
Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse - catacombs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/29/reddit-closes-long-running-forum-supporting-president-trump-after-years-policy-violations/
======
ve55
Worth taking note that in today's climate, you really cannot win when you are
in a position to moderate important things that a lot of people use.

There is constantly _tremendous_ pressure on you to perform opposing actions,
and even making no decision at all will cause you significant mental stress
and harassment, regardles of what the issue is.

You have to pick who you want to cave to, and to what extent, and no matter
how good of a job you try to do, a lot of people will _really really hate
you_.

This is even more apparent when you see that Reddit has been taking action
against a lot more subreddits recently, some of which are listed in the
article, and many of which clearly have little to do with the president. The
attitude of some of these communities may be abhorrent, but they are still
_communities_ , and people do not react well to their communities being
deleted, whether a company had the legal authority to, or was justified in
doing so, or not.

It's very tough and I wish that we didn't have to go through these things to
begin with, and could have more federated and decentralized platforms, or at
least more client-side filtering inside of centralization curation. I can
always dream.

~~~
duxup
Would something decentralized help?

I don't think people want that. The_Donald involved a lot of spreading their
message / fake news sites / spamming across other subs and etc.

Do people want to be on a platform where other folks on the same platform are
targeting their community with dishonest and often bigoted content?

I'm also not sure how much The_Donald was as a community. The sheer volume of
users at its height seemed to involve a huge amount of brand new accounts you
never saw again / never posted again (except when they show up as a group
again), and etc. Or those without brand new accounts show up and post strange
dishonest lead in type posts that sort of try to lead folks down a bigoted
path ... that you can blatantly see in their post history.

So you'd be in your other community and one day they all show up and down
votes and the vitriol begins... it was no mystery that this happened, it was
spoken of openly in The_Donald for a time.

Who wants to deal with that?

~~~
ryankemper
> I'm also not sure how much The_Donald was as a community.

It was very clearly a real community, as you can see evidence from the fact
that they migrated to thedonald.win when Reddit made it clear that they
wouldn't be treated fairly.

> So you'd be in your other community and one day they all show up and down
> votes and the vitriol begins... it was no mystery that this happened, it was
> spoken of openly in The_Donald for a time.

> Who wants to deal with that?

And yet Reddit happily ignores vote brigading and other negative externalities
from any subreddit that toes their party line, so it seems bizarre to single
T_D out. And as far as I know that wasn't the reason Reddit gave, rather they
said something about supporting violence which in my opinion was a pretty
clear "we're fishing for a made up reason that lets us boot you guys"

~~~
bitexploder
Well, if you had any doubt about the character of TD and what it has become at
its new home, just cruise around it. It’s full of conspiracy theories,
misogyny, racism, and outright calls to violence. It is a common sentiment
there that the only good Democrat is a dead one. These “edgy” takes receive
many upvotes.

~~~
williamgrant
> It is a common sentiment there that the only good Democrat is a dead one.

A similar sentiment is commonly expressed by far left individuals and groups
on Twitter, Facebook and other mediums.

"the only good Tory is a dead Tory" has been the popular refrain for decades.

It's depressing these sentiments are carelessly amplified and approved by so
many.

Edit: Apparently this has caused a stir. I encourage others to not read into
this comment anything but disdain for the kind of discourse where "the one
good BLANK is a dead BLANK" is accepted.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
They're not.

Not only is "The only good Tory is a dead Tory" not a popular refrain at all
[1], but a quick search for "The only good Republican is a dead Republican"
returns a lot of hits for the "[...] dead Democrat" quote and almost none for
the search phrase.

These attempts at false equivalence reliably appear in these situations, and
there's reliably nothing to back them up.

The difference is the right is trying very hard to move the Overton Window and
make "[...] dead Democrat" an acceptable mainstream sentiment suitable for
national news.

[1] You certainly won't hear it from any left-leaning MPs or in Labour
constituency meetings. And if that weren't true, _recordings would be all over
the media._

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Republicans use "Democrat" as a swear word. Democrats more commonly resort to
epithets to describe their opponents.

Relevant Google autocomplete for "the only good ...":

The only good cop is a dead one

The only good pig is a dead pig

The only good fascist is a very dead fascist

Nothing there referring to liberals/progressives/Democrats.

I also gave it "the only good c..." to see if it would give up "conservative"
and it gave "christian" instead, so there's that.

~~~
runarberg
A quick note: Anti christian sentiment is very much not a left wing stance.
Quite the contrary, I’m more like to find crap like that in libertarian
circles. The left wing are often the ones jumping in to defend religious
tolerance.

About the dead cops and dead fascists... sure I’ll admit to that. However that
is very much not the same. Fascism is an ideology that is a direct threat to a
large number of people’s livelyhoods. To declare militant intentions against
such an ideology of hate is a matter of self defense. The same applies to cops
(albeit to a lesser extent).

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Quite the contrary, I’m more like to find crap like that in libertarian
> circles.

Libertarians with philosophical disagreements with Christians are perfectly
entitled to them. "Libertarians" who murder Christians are, by definition, not
actually libertarians. See also non-aggression principle etc.

Also of note, libertarians are not "left" or "right" \-- see that political
compass thing they're always using -- because "left" is economic restraints
with social freedom while "right" is economic freedom with social restraints
and libertarian is both economic and social freedom.

Christianity is quite pro-social restraint, which is adverse to both the left
and libertarians, but the libertarian position is something like "you can
believe whatever you want but don't pass any laws forcing it on others."
Which, of course, becomes a conflict if the Christians want to pass laws
forcing it on others. But ask a Democrat what they think about a law
prohibiting contraception.

> Fascism is an ideology that is a direct threat to a large number of people’s
> livelyhoods.

There is another thread in here about how there aren't that many real
communists in the US and the people who get described as such aren't literally
communists. You could easily say the same thing about fascists.

Opposing fascism is very different than opposing "fascism" while defining it
as anything to the right of Bill Clinton.

~~~
vidarh
Libertarianism literally started on the very far left - an anarcho-communist
named Joseph Dejacque. Right libertarianism is about a century younger, and
the main distinction is view on property rights, which left libertarians tend
to see as oppressive government overreach. (Dejacque enthusiastically
supported Proudhons famous 'property is theft')

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Left libertarianism and right libertarianism agree on nearly everything. It's
not like "left" and "right" which are effectively polar opposites.

Right libertarianism has an antitrust problem -- if the state establishes
corporations and enforces property rights then corporations can become
powerful enough to be de facto governments. Left libertarianism solves it by
deleting property rights, which of course has its own drawbacks.

A middle ground that might work is to allow humans to own property but not
corporations, because the largest accumulations of capital have always taken
corporate form.

Obviously the non-purist can also solve it by having government-enforced
antitrust laws.

------
samfriedman
The title should be updated, as T_D was just one of a large number of subs
banned today; even then, it has been largely irrelevant since the admins'
earlier decision to quarantine it and impose other restrictions.

Other larger banned subs include /r/GenderCritical (anti-Trans) and
/r/ConsumeProduct which was ostensibly for criticism of consumerism and
product promotion, but hid a large strain of antisemitism below the surface in
a similar though less-direct fashion to previously banned /r/clownworld
(barely-veiled antisemitic and racist cartoons/commentary). Also banned is
/r/chapotraphouse, notably the biggest (only?) left-leaning sub on the list.
Its users were known to be relatively cantankerous and tended to kick off a
lot of brigading on Twitter and such; though some will say its banning was a
"both sides" maneuver from the management.

