Reddit's popular pro-Donald Trump forum will no longer appearing on its visitor's homepage r/popular

CEO Steve Huffman announced they were cracking down on 'toxic users and poorly behaving communities' last November

He said the website could no longer tolerate the 'antagonistic' behavior of many of The_Donald users

He also announced plans to block the subreddit's community announcements from appearing on the website's r/all page - a curated list of popular subreddits

Huffman previously admitted to editing abusive posts about him from Trump backers to make it look as though they were criticizing the president

Move has angered Trump supporters who say it's an attack on their free speech

Reddit's biggest pro-Donald Trump forum will no longer appear on its visitors' homepage.

Posts from the_donald forum - known as a subreddit - have disappeared from the online discussion site's r/popular page - the first page any new visitors or anyone who is not logged in, are directed to when they visit Reddit.

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The page shows the site's most popular discussion forums - with a few exceptions - such as subreddits that users consistently filter out of their r/all page.

The move has sparked fury among Trump supporters who claimed it was an attack on free speech.

'This is their attempt to stunt growth to this subreddit and the mods and users should be f***ing furious,' one user wrote. 'They're censoring us in a sneaky way that makes us think we're not censored,' another added.

'I guess Reddit doesn't believe in free speech,' one user wrote.

CEO Steve Huffman announced they were cracking down on 'toxic users and poorly behaving communities' last November.

In a Reddit post, he explained that he had refused requests to ban The_Donald forum - known as a 'subreddit' - outright. But he said that the website could no longer tolerate the 'antagonistic' behavior of many of The_Donald users.

Reddit has blocked the most popular pro-Donald Trump forum from appearing on its visitor's homepage. This graph shows how many posts are being filtered from the page

He announced plans to block the subreddit's 'stickies' or community announcements from appearing on the website's r/all page - a curated list of popular subreddits.

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'The sticky feature... was not meant to circumvent organic voting, which r/the_donald does to slingshot posts into r/all, often in a manner that is antagonistic to the rest of the community,' he said.

Reddit has faced criticism in the past for editing the posts of Trump supporters.

In November, Huffman, one of Reddit's co-founders, admitted he had been secretly changing posts criticizing him, so they appeared to criticize Trump instead.

Huffman said: 'Yep. I messed with the 'f*** u/spez' comments, replacing 'spez' with r/the_donald mods for about an hour. It's been a long week here,' he wrote.

Posts from r/the_donald will no longer appear on Reddit's 'most popular' page

Reddit has faced criticism in the past for editing the posts of Donald Trump (Trump pictured in Washington yesterday) supporters

The move sparked a furious backlash from conservative commentators who attacked the CEO, whose username is Spez, for 'censoring perfectly legitimate discussion'.

'Listen man, I'm not the type that would type f anyone, but unless you change the rules upfront what you did compromises everything about this website,' wrote one Reddit poster. 'You really screwed up here.'

Steve Huffman (above), the CEO of Reddit said he was cracking down on abusive users

'I'm hesitant to join any controversial topic now. It's one thing if a post is deleted, but another when a precedent is set that content can be changed without the author knowing,' another wrote.

Reddit has previously banned a number of controversial, white supremacist 'alt-right' subreddits because users repeatedly violated the site’s terms of service regarding harassment and releasing private information of other users.

The most prominent was r/altright, which was shut down earlier this month, alongside r/alternativeright and r/rightyfriends.

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The controversy surrounding Reddit is a byproduct of the struggle to walk the delicate balance of combating online abuse while also protecting freedom of speech.

And the online discussion site is not alone in being accused of partisan censorship.

Last year, Facebook was forced to change its rules on Trending Topics after the company was accused of blocking news reports supporting right-wing candidates and causes.

Facebook's Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg met with Glenn Beck and a dozen other prominent conservative commentators after the allegations surfaced on Gizmodo, based on a single, anonymous source.

The story, featuring a former Facebook worker claimed the company deliberately downplayed conservative news.

Facebook also came under fire over accusations its Trending Topics were politically biased (file picture of CEO Mark Zuckerberg)

Then, right-wing activist Lauren Southern complained she was banned by Facebook for complaining on the network over their censorship of conservatives

Then, right-wing activist Lauren Southern complained she was banned by Facebook for complaining on the network over their censorship of conservatives.

Facebook later lifted Southern's suspension claiming it was a 'human error'.

As part of its review, Facebook found that members of the team working on trending topics could temporarily suppress topics if news outlets weren't reporting on them enough.

But said it found no evidence of systemic political bias, though it couldn't discount that a lone wolf might be able to game its system.

As part of the changes outlined Monday, Facebook will stop looking to news outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and Drudge Report to automatically nominate topics for its trending feature. It also automatically nominates topics based on a spike in user posts about a subject.

Twitter also came under fire last year for allegedly censoring conservative gay voices after Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos was suspended

Spokeswoman Jodie Seth said: 'In our meetings last week, we received feedback that any list - even a good one - inherently raises questions of which publications are included versus which are not. Based on this feedback, we felt that the best approach would be to clear up this issue by removing these lists entirely and focus on surfacing the conversation on Facebook.'

Twitter also came under fire last year for allegedly censoring conservative gay voices after Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos was suspended and a popular pro- Donald Trump hashtag apparently disabled from the site's auto-complete system.

Yiannopoulos, who espouses anti-feminist and anti-Islam views, and whose college tour recently ended in a riot, had his account suspended shortly after the Orlando gay club shooting after he was particularly critical of Islam.

His account was restored later that day. He claims it was suspended after mass reporting, following a call out by a user with 1.2 million followers to report him. Twitter has not commented.

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That same day, Twitter apparently blocked the hashtag #GaysForTrump from appearing automatically when typing.