Reddit bans r/donaldtrump forum for inciting violence

Reddit has banned r/donaldtrump for encouraging and glorifying violence after last Wednesday’s mob attack on the US Capitol. Axios reporter Sara Fischer first reported the news, noting that the unofficial pro-Trump forum had been given multiple warnings. A Reddit splash page says the subreddit was “banned due to a violation of Reddit’s rules against inciting violence.”

“Reddit’s site-wide policies prohibit content that promotes hate, or encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence against groups of people or individuals. In accordance with this, we have been proactively reaching out to moderators to remind them of our policies and to offer support or resources as needed,” a Reddit spokesperson said in an interview with The Verge. “We have also taken action to ban the community r/donaldtrump given repeated policy violations in recent days regarding the violence at the US Capitol.”

The r/donaldtrump forum had approximately 52,000 members before its ban, according to an Internet Archive snapshot. That was significantly smaller than r/The_Donald, a notorious Trump subreddit banned last year for pervasive rule-breaking — after many members had already moved to an independent site. However, Mother Jones reported that former r/The_Donald members had used r/donaldtrump as a conduit back into Reddit, promoting posts through backchannels like a Discord server.

This deletion marks the latest in an internet-wide crackdown on President Donald Trump and his most aggressive supporters, even as online researchers have used social media footage to identify mob members. Trump was suspended from Facebook, Twitch, and Twitter banned his account permanently after making inflammatory statements.  Major web platforms like YouTube and TikTok have removed content that glorified the attack — which was aimed at overturning the US presidential election and left at least five people dead, including a police officer.

TikTok issued a statement which read, “Hateful behavior and violence have no place on TikTok,” the company said in a statement. “Content or accounts that seek to incite, glorify, or promote violence violate our Community Guidelines and will be removed.”

—
Photo Credit:  oasisamuel / Shutterstock.com