- Date
- 2015-08-05
- Trigger
- Continued operation of an interlinked network of overtly racist subreddits, the so-called 'Chimpire,' centered on r/CoonTown, after the June anti-harassment wave.
- Policy change
- Co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez) published an updated content policy and introduced the 'quarantine' mechanism for offensive-but-permitted communities, banning communities that existed primarily to make Reddit worse for others.
- Communities removed
- ~10 communities
What happened
On August 5, 2015, weeks after returning as CEO, Steve Huffman laid out a new content policy and banned r/CoonTown along with its network of satellite racist subreddits, often referred to as the 'Chimpire.' Reddit said the communities were removed for behavior that consumed a disproportionate share of moderation resources, not merely for offensive viewpoints, and simultaneously announced a 'quarantine' system to wall off offensive content that stopped short of a ban. The action reversed Huffman's earlier suggestion that CoonTown's content, while offensive, would be tolerated. It was a defining moment in Reddit's shift toward centralized content enforcement and drew heavy coverage as the platform's most significant hate-community removal to that point. The banned cluster included CoonTown's meta and mod subreddits and several allied racist communities.