"Transparency Report - Reddit Removal of Post - First Amendment and Free Speech Implications" in r/conservativeterrorism

On or about the afternoon or evening, Eastern time, of Friday March 7 2025, Reddit Inc. removed this post: https://old.reddit.com/r/conservativeterrorism/comments/1j5g8i2/removed_by_reddit/

The post consisted of an image.

The post was titled "Public domain available DOGE information."

The post was an image showing the names and email addresses of government employees working for or with the Department of Government Efficiency.

The image contained information that had been previously published by government, and by credible investigative journalistic reporting.

Some of that information was published by the House of Representatives Democratic Oversight Committee: https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-oversight.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2025-02-20.%20GEC%20to%20Trump%20re%20Musk%20Role%20DOGE.pdf

Some of it was published by the New York Times : https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/27/us/politics/doge-staff-list.html

Some of it was published by The Intercept:

https://archive.is/U6kwN#selection-805.82-805.145

This post in /r/ConservativeTerrorism had the [Removed by Reddit] interstitial applied. This interstitial was applied without the post being actually removed, and without the removal being recorded in the Moderation Log.

Such things imply that the removal of this post was performed outside of the typical AEO (Anti-Evil Operations) item removal process.

Because of the nature of the information in the post, and because of the unconventional (silent) nature of the post removal by Reddit, it is reasonable to suspect that the post was removed by Reddit under the legalistic demands of one or more Trump administration officers, with significant implications for violations of the First Amendment rights of the author of the post and the Constitutional rights of the members of this subreddit — and, indeed, the Constitutional rights of all Reddit users.

Where government is allowed to reach out under the colour of law to compel the silence of one of us, it has a Chilling Effect in the speech of all of us.

An alternative hypothesis is that Reddit, Inc's Safety department anticipated the desires of the Trump administration and complied in advance with their wishes for the removal of speech.

An alternative, alternative hypothesis is that an algorithm - perhaps powered by a heuristic - removed the content independently of human direction. This eventuality, too, has significant implications for the relationship between Reddit, Inc and users of the platform.

To sum up:

The Trump administration appears to have exercised power under the colour of law to compel Reddit, Inc. to quash newsworthy and First Amendment protected speech acts on Reddit. Such an exercise would violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, violate our rights, and has significant implications as to whether Reddit users can trust Reddit Inc to refuse such compulsions from the Trump administration in the future.