- Date
- 2021-09-01
- Trigger
- A platform-wide moderator protest ('r/VaxxHappened' blackout) demanding action on COVID-19 misinformation, with r/NoNewNormal identified as the source of roughly 80 brigades against mainstream-COVID communities in the prior 30 days.
- Policy change
- Reddit banned r/NoNewNormal for repeated interference (brigading), quarantined dozens of COVID-denial communities, and rolled out a new tool letting moderators flag when one community raids another.
- Communities removed
- 1 banned plus 54 quarantined
What happened
On September 1, 2021, after a wave of subreddits went dark to protest the platform's handling of COVID-19 misinformation, Reddit banned r/NoNewNormal and quarantined 54 additional COVID-denial communities. Reddit said r/NoNewNormal was removed specifically for brigading rather than misinformation alone, citing clear signals that it was the source of roughly 80 cross-community raids in the previous month, often targeting mainstream-COVID and local subreddits. Alongside the action, Reddit introduced a reporting feature for moderators to flag inter-community brigading. The episode was unusual in that it was driven largely by an organized moderator strike, and it highlighted the tension between Reddit's reluctance to police misinformation and its rules against coordinated harassment.