In my own opinion this was a long time coming, and Reddit has long since shown
that the original hands-off model is woefully inadequate in the face of
communities that are willing to expend the effort to argue continuously in bad
faith, organize to influence and control opinion in other communities, and
attack the platform itself in their campaigns for hateful speech. Just ask
/r/BlackLadies if you think these users "stay in their containment areas".
Hopefully Reddit is turning the page to better empower its communities to
protect their users and keep hate off the platform.

~~~
rjbwork
>In my own opinion this was a long time coming, and Reddit has long since
shown that the original hands-off model is woefully inadequate in the face of
communities that are willing to expend the effort to argue continuously in bad
faith, organize to influence and control opinion in other communities, and
attack the platform itself in their campaigns for hateful speech. Just ask
/r/BlackLadies if you think these users "stay in their containment areas".
Hopefully Reddit is turning the page to better empower its communities to
protect their users and keep hate off the platform.

All this will do is push these folks out to different platforms where they
will organize brigading and bad faith participation in the dark. There are
gobs of matrix/discord/irc rooms where people organize the manipulation of
social media, and this move just removed visibility of it from reddit.

~~~
noir_lord
So if we assume you are right then those users are going to behave like
arseholes in either case, better they behave like arseholes off reddit is
likely reddit's point of view - not least for PR/legal issues.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd probably agree with that, but someone upthread is saying Reddit is anti-
censorship, which doesn't quite match with "better they['re] off reddit"?

------
parliament32
Whether you agree with the move or not, it's funny how Reddit's stance has
changed over time. Under the old ownership, 2012:

"At reddit we care deeply about not imposing ours or anyone elses’ opinions on
how people use the reddit platform. We are adamant about not limiting the
ability to use the reddit platform even when we do not ourselves agree with or
condone a specific use. We have very few rules here on reddit; no spamming, no
cheating, no personal info, nothing illegal, and no interfering the site's
functions."

~~~
BoorishBears
The Donald would have been deleted under the old leadership too...

They got in hot water not for supporting Trump (there are plenty of pro-Trump
subreddits) but actively breaking the most basic rules of Reddit, maybe you
should actually look at their history.

Spamming the same images to the subreddit, interfering with other subreddits,
trying to out whistleblowers in federal cases, gaming the content discovery
system with sticky posts.

I'm tired of this narrative that The Donald was banned for censorship reasons,
they were banned for being a virus that was infecting Reddit.

They could have been supporting the Dalai Lama and their behavior would have
been against the basic expectations of Reddit, and that's exactly why they
were quarantined/banned

-

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#History)

In true fashion of people trying to push a made up point, every reply is
nitpicking over which one of their _many_ incredible misbehaviors was the deal
breaker, from doxxing people to brigading other subreddits, instead of
actually providing a rebuttal

It doesn't matter which one broke the camels back, anyone who can read their
history of behavior and pretend Reddit didn't have a reason to take action,
even by those 2012 rules, is in denial.

~~~
parliament32
It was initially quarantined for "threats of violence against police", but
they seem to have changed their narrative since, you know, everyone else
started doing it:
[https://i.redd.it/s2pdnningy451.png](https://i.redd.it/s2pdnningy451.png)

~~~
BoorishBears
Already said it in another comment:

Are we going to pretend everything in that history section is wrong and they
were only quarantined for anti-police comments?

There are literally dozens of crisis that the subreddit spawned, literally any
of which would have been explained it. The fact we can actually go back on
forth on which one of the many many many straws broke the camels back says it
all.

You also seem to want to go so far as to imply the only reason other subreddit
get away with anti-police sentiment is some kind of hypocritical favortism?

------
blisseyGo
From Reddit:

[https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-
reporting/acc...](https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-
reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/promoting-hate-based-identity-or)

> Marginalized or vulnerable groups include, but are not limited to, groups
> based on their actual and perceived race, color, religion, national origin,
> ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation,
> pregnancy, or disability. These include victims of a major violent event and
> their families.

> While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups
> or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of
> people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.

The majority based on what? An individual state? The US? The west? The world?
Men are the minority in many countries but the majority world wide. White
people are the majority in the west but a minority world wide.

Does that mean people can attack white people with impunity, even though
they're a global minority? Can I crap on women to my hearts content because
they are a majority in the UK? Can people in California shit all over
Hispanics because they're the majority in that State?

Will they assess a users state/country/continent of origin before deciding
whether or not they're being hateful towards a specific group?

We are watching Reddit die. Aaron Swartz, the cofounder of Reddit warned about
this a decade ago.

~~~
SmokeyHamster
>the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority

Wow. Like, holy shit wow. So racism and hate is ok with Reddit but only as
long as it's directed at "the majority"?

What the hell is the "majority"? I'm white. Yet I live in a city where blacks
are the majority. Am I still the majority, meaning it's ok to harass me and
send me hateful racist insults on Reddit, or would Reddit grant me honorary
minority status? This is legit sickening.

~~~
skocznymroczny
Don't think in terms of minorities and majorities. Here's a quick simple list:
hating on men, white people, Christians, heterosexuals and conservatives is
fine. Everything else is hate speech.

~~~
blisseyGo
Kind of funny how HN is downvoting you even though they all know this is the
truth. People are so drunk on lies and political correctness that they can't
even think straight.

------
nullc
I'm confused by the article. My understanding was that reddit replaced the
moderators of /r/The_Donald months ago after initially making in quarantined.

The Wikipedia article seems to agree with my understanding:

> In February 26, 2020, Reddit administrators removed a number of r/The_Donald
> moderators "that were approving, stickying, and generally supporting content
> in this subreddit that breaks [Reddit's] content policy" and called the
> remaining moderators to choose new ones from a list of Reddit-approved
> individuals.[77] About the same time, Reddit placed r/The_Donald in
> "Restricted mode", removing the ability to create new posts from most of its
> users. Since then, the subreddit's community has moved to thedonald.win, an
> independently hosted site based on Reddit's old user interface.

Which all sounds fine to me, but the article's quote "We’re not the ones who
shut down the community. The moderators are the ones who shut down that
community." seems disingenuous to me.

What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right
to set the rules?

~~~
Miner49er
Yeah, the ban of T_D is only symbolic; it has been dead for months. I think
the real news here is the ban of /r/ChapoTrapHouse, (arguably) the most active
leftist subreddit there was.

~~~
shakezula
ChapoTrapHouse has been laughing for months about their incoming ban, though.
They knew it was coming and they've been preparing for it by migrating to
other subs, moving to Discord, etc... T_D users are probably doing the exact
same.

~~~
SauciestGNU
I posted on cth periodically and while I think it was banned largely so the
admins could claim "balance" I don't care at all. Nothing serious happened
there, the daily chat threads were fun, but it was clearly eventually going to
be banned and I knew that and didn't get invested.

~~~
pmiller2
+1 to this. Chapo wasn't bad at all, in terms of breaking actual rules. I saw
people on the announcement thread claiming it was full of tankies, and that
was reason enough to ban it, but it really wasn't. You wouldn't get very far
on Chapo by unironically talking about what a great man Stalin or Mao was --
though, guillotine jokes, including applying them to the necks of landlords,
would certainly get you upvotes.

I never saw any actual brigading on the sub itself. Others talk about
"organizing brigades through Twitter," and I think it's kind of BS to punish
people for that. Reddit doesn't get to police Twitter, and vice versa.

Never saw any actual advocacy of violence against any specific person, either.
Sure, there were "kill the landlords" type jokes and memes, but the closest I
think I ever saw it get to actual incitement of violence was stuff like
"Kissinger needs to fucking die already," or "I would prefer that Trump exit
the White House feet first, in a box." You can call that whatever you like,
but it's certainly not advocating violence against anyone.

