Reddit’s “The_Donald” group claims 740,000 subscribers, or “patriots,” as they call themselves. This raucous corner of the internet is home to all things wonderful about Trump and tends to get slammed by critics as toxic to the public discourse.

From Islamophobia and misogyny to disinformation and propaganda, the group is often called out for violating Reddit’s rulebook. Yet, even as more sites have been purged across social media, “The_Donald” is still going strong.

But why? Let former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao explain it:

“ ‘The fear that platform employees have of their users drives a lot of decision making in ways you don’t expect. My guess is that there’s a lot of fear of people who are running and using The_Donald. It’s not a subreddit that is following the rules or should actually be there.’ ”

As she told Mother Jones in a recent interview, beyond the fear of backlash from users, it boils down to a business decision. “It’s hard to take down a subreddit which is driving a lot of traffic,” she said.

Meanwhile, current CEO Steve Huffman has been roundly slammed for allowing the group, which hails Trump as “God emperor,” to stand. Last year, Huffman elaborated as to why racism doesn’t violate Reddit rules.

“I believe the best defense against racism and other repugnant views, both on Reddit and in the world,” he wrote, “is instead of trying to control what people can and cannot say through rules, is to repudiate these views in a free conversation, and empower our communities to do so on Reddit.”

As for Pao, she believes the answer may lie in government involvement.

“Regulation will give [CEOs] an excuse to take on people and their bad behavior in a way that they wouldn’t have to explain and defend and perhaps they wouldn’t get as much abuse heaped on them, so they kind of have the justification out of their hands,” Pao explained in the interview.

The call to rid social media of “dangerous” accounts is getting louder. Just last week, Facebook FB, +0.55% , in its latest purge of controversial accounts, announced that it’s removing several fringe right-wing voices, such as Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer.

We’ll see if “The_Donald” can survive the latest wave.