Culture
Reddit finally gets around to permabanning r/donaldtrump
Social media's complicity in MAGA insurrectionism seems to be finally waning.
Just as the nation appears to be careening toward rock bottom, social media giants are finally pulling their ripcords in a desperate, probably-too-late attempt to salvage our souls. (That metaphor may not fully track logically, but it's been a long damn week, alright?) Just over six months after banning the internet cesspool that was the subreddit r/The_Donald along with thousands of similar groups, Reddit finally decided now would be a great time to close down the other MAGA mire, r/donaldtrump.
Don't expect a cookie from us, Reddit — According to a Reddit spokesperson speaking with Engadget today, the platform's "site-wide policies prohibit content that promotes hate, or encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence against groups of people or individuals," which, you know, pretty much sums up the whole Donald Trump subreddit experience. "In accordance with this, we have been proactively reaching out to moderators to remind them of our policies and to offer support or resources as needed. We have also taken action to ban the community r/donaldtrump given repeated policy violations in recent days regarding the violence at the US Capitol.”
What took you so damn long? — If only anyone could have seen this coming. Reddit's decision comes after a wave of similar, far-too-late reactions from sites like Facebook, Instagram, (briefly) Twitter, and even TikTok (lol).
Of course reining in the already overwhelming means of spreading disinformation, hate speech, and propaganda is welcome news, but well...c'mon. "What took you so damn long?" is pretty much a rhetorical question at this point. When traffic numbers and profit margins are the only concerns, Big Tech and its affiliates will nihilistically milk every last dime from the chaos so long as the going's good. Apparently, the line in the sand for most of them is when Trump legitimately incited a deadly riot, but if this means we as a country can finally get around to calling this shit as we see it, then we guess we'll take what we can get at this point.
