Days after an angry mob stormed into the U.S. Capitol in demonstrations against outgoing President Donald Trump's November poll defeat, another major social media site has removed a popular pro-Trump forum.
Reddit confirmed Saturday that it deleted the "r/donaldtrump" subreddit because of "repeated policy violations" on the platform following Wednesday's deadly riot at the Capitol building.
A Reddit spokesperson said the forum's site-wide policies restrict content that "promotes hate, or encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence against groups of people or individuals," The Wrap reported.
Before the assault of the Capitol, swarms of pro-Trump loyalists attended the President's own event, a rally near the White House. While the supporters kept themselves around a stage, Trump eventually urged them to head toward Congress to continue expressing their anger at the outcome of the polls.
While not directly connected with the President or his political campaign, Reddit is one of the biggest virtual communities dedicated to the commander in chief.
Among other companies that have opposed Trump's online presence in connection to Wednesday's mayhem Tiktok, Shopify, and Twitch.
Instagram and Facebook banned Trump from posting on their platform for at least the next two weeks.
Twitter suspended the President's account Wednesday before reactivating it Thursday once he removed questionable comments.
YouTube said it's fast-tracking its imposition of voter fraud accusations against Trump and others in the aftermath of the Capitol siege.
In June last year, Reddit took down a different thread devoted to Trump, called "r/the_donald," as part of a policy revision to its hate speech rules. Before the suspension, the thread was one of the most notorious pro-Trump forums.
The r/donaldtrump forum had around 52,000 members before it was taken down, based on an Internet Archive Snapshot. This figure was significantly smaller than the r/The_Donald subreddit that was removed last year for consistent policy breach.
Reddit did not give additional details about why Trump's subreddit was deleted, but did specify its actions against r/donaldtrump were an isolated issue and no other subreddits were removed Saturday.
"All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith," Reddit chief executive officer Steve Huffman said last year in a Reddit comment making public the changes. "We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity," he clarified in remarks quoted by C/NET.
