantined.

On the contrary, at least one study found that what you describe does not
happen. Rather, a quantitative reduction in hate speech was observed when
Reddit banned a number of toxic subreddits in 2015.

Inhabitants either moved off the platform entirely (accounts that frequented
those subs ceased to be active) or those that stayed appeared to modulate
their behaviour to conform to the norms of less-toxic subs.

[http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-
hate.pdf](http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf)

~~~
SkyBelow
>On the contrary, at least one study found

Among social sciences a single study has very little weight. Given how often
it is quoted despite this signals a flaw in popular cultures relationship with
the field.

~~~
msbarnett
> Among social sciences a single study has very little weight.

Sure. "I feel like ..." has absolutely no evidentiary weight, though, so in
this case, a little weight is strictly preferable to nothing.

> Given how often it is quoted despite this signals a flaw in popular cultures
> relationship with the field.

I'd say rather it signals a blind spot in the social sciences, where
researchers are failing to investigate emerging online phenomenon wrt
communities and moderation in significant numbers.

More studies confirming or disproving the results of this one would, of
course, be preferable. But we should hardly apologize for turning to what
little study and evidence there is rather than pulling "this will cause X to
happen" assertions directly from our asses.

~~~
SkyBelow
>I'd say rather it signals a blind spot in the social sciences,

Apologies, it appears I wasn't clear. I meant the extent that psychology and
sociology studies in any part of their fields are quoted when there is only a
single study, not just in relationship to internet/social media.

>But we should hardly apologize for turning to what little study and evidence
there is rather than pulling "this will cause X to happen" assertions directly
from our asses.

The difference is in the latter case we are well aware of the origin, while in
the former case many can mistaken think there is the full weight of science
behind the findings comparable to the theory of gravity or evolution. They
shouldn't make the mistake, but I've seen it made enough times.

------
KKPMW
That's a quick turn from their stance on the same issue just 22 days ago.

/u/spez:

> While they can be offensive and antagonistic to the rest of Reddit, we have
> not found them to be in consistent violation of our content policies.[0]

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/bwpqqi/we_are_us_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/bwpqqi/we_are_us_senator_ron_wyden_and_reddit_ceo_steve/epzk051/)

------
IfOnlyYouKnew
Here's an article with a collection of threats of violence that may have
precipitated this: [https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/06/24/A-pro-
Trump...](https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/06/24/A-pro-Trump-
subreddit-is-full-of-calls-for-violence-in-support-of-Oregon-
Republicans/224018)

Representative quote: _A user wrote, “Rifles are the only way we 're going to
get any peace in our lives ever again,” adding, “It's either war and we get
rid of these guys or a lifetime of listening to this shit over and over again
start getting yourself ready.”_

------
x1ph0z
Thank god, that subreddit was insufferable

~~~
ng12
Sure, but you didn't have to visit it. The worst part of the increasing
corporatization of the public-facing internet is that we no longer seem to be
content leaving well enough alone.

~~~
asdff
The problem with that subreddit was more that it made headlines. If it wasn't
named in dozens of articles, all over the news, and an overall very public
embarrassment for reddit for three years now, everything would be all fine and
dandy for the donald.

------
bhouston
Hmmm... I think that the_donald is on its way to get banned. I wish I knew how
much was real and what wasn't on that subreddit. I worry that the sentiment on
that subreddit is genuine and by banning it we draw lines as to what is
acceptable discourse that excludes a large segment of the population.

Of course I am not referring to the worst stuff on that subreddit, there is
shit there but if a sizeable part of the population has views like this is
banning it really fair? I worry that banning public speech by a large segment
of the population fractures the population that makes things even worse. And
once fully separate it leads to even more echo chambering and divergent
realities and more problems, not less.

But again that is assuming it is genuine and not trolls or foreign
interference and it is truly sizable and not fringe.

~~~
futureastronaut
Have you tried searching reddit for threads about a current event, only to
find pages of results of vitriolic/psychotic ("trolling!") /r/The_Donald
posts? I'm pretty tired of it and I hope they ban that sub and similar ones. I
couldn't care less about the political aspect, it's the 4chan lulz crap that
has to go. From reddit's point of view these users are parasites, who
basically deface the website in an attempt to control it. That's their M.O.,
good riddance.

~~~
ng12
I can't say I've ever experienced this. In fact, I would occasionally browse
r/T_D just to temper the overtly left-leaning bias of /r/news and /r/politics.

~~~
asdfgasd
/r/news is not left-leaning by any reasonable metric (there is frequently
blatant racism heavily upvoted).

/r/politics is only left-leaning because of how heavily skewed right american
politics is. Most of their opinions are centrist at best. Their obsession with
trump is a bit annoying, but it's only annoying, not actively harmful.

------
s9w
reddit censored the_donald long before this. It was completely filtered off
r/all. This effectively changes not that much.

------
empath75
About time. I am looking forward to the drama.

~~~
pmoriarty
Perhaps we can anticipate an angry tweet from the White House about this.

------
rofo1
From what I gather, the reason was that there were calls to violence that
weren't deleted sufficiently fast by the mods. Someone correct me if this is
wrong.

This seems like it would be easy to replicate this on any subreddit, doesn't
it?

Get a group of people and deliberately target subreddits in various hours of
the day with calls for violence, and then report them to the admins of reddit.

Wouldn't this, in theory at least, quarantine any subreddit?

Something doesn't add up here.

~~~
equalunique
The Against Hate Subreddit orchestrated similar false-flag attacks last year
and successfully shut down many other subreddits.

During 2016 on Facebook, similar spamming tactics were used to shut down many
pages promoting Bernie Sanders.

If it really were something orchestrated by users of T_D, then why would they
report it to reddit? It's more likely that outside forces had a hand in this.

~~~
rofo1
Maybe it's unclear from my post, but I don't think T_D users did this, or even
deserve this.

I was merely commenting how easy is to do this to other subreddits, so any
subreddit can get banned etc.

So maybe Reddit should reconsider their position on banning solely because of
this, if this is in fact the only reason they quarantined T_D.

~~~
equalunique
So I think we're on the same page. Not sure why you got downvoted, but that
wasn't me. I was only trying to list a couple of examples that might add to
your theory.

------
StanislavPetrov
I didn't vote for Trump, don't support him, and think he is a worthless human
being. That being said, its become crystal clear that a large part of our
"cultural elite" at the pinnacle of most big tech companies, media outlets and
universities in this country have taken it upon themselves to decide what
social and political opinions are acceptable, and are working hard to erase
and/or silence anyone who doesn't adhere to their cultural/political ideology.
Given the largely centralized nature of modern society and modern
communication, this gives tremendous power to those at the top to decide what
views are acceptable to disseminate (or hold at all). This is extremely
troubling to those of us who believe in the concept of free speech and free
expression as being the bedrock of a free society (which is distinct from the
legal mechanism of the 1st Amendment). The results of this lockdown on free
speech are not necessarily the results being sought or desired by our
tech/corporate censors. Ideas and philosophies that are deemed taboo and
banned don't simply disappear, they go underground and find alternative
communication networks, often becoming even more radical in the process. Those
who prefer to keep their heads buried in the sand and suggest that
monopolistic behemoths like Google are simply exercising their right as a
private company to decide who to silence and who to promote are simply
ignoring reality.

------
nautilus12
So whats keeping r/The_Donald from just endorsing a new subreddit to replace
the old one?

------
sawjet
Interesting, I've saved multiple comments on r/politics that explicitly call
for violence against trump supporters that I've reported and they still aren't
deleted. It is also unfortunate that reddit doesn't think it needs to provide
any evidence for this action, considering that it is the beginning of Trump's
2020 campaign and on the eve of the Dem primary debates.

~~~
gremlinsinc
It's easier to police threads than comments... there's hundreds of thousands
if not millions of comments on thousands of different threads, the T_D is
known to allow full threads devoted to violence, and they just leave them up.
They are known to let slide MANY innuendos of violence, I'm sure if you did a
statistical analysis of violent enacting comments across r/politics and
r/The_Donald that you'd find way more on the donald than politics. Would you
find 0 on poltics? probably not, some probably get overlooked and go
unreported or overlooked, doesn't mean they shouldn't be moderated, just means
there's not enough resources all the time to get the job done.

TD has always been toxic, racist, and bigoted, it was just a matter of time
before this happened. I think it happening near an election cycle is just
coincidence, I think more the civil-war inciting of the current events in
Oregon is at play here.

