Reddit, the social media platform known for woke politics and leftist censorship, is laying off approximately five percent of its employees and slowing its hiring process according to recent reports.
The Wall Street Journal reports that leftist social media site Reddit, known for its extreme censorship of conservatives, is slowing its hiring process and laying off about five percent of its workforce. The action is part of a larger restructuring intended to improve operational efficiency and bring about financial stability.
“Reddit is making these moves to address priorities, including funding projects and achieving our goal of breaking even next year,” said Steve Huffman, the left-wing company’s CEO. The layoffs represent about five percent of Reddit’s workforce, which currently stands at around 2,000 people.
Huffman provided more details about the company’s plans in a message to the workforce. “We’ve had a solid first half of the year, and this restructuring will position us to carry that momentum into the second half and beyond,” he said. As part of the restructuring, the company will reduce its hiring for the rest of the year to about 100 people, a significant decrease from an initial plan to hire 300.
Reddit has also faced multiple scandals and its management team has been accused of leftist bias. In July of 2022, Breitbart News reporter Allum Bokhari reported that the site had banned the word “groomer” calling it “hate speech.”
Bokhari wrote:
Reddit has banned the word “groomer,” a description of child predators who expose children to sexually explicit material, in what it says is an effort to tackle “hate speech.” The site also banned the claim, which until recently was a matter of mainstream psychology, that being transgender is a mental illness. In protest, some on social media have coined the term “predditor” as a replacement for groomer.
Over the past year, the problem of children being exposed to sexually explicit material has attracted increased attention on social media, particularly the leftist-backed trend of children being taken to drag shows.
Slate recently published an article claiming it’s a “good thing” to expose children to drag shows, arguing they are “mature enough” to handle “sexual innuendo.”
The popularity of the word “groomer” arose in response to this trend, quickly becoming the word of choice for people who were horrified at the left’s apparent determination to destroy the innocence of children.
Reddit has now banned the use of the word groomer. The far-left website, which directly interfered in the 2020 election by blacklisting its largest community of pro-Trump users, says it is only banning the word if it is used to reference LGBT people — but that will encompass a wide range of frequently criticized behavior, including taking kids to drag shows and pride parades.
And in June of 2020, Reddit officially blacklisted and banned the popular pro-Trump community “The_Donald” from its site.
As Breitbart News reported:
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced on Monday that the company has banned “The_Donald,” which had at one point over 790,000 subscribers, over allegedly failing to meet “basic expectations” regarding content moderation.
Huffman said that the crackdown was part of “closing the gap between our values and our policies to explicitly address hate.”
“All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith,” Huffman wrote. “We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity.”
“To be clear, views across the political spectrum are allowed on Reddit — but all communities must work within our policies and do so in good faith, without exception,” Huffman claimed.
Reddit’s restructuring reflects a general pattern in the tech sector. Other tech behemoths like Microsoft, Facebook (now known as Meta), Google, and Amazon have recently reduced their workforces. These businesses have given a variety of justifications for their layoffs, such as the impact of inflation, rising interest rates, and recent overstaffing.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan