Reddit's recent decision to shut down five forums that acted as breeding grounds for harassment is "not a free speech issue," a lawyer who specializes in cyber rights said Friday.
An uproar erupted online on Wednesday when the website banned five “subreddit” forums on the basis of harassment. The move came after Reddit updated its harassment policy in May.
In a statement online, the site said, "We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don’t take action. We’re banning behavior (sic), not ideas."
Among the banned forums was /r/fatpeoplehate, which had more than 151,000 subscribers at the time of the ban. As the name suggests, the forum provided a space for users to direct hateful remarks at overweight people.
According to Reddit, the other four subreddits, which included anti-transgender, and racist material, all had fewer than 5,000 members.
Users hoping to access those pages are now greeted with the message "This subreddit has been banned for violating the reddit rules to keep everyone safe."
Following the ban, many users accused the website of clamping down on free speech and urged redditors to migrate to other sites with fewer restrictions.
The most intense vitriol was aimed at Reddit CEO Ellen Pao. Users compared Pao to a Nazi for her role in the shutdown, and created subreddits calling for her resignation.
A petition calling for her to step down refers to her as "Chairman Pao," and has garnered almost 10,000 signatures. It also references a Silicon Valley gender discrimination lawsuit that Pao lost earlier this year.
Lawyer Carrie Goldberg, who specializes in cyber law, said the hateful reaction is "wrenching," but not surprising.
"I think you’ve got people who are throwing a tantrum. These are the same people that populated the five subreddits, presumably, that were banned and censored" she told CTV News Channel on Friday.
However, she said, Reddit has every right to clamp down on activity on the site, and is not violating any free speech rules.
"This is a private company and this is not a free speech issue, they can create whatever policies they want and enforce them in whatever way they want," she said.
She likened the situation to parents coming home to find a party raging. Like parents, those in charge of the website needed to enforce some rules, she said.
Elsewhere online, some commentators suggested the shutdown did not go far enough, and wondered why only five forums had been shuttered.
In its statement Wednesday, Reddit said the goal of its harassment policy is to "enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform."
