Reddit has been awash in bigotry and hate speech for years. Since Trump launched his campaign and his assault on news organizations like CNN, the worst people on the internet have flocked to subs on Reddit such as /r/The_Donald and spread their toxicity to other subs, despite lame attempts by the Reddit admins to “quarantine” them.
Anti-Islam rhetoric and racism have exploded on Reddit in the past year. Racist trolls have swarmed one subreddit after another, threatening mods and other users, while running campaigns to push their hate speech to the front page in the name of “free speech.”
They have attacked CNN as “fake news” while promoting false stories and spam from overseas spam sites. They promoted the fake Pizzagate story which landed one of their own in prison for shooting up a pizza parlor, and latch on to every conspiracy pushed by Alex Jones.
When the Pulse Nightclub shooting happened last year, pro-Trump users posted comments to the /r/news sub that included instructions on how to donate blood, but also peppered with hate speech, which was intentionally done to create a narrative that the mods who removed those bigoted comments were siding with radical Islam.
In other subs, these users regularly threatened and bullied other users and mods. They tried to push Breitbart links to the top, and some were more than happy to post links to Pastebin or other places which included the personal information of people they believed to be opponents.
After Donald Trump posted a gif created by a Reddit user showing him attacking WWE owner Vince McMahon with a CNN logo replaced as his head, the media blew up over the story. While I believed this to be in incredibly poor taste and juvenile, other people understandably saw this as a call to violence against the media.
In a surprising move by CNN, they attempted to track down the user who created the gif, and they found him. Now Trump supporters, especially on Reddit, are trying to attack CNN and demanding the website ban CNN for doxxing, even though CNN has not released his personal information.
That didn’t stop Donald Trump, Jr and others for promoting the false narrative that user was a minor (he isn’t) and that CNN was bullying him, despite the fact that is exactly what Trump and his supporters have done to many people who oppose them.
So @CNN can find a Reddit user in 3 hours but can't find a Russia connection in 6 months? š¤
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 5, 2017
Journalistic integrity question of the week. Which is worse? #CNNBackmail
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 5, 2017
The internet does not guarantee anonymity, just as the 1st Amendment doesn’t protect you from the consequences of your speech. CNN has not doxxed this Reddit user, and they likely will not. That’s a lot more than can be said for the deplorables.
