That Took a While: Reddit Finally Bans Racist Subreddits

In a post to /r/announcements, current Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman wrote that they’re updating their Content Policy to better reflect the desires and needs of the community. Specifically, they’re going to start applying “Quarantines” to certain offensive subreddits, and more importantly, they’re finally banning some racist communities. Who knew it took soul searching and a little less than a month to decide that “/r/CoonTown” was a hateful community? Reddit did, apparently.

If you’ll remember, back in mid-June after a wave of some community bans, Huffman explicitly wrote that subreddits like /r/CoonTown would be allowed to remain on the site under “Quarantine.” To view a subreddit under “Quarantine,” a member would have to be registered and explicitly opt-in to viewing the content after being warned about its nature.

But now that subreddit/community is gone, along with a few others. According to The Daily Dot, the other subs that are now gone include: /r/WatchNiggersDie, /r/bestofcoontown, /r/koontown, /r/CoonTownMods, /r/CoonTownMeta.

Really, though? Only now? It took all this backlash and feedback and all these articles and things to get you to realize that oh, a community with a racial slur in its name is maybe a bannable thing? Okay. Sure.

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Jessica Lachenal

Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.

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