~~~
s9w
> the T_D is known to allow full threads devoted to violence, and they just
> leave them up

that is not true

------
RickJWagner
One thing we can all agree on: Donald Trump attracts attention like no other.

Years from now, controversy will still roil. Historians will have a colorful
character to teach about.

------
turk73
I'm just going to tell you all: I'm a life-long libertarian. You're not going
to sway my opinions because I get censored online and my posts deleted. I am
limited to 2 posts like every 4 hours lest I poison your minds with theories
about free markets and personal freedom. I guess I'm lucky I can post at all,
probably someone will come along to fix that glitch or delete my posts or
whatever. What are you afraid of? Is freedom really so dangerous? Why have so
many tech companies closed ranks around such anti-freedom concepts? What
changed since the late '90s and early '00s when tech was so anti-authority and
wanted to disrupt bureaucracy and give a voice to other ideas? Freedom is not
racist, sexist, or anything else. It is definitely terrifying to someone,
though.

Is the Millenial generation just so indoctrinated that they can't see how
destructive what they are doing is? When you side with the left, you are
making a very clear statement about the value of individual human lives
(zero). Try having a little self-worth.

An estimated 262 million people were murdered by their own governments between
1900 and 1999. That toll is a silent testimonial about misplaced trust and
idealism. It is real, it is reality--bodies stacked like cordwood, piled by
the thousands, mass graves, misery beyond comprehension. Are we doomed to
repeat that? If so, in the next conflagration it will be billions.

~~~
pcunite
_Is freedom really so dangerous?_

Selfishness is the root of it. Can you imagine giving up your place of
superiority so that someone else gets a chance? They can't.

------
amyjess
According to the post about this in SRD [0], this was because of repeated
calls to violence (something that has been well-documented), and the final
straw was repeated incitements to commit violence over the situation in
Oregon.

The following is an excerpt of the message the Reddit admins sent the
moderators of /r/The_Donald:

(Edit: I originally posted an excerpt of the message from the OP in the SRD
post. I've since found the full message in a comment [1], so I'll be replacing
it here with that version. Of note is that the admins have disabled
/r/The_Donald's ability to use custom styling, as _they abused CSS to hide the
report button in order to prevent people from reporting violent content to
them_. The comment also mentions that one of the moderators of /r/The_Donald
was stripped of most of his permissions as well.)

> Dear Mods,

> We want to let you know that your community has been quarantined, as
> outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy.

> The reason for the quarantine is that over the last few months we have
> observed repeated rule-breaking behavior in your community and an over-
> reliance on Reddit admins to manage users and remove posts that violate our
> content policy, including content that encourages or incites violence. Most
> recently, we have observed this behavior in the form of encouragement of
> violence towards police officers and public officials in Oregon. This is not
> only in violation of our site-wide policies, but also your own community
> rules (rule #9). You can find violating content that we removed in your mod
> logs.

> As we have discussed in the past, and as detailed in our content policy and
> moderator guidelines, we expect you to enforce against rule-breaking
> content. You’ve made progress over the last year, but we continue to observe
> and take action on a disproportionate amount of rule-breaking behavior in
> this community. We recognize that you do remove posts that are reported, but
> we are troubled that violent content more often goes unreported, and worse,
> is upvoted.

> User reports and downvotes are an essential way that Reddit functions to
> moderate content. Limiting or prohibiting them prevents you from moderating
> your community effectively. Because of this, we are disabling your custom
> styling in order to restore these essential functions.

> As stated in our Moderator Guidelines, our goal is to keep the platform
> alive and vibrant, as well as to ensure your community can reach people
> interested in it. Accordingly, here are the specific terms of the quarantine
> and the next steps we are asking from you as a mod team to resolve this
> situation.

> Quarantine terms:

> Visitors to this community will see a warning that requires users to
> explicitly opt-in to viewing it. This messaging reminds users of the
> importance of reporting rule-breaking content.

> Custom styling has been disabled to restore the report and downvote buttons.

> We hope both these changes will help improve the signal around rule-breaking
> content and improve your ability to effectively address it.

> Next steps:

> You unambiguously communicate to your subscribers that violent content is
> unacceptable.

> You communicate to your users that reporting is a core function of Reddit
> and is essential to maintaining the health and viability of the community.

> Following that, we will continue to monitor your community, specifically
> looking at report rate and for patterns of rule-violating content.

> Undertake any other actions you determine to reduce the amount of rule-
> violating content.

> Following these changes, we will consider an appeal to lift the quarantine,
> in line with the process outlined here.

[0]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/c5safq/rthe...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/c5safq/rthe_donald_has_been_quarantined_discuss_this/)

[1]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/c5safq/rthe...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/c5safq/rthe_donald_has_been_quarantined_discuss_this/es3sin0/)

