Reddit Bans Racist Subreddits Under New Policy Amidst Criticism

Reddit has finally banned several racist subreddits after having failed to do so during its recent content policy updates. Failure to ban the subreddits long drew criticism from users and non-users alike, and then continuing to leave them in place after going after other offensive communities led to harsh outcries from users. The existence of the subreddit and others like it were ended today, however, as the company just announced additional changes and new bans brought about because of them.

About an hour ago, u/spez published a brief write up on to Reddit's content policy, saying that the update comes with the goal of consolidating "various rules and policies" from over the years. Feedback, he says, was taken into account and was "invaluable". He also promises that more change will come in the future as the service itself evolves.

With this newest update, Reddit has introduced only minor changes — most of the most recent overhauls remain, but with new additions. The most important one is "Quarantining" a subreddit, requiring users to opt-in to accessing it and, as a result, keeping it out of both users' and the public eye. Quarantines will be applied against subreddits determined to be "extremely offensive to the average redditor".

Reddit says that some communities are beyond the quarantining point, and that as a result it has gone ahead and banned "a handful" of them that "exist solely to annoy other redactors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else." A total of six subreddits have been removed, all of them racist and included among them being the most publicized among them, r/CoonTown.

We've been following all the Reddit hoopla over past weeks. Be sure to check out the timeline below for a full rundown on what all has been happening.

SOURCE: r/Announcements