Meanwhile, there's literally a Stalin meme on the front page of
r/fullcommunism that says "death to capitalism." Then, there's
r/latestagecapitalism, which is a toxic shithole of a sub where you literally
can't say "that idea is crazy and will never work because $REASONS," because
they have a blacklist of words that are "slurs" of one sort of another that
they don't publish, and which will get your post removed if you try and use
them.

~~~
SauciestGNU
/r/fullcommunism is also quarantined though. I'm honestly a little surprised
it didn't get banned in this wave. And late stage capitalism has had a bunch
of mod coups and stuff over the years that have negatively affected the
quality of the sub.

------
ggreer
One thing that seems to not be mentioned in Reddit's new policy: They're now
auto-removing comments that contain certain phrases or words. Not even
moderators can approve them:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/hhtwxi/culture_wa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/hhtwxi/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_june_29_2020/fwdyvqz/)

It looks like it is no longer possible to make a comment containing
"thedonald.win" on Reddit. To be clear: Reddit isn't just censoring links to
that site, it's censoring _mentioning_ it.

This appears to be a new change as it was retroactively applied to comments
from a few days ago.

------
duxup
It was largely empty after the quarantine.

I always wondered what the actual population of that sub was, I felt like I
saw some strange patterns where whole hordes of users would appear, disappear,
mob another sub and so on. It felt like a very non organic community in many
ways.

The issues surroundings that sub weren't just some folks who had a sub to talk
to each other, they were very busy mobbing / taking over other subs and etc.

Like most of those subs that leaned right it seemed like a front for sort of a
rabbit hole of fear, hate, open bigotry, and blatent calls for violence /
division and etc.

~~~
zionic
Well they broke off and made their own website after the quarantine and it's
on it's way to the top-1000 US sites (alexa rank).

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
What site is that? And is that actual organic users, or a ton of bot traffic?

~~~
SV_BubbleTime
I won’t link it directly for obvious reasons but theDonald dot win.

I just went clicked through and the comment traffic seems real to me. Doesn’t
look like bots that i can tell.

Then I clicked an article about 19 child welfare workers arrested for sex
trafficking children... and closed it. That’s enough for me for today.

------
ThA0x2
They literally greenlit racism against Whites:

"Marginalized or vulnerable groups include, but are not limited to, groups
based on their actual and perceived race, color, religion, national origin,
ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation,
pregnancy, or disability. These include victims of a major violent event and
their families.

While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or
all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people
who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate."

~~~
mitchdoogle
Can't find any reference to the line about majority on their website

~~~
ThA0x2
[https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hjdeo9/redd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hjdeo9/reddit_has_now_changed_the_wording_of_their_new/)

------
shiado
Reddit really had a good run as an interesting site, but it's really angling
for a FB style consumer ad experience now. I think the final blow will be when
they go after porn like tumblr did, then it will die forever. Too bad the
alternatives are pretty extremist. I think Dread is really the best one
because people who want to buy drugs on the internet aren't there completely
for the politics.

~~~
WorkingDead
Hobby specific communities were a big attraction point to reddit, but even
those have devolved into heavy censorship. There isnt really a good draw to
the site anymore.

~~~
cryptoz
IMO the 'heavy censorship' is the only thing keeping hobby communities going
well. Without that moderation, you'd be trying to learn about something fun
like knitting but you'd see a bunch of hateful content, like racist MAGA stuff
instead of knitting for example.

Having the moderation get stronger is the only way to save hobby subreddits
IMO.

~~~
symlinkk
No you wouldn’t, that’s the whole point of upvotes and downvotes. The
community gets to decide what’s popular. Not moderators.

~~~
zachm0
I agree that it doesn't necessarily always devolve into hate speech but,
anecdotally, every community I've seen without heavy moderation eventually
devolves into low effort meme posts, and sometimes hateful content. For
example, r/gaming vs r/games. The pattern repeats itself all over reddit.

~~~
symlinkk
If a community widely upvotes low effort memes then that’s what the community
wants to see. The people have spoken! Why do you think you know what’s better
for them?

“Hate speech” is a buzzword that doesn’t mean anything. What is hate speech?
No one knows.

~~~
joshuamorton
All unmoderated communities upvote easy to consume content. That's how group
dynamics work. You either have to limit who can enter the community at all
(which is what HN tacitly does), or what can be posted.

Are you suggesting that if I start a community called "pics_of_cute_cats" and
a bunch of people come in and start posting military insignia, that's what the
community wants?

Because it's certainly not what I, a member of pics_of_cute_cats want.

------
superkuh
I have no love for the political ideology or behavior of this group but they
weren't breaking any laws or even any more rules than other groups on reddit
that still operate. They were just politically unviable.

Centralized corporate means to communicate (like, say, this one we're using)
always go bad eventually. It's the natural lifecycle of online forums. Once
money involved it's only a matter of time before the profit and drama-
avoidance incentives of the corporation win over the wishes of the users.
Reddit hasn't been usable since 2013.

~~~
root_axis
> _They were just politically unviable._

We all know reddit leans a bit left, but the ban also included
/r/chapotraphouse which is a leftist subreddit that was also notorious for
rule breaking. Frankly, it seems reddit went out of its way to accommodate
the_donald for a while now.

~~~
cryptoz
> We all know reddit leans a bit left

Do we? I think reddit 'leans a bit right' if anything. Especially in the city-
level subreddits or country-level, or communities like that, there is (in my
experience) a heavy-handed right-leaning attitude. I noticed this about 10
years ago and it has gotten much much more pronounced. The subreddit r/canada
turned extreme-far-right about 10 years ago. Most of the cities I live in
downvote left-leaning posts instantly.

I don't think reddit was ever left-leaning in the past and I don't think it is
now, either. Sure, left-wing views are posted, sometimes upvoted and
tolerated, but I do not think they are the majority.

I consider myself left-wing but feel unwelcome in most subreddits due to my
opinions. I'll post anyway, but, it's not a left-leaning site at all IMO.

~~~
newfriend
> I think reddit 'leans a bit right'

This has to be a joke. Either you are so 'left-wing' that you consider Obama,
Biden, etc, as 'right-wing', or you are ignoring the vast majority of the
site. 'left-wing' views are not 'tolerated', they are celebrated.

There are consistent 60k+ upvoted 'trump bad', 'obama good', 'republicans bad'
posts from default subs. When's the last time you've seen anything 'right-
leaning' on /r/all? I haven't seen anything since they blocked TD from
appearing there.

~~~
cryptoz
I am not joking, and yes Obama and Biden are very clearly right-wing
politicians. I have not seen a single actually left-wing policy out of either
of them.

Also, please don't assume the people you're talking to online are 'joking'
when they express their serious views. It's against HN guidelines to assume
such bad faith in my answers.

> 'left-wing' views are not 'tolerated', they are celebrated.

I don't see that at all on reddit.

~~~
newfriend
Reddit is an American company, with a largely American user base. From an
American perspective, it is a very left-leaning site.

Judging reddit from the point of view of a communist is not helpful. I'm sure
there are people who view Trump as too left-wing, but that doesn't make it so.

> I don't see that at all on reddit.

I do see that on reddit.

------
gtk40
/r/gendercritical was also banned, an active and well-moderated radical
feminist sub.

I am not a radical feminist, nor was I particularly welcomed there as a man,
but I found the sub interesting to expand my perspective.

~~~
abellerose
What did that subreddit do besides hating on trans people? I never saw
anything but countless posts targeting hate against trans people.