~~~
drak0n1c
For context, the admin logs show that the Reddit Corporate Admins only
bothered to remove on average one comment per few days. It wasn't a deluge.
The Oregon post is an anomalous casus belli.

[https://twitter.com/thedonaldreddit/status/11439265704086446...](https://twitter.com/thedonaldreddit/status/1143926570408644608)

~~~
goatsi
A regular subreddit would see almost no admin interaction, so if the admins
are needing to correct failing moderation every couple of days that's a very
bad sign. I helped moderate a large subreddit teaching people how to buy drugs
on the darknet and we had zero admin interactions despite being very close to
the line of what was allowed because we were aggressive with our moderation.
The subreddit only ended up being banned after SESTA/FOSTA passed.

Edit: It's important to note that there isn't a report function that bypasses
subreddit moderators, unless you directly message the admins. So if the reddit
admins are having to step in on reports it means that the moderators are
ignoring them, either deliberately or due to a poorly managed moderation team
(not enough members or time zone coverage).

~~~
Solvitieg
It's understandable that an engaged, political subreddit revolving around a
controversial figure requires more admin oversight.

~~~
bduerst
Isn't that the job of the mods though? Admins are not moderators.

~~~
drak0n1c
Over the same period the mods handled 83,000 cases.

~~~
zo1
You mean the_donald mods handled 83k cases?

~~~
drak0n1c
Yes

------
LandR
Why? I don't like Donald Trump, so I don't go to Donald Trump fan sites.

Can't people that don't like the content just not read it?

~~~
nlh
Read reddit’s linked description of what a quarantined community is - it
explains the answer to your question.

It’s not about people who want to go to fan sites (or don’t want to go) - it’s
about misinformation / inappropriate content leaking out to folks who might
inadvertently view it and not understand the rat hole they’re about to go
down.

Putting the subreddit into the quarantine just means that there’s an extra
disclosure and opt-in before viewing content from that subreddit (and content
won’t be shown in popular, /r/all, etc.)

------
product50
Anything pro right is a headache while extreme left (aka AOC) is Jesus' gift
to the world!

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads further into partisan flamewar.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
product50
The entire thread is going to be about partisan flamewar Dang given the
context. It might be best to flag the thread vs. flagging my comment
individually.

~~~
dang
It's a matter of degree. What you posted was a degree worse.

------
lurquer
Dissapearing a subredit devoted to Trump immediately before the Democratic
debates?

Election meddling.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Probably not. If it were before the Republican debates (if there is a
Republican challenger), that _might_ be actual meddling. But before the
Democratic debates? How's that supposed to actually change any election
outcomes?

~~~
CapricornNoble
My guess? Issues that get raised on a major information platform such as
The_Donald could turn into policy debate questions for the Democrats.
Questions like "Given the Project Veritas video and associated leaked
documents on emails, what is your position on big tech social media platforms
and free speech? If you are President, what is your agenda for balancing the
exchange of ideas on arguably private yet mass-media platforms?"

A question like that could a) but some of the Democrat candidates in a bind
comparing their answer to any voting history/previous statements on the issue
or b) could cast light on the sort of topics that obviously Democrat-
supporting/anti-Trump big tech doesn't want people to investigate or learn
about for themselves.

------
AlexB138
I don't understand the cat and mouse game conservatives play with Bay-area
companies. These companies are blatantly bias against anyone right of their
political bubble, but conservatives keep using them and being surprised and
outraged when they're censored. On the other hand, these companies are playing
dumb and doing mental back flips to try to justify their blatant bias and
claim neutrality because they only want to run off the conservative thought
leaders, and keep most of the users.

Conservatives just need to move off of these platforms. They're private
property, let them have their bubbles. This moral outrage at being censored is
a waste of time, and staying on these platforms just continues to enrich them.
I'm all for avoiding echo chambers, but it's futile to try to have neutral
debate on a biased platform.

