Reddit users are switching in their droves to the lookalike site Voat, following Reddit’s decision to ban five subreddits.
Yesterday, the so-called front page of the internet announced that it was closing down r/hamplanethatred, r/transfags, r/neofag, and r/shitniggerssay, as well as r/fatpeoplehate – by far the biggest of the five, with over 150,000 subscribers.
“Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform. We want as little involvement as possible in managing these interactions but will be involved when needed to protect privacy and free expression, and to prevent harassment,” explain Reddit’s head of community and support Jessica Moreno, interim CEO Ellen Pao and founder Alexis Ohanian.
“We want to be open about our involvement: 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.”
Unsurprisingly, the move has attracted criticism: both from those that think the site’s banning too much and from those that think it’s banning too little.
It has, for instance allowed r/coontown to stay, on the basis that there have been no reports of members harassing individuals.
“When we are using the word “harass”, we’re not talking about “being annoying” or vote manipulation or anything,” writes one adminstrator.
“We’re talking about men and women whose lives are being affected and worry for their safety every day, because people from a certain community on reddit have decided to actually threaten them, online and off, every day.”
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