"All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith," a spokesperson for Reddit said. "We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity. The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations. Until now, we’ve worked in good faith to help them preserve the community as a space for its users—through warnings, mod changes, quarantining, and more."
The virtual "quarantine" had been in place for just over a year, and required viewers to opt-in before being able to see the site. Reddit had previously hidden popular r/The_Donald posts from the site's front page.
r/The_Donald has often become embroiled in the discussion of conspiracy theories, including Pizzagate and the alleged involvement of the Clintons in the 2017 murder of Seth Rich. It was also a hotbed of racism, Islamphobia, and misogyny. While Trump wasn't officially affiliated with the subreddit, he did an AMA there in 2016. Other AMAs hosted on the subreddit included Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, Roger Stone, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Tucker Carlson.
Along with r/The_Donald, around 2000 other subreddits, including one for discussing podcast Chapo Trap House, were banned.
Meanwhile, streaming site Twitch temporarily suspended Trump's own account today. A spokesperson for the site told TechCrunch, "Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed."
The comments that led to the suspension were from two of Trump's campaign rallies, the first from his 2015 campaign kickoff:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They���re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They’re sending us not the right people.
The second comment was much more recent, coming from his Tulsa, Oklahoma rally earlier this month:
Hey, it’s 1:00 o’clock in the morning and a very tough, I’ve used the word on occasion, hombre, a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or whatever he may do. And you call 911 and they say, “I’m sorry, this number’s no longer working.” By the way, you have many cases like that, many, many, many. Whether it’s a young woman, an old woman, a young man or an old man and you’re sleeping.
"Like anyone else," Twitch told TechCrunch, "politicians on Twitch must adhere to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. We do not make exceptions for political or newsworthy content, and will take action on content reported to us that violates our rules."
