Two subreddit ommunities in particular, r/The_Donald and r/CringeAnarchy, have stayed open even after community members justified shooting Muslims, according to Mother Jones .
"Muslims get what they deserve for being terrorist pedophiles," read one exemplary comment in r/CringeAnarchy cited by Mother Jones . "I have exactly zero sympathy for ANY member of the Religion of Terrorists and Child Rape. Any Muslim who doesnt like this should get the f--- out of the West. They dont belong here, they arent welcome and no one wants their filthy, greasy terrorist asses here."
"If Islam would stop its 24/7 decapitation / murder marathon, maybe we wouldnt have to wake up to stories like this," read another post, posted in r/The_Donald and cited by Mother Jones.
Social media platforms have struggled to grapple with the shooting, which analysts believe was calculated to go viral . The shooter live-streaming the attack and published a manifesto with white supremacist messaging. The document was steeped in internet culture and took strong stances on divisive cultural topics, with the apparent intention of drawing maximum attention and inflaming racism and anti-Muslim sentiment.
Reddit has taken action but not on anti-Muslim hate
Reddit previously shut down three communities shortly after the shooting after moderators defended users who circulated clips of video from the live-stream.
But it has been relatively hands-off on anti-Muslim hate. The r/The_Donald community, for supporters of President Donald Trump, has hosted white supremacist rhetoric for years . The community rules for r/CringeAnarchy , which is intended to mock people, has homophobic language and says racial and religious hatred is permissible as long as it's not "serious." Reddit has quarantined r/CringeAnarchy, which means that users need to create a Reddit account to view it.
Both communities are enormous by Reddit's standards. r/CringeAnarchy has nearly 400,000 subscribers, and r/The_Donald has more than 700,000. If The latter were to be removed, it would likely be the largest subreddit to ever be taken down.
A Reddit spokesperson told Mother Jones that it's devoted to enforcing its policies against "bad actors."
"We have also significantly built out the teams responsible for detecting and enforcing against policy infractions, proactively going after bad actors on the site, and creating engineering solutions to detect and prevent them in the future," the spokesperson said.
Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, told Mother Jones that Reddit is well aware that hundreds of thousands of its users are members of radicalized groups. Refusing to take action against them is a choice, he said.
"At the end of the day, these companies are aware that people are radicalized on the platform. The action they do or dont take, says something about what that company values," Segal said. "It might be drastic to remove The_Donald, but it might be a necessary step to meet something as drastic as people celebrating violence in New Zealand."
