• Reddit banned nearly 2,000 subreddits on Monday, including r/The_Donald, arguing it violated its new policies on hate speech, among other rules.
• The same day, Twitch temporarily suspended President Trump’s account over two videos from rallies where he made racist remarks against the Latinx community– marking the first time one of the president’s personal accounts has been suspended.
• YouTube also permanently banned several accounts belonging to white supremacists including David Duke, Stefan Molyneux, and Richard Spencer.

Reddit Announces Bans

Reddit, Twitch, and YouTube all took steps to crack down on President Donald Trump and right-wing accounts Monday.

In a post on the platform, Reddit announced that it had rolled out several new content rules, including updates to its policies that more explicitly ban hate speech.

“Communities and users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned,” the post said.

As a result of those new rules, Reddit also announced that it was banning about 2,000 subreddits, notably including r/The_Donald, the main forum for Trump supporters on the platform.

The subreddit was created in 2015 when Trump was running for president and quickly became a very significant online base for him, boasting just under 800,000 users. While it does not have an official connection to Trump, he has been known to share memes from it, and in July 2016, when he was running for president, he did an Ask Me Anything.

The page has long been accused of sharing hate speech, conspiracies theories, and promoting violence. Over the years, Reddit has cracked down on the page multiple times for violating its policies.

Last year, the company “quarantined” the page⁠— meaning it was placed behind a warning screen⁠— over comments that Reddit said incited violence. Even before that, the platform had also prevented posts on the subreddit from reaching the front page.

Recently, the page’s moderators and much of its audience have moved to other websites that are similar to Reddit but have fewer content rules, and as a result, the forum has been largely inactive for about three months.

In their post, Reddit noted that the “vast majority” of the 2,000 subreddits they banned were already inactive. The post also went on to explain why they banned the r/The_Donald subreddit.

“All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith,” it 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, […] antagonized us and other communities, […] 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.”

Notably, Reddit also said that it had banned the subreddit r/ChapoTrapHouse—which is a spinoff of the popular left-wing podcast—for similar reasons.

“Though smaller, r/ChapoTrapHouse was banned for similar reasons: They consistently host rule-breaking content and their mods have demonstrated no intention of reining in their community,” it said.

Twitch Suspends Trump

Around the same time, as Reddit’s post, Twitch also announced that it was temporarily suspending President Trump’s Twitch account for “hateful conduct.”

In statements to the media, the company noted two recent streams uploaded by Trump that violated their rules. The first was a rebroadcast of his famous 2015 campaign rally where he made racist comments about Mexico sending the U.S. rapists who bring drugs and crime.

The other was a broadcast of Trump’s rally a few weeks ago in Tulsa, where he talked about a “very tough hombre” breaking into a woman’s house in the middle of the night, saying that was something that happened a lot.

“Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch,” a spokesperson said in a statement to the media. “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.”

While the company did not say how long the suspension would last, the move is still highly significant as it marks the first time ever that one of Trump’s personal social media accounts has been suspended.

YouTube Bans White Supremacists

Later on Monday, YouTube too took steps to address hate speech and announced that it was permanently banning several prominent white supremacist channels, including ones belonging to former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, podcaster Stefan Molyneux, and white supremacist activist Richard Spencer.

In a statement, the platform said that the channels repeatedly violated its rules by claiming that members of protected groups were inferior, among other violations.

“We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies,” a spokesperson said. “After updating our guidelines to better address supremacist content, we saw a 5x spike in video removals and have terminated over 25,000 channels for violating our hate speech policies.”

These bans come almost exactly a year after YouTube announced that it would start cracking down on supremacist channels. The company, however, has already received pushback for the move.

In a tweet Monday, Spencer said that he would appeal the suspension, which he described as “part of a systemic, coordinated effort.”

Molyneux also took to Twitter to voice his displeasure, writing that that YouTube “just suspended the largest philosophy conversation the world has ever known.”

A Broader Shift

The steps taken by Reddit, Twitch, and YouTube are part of this recent shift many social media platforms have begun to make.

Most companies have long-embraced a more hands-off approach and said they want to remain neutral, but now, more and more are changing their tones— especially when it comes to hate speech and President Trump.

Twitter has now placed labels on multiple Trump tweets for sharing misinformation or inciting violence. Recently, Snapchat said it will not promote Trump’s account anymore because his posts can be seen as encouraging violence.

At the same time, Facebook, the biggest social media platform in the world, has consistently refused to address these issues. While the company has claimed over and over again it does not want to police speech, numerous critics have said that they are simply allowing hate speech on the platform.

With so many other social media companies beginning to make changes, Facebook is now seeing unprecedented backlash for its refusal to follow suit.

Over the last week or so, a steadily growing number of major advertisers like Starbucks, Honda, Verizon, Coca-Cola, and more have joined a boycott of Facebook over its policies on hate speech and misinformation on the platform.

The move comes after civil rights groups pressured companies to stop paying for advertisements on Facebook, specifically, because the company has allowed posts from Trump that other platforms like Twitter have flagged as inciting violence.

Despite the numerous requests—and the fact that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly lost $7 billion last week because of the boycott— the company has refused to take any action in removing the content.

On Friday, Facebook responded to the boycott by announcing it will expand its hate speech policies and label posts from politicians who violate rules as “newsworthy.” However, those labels do not explain why the posts are inaccurate or hateful, and many say the company is just going to label hate speech from political figures “newsworthy” without taking any real steps.

Currently, it is unclear if the boycott has had any real, lasting impact, especially because some of the companies are only boycotting for a month. Because Facebook is such a huge incredibly rich company, losing those advertisers is probably just a drop in the bucket.

The issue of political speech is something Zuckerberg has remained really firm on, and while it seems unlikely he will waiver in any meaningful absent some massive event, it will be interesting to see how other companies like YouTube and Twitter continue to change.

See what others are saying: (NPR) (The Verge) (Business Insider)