Reddit's June 2020 Mass Purge ('The Great Ban') and Content-Policy Overhaul

Reddit had resisted a categorical hate-speech ban for years on free-expression grounds and was repeatedly criticized for hosting communities like r/The_Donald. On June 29, 2020 the company rewrote its sitewide content policy from a vague set of guidelines into eight explicit rules, led by a new Rule 1 that for the first time expressly prohibited communities and users that 'incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability.' CEO Steve Huffman announced the change in r/announcements, conceding the prior anti-hate stance had been only 'implicit' and that 'I admit we have fallen short.'

Reddit enforced the rule immediately, removing roughly 2,000 subreddits the same day. The company said the large majority were inactive, with only about 10 percent having more than 10 daily users. The most prominent removals spanned the political spectrum, from the pro-Trump r/The_Donald to the left-wing r/ChapoTrapHouse, alongside named communities such as r/GenderCritical, r/ConsumeProduct, and r/DarkHumorAndMemes.

The action was causally tied to the post–George Floyd reckoning of summer 2020: an open letter signed by more than 600 subreddits and moderators demanded action, and co-founder Alexis Ohanian had resigned from the board on June 5, 2020, asking to be replaced by a Black candidate. The purge was a beginning rather than an endpoint — in an August 2020 follow-up Reddit reported it had banned nearly 7,000 subreddits for hateful content since June 29.