Expect to see an influx of Sad Pepe memes on Twitter, because Reddit has taken a stand against some of the most toxic areas on Reddit by shutting down two alt-right threads. The now defunct r/altright and r/alternativeright were in violation of Reddit’s policy on doxing, which is disclosing an individual’s private information like phone numbers, addresses, and other sensitive material online without their consent. While Reddit has yet to issue a longer statement, a simple message pops up when trying to access the threads:
“This subreddit was banned due to a violation of our content policy, specifically, the proliferation of personal and confidential information”
While there are surely other hives for these trolls to find hateful mooring elsewhere on the internet (looking at you, 4Chan), it’s good to see Reddit taking a stand against the kind of harassment that the alt-right has been perpetrating. Hopefully other organizations will notice and follow suit. For example, while alt-right ringleader Milo Yiannopoulos got banned from Twitter after sending his hordes of racist trolls after SNL star Leslie Jones, but there are still plenty of abuses perpetrated against many feminist and minority Twitter users that go unaddressed.
It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that Reddit is cracking down on racist trolls considering the letter that its co-founder Alexis Ohanian wrote against Trump’s immigration ban on Wednesday. While the letter reportedly didn’t cause the threads to be shut down, it certainly promoted a vision that those users would have hated.
“President Trump’s recent executive order is not only potentially unconstitutional, but deeply un-American. We are a nation of immigrants, after all. In the tech world, we often talk about a startup’s ‘unfair advantage’ that allows it to beat competitors. Welcoming immigrants and refugees has been our country’s unfair advantage, and coming from an immigrant family has been mine as an entrepreneur.” (via)
(Via Mashable, The Daily Beast)