Reddit, the link-sharing platform and message board known for its influential role in Internet culture, has censored The_Donald, a community of 750,000 Donald Trump supporters.
The community, one of the most active sources of grassroots support for the President on the Internet, has been placed in “quarantine” mode by the administrators of Reddit. Visitors to the page are met with a screen asking them if they wish to view the page.
Content from quarantined communities will not appear for members who are not subscribed to the board, known as a subreddit.
Reddit describes its reasons for quarantining communities as follows:
There will sometimes be communities that, while not prohibited, average redditors may nevertheless find highly offensive or upsetting. In other cases, communities may be dedicated to promoting hoaxes (yes we used that word) that warrant additional scrutiny, as there are some things that are either verifiable or falsifiable and not seriously up for debate (eg, the Holocaust did happen and the number of people who died is well documented). In these circumstances, Reddit Administrators may apply a quarantine.
In a message to The_Donald’s moderators, Reddit administrators explained that the community had been quarantined because of threats of violence from rogue users. The administrators acknowledged that The_Donald had cracked down on those comments immediately — but proceeded to quarantine the community anyway.
In the message Reddit sent to The_Donald page they say the page has been quarantined for random users posting about violence, but also acknowledge that the page admins do delete those posts. They were quarantined anyway pic.twitter.com/pU3fllL7u8
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 26, 2019
A spokesman for The_Donald condemned the move by Reddit in a comment to Breitbart News:
“Reddit has been finding methods to methodically censor The_Donald for years now. Enforcing special rules that only The_Donald has to follow, largely screening our submissions from reaching the front page, allowing far-left communities to harrass and dox our members (to the point of creating a chrome extension that marks anyone that posts on The_Donald).”
“This is their next step, and is generally Reddit’s step just before outright banning a community. Their reasoning is hardly sound, given that they claim they’ve had to spend too much time removing content on the subreddit that violates site-wide rules, yet their own logs show less than one removal [per] day. This censorship also takes place on the eve of the Democratic Primaries, which seems less than coincidental,” the spokesman continued.
Reddit’s decision to quarantine the main hub of Trump supporters on its platform was met with condemnation from conservatives across social media.
So @reddit has quarantined the entire Donald subreddit because of posts from random users, which the Donald Administrators promptly deleted???
Big Tech is obsessed with stopping @realDonaldTrump in 2020 & are engaging in actual election interference to stop his reelection. https://t.co/ylmsgFRJo6
— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) June 26, 2019
A 2018 study found that 'The Donald' was the "most effective" forum at spreading memes.
It gets quarantined on the day of the first presidential debates.
Yet more flagrant election meddling by Big Tech.https://t.co/QPSbcJk2DM
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) June 26, 2019
r/The_Donald is now quarantined on Reddit.
It doesn’t come up in search results.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened on the eve of the Democratic debates. pic.twitter.com/OBVP5z6HCs
— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) June 26, 2019
Breitbart News has reached out to Reddit for comment.
You can visit The_Donald here.
Are you an insider at Reddit or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
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