The reason RT.com was banned on Reddit’s /r/news section may not be spam or vote manipulation, as was stated officially, but “simply because it’s Kremlin.” This was revealed by a user from his discussion with one of the subreddit’s moderators.
RT.com was banned from /r/news this Thursday on accusations of “spam and vote manipulation”, with no evidence of the violations being presented by the moderators, who said that this information was only for “internal” use.
The move caused uproar among the reddit users as the drama was then taken to another subforum, /r/worldnews, where several things were eventually revealed.
Redditor BipolarBear0, who is listed as one of the moderators for the /r/news section, said that no “vote manipulation” ever took place, and that forum's leading moderator douglasmacarthur, who was behind the ban, made “an honest” mistake by making such announcement.
When another user asked him to clarify if the ban was explained by “just spam of RT.com links,” the moderator’s answer was: “Yeah.”