~~~
nullc
People see what catches their attention.

Some people would go there and read articles about gay women being attacked
for choosing whom they took on as sexual partners. (I found it quite
surprising and extremely rapey that anyone would consider it appropriate to be
critical of _anyone_ for choosing their consenting sexual partners however
they like-- but it happens sometimes.)

Or read about people being displaced from scholarships because the top spots
in track in their community were held by hormonally advantaged persons.

Or learn about cases where tomboyish young women were told that they were
actually men because they were interested in science or sports.

Personally, I find it too easy to be extremely self righteous in ethical
proclamations if I never even get exposed to the corner cases where there can
be a truly difficult conflict of rights.

Now-- taking fringe events like the above examples and exaggerating them as
some kind of endemic phenomena absolutely can fuel hate. It isn't always an
easy line to walk.

~~~
saltminer
Trans people were the subject of a great many, if not most of the posts on GC
for the past few months I've paid attention to the sub. GC is a radical
feminist hangout, as in SCUM Manifesto "men are the root of all evil and must
be exterminated to liberate women"-flavor radical feminism, which lends itself
to trans exclusion quite easily since you just have to view trans women as men
for them to become evil fetishizers who want to become women for their own
pleasure (this also allows them to pity trans men since they become women who
were tricked into becoming a man for social reasons instead of acknowledging
that gender dysphoria is real).

Trans stuff was certainly not the only thing they talked about, but it was the
most common, and trans posts tended to have the most discussion.

------
txcwpalpha
About time. However, this move was mostly symbolic. r/the_donald has been
inactive for months without a single new post on it. AFAIK the community had
already moved on to another site off reddit.

Much more significant IMO is that the ban also includes r/ChapoTrapHouse,
which is a "left"-leaning subreddit accused of much of the same stuff
r/the_donald was.

~~~
robotron
I haven't seen this mentioned in any stories but r/antifa is also banned. It
could have come about as something else but I took a peak in it Thursday and
it was there.

------
zimac
New rule change is essentially no hate subs except if it’s hate against a
majority aka white people. As a minority I’m tired of defending white people
from other white people and being shouted at by white people for doing so.
I’ve tried for 6 years to push for equality for all and had the most insane
rebuttals against that.

~~~
SkyBelow
Oddest thing is that many groups deemed a majority are not if one looks at a
global scale. It really seems the terms majority/minority are selectively
defined as needed to target certain groups.

~~~
mantap
It's not even true on a per country level, for instance in Bahrain and UAE the
majority of the population are south Asian people. It does not protect them
from racism.

It's not uncommon around the world for racism and discrimination to be
perpetuated by a small but powerful aristocracy.

~~~
SkyBelow
All the more reason to drop any 'majority group' based logic and just ban
targeted harassment and discrimination based on immutable characteristics in
general.

------
conradfr
As horrible or stupid as that subreddit was it at least exposed Steve Huffman
stealthily editing posts, so some positive came from it.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/)

------
abnry
If the rationale for banning is policy violations (doxxing, racism, vulgarity,
calls for violence, etc), as long as the standards are consistently enforced
I'm okay with it. Although my caveat is that racism is defined differently for
different people. I E., racism has to be directed towards a marginalized group
vs derogatory statements based on racial characteristics.

This is my main problem with Twitter. The standards aren't consistently
enforced. I've seen so many leftist blue checkmarks justifying violence that
get a pass.

And on the racism front, Sarah Jeong comes to mind.

~~~
SV_BubbleTime
> racism has to be directed towards a marginalized group vs derogatory
> statements based on racial characteristics.

Here I am old school just thinking the color of a mans skin should have no
more significance than the color of his eyes...

I don’t believe in the oppression olympics and that hate is ok because group A
has it worse than B.

Edit: HN 2020, ideals of Haile Selassie are rejected in the name of
“tolerance” I guess? What a wild ride!

~~~
maceurt
> Here I am old school just thinking the color of a mans skin should have no
> more significance than the color of his eyes...

I almost certain neither group on either side agrees with that. The people on
the left will argue that color is important and is deeply connected to culture
and through subconscious/ institutional racism. To pretend to be blind to race
or think of it like any other physical characteristic would be to just put
your head in the sand and pretend the world is all lollipops and gumballs.

The right will argue that race plays a factor in physical and mental
characteristics through culture and possibly genetics. And that too ignore
race entirely would be to go against the stats on things like average SAT,
ACT, IQ, Crime Rate, etc.

I personally think that there is truth in a lot of what they both say, and
ignoring race will not solve tension or conflict in the US. Its very naive to
assume that race is skin deep and can be solved by simply pretending it
doesn't exist. If it was that easy we would have solved it by now.

~~~
afiori
From a mainstream point of view (of let's say twitterverse) the left is the
only one I have seen claim that race should be used in social policing.

The right would rather use race correlation those metrics to argue that the
status quo is fair, not racist and just due to meritocracy.

Personally I think both are wrong as the status quo should be improved quite
drastically, but also I believe that race-aware policies will ultimately
slowdown progress and lead to push back.

------
cptnapalm
I don't know what the rest of you are reading, but reddit now explicitly
allows hate speech against a majority. Seriously, it's right there on their
site: [https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-
reporting/acc...](https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-
reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/promoting-hate-based-identity-or)

------
jl2718
There’s no winning this game. Soon they will be considered liable for anything
they didn’t censor, especially from the extreme left, as they are making the
appearance of support. I hope they’re paying Michael a massive amount of money
to associate himself with this dumpster fire.

~~~
basch
Section 230 protects you from liability when you choose to censor.

~~~
tomjen3
Legal liability. It does nothing to prevent them from being attacked in the
press, for having their payment systems cut, or from being personally
vilified.

And who knows how soon the laws will change?

------
hartator
To be fair, The_Donald was already shutdown for a while. Between quarantine
that makes it not show up in feeds and the moderation team being replaced by
Reddit’s, it wasn’t up and running anymore.

~~~
minimaxir
A de facto shutdown is not the same as an actual shutdown.

~~~
hartator
At least, they are being transparent about it.

------
electrotype
I remember how was Reddit 10 years ago... It was a very open and permissive
place. Only _very_ bad things were prohibited at that time (pedophilia, rape,
murder, etc.).

It is now ran by people/corporations with a political agenda.

~~~
sschueller
Yep, r/videos is so locked down you don't get anything relevant other than
some old cat video repost.

~~~
chippy
/r/movies had posters who literally and out in the open said they were
employed by netflix to post netflix videos they said their manager thought
reddit would like.

I avoided the place ever since then. That was about 4 years ago.

~~~
electrotype
I pick my subreddits and I never look at the default/popular ones. There are
some topics/interests for which Reddit is still the place to be, sadly.

------
Press2forEN
Since the 2016 election the left has been consolidating their vast cultural
power by exiling opposing views that don't pass their ever-shifting purity
tests.

It remains to be seen whether or not this will bury conservative thought or
cause an underground resurgence.

~~~
ipnon
Social media companies and "the left" are not the same. Although they surely
have some overlap (just as social media companies and "the right" surely have
some overlap), conflating them entirely with each other is simply false. We
cannot assign political conspiracies to entire industries.

~~~
lipstone
I don't think the claim is that social media is inherently leftist, but rather
than leftists have mounted attacks on all social media companies that don't
actively censor right-wing opinions (see current ad boycott targeted at
Facebook). I think the success of these campaigns are extremely concerning and
a reminder that peace and prosperity are not a given.

