"We will not ban questionable subreddits," Reddit's then-CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote mere months ago. "You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create."
But in an apparent reversal of that policy, and in an unprecedented effort to clean up its long-suffering image, Reddit has just banned five "questionable subreddits."
The site permanently removed the forums Wednesday afternoon for harassing specific, named individuals, a spokesperson said. Of the five, two were dedicated to fat-shaming, one to transphobia, one to racism and one to harassing members of a progressive video game site.
Unsurprisingly, a vocal contingent of Redditors aren't taking the changes well: "Reddit increases censorship," read one post on r/freespeech, while forums like r/mensrights and r/opieandanthony theorized they would be next.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday June 16 2015, @03:57AM
if a group is so broadly defined that self-labeling is all thats required to be part of it, then there's no point in labeling anyone as a member, the same way a word thats so broad that it could mean anything is meaningless and useless to use.
There goes most labels. Good riddance.