Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | SOPA Images )

Over 135 subreddits have gone dark this week in protest of Reddit's refusal to ban communities that spread misinformation about the COVID pandemic and vaccines.

Subreddits that went private include two with 10 million or more subscribers, namely r/Futurology and r/TIFU. The PokemonGo community is one of 15 other subreddits with at least 1 million subscribers that went private; another 15 subreddits with at least 500,000 subscribers also went private. They're all listed in a post on " r/VaxxHappened " which has been coordinating opposition to Reddit management's stance on pandemic misinformation. More subreddits are being added as they join the protest.

"Futurology has gone private to protest Reddit's inaction on COVID-19 misinformation," a message on that subreddit says. "Reddit won't enforce their policies against misinformation, brigading, and spamming. Misinformation subreddits such as NoNewNormal and r/conspiracy must be shut down. People are dying from misinformation."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuriko Nakao )

Reddit yesterday defended its stance on allowing pandemic misinformation after hundreds of subreddit moderators joined an open letter urging the company to "take action against the rampant Coronavirus misinformation on their website."

The open letter on r/VaxxHappened was joined by over 450 moderators and said that subreddits existing "solely to spread medical disinformation and undermine efforts to combat the global pandemic should be banned." The hundreds of subreddits that joined the open letter include 10 with over 10 million subscribers each, over 40 subreddits with 1 million to 10 million subscribers each, and about 20 others with 500,000 to 1 million subscribers.

In response, Reddit posted an explanation of its approach, saying it will continue to allow "debate" and "dissent" on vaccines and other COVID-related matters, even when there is a scientific consensus.

Enlarge / A closed GameStop store in Frankfurt, Germany, on Friday, Jan. 29, 2021. (credit: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

You've probably seen stories about GameStop, the struggling video game retailer that has improbably seen its stock quintuple since the start of the week. The stock isn't up because GameStop announced strong financial results or a new turnaround strategy. Instead, it was the focus of a coordinated buying campaign by members of the WallStreetBets subreddit.

The effort has been so effective in part because its architects have convinced people that it's not just a pump and dump scheme. Instead, they've painted a seductive story in which retail investors found a loophole that allows them to make money at the expense of hedge funds and other wealthy investors who had shorted the stock.

In reality, most of the gains captured by early GameStop investors will come at the expense of later investors who will be left holding the bag when the stock falls.

Enlarge / The image currently at the top of r/donaldtrump. (credit: Reddit)

On Friday, Reddit joined this week's response to violent online rhetoric as spearheaded by President Donald Trump and removed its "r/donaldtrump" community, the site's largest existing community dedicated specifically to Trump. Visiting any of that community's pages now leads to a simple message pointing to Reddit's rules about "inciting violence," which starts by saying, "Do not post violent content."

Without a citation of specific Reddit threads, or a formal announcement from Reddit administrators clarifying the move, users may be left wondering what the exact logic of the move was. It's possible, for example, that the community page was punished for reposting Trump's speeches and statements from earlier in the week, which alternated between false claims about election fraud, calls to action by his followers in response to his claims about fraud, or sympathetic statements about the seditionists who stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday.

While searching through r/donaldtrump archives is a bit unwieldy (owing to how such archives are maintained at sites like archive.is), cursory searches point to the community hosting pre-protest conversations about the January 6 protest, usually with titles pointing to Trump's direct request that his followers attend from across the nation. The issue may also have come from multiple claims at r/donaldtrump shortly before its shutdown about Wednesday's seditionists being disguised as "antifa," despite a majority of Capitol building invaders being identified with clear links to white nationalist organizations and calls for a violent January 6 protest .