Reddit front page altered so that it won't show posts from Donald Trump forum, along with other tweaks

Reddit calls itself the 'front page of the internet', but its own front page has had some controversial tweaks

A sign hangs on the door of an office at Reddit headquarters in San Francisco, California April 15, 2014 (REUTERS/Robert Galbraith)

Reddit has tweaked its front page to show more different posts – and exclude those from political forums.

New users to the site and those who aren't logged in will be treated to a range of different posts than before, after the site made a tweak to what it will show.

The change appears to be a response to the site's growing popularity – and fears that same popularity might be warping the kind of things that get shared and seen on the internet.

Until now, Reddit has shown posts from a specific set of forums or subreddits on its homepage. Those were selected early on in the site's development, as a way of ensuring that the front page was filled with the site's most popular and interesting content.

But it has now decided that doing so means unfairly editorialising and excluding certain subreddits, which means that it is very hard for new ones to become well-known. So instead it will show a special page called Popular on its front page, aggregating content from across Reddit.

For the most part, that Popular page will still highlight posts form the site's biggest and most recognised communities. But it will no longer exclude new ones, since it will pick out the most popular posts on the site rather than limiting itself to a small pool.

But some subreddits will still be excluded from appearing on that front page, which Reddit has described as the front page of the internet and can send millions of people to look at a specific thing. It will ban posts that include nudity, for instance, and will also exclude posts with a "narrow political focus".

For instance, posts from The_Donald – a popular subreddit devoted to discussing and supporting the President – won't appear on that front page. But the ban will take in other political subreddits on the left, too, like SandersForPresident.

And it will also exclude other forums with a particularly narrow focus, like ones devoted to discussing games like Overwatch or League of Legends, or a subreddit called Trees that talks about cannabis.

Those exclusions met with protests from some fans of those pages. Some even complained that the change was specifically made so that The_Donald – which has become a highly controversial forum before and after the election – could be blocked from ever appearing on the front page.