~~~
opportune
On the contrary, bay area companies _want_ right wing politics on their
platforms (it generates a lot of content and thus a lot of money, after all)
but some conservatives tend to break code of conduct rules regarding hate
speech and calls to violence, and for whatever reason when they do it makes
the news, even though it is a minority of conservatives.

There are still going to be lots of conservative people on reddit even if
/r/The_Donald gets banned, and there are still _tons_ of conservative people
on youtube, facebook, etc. Just because a few highly controversial right wing
personalities have been removed from these platforms (usually for hate speech)
doesn't mean the platforms are biased against conservatives in general

------
bitxbitxbitcoin
Voat with your feet, as they say!

~~~
mankeysee
They did try that once, the sane ones among them ended up loathing that site

------
hashberry
Interesting, because the The_Donald has always been toxic, but now action is
finally being taken. The narrative on The_Donald this week has been about
Google's interference with the political process such as manipulating search
results (e.g. the Project Veritas Jen Gennai video)[0], and why the media is
ignoring this after obsessing over Russian interference.

[0]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/c4miq0/insider_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/c4miq0/insider_blows_whistle_exec_reveals_google_plan_to/)

~~~
krapp
Referring to TLA, the rationale for quarantine may have been calls by T_D
users for violence against police officers, not (if you're implying this) an
attempt censor news about Google.

~~~
burfog
It's an average of less than 1 per day in a very busy subreddit. That is an
impossible standard to meet. It would be trivial for a false flag operation to
post that often, and there clearly is a motive for that.

Meanwhile, as rhegart commented below, far worse is permitted in other
subreddits. The bias is clear as could be.

It's not crazy to think this has something to do with Google. Immense pressure
is being applied by Google. Nobody dares risk being blacklisted from Google
search. We've partially lost our ability to have public debate that might
negatively impact Google.

~~~
drak0n1c
For those interested in the source, the admin logs show that the Reddit
Corporate Admins only needed to remove on average one comment per few days
going back 30 days. Then they removed 9 comments on one day on a post about
Oregon - a somewhat anomalous casus belli. Apparently that was enough to
quarantine a subreddit of 750k subscribers.

[https://twitter.com/thedonaldreddit/status/11439265704086446...](https://twitter.com/thedonaldreddit/status/1143926570408644608)

~~~
weaksauce
That belies the point that admins are not having to do this with other
communities. they simply don't need to step in unless it's overly egregious as
it seems to be here. admins are not there to moderate communities; that's the
mods job.

------
rhegart
The perception of bias from liberal tech platforms will lead to a large group
becoming “conservative” when in actuality they are just contrarian and go for
the counter culture underdog side. It’s a real phenomenon. The artificial
religious right in bush era constantly pushed in our faces led to liberal
values completely dominating mainstream society partly because it all felt too
fake and suffocating it forced average person to think and the right turned
into a joke. I predict liberal values that are mainstream today will be met
with the same fate. They are filled with as many fallacies if not more than
the religious right and the more suffocating almost religion like feel they
get when someone tries to argue against one aspect, the more people will rebel
and fall into the arms of conservatives.

~~~
0815test
The values you are objecting to are not "liberal" values but radically
collectivizing ones. Liberals value freedom and have always done so.

------
MRD85
I'm actually sort of scared with the way that censorship of different views is
becoming the norm. I'm predominantly left leaning but I'm seeing more and more
moderation where the only allowed opinion is the correct one. I seem to recall
that a lot of horrible things were started with good intentions, ie Nazi book
burnings were censoring the wrong views.

