Racism is rampant on Reddit, and its editors are in open revolt

Reddit has faced several potential inflection points in its approach to racism in the six years since then, but has never undertaken a full enough reckoning to satisfy its critics. It’s facing another big moment in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd. — Dreamstime/TNS

The volunteer moderators of Reddit Inc’s r/blackladies community – an online message board that currently has over 40,000 members – wrote an open letter outlining their frustrations with the popular website in August 2014.

They had pitched their message board, known as a subreddit, as a safe space for Black women, but were being deluged with hateful comments and links to racist content from anonymous accounts. “They are relentless, coming in barrages,” the moderators wrote. “We have a racist user problem and Reddit won’t take action.”