The front page of the internet is suppressing popular conservative voices — “without warning.”
Reddit’s subreddit group, The_Donald, was given a “quarantine” by admins following liberal complaints about violence in the group’s content. The_Donald was accused of permitting posts encouraging violence on Oregon’s governor and police force.The group was censored on June 26.
It is banned from showing up in Reddit searches, and a filter has been placed over the whole group, warning users that “It is restricted due to significant issues with reporting and addressing violations of the Reddit Content Policy.”
In a post by the moderators of The_Donald, the group stated that, “We were quarantined without warning for some users that were upset about the Oregon Governor sending cops to round up Republican lawmakers to come back to vote on bills before their state chambers. None of these comments that violated Reddit’s rules and our Rule 1 were ever reported to us moderators to take action on.”
The moderators went on to explain their shock and dismay at anyone in the group expressing anti-cop sentiment. They asked members of The_Donald to “hit that deport button” if they saw anyone else violating the rules of the group.
Carlos Maza, the Vox contributor who worked to get conservative voices on YouTube demonetized and removed, reported on what he considered to be egregious violations on The_Donald. Maza tweeted, “Reddit claims to have an explicit policy against calls to violence.It's shut down subreddits before.So why hasn't it done anything about the "The_Donald," the largest pro-Trump subreddit, which is littered with calls to violence?”
Journalist Tim Pool pointed out that, “Within 2 days of Carlos Maza calling for The_Donald Subreddit to be censored Reddit has taken action and quarantined one of the largest Pro-Trump forums.”
Reddit’s rules describe the consequences of being quarantined: “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. Quarantined subreddits and their subscribers are still fully obliged to abide by Reddit’s Content Policy and remain subject to enforcement measures.”
Quarantined subreddits are demonetized, will not appear in any feeds on the platform, and will be shadowbanned from search bars. Custom styling tools will also be removed.
This is not the first time that The_Donald has been censored. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman mentioned in 2016 that some posts from The_Donald were shadowbanned and prevented from showing up in the main feeds on the platform.
