Adi Robertson of The Verge explains today's banning of some subreddits:

In the wake of a new anti-harassment policy, Reddit is banning a handful of its worst communities. "Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform," a group moderator post reads. "We want as little involvement as possible in managing these interactions but will be involved when needed to protect privacy and free expression, and to prevent harassment."

The most prominent removal — or, as the moderators say, the only subreddit with more than 5,000 subscribers — is r/fatpeoplehate, a forum devoted to posting (among other things) pictures of overweight people for ridicule. A follow-up comment lists the other four subreddits as r/hamplanethatred, r/transfags, r/neofag, and r/shitniggerssay; they've all indeed been shut down, all but one "for violating the Reddit rules to keep everyone safe." According to the moderator, these last four ranged from 149 to 3071 subscribers, although in r/fatpeoplehate's case, "more than 5,000" is a bit of an understatement; the last Reddit metrics (and a Google cached page) put it at around 151,000 subscribers.

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"All five [subreddits] had numerous complaints that they were harassing people both on and off Reddit," she said.