[Karunamon]

I'd believe that if the behavior of the administrators were consistent with that explanation.

Example, the ban you're talking about, communities which had the same idea, with different staff, that had existed before that one had, were also caught up in the ban. In other words, they were banned despite not breaking any stated rules.

Another example: A racist subreddit, not getting banned because of harassment, not for breaking rules, but because they were a frequent target of admin attention.

Another another example: Colluding with the governments of other non-US countries to censor content at those governments' request.

It's their website, they can run it as they please, but I wish Ohanian and Huffman would stop playing lip service to "free speech" and "open discussion" (something that up until recently, they did loudly and often) if that's not the goal they intend to live by. Actions speak a lot louder than words.

[linkydinkandyou]

Exactly. People are saying that /r/fatpeoplehate "violated copyright" but every meme does that. (See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09...). And reddit never said they were getting legal takedown notices for material published there.

Most of the posts I saw were responses to fat-acceptance bloggers and their postings on their blogs. Obviously these blogs were created to foster discussion and that was happening. When the discussion wasn't positive, they got upset.

Obviously, it's a private website and they can do what they want with it. But it never was a place for "free speech." If you didn't go along with Reddit groupthink (which is an odd mix of socialism "college should be free" "Koch Brothers are Evil" and libertarianism "Go Uber!" "Open Access to the Internet") you would be quickly down voted away.