Reddit bans largest pro-Trump forum as election season heats up

Having been convinced by the latest batch of national polls that Trump can’t possibly win in November, dozens of major companies are joining a Facebook advertising “boycott” intended to punish the company for refusing to censor conservative views, opinions and even facts that contradict the official far-left narrative. And now, more social media organizations are turning their own virtue-signaling dials up to “11”, with Reddit shutting down one of the most popular pro-Trump subreddits.

(Article by Tyler Durden republished from ZeroHedge.com)

Reddit’s “r/The_Donald” subreddit garnered plenty of media attention during the 2016 primary, and later during the campaign, as a popular online gathering place for Trump’s most fanatical supporters. According to a recently archived copy of the site, the subreddit had nearly 800k subscribers, making it one of the most popular conservative-focused subreddits on the site.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told reporters – according to Axios – that the company “tried everything” to avoid outright banning “The_Donald”, including approaching users in good faith, but they continued to break Reddit’s rules, including by upvoting more prohibited content and antagonizing other communities.

“It was becoming clear that the company’s values and the way discourse was playing out on the platform was one of the main things we wanted to fix in our content policy update,” Huffman said.

But in a transparent attempt to “play fair”, Reddit also banned the subreddit dedicated to the popular left-wing podcast “Chapo Trap House”, known as “r/ChapoTrapHouse”.

Both subreddits were among the most popular political platforms still on Reddit, which has seen its usage rates decline sharply over the past decade. Notably, both r/Chapo and r/The_Donald have hosted plenty of criticism of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who is a frequent object of hatred from ‘democratic socialists’ who listen to Chapo.

But Reddit isn’t the only social media platform to take a swipe at conservatives on Monday: Popular video-game streaming service Twitch has temporarily banned Trump’s account for its airing of “hateful conduct”.

Twitch claimed the offending content was the now-infamous Trump campaign kickoff rally, where he accused Mexicans of being “rapists” and bringing drugs into the US. Twitch also flagged “racist” comments from his rally in Tulsa.

Differing slightly from a policy articulated by Facebook, the Amazon-owned Twitch explained that “like anyone else, politicians on Twitch must adhere to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. We do not make exceptions for political or newsworthy content, and will take action on content reported to us that violates our rules.”

Twitch’s crackdown has included banning one of the most popular channels on the platform “Dr. Disrespect”. The user has claimed he wasn’t informed why the account was taken down, and Twitch has refused to elaborate. Is this all a ruse to allow Amazon to weaponize Twitch in its ongoing cold war with the president? Or is this simply an example of two more companies kowtowing to the woke mob?

Of course, if it’s “hate speech” Reddit is trying to battle, shutting down r/the_Donald and the other subs will probably have the opposite effect, as more users are forced to migrate to uninhibited environs like 4chan’s /pol, long criticized as a hotbed for white nationalist and otherwise extremist thought.

Though, fortunately, the subreddit has been backed up on an independent site, www.thedonald.win.

Read more at: ZeroHedge.com