Today reddit announced that its management would begin actively banning subreddits that “allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals.”

The site, long known for its anything-goes, hands-off management, adopted its new direction in May, saying that it would be taking its harassment policy more seriously. The decision was made after reddit surveyed thousands of its users, a large portion of whom said that they would not recommend the site to friends because they didn't want to expose them to “hate and offensive content.” At the time, however, reddit didn't give much of a hint as to how or whether the site's management would actively involve itself in moderation. It just asked users to report offending content.

In a post today, reddit administrators Jessica Moreno, head of community and support; Ellen Pao, interim CEO; and Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of reddit, said that they had decided to ban five subreddits “that break our reddit rules based on their harassment of individuals.” Four of the subreddits were not named. The only one with more than 5,000 subscribers that was banned was called “r/fatpeoplehate.”

The administrators encouraged people to report other subreddits for harassment. “Ultimately, we hope to have less involvement, but right now, we know we need to do better and to do more,” the post continued.

One commenter pointed out another potentially offensive subreddit that wasn't banned and Pao responded, “We're banning behavior, not ideas. While we don't agree with the content of the subreddit, we don't have reports of it harassing individuals.” Ohanian also denied that this new move was about making reddit more palatable for advertisers, writing “Steve and I did not create reddit to be a platform for communities to target + harass individuals. It's really that simple.”