What happened
On June 10, 2015, Reddit banned five subreddits—r/fatpeoplehate, r/hamplanethatred, r/neofag, r/transfags, and r/shitniggerssay—under the anti-harassment policy it had introduced earlier that year. Administrators said the communities were removed not for their content alone but because their members used them as platforms to harass specific individuals off-site, and moderators had failed to curb the behavior. The largest, r/fatpeoplehate, had roughly 150,000 subscribers, making the action one of the most consequential enforcement moves in Reddit's history to that point.
The bans, announced in a post signed by interim CEO Ellen Pao and other executives, provoked a furious backlash. Users flooded the site with images mocking overweight people and personal attacks on Pao, and some migrated to the rival aggregator Voat. Critics framed the action as censorship, while supporters argued Reddit was finally enforcing basic standards. A later academic study published in the Proceedings of the ACM found the bans were broadly effective at reducing hate speech, as many displaced users left the platform rather than simply relocating their behavior.