There’s a move to ban over forty primarily right-leaning communities for “reports of harassment” and actively censor any opposition or comments not in favor of this purge.
Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/) is a social media website that allows users to submit text, photos, videos, and links to user-created communities called “subreddits.” There are subreddits for every possible topic, ranging from pictures of cute cats to casual political debates. Each community has volunteer moderators that are responsible for making sure that submitted content follows sitewide rules, as well as rules specific to the subreddit. Additionally, if you cannot find a subreddit that suits you, you can easily create and moderate your own.
Recently, a wave of mass-bannings has hit the website, a movement run entirely by different moderators from subreddits across Reddit. Those facilitating the ban call it “The Banout,” and claim that it aims to ban over forty subreddits that they have deemed hateful. Their community information page reads as follows:
“We will ban every participant of a hateful harassing subreddit from as many subreddits as possible.” Funnily enough, this sort of mass banning event is also against sitewide policy. Many seem to be okay with this, as the promise of banning hateful subreddits or subreddits that break the content policy seems perfectly fair. However, a quick glance at the list of subreddits that they seek to ban will show you that most of the the targets are simply right-leaning communities, with no obvious hateful intentions
Some of the targets:
r/The_Donald (https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/)
A subreddit dedicated to the discussion and support of President Donald Trump. Mostly jokes and occasional news articles.
r/LeftistWatch (https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftistWatch/)
A subreddit dedicated to exposing hatred and bias against conservatives online by the left. This is certainly the most suspicious target of the bunch, considering the purpose of this subreddit is to expose extremely biased movements like this one.
r/ShitPoliticsSays (https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/)
A community similar to LeftistWatch, that discusses and documents the extremes of politics on both sides, primarily the anti-conservative media bias.
…and over twenty others, with many more targets supposedly being compiled, and an additional twenty-two communities already being banned as of right now (not to mention the several specific users that have been banned.)
Most of the communities banned have over twenty thousand followers, and r/The_Donald has over six hundred thousand. These are by no means small communities. Not to mention, almost every subreddit on the list has specifically stated in its rules that they don’t tolerate harassment or racism. Although a couple of the bans are arguably justified, The Banout (as of now) conveniently ignores many equally as hateful and biased (if not more so) left-leaning subreddits and communities, like r/PoliticalHumor (https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/) and r/Politics (https://www.reddit.com/r/Politics/), both of which are blatantly anti-conservative and harass any user that posts anything right-of-center. If all that wasn’t enough, the official Banout subreddit censors any comment that isn’t support of the movement, as seen below:
This movement, coupled with the censorship and blatant hypocrisy, is just more proof of a clear bias against conservatives on almost every form of media. The only way to effectively counter these movements is to spread information about them and properly expose the anti-right prejudice. If this isn’t clear censorship, I don’t know what is.
@BlueCheckPatrol
via Mindy Robinson
www.facebook.com/iheartmindypage
@iheartmindy
Leave a Reply