- Date
- 2020-06-29
- Trigger
- Mounting pressure during the George Floyd protests and a broader reckoning over platform tolerance of hate, with r/The_Donald long cited as a persistent rule-breaker despite a prior quarantine.
- Policy change
- Reddit overhauled its content policy with an explicit rule banning communities and users that 'incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability,' applied across the platform at once.
- Communities removed
- ~2,000 communities
What happened
On June 29, 2020, Reddit carried out the largest coordinated removal in its history, banning about 2,000 subreddits under a rewritten hate-speech policy. The most prominent casualty was the pro-Trump r/The_Donald, which at its peak had nearly 800,000 subscribers and had already been quarantined; the left-wing r/ChapoTrapHouse and the anti-trans r/GenderCritical were also removed. CEO Steve Huffman said the platform had fallen short and was committing to act against hateful communities. Although the headline figure was roughly 2,000 subreddits, Reddit noted most were dormant, with only around 200 having more than ten daily users. The 'Great Ban' became the defining example of large-scale deplatforming and reshaped debates over content moderation across the industry.