~~~
rainonmoon
Companies should be accountable to their customers. When a large group of
those customers collectively exercise their rights to let a company know the
company's values don't align with those customers, that seems like a pretty
reasonable demonstration of the market.

------
non-entity
Note T_D is only one such sub being banned. CTH and thousands of others as
well are being removed.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21304947/reddit-ban-
subre...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21304947/reddit-ban-subreddits-
the-donald-chapo-trap-house-new-content-policy-rules)

------
newguy1234
I don't know how many will see the comment but I was a member of the_donald
sub and subsequently migrated to the new thedonald.win

There is a significant shift going on that people aren't realizing. The days
of the "platform" being a monopoly over users is coming to an end. The cost of
running a website, even a bandwidth heavy website is going lower. As major
social networks and platforms crack down on controversial content, these
communities don't vanish. They simply move to some other place. In the
conservative community this idea of "censorship" is increasing to the point
where it is becoming a serious movement. Many alternatives to mainstream media
are actually gaining a decent userbase. Here is what is going on that I can
see:

Twitter is replaced by parler

Youtube is replaced by bitchute

Reddit subs are replaced by thedonald.win (you can get your sub hosted by them
now)

Twitch is replaced by dlive

Just to show you the growth of some of these platforms. Just look at the
growth of thedonald.win. Apparently it is ranked at something like 1,250 for
the USA by Alexa. That's staggering considering this website is only a few
years old.

If you are a web entrepreneur, take note because there is a growing market for
"conservative" or "censorship-free" social media now.

~~~
joshschreuder
It's ranked 8,648 from what I can tell

[https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thedonald.win](https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thedonald.win)

I have never heard of the other sites you mention, so I can't speak to their
popularity. But as far as I can see this all seems very fringe for lack of a
better word. There doesn't really seem to be a groundswell of movement towards
alternate platforms because of censorship.

~~~
Eezee
Calling bitchute fringe seems to be very kind. I just took a look at their
front page and they are promoting videos about Holocaust denial and 2 of the
first 10 videos are blatantly antisemitic.

Parker requires an account, which I'm not willing to make, but if it's similar
to the last conservative Twitter alternative Gab, it's all just racist drivel
with barely any 'normal' conversations.

While alternatives to the big corporate social media are obviously needed,
they very often attract the most toxic members of society, which most sane
people won't be comfortable associating with.

------
nilkn
This is a purely symbolic move at this point. It was effectively shut down and
has been completely inactive for something like four months, and by all
accounts the competing site has been thriving.

------
13415
It's high time Reddit and other social networks ban toxic users, and boy are
those political zealots toxic. The problem with these people is that they
don't realize that almost nobody cares about their fringe opinions.

For all that I'm concerned, if Reddit shadowbanned every user with a history
of mostly political comments and posts, nothing of value would be lost.
Political discussions online do not have any positive effects on anybody,
neither on the people doing it nor on the poor bystanders who have to endure
all these "campaigns" and the constant attempts to manipulate public opinion.

As a European, I'm particularly tired of the constant flow of politically-
motivated garbage posts coming from the US. One reason why I'm mostly on HN is
that political topics are usually flagged. Kudos to Reddit if they go the same
path.

------
admin1010
Do you all think Steve is ok? Like on a personal health level? The constant
onslaught of "you're a nazi and racist" and being overwhelmingly hated by your
user base must take a toll. How do CEOs in positions like this not burn out or
avoid major stress-related health problems?

~~~
flyingfences
> How do CEOs in positions like this not burn out or avoid major stress-
> related health problems?

Money.

------
drocer88
20th Century Dystopian novels are now operations manuals.

~~~
skrowl
It's very sad how many leftist are cheering on the censorship.

Forcible silencing of opposing views is a central tenant of actual fascism
(not the kind of "fascism" that kids on social media accuse people of just for
disagreeing with them).

History repeats itself, it would seem. This is a modern day book burning.

~~~
ipnon
Americans have a constitutional guarantee to free speech. They do not have a
constitutional guarantee to use Reddit. Does that difference matter here?

~~~
maceurt
It matters in that we should not lobby congress to make reddit unban certain
subreddits.

However, that does not mean we should not criticize reddit for not standing up
for freedom of speech. You can't make your whole website based around "open
and honest discussion" then ban subreddits where open and honest discussion
was happening, but in ways you didn't like.

~~~
afiori
To be fair the argument isn't really that TD was where "open and honest"
discussion would happen, rather that reddit is politically biased anti-Trump
in selectively detecting rule violations.

------
blisseyGo
Spez is lying because The_Donald had been inactive for 4 months when the
Reddit admins banned their top mods and they all left and built their own
website thedonald.win

So Spez claiming TD has been continuing to post rule breaking content is
literally a lie.

~~~
asdf21
If you follow spez at all that shouldn’t surprise you.

Hell he directly edited the comment database on the_donald one time

------
haunter
I wonder how they will fight against the other kind of systematic propaganda
now but guess nothing will happen. Subs like /r/bestof became absolute shit

See the current top post there which is absolutely crazy but hey it fits the
agenda.

~~~
tenpies
Reddit is basically a Left-wing propaganda outlet at this point. The amount of
clearly targeted sub-Reddits with the aim of radicalising their target group
is staggering and would make even the most nefarious of insurgents blush at
how open and obvious it is.

~~~
cryptoz
Worth noting that _from my perspective_ , reddit is basically a right-wing
propaganda outlet and always has been (at least the last 10+ years).

Weird how that goes.

~~~
lipstone
Have you used reddit at all within the past 10 years? Yeah, there's some
smaller subreddits that have right-wing views, but every frontpage sub leans
heavily left.

For example, the most common political debate right now isn't Biden vs. Trump,
it's whether or not Biden is left-wing enough to deserve a vote.

~~~
sgift
From the perspective of someone from Europe this is a very valid question,
cause Biden is right of the center, so not really what somehow who describes
themselves as "leftist" usually votes for. Even Bernie Sanders, often seen as
the start of socialism in America, is only a bit left of the center in typical
political quadrants.

The problem is that US politics are very skewed to the right, so many there
think clear right wing positions are on the left.

([https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020](https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020))

~~~
OGWhales
People are referring to social politics when they say reddit is left heavy,
which is certainly true.

Yes, economic politics in America is more right leaning than most of Europe
but even still I have a hard time believing reddit pushes towards the right
more than the left in any regard besides smaller subs

------
ianleeclark
I'm actually curious how conspiracy subs continually skate through these ban-
waves. Even if you discount all of the dog whistles, you can find normal
whistles scattered throughout the place: echoes and charts showing who in the
media is Jewish are the two most common.

Yet they always stay around.

------
bradlys
Chapo was just banned too. No warning AFAIK.

~~~
Miner49er
Really this is what it's all about. T_D has been dead for months and its ban
is mostly symbolic. Chapo has still been active.

~~~
kazagistar
Chapo had actually grown since quarentine afaik.

~~~
bradlys
It seemed really popular to me. The daily threads alone regularly had 4000+
comments when I was viewing the sub more frequently.

------
frankzen
It's about time now to declare the "social media" experiment dead. We're
basically learning that there is value in excluding. The all inclusive buffet
only brings you down to a neutered lowest common denominator. You're not
really going to get any real thought or discussion when you're conversation is
monitored by outside moderators. It was doomed to fail anyway.

~~~
floatingatoll
Do you consider this failure to include this social media site, “Hacker News”?

~~~
asdf21
If you start posting substantive points arguing against socialism / big
government you get warned. If you argue about the warning you get banned.

YC is not really any better and the main mod is a self-admitted (although he
took it down now) far leftist.

