What happened
On June 26, 2019, Reddit placed r/The_Donald, its largest and most notorious pro-Trump community with more than 750,000 subscribers, under 'quarantine' after repeated violations of its rules against content that encourages or incites violence. The trigger was a wave of threats directed at police officers and Oregon state lawmakers, posted in reaction to a statehouse standoff in which Republican legislators fled the state to block a vote on a climate bill. Reddit said moderators had failed to curb the rule-breaking despite warnings.
A quarantine stripped the subreddit of advertising and discoverability, removed it from recommendations and search, and forced visitors past an interstitial warning before they could view content. Reddit demanded that moderators clearly communicate that violent content was unacceptable and warned that continued violations could lead to an outright ban. The action marked an escalation in Reddit's enforcement against a community that had long tested the platform's tolerance, and foreshadowed The_Donald's eventual removal during the 2020 'Great Ban.'