The “front page of the internet” now has less hate. Social news site Reddit announced on Wednesday that the company would be banning subreddits – areas of the site dedicated to a single topic – “that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don’t take action.”

“We’re banning behavior, not ideas,” the post said. Five subreddits were removed: r/fatpeoplehate and r/hamplanethatred, both of which are about hating overweight people; r/transfags and r/neofag, which target the gaming community; and r/shitniggerssay. Most of the subreddits being banned are fairly small, Reddit leadership said: the only subreddit being banned with more than 5,000 subscribers was r/fatpeoplehate.

The statement, posted to the r/announcements subreddit, shared the bylines of Jessica Moreno, head of community and support, interim CEO Ellen Pao (who is seen as spearheading Reddit’s evolving strategy around harassment), and founder Alexis Ohanian.

Implicit in the announcement was the notion that subreddits of whatever stripe would be allowed to continue to exist so long as they did not actively harass or bully people participating in the discussions on the boards. Subreddits are notoriously insular communities, rife with in-jokes and miniature histories, but many of them are filled with content that test the limits of free speech and some have been banned in the past for organizing illegal activity or distributing illegal material. Racism, misogyny, and other kinds of hate speech will still find space on the site, so long as they don’t involve direct harassment of individual.

The move frustrated some commenters on the initial post. “Why is /r/fatpeoplehate banned, but /r/coontown get to exist?” asked redditor CrackheadControl. “That’s bullshit.”

“Because the admins are fat, not black,” replied The_Wizard_of_Wang.

Reddit brass aren’t banning subreddits devoted to making fun of them personally, either: Pao’s pursuit of legal action against former employers at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (a suit she lost), coupled with her recent ascendancy at Reddit, has made her the direct target of a great deal of criticism including on subreddits devoted to maligning her such as r/chairmanpao.

Pao and others remain unintimidated. “While we do not always agree with the content and views expressed on the site,”she, Ohanian and Moreno wrote, “we do protect the right of people to express their views and encourage actual conversations according to the rules of reddit.”