What happened
In the wake of the August 12, 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — where a far-right attacker drove a car into counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer — Reddit moved to ban communities promoting violence. On August 15, 2017, the company shut down r/Physical_Removal, a subreddit that had openly advocated the 'physical removal' of political opponents and that drew outrage for mocking Heyer's death. Reddit said the community violated its policy against content that incites violence, citing its embrace of 'helicopter ride' rhetoric referencing the Pinochet dictatorship's death flights.
The action came as major platforms including Facebook and crowdfunding sites simultaneously cracked down on neo-Nazi and far-right groups after Charlottesville, and as anti-hate communities such as r/AgainstHateSubreddits pressed Reddit to act. The bans signaled a hardening stance toward violent extremism on the site and presaged the formal expansion of Reddit's violent-content policy that followed in October 2017, broadening the rules from merely 'inciting' violence to glorifying or calling for it.