"Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform," Pao and the site's leaders said in a statement that addressed the FPH ban. FPH was seen by many as one area of Reddit that needed to be eliminated for the overall good of the site. Reddit's harsh and unforgiving tendencies have often been mentioned in the press, and the site has gained a reputation for not being a particularly welcoming place for women. The policy, which was first announced in May, represents an attempt to make Reddit a more welcoming place. Reddit's interim CEO, Ellen Pao, invoked the site's new anti-harassment policy in explaining the decision to ban FPH. This all changed when Reddit banned the forum. However, it boasted a very committed community, according to the site Redditlist, which tracks Reddit analytics:Ī ranking of the most active communities on Reddit versus their number of subscribers. What's kind of mystifying is that Fat People Hate didn't have as many subscribers as some of Reddit's other forums.
What distinguished it from some of the darker, more obscure corners of the internet where terrible stuff happens is that it had an extremely active membership, and so many of its posts would get upvoted (Reddit users have the power to "upvote" or "downvote" each post the more upvotes a post receives, the better its chances of making it to that top shelf, if we're still using the grocery store analogy) that it had a very vocal, inescapable presence on the site. And because they're so popular, they're usually displayed in additional places throughout the store, which is more or less what happens when something appears on Reddit's "front page."įat People Hate was a subreddit devoted to viciously demeaning obese people and denouncing the idea of fat acceptance. Each aisle would be a subreddit, with the most popular items on the top shelves - think of these items as the top posts. That concept can be kind of confusing to people who don't regularly venture onto Reddit, so an easy analogy would be to picture Reddit as a giant supermarket. What is Fat People Hate?įat People Hate, or r/fatpeoplehate, is what's called a subreddit - a specific section of the larger website. Reddit's decision to shut down this forum has set an important precedent - the first of the site's bans against harassment - sending shockwaves throughout its massive readership and raising questions about censorship and free speech.
FPH was one of the meanest and most active areas of the site it was astonishing how fast its 150,000 subscribers could mobilize. And it was designed solely to mock fat people, no matter how famous or obscure they might be. It thrived because of the internet's unparalleled ability to connect people who would never find each other in real life. On Wednesday, June 10, Reddit killed one of its most popular - and ugliest - forums, a "subreddit" called Fat People Hate (FPH).įPH was Reddit at its best and worst.
From forearms to television to gay bros to cute dogs to female bodybuilders, the Reddit community is a huge pastiche of people from all walks of life. Reddit, known as the "front page of the internet," is a website where you can find all kinds of people talking about all kinds of stuff.