Reddit Communities 'Go Dark' in Protest Over COVID Misinformation

By Dan Milmo, Guardian UK

01 September 21

Some of site’s largest subreddits switch to private, saying Reddit is failing to tackle misinformation

eddit has been hit by a user rebellion over the online discussion forum’s failure to tackle misinformation related to Covid and vaccines.

More than 135 Reddit communities, or subreddits, have “gone dark”, which blocks non-members from reading or joining the page, in protest at the site’s refusal to limit discussions that propagate misleading theories about the pandemic. The protest covers many of the site’s largest subreddits, including r/Futurology and r/TIFU, which have more than 10 million subscribers each.

A message on the r/Futurology forum said “people are dying from misinformation” related to coronavirus. “Futurology has gone private to protest Reddit’s inaction on Covid-19 misinformation,” the message said. “Weaponized misinformation is a key problem shaping our future. Reddit won’t enforce their policies against misinformation, brigading, and spamming.”

Defending the site’s approach, Reddit’s chief executive, Steve Huffman, wrote in a post last week that the site was a place for “open and authentic discussion”. He said: “Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy. Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate. This includes conversations that question or disagree with popular consensus.”

The r/PokemonGo subreddit, representing players of the augmented reality game, announced it was going dark and would stay private until Reddit removed sites spreading misinformation about Covid. “We have gone private in protest of Reddit’s inaction against Covid misinformation. As our users know Covid directly impacts this game because Go is played outside in real life with others.”

The message added that the group had supported protests against Pokémon Go’s developer recently after it announced plans to reverse safety measures implemented at the start of the pandemic last year.

One of the Reddit communities cited by the protesting groups, r/NoNewNormal, has been “quarantined” by the site, meaning Reddit has flagged its content as having the potential to be “highly offensive or upsetting” and preventing it from showing up on the normal homepage.

The r/NoNewNormal forum, which has 124,000 subscribers and contains posts warning against taking Covid vaccines, describes itself as “a diverse international coalition with the shared goal of restoring our old ways of life before the world fell into the grips of fear and hysteria”. One post on Tuesday stated: “Being anti-[vaccine] mandate is not anti-science, it’s pro-freedom, pro-choice.”

Research by the UK and US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate published this year found the vast majority of Covid-19 anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories originated from 12 people – including the Kennedy family scion Robert F Kennedy Jr – with a combined following of 59 million people across multiple social media platforms.

CCDH analysed 812,000 Facebook posts and tweets and found just under two-thirds came from the so-called disinformation dozen. Facebook said it had already taken action against some of the groups mentioned in the report, while Kennedy said he had never posted an inaccurate statement on his Instagram account.