Reddit has dropped its The_Donald subreddit, an influential pro-Trump community, for alleged "hate speech" and harassment.
The_Donald boasts more than 790,000 users who post memes, viral videos and supportive messages about Mr. Trump.
“Reddit is a place for community and belonging, not for attacking people,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, in a call with reporters, an event covered by The New York Times. “‘The_Donald’ has been in violation of that.”
The move came simultaneously to Amazon's Twitch kicking the president off its platform for alleged "hateful conduct." Twitch cited two offending videos, one of which featured footage from Trump's Tulsa, Okla., rally during which he described Mexican nationals as "bad hombres."
“Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed," Amazon said in a statement.
Ironically, the president has been calling on social internet platforms to take more responsibility for moderating their content, but his goal has been to cut down on the censorship of conservative speech.
The moves follow Facebook's decision to start removing or labeling content related to the upcoming election or that incites violence, which in turn follows Twitter's labeling of tweets by President Trump as inciting violence and not relaying accurate information about elections.
That drew strong pushback from the President and was seen as, in part, a spur to his executive order seeking the help of Congress or the FCC or both to regulate social media content and alter or eliminate web sites' Section-230 immunity (via the Communications Decency Act) from civil liability over how they moderate third-party content posted on their sites. That allows them to remove most content, or leave it up, without fear of being sued.
Reddit reserves the right to ban communities, but it is a last resort, literally, on its enforcement policy. As to hate speech: "Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned," it said.
