Ravelry, a social networking site for knitting with ~829K MAUs, bans all posts supportive of the Trump administration, which it claims supports white supremacy
Ravelry, the leading social networking website for knitting activities, banned posts that are supportive of President Donald Trump and his administration.
Context & Ripple Effects
Ravelry's ban lands mid-way through an industry-wide tightening that began with Reddit's post-Charlottesville purge and its October 2017 shutdown of Nazi and white supremacist subreddits — but with a twist: rather than banning content that encourages violence, a knitting network with ~829K monthly users is barring support for an entire sitting administration.
The move proved divisive enough that MIT Technology Review returned months later to document how the site's predominantly older female userbase fractured over it (the politicization of Ravelry) — while Reddit's own trajectory kept escalating toward mass bans like r/The_Donald's removal.
First-order effects
- Pro-Trump knitting patterns and posts disappear from Ravelry immediately, forcing the site's ~829K members to self-censor or exit — the MIT Technology Review follow-up shows the community split along exactly this line.
Second-order effects
- The ban sets a reference point for other small and mid-sized platforms: Reddit's sequence — from violence-focused rules in 2017 to sweeping out-and-out subreddit bans by June 2020 and r/donaldtrump after January 6 — shows how quickly conduct-based policies can widen into viewpoint-based ones.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform moderation bifurcates structurally between mega-platforms policing at scale and niche communities openly declaring political alignment — making a site's politics part of its product, and pushing users to sort into ideologically homogeneous spaces.
The trend: Online communities are shifting moderation from policing conduct and incitement to restricting political viewpoints outright, with even apolitical hobby platforms now drawing the line.