Reddit's COVID Misinformation Moderator Strike and the Banning of r/NoNewNormal
August–September 2021
In late August 2021, moderators of roughly 135 subreddits took their communities private to protest Reddit's refusal to act on COVID-19 misinformation; days later Reddit banned the COVID-denialist hub r/NoNewNormal — citing brigading rather than misinformation — and quarantined 54 other subreddits.
What happened
Through 2021, r/NoNewNormal grew into one of Reddit's most prominent hubs for COVID-19 denialism. It was quarantined on August 12, 2021 (over 112,000 subscribers), but moderators argued this was inadequate. Organizing through r/VaxxHappened, a coalition of moderators published an open letter — signed by hundreds of subreddits — demanding Reddit remove communities dedicated to medical disinformation, writing 'there can be no room for leniency when people are dying as a result of misinformation on this platform.'
CEO Steve Huffman initially rebuffed the demands, framing COVID-skeptical discussion as protected debate: 'dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy,' and arguing that disagreeing with the CDC was not against policy. In response, moderators of roughly 135 subreddits — including r/Futurology, r/PokemonGo, r/StarTrek, and r/TIFU — went dark in late August 2021.
On September 1, 2021, Reddit reversed course and banned r/NoNewNormal. Crucially, the official justification was not misinformation but 'brigading' — coordinated interference with other communities. Reddit's security team said it found clear signals the subreddit was the source of roughly 80 brigades over 30 days, and quarantined 54 other COVID-denial subreddits. Commentators compared the technicality to 'convicting Al Capone for tax evasion.'
Impact
The episode was one of the largest coordinated moderator protests in Reddit's history and a landmark test of how a major platform balances free-expression commitments against public-health harm during a pandemic. It demonstrated that organized community pressure could force a policy reversal from leadership committed to inaction days earlier. Yet critics on both sides were unsatisfied: Reddit acted on a brigading technicality rather than banning misinformation, leaving its health-falsehood policy largely intact. The events foreshadowed the 2023 API blackout.