News sharing and discussion website Reddit will take action against "toxic users", in particular some of Donald Trump's supporters, the chief executive and co-founder says.
"We have identified hundreds of the most toxic users and are taking action against them, ranging from warnings to timeouts to permanent bans," Steve Huffman, who writes under the username "spez", said in a statement posted on the site on Wednesday.
Huffman's post highlighted "r/the_donald", a subreddit or section of the site that was created and used by Trump supporters.
"The community that was formed in support of president-elect Donald Trump organised and grew rapidly, but within it were users that devoted themselves to antagonising the broader Reddit community," Huffman said.
Many users have asked Reddit "to ban the r/the_donald outright", Huffman said, adding he had resisted doing so in a "spirit of healing".
The election had shown "there are communities that feel alienated and just want to be heard, and Reddit has always been a place where those voices can be heard".
The US-based site allows users to share posts that are then voted up or down by the community.
In his post, Huffman said r/the_donald users had abused a "sticky" feature meant to provide announcements as a way to "circumvent organic voting".
Huffman came under fire after admitting last week he had edited comments on the website, replacing his own username in abusive comments with the usernames of r/the_donald moderators.
