Controversial Reddit communities
List of known controversial communities on Reddit / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Some communities on the social news site Reddit (known as "subreddits") are devoted to explicit, violent, propagandist, or hateful material, and have been the topic of controversy, at times receiving significant media coverage. The founders of Reddit did not claim they intended the platform to be a "bastion of free speech",[1] yet for a period of time allowed such communities to operate largely unrestricted. Eventually usage rules were instituted to allow for the ban of groups and members who promoted illegal activity, violence, personal information or image theft and exposure, shaming, racial or gender hatred, harassment, and extremist speech.
Obscene material was originally seen as undesirable by Reddit staffers, but the general manager stated it was a consequence of allowing free speech on the site. The downfall of r/Jailbait was prompted by the posting of a provacative image of an underage girl, with a wave of Redditors (Reddit users) requesting more photos of the girl via private message to the poster. Various news sources criticized the subreddit, and Reddit administrators closed the forum. Subreddit r/The_Donald was eventually taken down for harassment and targeting, after steps were taken earlier to lower immediate visibility (such as an opt-in button). Nevertheless, various other heavily-trafficked subreddits skirting the edges of the rules remain active, with bans often seeming to take place only after widespread negative exposure in mainstream media.
At least one of the controversial subreddits was started or maintained by a high-profile user, New Hampshire legislator Robert Fisher.
Various journalists, attorneys, media researchers, and others have observed and commented on the weight of the negative influence that such communities hold in shaping and promoting biased views of international politics, the veracity of medical evidence, misogynistic rhetoric, and other disruptive concepts. The information is often reported to Reddit by concerned Redditors and moderators, but in a number of cases, the subreddits remain until an incident forces them to come under more intense scrutiny and a judgment must be made between allowing distasteful content versus suppressing dangerous or destructive communities. Critics have stated the site has been inconsistent in what it bans.
Threatened users and communities have often gone on to create or become active on other platforms, with some even saving a duplicate of their subreddit in order to preserve it elsewhere, in the event it gets banned.