Reddit has “quarantined” the subreddit r/The_Donald after it said the forum for supporters of President Trump has encouraged “rule-breaking behavior.”
Officials from Reddit said Wednesday that the subreddit’s questionable behavior included “encouragement of violence towards police officers and public officials in Oregon.”
“We are clear in our sitewide policies that posting content that encourages or threatens violence is not allowed,” Reddit spokeswoman Anna Soellner told the Washington Post. “We are sensitive to what could be considered political speech,” she said, but “recent behaviors including threats against the police and public figures is content that is prohibited by our violence policy.”
The_Donald quarantined on the eve of the Democrat Debates ? pic.twitter.com/JnCXDXu2bO
— /r/The_Donald (@thedonaldreddit) June 26, 2019
The quarantine doesn’t ban the forum but will remove certain features and restrict how its content is shared. It also conceals the subreddit behind a warning page asking visitors to confirm they intend to visit the right-wing forum.
The r/The_Donald, which has about 750,000 followers, was created before the 2016 presidential election and bills itself as “a never-ending rally dedicated to the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”
Some of the threats referenced involve outrage over recent events in Oregon state politics.
Republican state senators left the state in order to deprive quorum on a Democrat-led climate change vote. There were calls for law enforcement to retrieve the missing lawmakers, with local militias responding by saying they would protect the senators with violence if necessary. Some users on the forum echoed the militia sentiment, contributing to the quarantine.
Reddit is one of the most popular websites on the internet, pulling in millions of users of all interests to its collection of individual subreddit pages. The crackdown comes amid allegations from conservatives of speech suppression by tech companies.