One time I found all the UBI threads and every flagged / mod warned post was
someone arguing against UBI (that’s apparent a flame war), but endless
idealistic rambling about how great it would be was totally fine.

------
throwawaylolx
It appears to have been a cross-platform mass-banning which included actions
from Google (YouTube) and Amazon (Twitch) as well.

------
cc-d
I feel obligated to once again plug
[https://ieddit.com/about/](https://ieddit.com/about/) -transparent mod/admin
logs, anonymous posting, etcetcetc, but I honestly think it's been
demonstrated that it's next to impossible to sustain any amount of serious
interest in such alternatives (there is certainly no shortage of reddit-like
sites).

The direction reddit has taken is absolutely abhorrent, but at this point it's
hard to avoid adopting a fatalistic outlook on things. What else can be done?

Anybody in the upper echelons of reddit who is responsible for the direction
the site has taken over the past few years should be absolutely disgusted with
themselves. Was the hundreds of millions (billions?) in VC funding not enough?
You were given an extremely important position of stewardship over the
internet, and have utterly betrayed all of us.

------
s9w
So the rumors about today were right. But this should not be the headline - TD
was shut down many many months ago, despite people clinging to technicalities
that it was not the case.

------
runawaybottle
Without getting into the weeds, I just don’t see why we accepted that the
internet should be one giant message board. We seem to do this over and over
with stuff like Reddit and Facebook, but once upon a time communities would be
their own site with their own message board.

~~~
buboard
Because it is and always has been , from the start. Without this liberation of
having a public , anonymous board, we 'd be so much poorer culturally. Reddit
banning some stuff is a good thing - new venues will arise because people
arent just going to stop talking.

------
dandersh
This played out how many (myself included) speculated it would.

1\. t_d would not be banned as long as it was moderately active (it's
basically been dead for months)

2\. If it goes, ChapoTrapHouse gets banned as well.

The big thing here is that Chapo served as a clearinghouse for the "dirtbag
left" and was incredibly active. The expectation that it would be banned was
increasing even before the anonymous warning over the weekend. It was common
for users to get warnings/3 day bans for "posting violations of
content/upvoting violated content" without specifying the specific post or
rule that was alleged to have been violated.

It's clear that including Chapo was a weak, "both sides" move.

------
untog
IMO this headline is too selective. They banned a whole group of subs,
including /r/trapochaphouse, which is a left-wing subreddit. Only highlighting
this one is needlessly simplistic and will mislead anyone reading it.

------
forgotmypw17
I know a little bit about a large apolitical r.

The majority of the time people's arguments get heated enough that a mod has
to step in and tell someone to cool it, the topic is politics.

And the majority of the time the argument starts with obvious
trolling/baiting, typically racist stuff.

Straight up racism is quickly spotted and flagged down, so the new technique
is to go on a roundabout monologue and imply racism.

Reddit admins themselves sometimes step in to remove things as well, but it's
rare. Mostly for illegal things they spot first, e.g. trying to buy/sell
drugs.

AMA if you want to know anything else.

------
secondcoming
Great, I hope r/politics is next. And then they can start censoring anti-
semitic far-leftists.

~~~
MrZongle2
Don't hold your breath, especially regarding any action taken against
/r/politics or an effort to make it _actually_ politically neutral.

~~~
tzs
How would one make a political discussion group be politically neutral?

~~~
MrZongle2
By encouraging discussions from both ends of the political spectrum, perhaps?
The discussions themselves cannot be neutral, but the environment _can_ be.

That is _not_ currently the case in /r/politics.

------
koolba
This final banning of /r/The_Donald is part of a concerted effort to eliminate
any sense of normalcy for being pro-Trump. Even with no content for the past
few months (after the mod removal), it stood out as a historical reference
point to show thousands of people that supported Trump's 2016 campaign and
presumably would continue to support him in 2020.

They had a choice to leave it up and locked, but instead chose to erase it
from the Internet and that's no accident.

~~~
dangus
As a counterpoint to that, there is really nothing “normal” about supporting
Trump. He really is just as bad as his critics say.

This is the guy that retweeted a video of someone yelling white power in
support. This is the guy who called COVID-19 the “Kung flu.” This is the guy
that said there were “fine people on both sides” where one side was neo-Nazis.
This is the guy that encouraged both police and rally-goers to get violent
with the “wrong“ type of people.

Trump is deeply, unacceptably racist, and pro-violence, full stop. Trump is on
the side of Christian white nationalism and there are plenty of people who
voted for him who don’t even recognize it.

The fact that your typical upper middle class white suburban family with
generally moderate views might have voted for this guy isn’t normal. They just
can’t hear the dog whistles and have been, amazingly, convinced that that the
alternative is worse.

------
kajb
Are there any reddit alternatives with minimal political discussion that at
the same time is not just for a narrow topic?

------
ur-whale
[http://archive.is/DIKFA](http://archive.is/DIKFA)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Apart from politics, one thing I hope that comes from this is the people learn
to own their online identity instead of leasing it from social media
companies.

For an individual, set up your email on your own domain. Even if you use some
other service to host it for you, as long as you own the name, you can move it
wherever you want.

If you host a community, have it on your own domain. Maybe initially it just
redirects to a reddit subreddit, but your users should get in the habit of
going to MyCommunity.tld instead of reddit.com/r/my_community

If you make videos for a living, have at a minimum a website that has a list
of your videos and always tell your users that that is the canonical place to
find your videos.

Own your online identity. Don’t lease it from a social media company.

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
Good. I wouldn't want these communities on my website either. And it's not
about censorship, it's about not wanting to give shitty hateful trolls a
platform and let them run wild on your site ruining it for everyone who
chooses to remain civil.

------
extr
RIP /r/cumtown

~~~
sketchyj
o7

------
HeroOfAges
"The rule does not protect people in the majority". Hmm... Aren't women in the
majority here in the United States? According to Reddit, women are fair game.

------
thepangolino
How many places will Reddit drop in Alexa rankings after this?

------
christkv
A bigger threat to all the social platforms is that advertisers seem to be
pausing the ad spend. I wonder how that impacts decisions like these bans.

------
stevens32
This seems like a win for the trolls. I've cut Reddit out of my diet and I'm
sure those communities were deserving of the ban, but targeting specific
subreddits rather than properly enforcing whatever rule they were breaking to
create a toxic atmosphere seems like the less good answer of the two.

------
Morizero
Here's where news about it was leaked over the weekend:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/redd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/reddits_largest_ever_banwave_is_coming_monday/)

------
lumberingjack
I was still using the site but now my front page is empty I tell you empty not
one sub I had is LEFT

~~~
duxup
That's a pretty weird thing to have happen. How many subs could you possibly
been following?

Not that many subs get banned...

------
bibinou
source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/)

------
madars
Full list of subreddits banned today: [https://www.redditstatic.com/banned-
subreddits-june-2020.txt](https://www.redditstatic.com/banned-subreddits-
june-2020.txt) (with "blurring" after top 10)

~~~
donatj
Why the blurring?

~~~
floatingatoll
Naming them grants them glory as martyrs, especially when the subreddit's name
is a google-unique term that they can use to regroup and to attract supporters
to their cause. It's already too late for the top 10, but that's no reason to
give the rest a free boost.

