A little-noticed detail in Reddit’s official “hate speech” policy specifically exempts “people who are in the majority” — which, in the United States would include white people and women — from its protections.
The “hate speech” policy protects minorities and prohibits attacks based on peoples’ “actual and perceived race,” but does not extend to “people who are in the majority:”
Rule 1: Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and people that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.
Marginalized or vulnerable groups include, but are not limited to, groups based on their actual and perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or disability. These include victims of a major violent event and their families.
While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.
The detail has been highlighted by conservatives on social media after Reddit came under renewed attention in the wake of its decision to ban r/The_Donald, its main hub for Trump supporters.
r/The_Donald, which anticipated the ban several months in advance, migrated its community to an independent websites, thedonald.win.
On 29th June, @reddit banned the radical feminist subreddit r/GenderCritical, Reddit’s most active feminist community, which had nearly 65,000 subscribers and more than 27,000 daily users, as part of their campaign to rebrand themselves as being against “hate." #RedditHatesWomen
— GenderCritical (@rGenderCritical) June 29, 2020
The ban was part of a wide-ranging purge of approximately two thousand user-created communities on Reddit (known as “subreddits”). It extended to r/GenderCritical, which describes itself as the site’s most active feminist subreddit. The subreddit had a history, common to radical feminism, of critiquing the transgender movement — a point that has earned them the label “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists” (TERFs) from the far left.
Breitbart News has reached out to Reddit for comment.
Are you an insider at Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
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