It's also incredible divisive. In my country we had a football star doing a
GoFundMe for legal fees after he was sacked for a religious and homophobic
cartoon on his social media. GoFundMe blocked his campaign, as it's against
their views, and now he's making more money than before through a private
donations drive.

The banning of The Donald is going to drive an even bigger wedge between the
two sides of the political spectrum. For a political movement obsessed with
power/privilege, the left seems oblivious to its own power/privilege. They
wield the cast majority of the societal power currently and they're throwing
it around like a hammer.

~~~
Daishiman
> The banning of The Donald is going to drive an even bigger wedge between the
> two sides of the political spectrum.

This keeps getting repeated over and over again and does not correspond with
reality.

/r/the_donald is a forum full of obvious bots, spin doctoring, and people with
openly extreme and antisocial views. Out entire history has shown that the
"deplatforming" of these views works.

The views in that forum are not part of a majority, nor what most people would
associate with mental sanity. You would do well to dive into the content.

~~~
malvosenior
> _This keeps getting repeated over and over again and does not correspond
> with reality._

Like it or not Donald Trump actually is the president of the United States.
It's not like this is some fringe forum of weirdos, it's _the_ fan site of the
sitting president of a major country. It's also very likely that it played a
big role in helping him get elected.

If you think quarantining or banning The_Donald won't sow the seeds of
discord, you're sorely mistaken.

~~~
Daishiman
I'm sure it will. And I'm sure that the damage is less than the damage behind
his policies. At this point, I don't think people should care about inflaming
the alt-right anymore.

~~~
malvosenior
Do you really consider everyone who voted for Trump "alt-right"? If that's the
case does that mean all Republicans are "alt-right"?

------
jkljqwiokj
Frankly, I think they've effectively killed Reddit with this move. Like it or
not, it was one of the last places to discuss right-leaning politics on the
site. Every major "neutral" sub (ex: /r/politics) has notoriously biased mods
placed in by the admins. Now with one half chopped off from political debates,
is the site still fun?

------
writepub
Observe the rinse-and-repeat patterns here:

1\. Openly leftist media outlet [1] sensationalizes posts by a _few_ users,
and proclaims a non-sequitur - that the problem lies with the entire sub-
reddit, instead of with a few users

2\. SV tech company feigns umbrage, cowering behind the sensationalism of said
media outlet, legitimizes their false claims and BANS the entire sub-reddit.
Instead of banning the offending users.

3\. Ecosystem of left leaning outlets (techcrunch et. al.) publish opinions in
agreement with the actions, though similar actions from their preferred
political faction (say for a few illegal posts by far-left activists on AOC
subreddit) goes ignored and free of media amplification.

The frequency of the above steps happening has skyrocketed as the democratic
presidential campaign gains steam. If you trained an AI on the above
phenomenon, the internet would be rid of _any_ speech not condoned by the left
faction of the democratic party.

Techno-fascism is well and truly here.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759967/reddit-
quarantin...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759967/reddit-quarantines-
the-donald-trump-subreddit-misbehavior-violence-police-oregon)

~~~
StellarTabi
> (say for a few illegal posts by far-left activists on AOC subreddit)

[Citation Needed]

------
malvosenior
That's pretty ridiculous (and I'm sure counter productive). If you look at
/r/politics, it's as bad as The_Donald yet remains a default sub.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/](https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/)

~~~
drak0n1c
Perhaps a better counter-example would be /r/ChapoTrapHouse, which routinely
promotes generalized violence against landlords and police.

~~~
spamizbad
Wasn't that subreddit also quarantined a while ago? No idea what its current
status is, but when I tried to click-thru a post there a while back it
wouldn't let me in.

Edit: the Chapo one is out of quarantine. Apparently there were a bunch of
posts soliciting violence towards slaveholders and once the mods removed them
they lifted the quarantine.

~~~
MickerNews
>bunch of posts soliciting violence towards slaveholders

Slaveholders? What kind of violence?

~~~
illirik
The memes were about shooting slave owners, both in the American context and
others. Similar to the Dave Chapelle skit.

