Reddit users expect their site to be “the front page of the internet.” But the morning after the Orlando shooting, it was anything but.
Reddit’s r/news, the subreddit that exists for the sole purpose of discussing and sharing breaking news, locked multiple threads and deleted others on articles pertaining to the Orlando shootings after it was revealed that the shooter was Muslim. When a thread is locked users can no longer comment. The moderators blamed it on “brigading” and “hate speech,” but they also blocked people from sharing useful information on blood donations and ways to help.
While there were some racist comments, the mods mass-deleted ones that were simply pointing out the fact that Islam was a factor in the shooting. The mods also banned many users for innocuous comments or for complaining about the censorship.
Many users were furious that the morning after the shooting little evidence of it could be found on the front page. Some had to find out from Facebook or other sources. Redditors pride themselves on being the first to know, but on Sunday morning they were almost completely in the dark.
For hours the only major subreddit offering open discussion of the shooting was r/the_donald, a sub for Donald Trump supporters, and hardly the best place for unbiased discussion (as any user saying something negative about Trump will be banned).
Finally at around noon, r/askreddit, a sub where users ask the community fun or insightful questions, took the onus upon themselves to open a thread on Orlando.
After finally opening up a megathread to discuss the events, the moderators at r/news deleted most of the comments for complaining about the censorship.
One mod, SuspiciousSpecialist, even freaked out and told a user to kill him or herself.
It seems SuspiciousSpecialist lost his moderator privileges as a result of this comment.
Some Redditors are calling for the ouster of the entire r/news mod team or the removal of the sub from the list of default subreddits.
Reddit users feel betrayed that their site could not handle a tragedy of such magnitude properly. At its worst, the mods censorship was an example of liberal bias pushing to keep Islam out of the narrative, and at its best it was an insane level of incompetence. Either way Reddit users want change.
Reddit admins released a statement on r/news’ megathread promising to look into the incident and discuss the situation with the moderators.
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