Don’t worry asshole Redditors, you can still hate fat people elsewhere

Reddit, or rather a particularly vocal subsection it, is up in arms about the banning of a number of subreddits yesterday under the site’s recently instituted harassment policy.

<sarcasm>You see, on the internet, it’s very important that folks who want to spend their time publicly shaming fat people, hating trans people and finding pictures of women who’ve been attacked, are allowed to do so. That’s free speech.</sarcasm>

To protest the removal of their beloved forums for finding pictures of people they hate and coordinating attacks on them, this upstanding segment of the Reddit community has been flooding /r/pics and /r/all in protest.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

There’s a fundamental flaw at the heart of the arguments essayed by these entitled asshats: They seem to believe that Reddit is a public square to which they should be guaranteed access, however they behave.

The internet is an incredible platform for free speech and fans of FatPeopleHate, one of the banned subreddits which had over 150,000 subscribers, already have a dedicated site where they can continue to be horrific. That and many blogging platforms to choose from if they want total control.

The simple fact is: Reddit is a company that provides a service. It is under no obligation to provide space for these groups.

The site actually does a terrible job in cleaning up its backyard. The five subreddits that were shuttered yesterday weren’t closed down due to content but because Reddit claims they were involved in active harassment.

Other subreddits like BeatingWomen2 and the virulently racist Coontown are still very much alive and pumping out streams of incredibly ugly content.

Reddit has always been an unholy mix of cool pictures, great communities and vast, stinking rivers of toxic waste created by deeply unpleasant individuals.

But hey, I’m sure the virtual placard waving wackos who are wailing about the demise of FatPeopleHate won’t mind me saying this. After all, I’m just exercising free speech, right?

Read next: Twitter now lets you share a list of blocked accounts with others