The subreddit was banned in 2019, after violating Reddit's content policy with respect to bullying and harassment. The subreddit's leaders decided to ban individuals advocating for murder. R/Braincels was the most popular subreddit for incels, or 'involuntary celibates', after r/Incels was banned, gaining 16,900 followers by April 2018. Following the ban, the community's founder rebooted the subreddit under the name r/beatingwomen2 in an attempt to circumvent the ban, but was banned afterwards. The community, which featured graphic depictions of violence against women, was banned after its moderators were found to be sharing users' personal information online, and collaborating to protect one another from sitewide bans. On June 9, 2014, a subreddit called r/beatingwomen was closed by Reddit. Some subreddits are banned after unsuccessful appeals. Since 2018, subreddits are allowed to appeal their quarantine. In addition, quarantined subreddits don’t generate revenue, don’t appear in non-subscription based feeds such as r/all, and their user count is not visible.
Visiting or joining a quarantined subreddit requires bypassing a warning prompt. In 2015, Reddit introduced a quarantine policy to make visiting certain subreddits more difficult.
