What happened
On February 1, 2017, Reddit banned r/altright and the related r/AlternativeRight, two prominent gathering places for the white-nationalist 'alt-right' movement. The company said the communities had repeatedly violated its content policy, specifically by proliferating personal and confidential information — that is, doxing. The bans followed users posting identifying details about the person believed to have punched white-nationalist figure Richard Spencer during an on-camera incident around Inauguration Day, with the apparent goal of harassment.
Reddit framed the action as a content-policy enforcement matter rather than a judgment on the communities' ideology, stating that r/altright had been 'unable to curb the practice' of doxing despite warnings. The removals were among the most visible early examples of Reddit deplatforming an explicitly far-right community and prompted debate over whether such bans were appropriate or merely pushed extremist users to other platforms. The decision set a template Reddit would invoke repeatedly in later years as it tightened enforcement against hate-oriented and harassment-prone subreddits.