The_Donald

For a number of reasons, I try not to talk about individual politicians by name here on my public blog.

But by god, the current administration makes that difficult.

Yesterday, the well-known hate subreddit r/The_Donald was quarantined. “Quarantined” on Reddit means that anything in that part of the site won’t appear in searches- either on Reddit or on Google- and a big ol’ splash page that lists why it was quarantined and makes you verify that the end user wants to see that content before being allowed in. Some folks believe this is the first step in getting it erased entirely, like r/Incels. I think that’s a bit hopeful, but quarantine is better than nothing.

Then again, The_Donald has been spewing hate since Trump announced his campaign in 2015. So why did it take so long for reddit to take action?

One of the biggest pro-Drumpf forums on the web, Reddit’s r/The_Donald, has been walled off. As of Wednesday, the social media site put the subreddit (which has more than 754,000 subscribers) under “quarantine” because of threats of violence made on the message board against police officers, which Reddit does not allow. The threats were in reaction to a statehouse fight in Oregon involving GOP lawmakers who refused to vote on a climate bill and fled the state.

Full Slate article

Never mind that these same people are, as of my last viewing, still going after Carlos Maza and a number of other targets, it’s when they threaten police that Reddit takes action.

I’m insulted. Why are officers the arbitrary line? The_Donald and all its Russian troll friends have been trying to incite violence for four goddamn years.

I hope that this and that crazy knitting site, are signs of social media platforms taking the necessary initiative to protect victims of harassment. But, being in the economic climate we are, my assumption is that finally all the bad press was hurting Reddit’s bottom line. That’s the only real tool we have to enact change, and so we’ll use it.

We have to make bigotry unprofitable. Like the Wayfair workers, we have to hit those who profit in the only place they care about- their wallets.

For today, let’s rejoice in the quarantine. In particular, let’s relish this beautiful image: