Reddit users revolt after site bans offensive subreddits

Reddit, the website known for things like sharing pictures of cats and leaking nude images of celebrities, recently made an effort to curb harassment and trolling by banning several subreddits.

The bans were not well received by Redditors, a community of Impassioned internet users with a penchant for vitriol. Since the ban, angry users have stirred a veritable s–storm on the website.

Among the banned subreddits were /r/hamplanethatred , r/transfags, /r/neofag and r/shitniggerssay. The only banned subreddit to have more than 5,000 subscribers was r/fatpeoplehate.

Yesterday, a post announcing the bans and new community guidelines was published to Reddit.

“We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don’t take action. We’re banning behavior, not ideas.”

“Today we are removing five subreddits that break our reddit rules based on their harassment of individuals. If a subreddit has been banned for harassment, you will see that in the ban notice. The only banned subreddit with more than 5,000 subscribers is r/fatpeoplehate.”

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Users have also claimed that some Redditors have been “Shadowbanned,” which is when a website bans a user in a way that leaves the user unaware that they’ve been banned at all (i.e. a user will see their own post and profile, but will be invisible to the rest of the site).

According to Gawker,some users have retaliated against the bans by “taking up the cause of the banned fat-shaming community /r/fatpeoplehate [and] creating backup forums for mocking fat people faster than Reddit can take them down.”

In addition, users are targeting Reddit CEOEllen Pao and are accusing her of being a “Nazi,” and have called for her resignation.

Users have also called this the beginning of the end for Reddit. Some have vocally announced their departure for similar websites like Voat.co, whose servers are apparently unable to handle the deluge of traffic.

Matt Lee is a Web producer for Metro New York. He writes about almost everything and anything. Talk to him (or yell at him) on Twitter so he doesn’t feel lonely @mattlee2669 .