Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
In June this year, Reddit began a huge campaign to remove hateful content from its site, blocking communities that engaged in hate speech and harassment. In an update on its progress today, the company says it’s banned nearly 7,000 subreddits (including repeat offenders) resulting in an 18 percent drop in users posting hateful content.
“While I would love that number to be 100 percent, I’m encouraged by the progress,” writes Reddit user u/worstnerd, a member of the company’s Safety team.
The progress is part of a sea change at Reddit after the site introduced new policies that explicitly ban hate speech and promised to enforce them rigorously. Reddit has…