Reddit Bans r/TumblrInAction and r/SocialJusticeInAction (2022)

In late June 2022 Reddit banned r/TumblrInAction and its sister community r/SocialJusticeInAction without prior warning. r/TumblrInAction, founded in 2012 to mock 'social justice warriors' and what it called Tumblr 'gender ideology,' had grown to roughly 470,000-500,000 members and was one of the platform's oldest 'anti-woke' communities; r/SocialJusticeInAction had about 96,000. Reddit said the subreddits were removed for violating its rule against promoting hate.

The communities' moderators offered a different account, arguing that the trigger was 'identity invalidation' — posts questioning or refusing to affirm transgender identities, such as debates over transgender athletes and puberty blockers. r/TumblrInAction had become a gathering point for gender-critical discussion after Reddit closed r/GenderCritical and r/LGBDropTheT in its June 2020 purge, and its moderators framed the 2022 ban as the platform finally moving against a viewpoint rather than conduct.

Because much of the sustained coverage came from ideologically conservative outlets, the episode is best read through what is independently verifiable: the date, the subscriber counts, Reddit's stated 'promoting hate' rationale and the gender-critical context are documented, while the competing claims about Reddit's true motive are attributed to the parties making them. Reddit did not publish a detailed public explanation beyond citing its content policy.

The bans fit a recurring pattern in which Reddit removes long-tolerated communities in waves and is then accused — from opposite political directions — of both over- and under-enforcing. Coming two years after the Great Ban and amid intensifying platform fights over transgender issues, the removal of a half-million-member community with a decade of history renewed the perennial criticism that Reddit's hate-speech enforcement is opaque and applied inconsistently.