An unending stream of racist posts, likely coming from ‘sockpuppet’ American accounts, has overwhelmed the moderators of the Reddit Ireland page, prompting a nightly shutdown to allow everyone to get some rest.
Moderators of the popular page, which has over 280,000 members, said they have reached “breaking point” after floods of racist content was posted in recent days. In a bid to “stem the flow” of racist material, they have decided to shut the page between midnight and 8am Irish time every day.
In a post explaining the new policy, the moderators said that a multitude of accounts with false identities are spamming the page with racist or hateful comments and they are typically posting in American hours. They are then using different accounts to share their posts in “hate-focused” subreddits in order to boost their popularity.
The moderators said they were at a “lost cause” trying to clean up “hate-filled messes” that were caused by inaction on the part of Reddit’s administrators. The page is attempting to hire moderators based in different time zones and add filters that can spot posts “hateful” comments.
“While the vast majority of hateful comments submitted over the past while have been solely directed towards someone’s skin colour, we are noting now that this automod filter list will include common phrases used against Traveller communities, and any other minority groups which we have found to have been of target by these accounts in the past,” the post said.
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