~~~
donatj
I mean it would be nice to know if anything I was subscribed to was banned.
Denying us that is irritating at best.

~~~
floatingatoll
Theoretically, I can see why that would be distressing as an end-user, but
wearing my platform operator hat^, I can't think of any way to implement that
doesn't result in either driving traffic to competing platforms, assisting
rulebreakers in their inevitable quest to rouse a pitchfork mob against their
own platform, and/or is interpreted to be saying that users are bad for having
subscribed to banned content.

^ I do not operate any public platforms.

------
gre
r/chapotraphouse was the only reason to still use reddit

------
nabla9
If you look at the posting history of people who post lots of politics or
bigoted, many of them are really weird.

One very clear class of weird is people who only post 1-2 sentence posts. If
you scroll down, they may post 10-100 posts per day and they are always some
short unoriginal emotionally loaded statement of the world situation. If they
are not banned the posting history can go on for years, with just endless
stream of short sentences.

Discussing for them is just saying opinions. They take everything against them
personally. If you try to engage them into discussion, they really can't.

------
asdfk-12
I find it odd that there is no mention in parent article or in any comments
that Reddit is a subsidiary of the Condé Nast media empire. Their ultimate
profit goal doesn't align with users and relies on algos and top-down
intervention to generate cash and clicks.

Partisanship doesn't contribute to this aim, so, how is their killing a
discussion board newsworthy or surprising to anyone?

------
anonu
The internet remains a bastion of free speech. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter,
remain privately managed companies with a duty to police their platforms. If
/r/The_Donald contributors are upset - they can go almost anywhere else.
Vitriol, hate, disinformation, etc... just doesn't need to be on public
display.

~~~
TheGrim-888
The problem is that what hate is, is in the eye of the beholder. People can
say Trump wanting to enforce rule of law is hate, I don't think so. People can
say Trump wanting to enforce our borders is hate, and I don't think so. You
have politically motivated people who think that anything that disagrees with
their political viewpoints is hate, and justification to be memoryholed from
the internet. I don't agree.

~~~
rvz
That's right. Who defines hate speech? Where do you draw the line? I guess as
soon as one incites violence no matter what side of the political spectrum it
is from, that is out of order.

------
apta
Perhaps now that reddit is Chinese owned, they're trying to infiltrate to see
how much they can get away with by medling around with external affairs in
order to model them after their own internal policies.

------
gadders
It's an election year. What do you expect?

------
beloch
>“It’s one of the founding principles of Reddit to foster [political]
discussion,” Huffman said in the call with reporters.

Ironically, /r/The_Donald highlighted a key flaw in reddit's system:
moderators.

Moderators in reddit's sub vary from being totally absent to all-controlling.
/r/The_Donald's mods were at the very far end of the controlling spectrum. For
example, back in the early days of the sub, before Trump was even elected, one
of their posts showed up on /r/all (Anything highly voted on any subreddit can
show up there). Somebody was gushing about "The Art of the Deal". I replied to
them that they should check out some of Tony Schwartz's other books and was
immediately banned from /r/The_Donald for life. The post in which I said this
was removed. People went on gushing about the brilliance of Trump.

Moderators on reddit are not selected or paid. They "volunteer". They have
absolute control over who posts and what is posted in their sub. There is zero
transparency. Users can't see what moderators are doing. The end result is
that a sub is as biased as it's moderators. The thing is, reddit subs are like
communities. People who post in a sub regularly get upvotes for conforming to
the sub's biases, downvotes for struggling against them, and see only what the
moderators let them see. Pretty soon their views conform to those of the
moderators. /r/The_Donald allowed some pretty crazy people to polarize a lot
of other people who were probably a lot more balanced in their political views
before Reddit came along.

For this reason, I no longer post in or read Reddit's political subs. Most
subs _seem_ better than /r/The_Donald, but you simply don't know what the mods
are doing to shape your views. Personal experience has led me to believe
/r/Canada also has some really bad moderators right now, and you can see the
tone of that sub gradually changing over time. It's simply unacceptable to
place this much trust in people who are _totally anonymous_.

So, where do I get my political news from? Newspapers. I read several sources
distributed from left-centre to right-centre on mediabiasfactcheck.com's
ratings. Dead tree media may have corporate biases and a host of other
problems but, at least, you can _begin_ to get a handle on who they are and
what their biases are. Also, by removing the upvote system from the mix, you
don't have meaningless internet points serving as both carrot and stick to
make you subconsciously conform.

Bottom line, Reddit is for cat gifs and people smacking each other in the
nuts. It is not a safe place to get your politics from.

------
otterley
"...and nothing of value was lost."

~~~
bastardoperator
trash in / trash out

------
akerro
I see reddit as a platform where everyone can shitpost whatever they want, and
where every opinion will face criticisms. Banning right or left wing
subreddits will make these people to leave to "safe harbour" where their
extreme views won't be banned, but such portals will be pwoered by their
extreme views and there will be no criticism or "quality control". Basically,
extremists fuelling each other to do harm in real life, because there is no
one to tell them "hey, this is too edgy" just like small terrorist groups
start.

------
catsarebetter
Never checked it out. Don't regret it

~~~
MINIMAN10000
I did and I was left satisfied.

I wanted to see their viewpoint on at the time "the hot topic" and confirm my
suspicions that I truly don't consider their viewpoint rational or valid. It's
like they start from a conclusion and work backwards to excuse it.

~~~
arcticbull
That was my experience as well. It's a fascinating parallel universe, but it's
not for me. It's kind of the same reason I watch a lot of Fox News.

~~~
D13Fd
I love reading foxnews.com and some of my deeply conservative relatives'
Facebook feeds, because they give a perspective I'd never see otherwise (even
if I generally disagree). I'm on there daily, and I'd say I get just as much
news from those sources as from others, like washingtonpost.com. I also
sometimes go to some old school conservative blogs like
nationalreview.com/corner/, as well as sites like Drudge and Breitbart to see
what they think.

But /r/the_donald was just toxic. Even when I was in the mood to see more of
that kind of content, I couldn't stand more than about 5 minutes of browsing
that subreddit before closing the tab in frustration and disgust.

------
yur3i__
Well yeah after they all migrated away. Bit of a token gesture to all the
people who kept yammering at them really.

------
neonate
[https://archive.vn/DIKFA](https://archive.vn/DIKFA)

------
wnevets
Finally. Its been a festering hole of hate speech for years

------
blisseyGo
I used to spend a lot of money on Reddit gold until few years ago when Reddit
blocked any discussion about the gay club shooting at Pulse nightclub.
The_Donald was the only sub which allowed discussion of it and seemed to be
the only ones who could sympathize with the gay community on Reddit at that
time.

Before that, I used to believe right wingers were a bunch of homophobes and
what not but if that was the case, why would would they be the only one
discussing and sympathizing with the families of the victims?

Why was the supposed homophobic and violent sub The_Donald the only ones which
were allowing stickies for blood donations towards the shooting victims while
the /r/news sub deleting any comment which talked about blood donations to the
victims? PEOPLE LITERALLY DIED and for all the virtue signaling Reddit and the
front page subs did, they didn't care about the victims?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160612232812/http://i.imgur.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160612232812/http://i.imgur.com/OGaPNij.png)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160612215205/https://www.reddi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160612215205/https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4nrnyk/fucking_despicablernews_mods_even_censoring/)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160612215019/http://reddit.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160612215019/http://reddit.com/r/the_Donald)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160613172842/http://reddit.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160613172842/http://reddit.com/r/the_Donald)

Here's people literally pleading mods of /r/news to not delete blood donation
comments:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160612212229/http://media.brei...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160612212229/http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/06/2016-06-12_18h33_15.png)

When people called out the mods of /r/news to stop censoring, the mod told
them to "kill yourself":

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160616024508/http://imgur.com/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160616024508/http://imgur.com/XDlWQNd)

Here's mods of /r/news deleting a comment about a missing friend:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160920213229/https://i.imgur.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160920213229/https://i.imgur.com/OOiIRAT.png)

This made me re-think about whether my side was the bad guys? Since I am a
brown immigrant myself, I was always told right wingers hate me and other
minorities. I had never looked deep enough. The Orlando Pulse nightclub
shooting which killed 50 gays made me re-think. Why is the side which
supposedly hates minorities the only one talking about blood donations to the
victims?

This also made me question why was "/r/rightwingLGBT" banned? Are gays not
allowed to be conservative?

Since then, I started browsing The_Donald more often and despite whatever
media says, there can sometimes be tongue in cheek memes and comments on there
but they are not evil people as media and Reddit makes them out to be. There's
a huge community there with gays, hispanics, blacks and every minority group
which media claims right wingers hate. When hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico 3
years ago, The_Donald was the only sub where people were sharing how a lot of
the FEMA supplies were going missing. Everyone else was calling this a
conspiracy theory but there were people literally sharing videos of garbage
trucks and warehouses filled with perfectly well and brand new supplies. It
was quite sinister. Then the truth finally came out earlier this year that
they found 8 warehouses full of FEMA supplies which were rotting away and
never given to the Puerto Rico people who were literally starving and dying.
These are the types of incidents which have changed my mind since then that
there's evil in media and many people who are actively willing to let people
suffer and die if it makes right wingers look bad.

I might get downvoted for this comment but I hope few people pay attention to
what's happening and dig a bit deeper than what media and big tech are telling
them. I used to be a liberal - I am still a liberal on most things but I can
no longer identify with the current left. It breaks my heart on what people
have become.

