The Propaganda FilesFor years some subreddits used bots such as SaferBot and Hive-Protect to automatically ban anyone who had posted in communities on a blocklist, including political ones. On March 5, 2026, Reddit announced it would remove the bots' ability to ban users based solely on where they had posted, effective March 19.
Concerns that a few moderators control many of Reddit's largest communities date back at least to 2014, when Reddit capped moderators at three default subreddits. In September 2025 Reddit announced that no one may moderate more than five communities with over 100,000 weekly visitors, enforced from March 31, 2026.
A 2024 University of Michigan study of over 600 million comments found that Reddit moderators are more likely to remove comments that oppose their own politics, and that the average moderator leans slightly further left than the average user. The authors stress that the bias runs in both directions. A 2021 Nature study found Reddit's 2016 polarization was driven mainly by an influx of new right-wing users.
In October 2024 Reddit banned r/real_China_irl, a Chinese-language community of about 100,000 members, many of them dissidents. The ban is documented, but the claim that Beijing or Tencent caused it rests on circumstantial evidence.
Reddit's 2024 IPO registration statement (Form S-1) lists Tencent as a minority shareholder of about 11%, behind Advance Publications (Condé Nast's parent) at about 30%. The filing shows no Tencent director on the board and caps Tencent's voting power. The claim that China or Tencent 'controls' Reddit is not supported by the ownership record.
The July 4, 2023 ruling in Missouri v. Biden found that Reddit was among the platforms in a CISA-run industry working group with the FBI, held bilateral meetings with the FBI, and was among the platforms that took part in the Election Integrity Partnership. The Supreme Court later reversed the resulting injunction on standing grounds and did not decide whether coercion occurred.
After Reddit announced paid API access in April 2023, thousands of subreddits went dark starting June 12. Reddit warned it would replace moderators who kept communities closed, then removed several mod teams and took direct control of some subreddits.
In August 2021, moderators of hundreds of subreddits signed an open letter asking Reddit to act on COVID-19 misinformation, and many large communities went private when Reddit refused. On September 1, Reddit banned r/NoNewNormal and quarantined 54 other COVID-skeptic communities.
In March 2021 Reddit faced a site-wide protest after it removed posts naming a newly hired admin, Aimee Challenor (now Knight), and banned a moderator who shared a news article about her. On March 24, CEO Steve Huffman said Reddit had not vetted her background and that she no longer worked there.
After Ghislaine Maxwell's July 2, 2020 arrest, users speculated that u/maxwellhill, one of Reddit's highest-karma accounts and an early moderator of r/worldnews, r/politics and r/technology, belonged to her. No journalist, court record or Reddit statement has confirmed this.
On June 29, 2020, Reddit banned r/The_Donald, a pro-Trump forum of nearly 800,000 users, along with about 2,000 other communities, as it added an explicit rule against promoting hate. The left-leaning r/ChapoTrapHouse was banned in the same action.
In June 2019 Reddit quarantined r/The_Donald, its largest pro-Trump forum, citing posts encouraging violence against police and public officials in Oregon. The quarantine hid the forum behind a warning screen and removed it from search and recommendations.
In February 2019, Chinese tech company Tencent put $150 million into a $300 million Reddit Series D round at a $3 billion post-money valuation. The investment drew a user protest on Reddit over fears of Chinese-style censorship.
On June 10, 2015, under interim CEO Ellen Pao, Reddit banned five subreddits, including r/fatpeoplehate, for harassing individuals. The bans, followed by the firing of a popular staffer, led to a moderator blackout, a 100,000-plus signature petition, and Pao's resignation on July 10, 2015.
