Photo Credit: The New York Times
On Monday, June 29, Reddit finally decided to ban hate speech after a yearlong debate. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced that ‘The Donald’, home to 790,000 subscribers, has failed to “meet our most basic expectations.”
Reddit is known as one of the largest social networking and message board websites. The community or “subreddit,” called “The_Donald,” is known to share videos and messages in support of Donald Trump. Reddit executives said the group had consistently broken its rules by allowing people to target and harass others with hate speech.
“Reddit is a place for community and belonging, not for attacking people,” said Steve Huffman, the company’s chief executive. ‘‘The_Donald’ has been in violation of that.”
As part of a crackdown on hate speech, Reddit is also banning roughly 2,000 other political communities. Twitch, a video-game broadcasting and viewing platform, shared a few examples of "offending content" from Trump's account, including a campaign rally in 2016 and a recent campaign event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, both of which showed the president making racist comments about Mexican Americans.