Reddit is a US-based social media site which is centered around topic-specific communities called subreddits. Users can submit text or image posts to be voted on in each community, and users can also comment and vote on comments. It is the eighth most visited website in the United States.[1]
Fears of censorship of certain communities have led to users looking for alternatives. For example, censorship of the /r/GenZedong subreddit has led them to join Lemmygrad, a pro-communist instance of the FOSS alternative to Reddit, Lemmy.
Censorship
In August 2013, r/news moderator douglasmacarthur banned the Russian news outlet RT from the subreddit. r/politics soon banned many alternative media sources, including AlterNet.[2] In 2021, multiple subreddits with a total of 10 million users banned the World Socialist Web Site as a source.[3]
Reddit has deleted hundreds of thousands of accounts linked to the Russian, Iranian, and Chinese governments at the request of Western intelligence organizations. It does not ban accounts connected to Western capitalist governments.[1]
Banned subreddits
In June 2020, Reddit banned the far-left r/ChapoTrapHouse community, which had 160,000 users.[4] Reddit banned the pro-AES community r/MoreTankieChapo, which had about 25,000 users, for "promoting hate."[5]
Quarantined subreddits
Reddit quarantined r/FULLCOMMUNISM in September 2018[6] and r/GenZedong in March 2022.[7] At the time it was quarantined, GenZedong had over 56,000 users.[8] Quarantined subreddits are not deleted, but they can only be accessed by verified users and display a warning message.
U.S. government connections
Reddit's director of policy, Jessica Ashooh, worked for the Atlantic Council, NATO's think tank. She supported U.S. imperialism in Syria and praised the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia.[1]
From 2005 to 2015, Reddit received information requests from government agencies in 15 U.S. states. It agreed to hand over user information in 64% of U.S. government requests. 30% of the requests prohibited the website from notifying the users that their data had been accessed.[9]
On 8 May, 2013 Reddit revealed Eglin Air Force Base to be the "Most addicted city (over 100k visits total)".[10] Eglin Air Force Base has produced research papers such as "Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity" describing methods of producing propaganda for social media sites.[11]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Alan Macleod (2021-06-11). "Jessica Ashooh: The Taming of Reddit and the National Security Plant Tabbed to Do It" MintPress News. Archived from the original on 2022-07-30. Retrieved 2022-08-05.
- ↑ Katie Rucke (2013-11-08). "Reddit Moderators Ban Alternative Media Outlets" MintPress News. Archived from the original on 2020-11-11. Retrieved 2022-08-06.
- ↑ Kevin Reed (2021-06-15). "Why is the World Socialist Web Site still blacklisted on the Reddit r/coronavirus and r/politics forums?" World Socialist Web Site. Archived from the original on 2022-08-04. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
- ↑ Kevin Reed (2020-07-02). "Reddit bans 2,000 communities in major censorship action" World Socialist Web Site. Archived from the original on 2022-06-18. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
- ↑ "This community has been banned". Reddit. Archived from the original on 2020-12-05.
- ↑ ComradeGirl (2018-09-29). "FULLCOMMUNISM Quarantined!" Reddit. Archived from the original on 2018-10-04. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
- ↑ ComradeStalin69 (2022-03-23). "Breaking news: r/GenZedong has been quarantined" Reddit. Archived from the original on 2022-03-23. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
- ↑ "GenZedong". Reddit. Archived from the original on 2022-03-22. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
- ↑ Lucas Mearian (2015-01-30). "Reddit Handed over User Info for 58% of Government Requests" MintPress News. Archived from the original on 2022-01-17. Retrieved 2022-08-06.
- ↑ hueypriest (2013-05-08). Get ready for Global reddit Meetup Day, plus some stats about top reddit cities and languages. Reddit. Archived from the original on 2014-03-22.
- ↑ Zhen Kan, Justin Klotz, Eduardo L. Pasiliao Jr, Warren E. Dixon (2015). Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity. Automatica, vol.56 (pp. 86-92). [PDF] Elsevier.