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Reddit bans large leftist subreddit r/TheDeprogram for gloating about the death of a Nazi
(www.datalounge.com)
Follow the money there.
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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Reddit fears retribution, especially the fiscal kind.
The fediverse is not immune to bullying by powerful people, but it's much more of a pain as we more resemble a hydra.
True, Felker-Martin, DC comic author, was suspended from bluesky after all for being less than diplomatic with Kirk's death.
Oh, what had he said?
Bluesky is not the Fediverse.
Bluesky is singly controlled by one for-profit corporation, and in no meaningful way represents a decentralized hydra the way thay the Fediverse does.
BlueSky is liberal and leftist flavored/brand Twitter, brought to you by Jack Dorsey, headquartered in Seattle.
The Fediverse is actually meaningfully decentralized in practice, brought to you by a bunch of wierdo random coder people you've probably never heard of, a good number of them ardent communists, running and developing everything mostly entirely for free, headquartered nowhere and/or everywhere.
judging by how fast they quashed the luigi shootings in dec, it was pretty telling.
I welcome our future gloating brethren
No offense, but r/TheDeprogram was actually a pretty toxic community. It doesn't surprise me that it got banned.
I hope it doesn't surprise anyone it was banned. But let's not pretend its because they were toxic. The only reason Reddit has ever pumped the breaks on a toxic community that wasn't politically left is when they were dragged over the coals in the mainstream news about it and it threatened to hurt their advertising revenue.
TheDeprogram's ban is political censorship. If you don't embrace late-stage capitalism, it is not safe to build a community on Reddit.
Since Luigi they have gotten a lot more strict about this stuff.
But ironically I feel like this is kind of the same situation as Kirk. I’m sad for the situation that led this to happen. There are contributing factors here that are deeply troubling and should be addressed. But I don’t feel sad for Kirk and I don’t feel sad for the DeProgram even though I don’t think it’s right to leave that decision up to assholes in suits.
If you don't embrace ~~late-stage~~ capitalism
There, all better now.
I don't disagree with that. My point was more along the lines that that particular community is home to some pretty rude assholes. When the difference between getting banned and not, depends on the extent to which a rule gets violated...that community definitely has a very high number of people with no filters, who regularly spew some pretty rancid takes. Not really the types to "keep their heads down, until shit blows over", if you know what I mean.
And unfortunately as you indicated, due to Reddit being Reddit, now is probably not the best time to go out of your way to prove how edgy and anti-establishment you can be. It just gives them an excuse to pull the trigger on you.
The way you're phrasing it sounds like victim-blaming here.
Celebrating Kirk's death is a form of political speech, just like burning an American flag.
Reddit has always used "free speech" as a shield for toxic content that brought in advertising revenue.
"We stand for free speech... we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits."
If they were participating in a platform that supported free speech, it wouldn't matter how 'toxic' they are. They were lied to.
being rude, isnt a reason to ban a community. So does r/conservatives, they did worst and they arnt banned.
They kept jailbait up until it got national publicity.
They kept fatpeoplehate until it got negative attention. Same with watchpeopledie.
It's always about the money and their optics.
Reddit is fully compromised and has been for a while. It's also chock full of dumbs these days.