/r/the_donald has a worse record than most of the fascist-flavored subreddits that have been quarantined or banned. They have participated in vote manipulation, brigading other subreddits, and doxing, and only doing one of these has gotten fascist subreddits the hammer in the past. There are only a few explanations that would make sense.
Possibly one of the admins is a Trump fan. There’s one I’m somewhat certain is, but I don’t want to be the one to start a witch hunt in case I’m wrong. This is the simplest explanation but would also be the most annoying to deal with because it would ensure the continued and indefinite survival of a poisonous community almost everyone else wants to see gone.
Possibly /r/the_donald is kept around because banning it would be the banning of /r/fatpeoplehate times a thousand. When FPH was banned, its users got megatriggered and spilled into other subreddits for days. Banning T_D would be like poking one of those spider egg sacs and millions of tiny spiders pour out and race up your arm. It would probably dwarf those weeks-long flame wars from the 90s. (On the other hand, sometimes you must lance a boil.)
And possibly /r/the_donald is now honeypot. Law enforcement in the US has a history of conducting surveillance and sting operations via internet forums, some of which they allow to continue to exist so they can catch (primarily) drug dealers and child pornographers. If it was my job to look for propaganda hubs, Reddit would be on my list, and I wouldn’t want a well of information and activity to disappear before I got everything I needed.
