What are you talking about? It was a large, vibrant, and rapidly growing community of Trump supporters. Funnest subreddit around before it was banned on completely laughable charge of targeting police. Spez did that.
I was gobsmacked that The_Donald was banned because some users 'threatened police officers' and then a slew of ACAB and anti-police subreddits faced no repercussions during the summer riots. I shouldn't really be that shocked though, it was well known that the admins and site moderators wanted The_Donald banned for quite a long time.
I don't think there are many subreddits that praise and love law enforcement more than the_donald. They used a Media Matters hit piece to censor and contain one of the most popular subs, for purely partisan reasons.
It was by far the largest online conservative community, and it funneled people into even more extreme communities.
I don't really get bringing up the freedom of speech angle here - r/the_donald has always aggressively deleted posts and banned users for expressing anything but complete loyalty to Donald Trump.
What was a massive eye opener for me was the few days in the wake of Donald Trump's presidential win, that subreddit went back to normal, it was quiet, level-headed.
After a few days the agenda pushing and blatant shilling began anew and it's been a non-stop screaming mess since.
I visited a couple of times but couldn't share my opinion an anything because it would have been in violation of the sub's rules. Basically any anti-Trump comments were a violation of the rules.
There's a bit of irony in an anti-free speech community eventually being shut down by the hosting platform.
T_D wasn't banned because it was inactive. spez's post says, "All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith. We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity." They weren't banned for political ideology, they were banned for doxxing, fear mongering, and generally being a community full of toxic posts. That's the reason it was banned, and good riddance.
Ironically, that sub wasn't banned for supporting a right-wing political candidate but for repeatedly refusing to action content calling for violence against law enforcement.
Interesting, /r/the_donald, which has, and continues to this day, explicitly called for perpetrating violence on minorities, people with opposing political views, democratic politicians, etc. etc ad nauseum, remains up and running to this day.
It is far and away worse than fph and incels in terms of content, but for some mystical reason that's totally not /u/spez vetoing any attempt to reign it in due to his conservative ideology, it has missed the banhammer.
Hard agree. I deleted my reddit account over the fact that they kept letting T_D exist despite its obvious flouting of the rules around brigading (they arranged brigades on discord and took over other subreddits, repeatedly, after being warned) and how it was an increasingly obvious alt-right funnel full of some of the absolute worst people on the internet.
They ultimately closed the subreddit about a year later, but I had already deleted my account at that point. I was better off in the end though, as the entire site is now just a giant meme dump with no redeeming qualities (it felt like all subreddits eventually saturate with memes on their main page as a function of their popularity, and it gets tiresome and same-ey after a while.)
Removing the_donald sub was ridiculous especially when compared to equally if not more objectionable rhetoric on main subs like /r/politics. Additionally if you want to get rival subs banned on reddit you just post and report objectionable material icognito. Reddit is a dumpster fire of juvenile , woke idiocy now and I rarelt visit anymore. That said some of the content on the_donald was just as idiotic but if you are going to allow one you have to allow the other.
You've left out the fact that The_Donald was banned from reddit for repeatedly and egregiously breaking site wide rules on harassment, brigading, and issuing death threats. Despite the mods efforts to keep it clean the subreddit was a cesspit that was only getting more extreme.
I don't agree with other subreddits automatically banning people based on post history, but I can see why the subreddit was banned, along with the left leaning subreddit chapotraphouse which engaged in similar behaviour.
They didn't ban Trump, nor did they ban all subreddits about Trump. They banned a single subreddit which repeatedly violates reddit rules and refuses to moderate according the rules.
Another fun factoid about The_Donald's love of free speech is that they immediately and permanently banned anyone who disagreed with anything said on that sub. Good riddance
Its worst content was no worse than what you saw (and still see) on other subreddits.
You would be disingenuous to not acknowledge the political forces at play. Mods were on high alert because they knew admins were waiting for the most microscopic of reasons to ban the sub. And we know these forces exist. Twitter is proof positive of political bias in content moderation.
People of all backgrounds were on the_donald, which should make you question why they were tolerant of much of the content you likely perceived as hateful. If your answer is simply that they’re bigots, then I suggest you have more conversations.
It was more of an offshoot of the gamer gate crowd. There were a few different pro Trump subs; TD just so happened to be the one that took off.
It is a pretty honest sub though; It's supposed to be a non stop Trump rally - clearly subversive content and discourse will be banned and removed.
Source: was there when the original mod drama was kicking off at around 30k subs. Can't remember the guys username but he got booted once the sub took off (around 100k subs) and its almost certainly run by mods on the campaign dole currently.
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