What happened
On September 12, 2018, Reddit banned r/greatawakening, the largest hub for the QAnon conspiracy theory, citing repeated violations of its content policy. The community had grown to more than 71,000 subscribers and averaged over 10,000 comments a day, and had become the main forum where QAnon's claims were amplified and refined. Reddit also removed a backup community, r/the_greatawakening, and roughly 17 other QAnon-focused subreddits, including r/BiblicalQ, pointing to a stream of violent threats and the posting of personal information despite moderators' warnings.
The purge built on Reddit's earlier action in March 2018, when it banned the original QAnon subreddit r/CBTS_stream and its moderators for inciting violence and doxing. By cutting off one of QAnon's most active mainstream platforms, Reddit became an early example of a major site moving to contain the conspiracy theory before it spread further. QAnon nonetheless continued migrating to other platforms and grew into a broader movement, making Reddit's 2018 bans a notable early marker in the wider reckoning over conspiracy content and online radicalization.