Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian tried to make a case against immigration law enforcement, but found himself in hot water for his site's extremist content.
Ohanian
wrote a post on X Tuesday criticizing U.S. federal authorities arresting illegal aliens on the street. In the post, he admitted that his mother was an illegal alien, and had she been deported, Reddit may not have been created. Users in the replies turned his admission back on him, noting that Reddit has become a hotbed of leftwing extremism.
"As the son of an undocumented immigrant (my mom overstayed an au pair visa for years before marrying my dad, a U.S. citizen), it’s deeply personal: Reddit wouldn’t exist if ICE had come for her," Ohanian wrote on X. "I do think border security matters. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of crushing lives. A sensible amnesty / legalization policy (like what Reagan offered in 1986!!) could strike a better balance:
"Path to citizenship for law-abiding, hard-working undocumented immigrants <
>."Order and accountability; those who don’t step forward for the pathway should face enforcement under due process. This isn’t open borders, it’s smart borders + humane immigration reform.
"The guys up at the crack of dawn in the Home Depot parking lot <> or the women hustling their home-made food on the corner are <> the men & women we want contributing to this great nation. We shouldn't be rounding them up at gunpoint."
Ohanian was responding to a post by computer scientist and Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, who was also criticizing ICE agents for wearing masks during deportation operations.
X users replied to the post, many joking that not having Reddit would not be such a bad thing.
"Reddit not existing had we enforced immigration law is a great argument for enforcing immigration law," former Arizona Congressional candidate
Blake Masters responded.
But several responses highlighted the ongoing problem of the site's overt left-wing bias and overtures to left-wing extremism.
"Your [co-founder] and CEO went into the internal code of Reddit to alter a user[']s comments because he was emotional," podcaster
Tim Pool responded. "Reddit banned and censored political subreddits turning the platform into a hotbed of extremism. Reddit is one of the principal creators of the cultural strife in this country."
"Hot take: I am not my co-founder,"
Ohanian responded.
Reddit has a reputation for left-wing bias, confirmed by multiple
academic and
nonprofit studies. The site has banned several high-profile right-leaning message boards, or "subreddits," including
r/The_Donald—the site's largest pro-Trump subreddit with over 755,000 users—allegedly for promoting threats of violence against public officials. In 2016, co-founder and CEO
Steve Huffman admitted to silently altering posts criticizing him to instead target the moderators of the subreddit. However, the site has also banned the subreddit for the leftist podcast "Chapo Trap House" for similar violations.
That bias attracted attention from Congress. House Oversight Committee chairman
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) sent letters to Huffman, along with Discord CEO Humam Sakhnini, Valve CEO Gabe Newell, and Twitch CEO Dan Clancy. The letters request the four CEOs to testify before the committee at a hearing to " examine radicalization of online forum users, including incidents of open incitement to commit violent politically motivated acts." It also requests them to provide written testimony in advance.
