More than 100 subreddits with tens of tens of millions of customers between them are all going darkish this week in protest of Reddit’s inexplicable determination to permit communities to unfold misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines. Reddit’s stance grew to become clear final week when the corporate’s CEO, Steve Huffman, responded to a moderator’s pleas to close these communities down by saying it was basically their drawback to unravel.

“While we appreciate the sentiment of those demanding that we ban more communities that challenge consensus views on the pandemic,” Huffman wrote, including that the corporate “[continues] to believe in the good of our communities,” regardless of all of the dangerous nonsense that these on the fringes generally promote.

Considering Huffman’s nebbishy strategy to dealing with hate speech, open racism, and god knows what else on the platform, it’s not shocking that he’d demure on dealing with these controversial communities. So, Redditors are taking on the decision as a substitute; over the previous two days, roughly 130 communities starting from r/TIFU and r/PokemonGo to a subreddit solely dedicated to dunking on Calliou have all gone personal to protest the platform’s selection.

“We have gone private in protest of Reddit’s inaction against Covid misinformation,” reads the message from Pokemon Go’s mods.

“As our users know Covid directly impacts this game because Go is played outside in real life with others. We have stood against Covid misinformation publicly before, and stood with the community when they petitioned Niantic to return the 80m distances so we could continue to play safely,” they added, noting the developer’s latest transfer to revoke the expanded interplay distances for Pokestops and gymnasiums throughout the US and New Zealand. “To that end, we will stay private until NoNewNormal and similar subs dedicated entirely to misinformation are banned.”

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Right now, the NoNewRegular subreddit—extensively thought to be a hub for antivaxxers and antimaskers to congregate—has solely been quarantined by the platform, and solely after it reached greater than 100,000 members. In a press release to VICE, the one reasoning Reddit provided was that the neighborhood wanted to be quarantined “in accordance with Reddit’s Quarantine Policy.” On the page describing what “quarantining” does, Reddit describes the transfer as a preventative one.

“The purpose of quarantining a community is to prevent its content from being accidentally viewed by those who do not knowingly wish to do so, or viewed without appropriate context,” Reddit wrote. “Quarantined subreddits and their subscribers are still fully obliged to abide by Reddit’s Content Policy and remain subject to enforcement measures.”

The excellent news right here is that Reddit has proven it may be swayed by collective Redditor dissent earlier than. This previous March, a whole bunch of communities additionally went personal after phrase received out that Reddit had employed Aimee Challenor, a well known determine within the UK politics scene who had been beforehand accused of some, er, pretty grisly stuff. Not lengthy after the communities went darkish, Huffman confirmed that the corporate had let her go, saying that Reddit “did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her.”

Obviously, the present state of affairs is about moderation, not a brand new rent, so it’s unclear whether or not Reddit will cave. But the platform finally ended up banning The_Donald, so who is aware of, possibly Huffman will shock us all this time, too.

We’ve reached out to Reddit for an replace on the protests and can replace right here once we hear again.