~~~
emerged
This is my experience as well. I was fully liberal until election night. The
veil was lifted watching CNN anchors react to their preferred candidate
losing. I started digging and wound up at T_D. My experience there has been
polar opposite of the perspective you hear claimed by many.

~~~
blisseyGo
Yep. I recently went and watched one of the compilations of election night
reporting and couldn't believe how blatant their bias was.

Funny thing is that I am still a liberal on most issues but how does anyone
expect me to identify with the current left when they don't even want to allow
posts and comments about blood donations to gay victims for political
correctness reasons?

------
ausbah
some other bannings

r/Consume Product r/ClericalFascism r/Smuggies r/Debate Alright r/bruhfunny
r/ShitNeoconsSay r/soyboys r/imgoingtohellforthis2 r/AltRightChristian
r/TheHonkPill r/topnotchshitposting r/TheNewRight r/DarkHumorAndMemes r/Gender
Critical r/ChapoTrapHouse r/rightwingLGBT r/whitebeauty r/The3rdPosition
r/CumTown

------
reaperducer
I was mostly OK with the previous restrictions on Mr. Trump, because they were
directed at a person acting irresponsibily.

This, however, may cross a line for me. I'm not a Reddit user, but it's my
understanding that this is a discussion group about a person. I'm less OK with
restricting the discussions of topics.

It reminds me of something I heard in a forensics class years ago: Attack the
problem, not the person.

I need to think about this one for a bit.

~~~
dunnevens
There are pro-Trump, pro-Conservative subreddits which haven't broken the
rules and haven't been particularly hateful. Those subs are still active.

------
annexrichmond
r/RightWingLGBT was also banned because it supposedly promotes "hate"

What is hate, anyways?

~~~
cjones26
When someone disagrees with you

------
praveen9920
I'm sorry but I feel that the posts with paywalls should be separated out from
top page.

~~~
floatingatoll
You'll need to email the site moderators using the footer Contact link if you
wish to have any influence on their views in this matter. Posting about it
here will have no effect at all.

------
blisseyGo
3 of some of the biggest right wing YouTube channels, Trump's Twitch account,
and 2000 other subreddits including The_Donald all being banned in the span of
less than an hour is just a coincidence. More of a criminal conspiracy.

~~~
blisseyGo
Twitter also banned Sidney Powell, the lawyer of 3 star general Michael Flynn.

------
GenerocUsername
This is not news. Reddit killed the_donald months ago...

------
phjesusthatguy3
Whatever else you want to want to say about our current president, "The
People" did not vote him in.

The fact that he's President _really is_ going back to the founding fathers'
intention, and why we have an Electoral College in the first place:

So that underrepresented voters would have a say in who the President was. And
they did, so he is. And now he's pretending that he's the voice of our
country, when he so clearly is not. The People spoke, and they requested
someone else.

A reasonable person would look at his election results and create an agenda
from there, but not Trump. I am hopeful that is his downfall. I'm not holding
my breath about it, though.

~~~
afiori
But there is not "one true way" to coordinate a democratic election.
Especially when considering the differences between presidential republics and
parliamentary republics.

Or even concepts like "one person one vote" force systems to converge towards
a few stable establishment parties.

It would still be democratic if voter could grade candidates and the winners
were chosen by some appropriate statistical measure, or if voters could select
arbitrary subsets of okeyish candidates and the winners were those with most
votes, or any combination of many other systems.

The real objective of most democratic electoral systems is governability and
meaningful representation. Pretending that popular vote is the only meaningful
way to elect representatives is naive.

------
alkibiades
I used to use reddit a lot but it got far too political. even generic
subreddits like r/pics or /funny seem to often have a top post bashing trump.

it’s really devolved.

------
submeta
I wonder how someone like Hitler would have been treated. I guess free speech
advocates would have helped him to spread his sick ideas and rise to power?
Free speech needs to have limits somewhere. If others are insulted, smeared,
de-humanized, if hate is spreaded, if under the protection of free speech
people rise to power who poison the political climate, then the whole system
is in danger of falling apart, with all the good elements, even the right for
free speech.

~~~
anm89
Throwing Hitler out as a boogie man does not nullify the entire legal system
of our country or the intellectual tradition behind it. Yes Hitler would have
had free speech too although most of what is viewed as problematic by Hitler
would have been considered violent hate speech in our current legal system and
would still not be allowed.

As a jew, I support free speech for hypothetical Hitler. Stop using these lazy
arguments.

------
hkt
If this drives away lots of users of that subreddit, it may well be the case
that Reddit becomes less representative (of drastically unpleasant people) and
more cohesive. So, good to see it go.

------
jacobwilliamroy
This may be the first ban of a sitting U.S. president. Reddit is making
history over here and I get to see it. Cool.

~~~
c3534l
They didn't ban Trump, nor did they ban all subreddits about Trump. They
banned a single subreddit which repeatedly violates reddit rules and refuses
to moderate according the rules.

~~~
BitwiseFool
I guarantee you any new pro-Trump subreddits will be banned quickly due to
"Ban Evasion".

~~~
c3534l
Not likely. All the conservatives have move to /r/conservative, which actually
bans people for threatening to kill people and things like that, and Reddit
appears to have no problem with them.

------
kace91
About time!

As I commented in a previous discussion of reddit's policies
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23601595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23601595)),
the "quarantined subreddits" half measures were clearly too tame as a middle
point, where reddit decided to both moderate which communities are wrong and
at the same time not ban them (worst of both worlds).

I wonder if the discussion there was read by people at reddit, though it's
probably not relevant opinions to them.

------
opportune
Chapo was the only interesting subreddit remaining, or at least the only one
that still brought me to the site, but I’d gladly take losing it so that
reddit can use a “both sides” narrative to deplatform racists.

TD was pretty much in zombie mode since they replaced all the mods and the
users moved to other conservative subs. I also think many of the more
extreme/active users graduated to 8ch. This is probably just reddit getting
ahead of the election to be extra sure they can keep it advertiser friendly as
it heats up

