Reddit’s reputation may not be as bad as 4chan’s, but the website definitely has its darker areas. While freedom of speech and a hands-off approach to moderation have been the website’s primary policies for years, now that Reddit has turned into one of the largest communities on the Internet, many of its executives feel like its time to implement some law and order, which starts today.
Reddit just sent a clear message to its sprawling community: the Wild West days are over. It’s time for some law and order. The top execs at Reddit informed users on Wednesday that five subreddits, or custom Reddit communities, have been removed from the social news site for breaking the company’s recently updated rules to crack down on harassment of users. The names of the banned subreddits had offensive names or abusive purposes: transfags, neofag, shitniggerssay, hamplanethatred and fatpeoplehate, which was the only group with more than 5,000 subscribers. With this move, Reddit grows up, but now walks a fine line. For much of its nearly decade-long history, Reddit leaned far to the side of free speech, effectively letting the inmates run the asylum. Predictably, that didn’t always lead to the best outcomes: Last September Reddit found itself on the front lines of a controversy surrounding hacked nude celebrity photos. Not long after, Reddit’s CEO Yishan Wong resigned amid criticism that he’d mishandled the issue.
