Reddit has billed itself as being the frontpage of the internet and also as a place where people of various interest can gather and discuss topics close to their hearts. In theory this sounds good, but given that not all interests and hobbies are legal or socially accepted, this has led to the creation of some very questionable communities.The fact that they’ve managed to stay open for this long is a testament to Reddit’s desire to create a free internet, but unfortunately it looks like after all the backlash the website has received, and with the appointment of Steve Huffman as the new CEO following the departure of Ellen Pao, it looks like some of these communities are finally getting shutdown.
This includes some very racist and hate-filled communities, whose names we won’t bother repeating. According to Huffman who wrote in r/Announcements, “Today, in addition to applying Quarantines, we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else.”
Huffman also introduced a new concept called Quarantining in which it basically restricts access to a particular community. Only those who explicitly wants to view the contents will be let inside, meaning that the average Redditor won’t accidentally stumble across it. It’s an interesting direction that Reddit is headed at and we guess we’ll just have to let the community decide if this is what they want.
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