What happened
On June 29, 2020, Reddit overhauled its content policy with an explicit rule prohibiting communities and users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability, and simultaneously removed roughly 2,000 subreddits in an action that became known as the 'Great Ban.' The vast majority of the banned communities were inactive, but the purge swept up high-profile forums across the political spectrum, most prominently r/The_Donald, the pro-Trump community that had been quarantined a year earlier, and the left-wing r/ChapoTrapHouse. Other notable removals included r/GenderCritical, r/ConsumeProduct and r/CumTown.
The move came amid intensifying scrutiny of social platforms over hate speech during the George Floyd protests and days after co-founder Alexis Ohanian's departure from the board. CEO Steve Huffman acknowledged the company had long struggled to define and enforce limits on hateful content. While praised by many as overdue, the action drew criticism both from those who said it arrived too late and from users who argued the broad enforcement risked sweeping up legitimate debate.