Reddit users flooded the forum with derogatory comments about staff, complementing them with images of fat people. This followed the site operator’s decision to ban several subforums. The site saw a wave of derogatory postings about Ellen Pao, Reddit’s interim CEO, as she was the one to lead a campaign to clean up harassment on the website.

A few days ago Reddit announced the ban of 5 suforums: two with fat-shaming comments, one targeting gamers, one racist and one transphobic. Only one of the threads had a significant number of subscribers (over 150,000), while the other four all had under 4,000.

Since then, lots of other obesity-related subforums emerged, and Reddit users even have launched a petition calling on Ellen Pao to resign for the attack on the free speech. These threads contained crude photoshopped images of Reddits’ interim CEO on an obese body, while one popular subforum was briefly flooded with images of fat people.

The recent Reddit’s decision made it clear that they only ban direct attacks on identifiable individuals, while the abstract racism and other kinds of hate speech are still allowed. In response, Reddit users claimed that such subforums are insular communities, and it would be unusual for anyone unsuspecting to come across them.

In the past years, the website has made small inroads into the free-for-all atmosphere on the site by closing down threads dedicated to suggestive images of kids and young teens, “creep shots” of unaware women, and a subforum distributing hacked celebrity nude photos. It should also be noted that Reddit operators didn’t ban any pages critical of them directly.

Reddit’s announcement about the bans over harassment topics read that the site operators wanted the least involvement, but explained that the moderators will have to be involved when needed to protect privacy and free expression, as well as to prevent harassment against certain individuals. The statement published by the website clearly stated that the behavior will be banned, not ideas. In other words, from now on the subreddits will be removed which allow their communities to use the site as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don’t pay attention to what is happening.

ha ha! wait till Twitter shows it's teeth! There's no Brave New World in the corridors of internet. Censorship gives control and control gives power and who don't want power! huh?