Reddit limited access to a forum popular with supporters of President Trump on Wednesday, saying that its users had violated rules prohibiting content that incites violence.
Visitors to the The_Donald subreddit were greeted Wednesday with a warning that the section had been “quarantined” and asking if they still wanted to enter.
Site administrators said that users of the online community, which has about 750,0000 members, had made threats against police officers and public officials.
“The reason for the quarantine is that over the last few months we have observed repeated rule-breaking behavior in your community and an overreliance on Reddit admins to manage users and remove posts that violate our content policy, including content that encourages or incites violence,” Reddit wrote in a public message to the site’s moderators Wednesday.
“Most recently,” the message continued, “we have observed this behavior in the form of encouragement of violence toward police officers and public officials in Oregon.
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The posts came amid a partisan feud in Oregon over a climate change bill, in which Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, ordered the state police to corral Republican lawmakers who had fled the Capitol. There was a one-day closing of the Capitol after threats of militia violence.
The_Donald bills itself as “a never-ending rally dedicated to the 45th President of the United States.” Among its prominently posted rules: “Trump Supporters Only. No Cucks or Leftists.” The former is a derogatory term for anti-Trump conservatives.
The subreddit has been fertile ground for pro-Trump images and videos that spread to other social media platforms, with support from within the president’s circle. Days after being named digital director of the Trump campaign in 2016, Brad Parscale, now the campaign manager of the president’s re-election campaign, tweeted that he visited The_Donald daily.
A month later, Mr. Trump answered questions from users of the subreddit. Throughout the campaign and the early days of his presidency, Mr. Trump regularly mined the community for memes he would later amplify on social media.
The response by Reddit on Wednesday stopped short of an outright ban of the group, a step taken by administrators twice in 2017, when they cracked down on Nazi, white supremacist and far right subreddits and later expunged a forum about the incel subculture because of threats of violence against women.
The_Donald did not have a clear mechanism to report or de-emphasize content that was inappropriate, and violent content was not being flagged, the administrators said.
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Online sites have increasingly been struggling with the mix of politics and sometimes violent rhetoric on their sites in an era of increased polarization. This month, YouTube announced plans to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies.
The problem has even affected sites that are not inherently political. Earlier this week, Ravelry, a popular knitting and crocheting site, banned content in support of President Trump in what it said was a stand against white supremacy.
“We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy,” the site said in a statement explaining the decision.
On Reddit, quarantines are a middle-ground approach to dealing with communities that engage in discussion or behavior that, while permitted, may be offensive to average users.
Under a quarantine, an alert warns visitors that a subreddit has struggled to address alleged violations of Reddit’s policy.
“Most recently the violations have included threats of violence against police and public officials,” reads the quarantine message presented to users who visit The_Donald.
Users have to agree to click through the warning to see the posts, which no longer appear in the general stream on Reddit, which bills itself as “the front page of the internet.” According to Reddit, it has 330 million monthly users, which makes it the fifth-most visited website. The site claims to have more than 130,000 communities, with an average of 21 billon monthly page views.
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Other quarantined communities include subreddits centered on discussions of racism, violence, Holocaust revisionism and other forms of anti-Semitism.
The quarantine feature has been used on the site for several years. “The purpose of quarantining a community is to prevent its content from being accidentally viewed by those who do not knowingly wish to do so, or viewed without appropriate context,” Reddit said in an online description of the practice.
In a thread about the quarantine decision, a moderator and many users of the subreddit speculated that the move was intended to silence the community ahead of the 2020 election.
Story cited here.
