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Reddit is a liberal 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[edit | edit source]
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]
Deletion of left-wing subreddits[edit | edit source]
Reddit has for a long time allowed right-wing and gray-area subreddits to thrive, only banning them when they attracted too much media attention, while also banning some left-wing subreddits in the same wave so as to claim a fair approach. The r/jailbait subreddit for example, which was devoted to posting suggestive pictures of underage girls, existed from 2008 to 2011 on Reddit.com.[4] Its founder, u/violentacrez, even received an award from Reddit themselves, a golden bobblehead, for his "making significant contributions to the site".[5] It was only closed down following a media investigation. Up until then, Reddit defended the subreddit under the argument that they did not want to censor anything on the platform.
In June 2020, Reddit banned the far-left r/ChapoTrapHouse community, which had 160,000 users.[6] Later that same year, Reddit banned the pro-AES community r/MoreTankieChapo, which had about 25,000 users, for "promoting hate."[7]
In July 2025, Reddit banned the communist r/CommunistMemes for being "unmoderated" after all of its moderators were banned for "breaking the rules" with no further explanation.[8] Two months later in September, Reddit banned r/TheDeprogram, the unofficial subreddit for The Deprogram podcast, the official reason given was for "violating [Reddit's] Rule 1",[9] with rule 1 being "incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability".[10] In either cases, it was left unclear by the Reddit corporation which was the problematic content exactly, and no time or warning was given to the moderators to comply with the rules.
Quarantined subreddits[edit | edit source]
Reddit quarantined r/FULLCOMMUNISM in September 2018[11] and r/GenZedong in March 2022.[12] A quarantine allows people to visit the subreddit provided they read a disclaimer first about its content, agree to visit, and provide a valid email address. Furthermore, quarantines prevent the subreddit from being linked in comments or discovered through organic tools.
At the time it was quarantined, GenZedong had over 56,000 users.[13]
U.S. government connections[edit | edit source]
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.[14]
On 8 May, 2013 Reddit revealed Eglin Air Force Base to be the "Most addicted city (over 100k visits total)".[15] 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.[16]
Alternatives[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ https://old.reddit.com/r/jailbait
- ↑ https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/18/us/internet-troll-apology
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ u/Unhappy_Lead2496. "The "reason" given to the mods of r/CommunistMemes for why their accounts got banned" Retrieved 2025-10-07.
- ↑ https://old.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogram/
- ↑ https://redditinc.com/policies/reddit-rules
- ↑ 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.