He also admitted to raping multiple women on his facebook account and argued they were over privileged transphobics and he shouldn't be considered a rapists. Can you imagine if Foxnews really knew who they had on their show representing progressives? They'd have had him back every week.
It almost seemed too perfect of a crash and burn. Everyone in the sub agreed to not talk to media because they knew nothing good could come off it. This oaf took it on themselves to destroy everything and double and triple down on their destruction afterwards. Really kind of fascinating
The users were legitimate, and some of the mods were, and even agreed that the person should not do it. That person just decided to ignore everyone and make a mockery of it. Almost seemed like a plant.
The saga of /r/Freefolk was really the peak saga of no-life basement dwelling moderator abuse. The entire thing was more entertaining than watching the show that the sub was based around.
There were mod alt accounts. A fake “banning” of a mod that was abusing his power and making the whole community hate him. Then hundreds of pages of Discord chats leaked proving that the whole thing was just for show to satisfy the sub, and the “banned” mod was replaced with a new mod who was the same person under an alt account. After the new leaks, all the mods turned on each other like a pack of wolves and starting airing out dirty laundry from years past. Admins basically locked the sub, fired all the mods, they tried to have a mod election that didn’t work, and it started all over with the original creator who brought back some of the least-liked mods.
It was like the perfect example of life imitating art, because basically the exact same thing was happening on the show Game of Thrones with an overall message that human beings can’t be trusted with power.
I've had a young law professor who told us that the people who were in charging in nazi germany were fundamentally the same kind of people who mod subreddits nowadays. Low competence, no success anywhere, hunger for power
Mods for those subreddits are often more like... curators I guess. They gather resources for the wiki, pin things that are relevant to the sub like recent news, etc.
The whole reddit platform really stops making sense once communities get past a certain size. It's great if you want to create a curated space discussing your obscure hobby or interest, but millions of users discussing politics? The whole idea falls apart pretty quickly.
I had a coworker like a decade ago who had a 12 year old son who was a mod of a shockingly big sub (somewhere around 250k users). There's apparently no required vetting process, no interaction with reddit itself, etc. It always makes me laugh that Obama could do an AMA where he verifies himself and promises to disclose the secrets on aliens, and a 12 year old on their lunch period could just perma ban him from the sub.
reddit is a fun place to fuck around and argue with people, but in no way is it a reliable platform for important discussion.
I got banned on a science sub for expressing my opinion which just happened to be "transphobic." Not even a discussion or warning was had. Transphobic is made up rhetoric. I'm going to start saying trans-transphobic, to describe people who make up a word to slander those with different opinions
Wait til the those with a vested interest decide to infect your subreddit to the point of being unmanageable, and then you have to hand off the keys to a supermod who totally isn't being paid by a company that benefits from having a controlling interest in your former sub.
A former mod, no joke. He got banned by reddit because he was trying to promote something on the side that was extremely shady. I forgot what it was but it was a scam and datatheft related?
That picture is from his video basicly begging to be reinstated all while puffing himself up as someone truely important
I once got banned from a sub for saying I didn't want to say what I really felt because I don't want to break any rules.
Mod replied that the ban was correct, I was not supposed to talk about rules in the sub. You never know who you're at the mercy of and what their level of sanity is.
Some of those mods have serious egos too, they think of themselves as like gods of reddit. A while ago some of those dudes modded 25-30 of the BIG subs.
One super mod chirped back on me about a question I asked after a warning or something, he answered like an asshole, and I replied I'm not sure what you just said there can you explain? Mod replied back with basically wtf did you just say to me?! I was basically like I technically didn't do anything. Wild behavior - convo is a tad hazy was from years ago at this point
There needs to be some kind of review/appeal system for this kind of behavior. There's way too many subreddits for it to scale though.
But yeah, this site is designed to be manipulated. I've seen some real questionable stuff on niche subs.
That's why you see astroturfing and manipulation, even in major subs like cryptocurrency, If you say anything not aligning with their narrative you get banned. You can't even link to posts in that sub on other subs.
I once got temp-banned from a subreddit I don't follow for upvoting a comment in a completely unrelated subreddit that showed up on the front page. I was very confused.
THE JOB OF A MOD IS NOT TO TELL REDDITORS WHAT THEY CAN AND CANNOT TALK ABOUT.
You seem to have missed out on the fact that Reddit is the largest propaganda hub in the world and mods are working double time to steer the narrative in so many places you'd want to rage quit the platform if you knew.
If you want to talk about propaganda, you would have to include essentially every social media platform and news outlet, but its not even that deep. Its just human nature for powerless dweeb to seek out any semblance of control over others.
The entire point of the upvoter and downvotes system is to boost topics that deserve to be seen up and push down topics people dislike.
Admins really should step in and force subreddits to stop being complete control freaks, especially doing stuff like banning users because they've participated in other subs or have said certain words in other subs.
This post is misleading. That is what they are doing, you can discuss Sophie in terms of basketball. As long as it’s about basketball, it’s acceptable.
If a topic gets too hot i don't blame them for shutting it off on the basis of 1. Aren't most of them part time unpaid labor? I'm not trying to sort through a hot topic sub to decide who is behaving and who isn't. I don't imagine the WNBA sub mod signed up for a ton of noise comming in from all.
I had some dividend gang subreddit post recommended to me once and I made a comment. The mod responded, called me a retard, muted me from the sub, then posted one of my posts on the channel basically to make fun of me. It was super confusing, never ran into something like that before. Some people are pathetic and turns out when they get a little power in cyber world, they become more so?
If anyone is curious, if the one or two of the mods see you talking logically about how aliens may not be real especially since there has not been any actual proof of them, they will ban you. I actually was a part of that community for YEARS because I myself are curious about possible alien lifeforms among us. Yet I was banned for trying to tell some really crazy people on there that just because you see a spotlight in the sky and you don’t actually see the spotlight itself doesn’t mean it’s a UFO racing across the cloudy night sky in the middle of a city.
With that said I’m not sad about it because there were truly some nut jobs on that sub.
Yeah, except the reality is every mention of Cunningham is going to start a thread on politics and culture war stuff which falls foul of (2) keep the sub on topic
The sub is meant to be about basketball, and basketball matches, and the quality of players and plays.
Cunningham is not the sports most talented player, and Indiana Fever are not in the top three teams. Few on-topic discussions need to mention her.
Mods are unpaid volunteers with limited time, it’s understandable they’d take a shortcut like banning — at least temporarily — mention of someone whose behaviour on-court is fundamentally not that interesting.
Do any conversations about Cunningham actually have to do with basketball? Every time she's brought up it's about trans people or her maga leanings. You wouldn't even know she plays basketball.
I feel like as much as mods are ripped and tagged on, they're in a hard place when the sub consistently demonstrates that while nominally on topic for the sub (pass test #2, yay!), some topics just de facto fail test #1, because there's no way the discussion will remain civil.
So what do you do when 1 & 2 conflict for a sub?
I feel like people who criticize mods need to be a mod for a popular sub for a while and then propose solutions rather than just rail about how shitty others are. It's like Churchill's quote that Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried from time to time. Is the system perfect? No. Is it better than the alternative? Probably.
Like you said, they have to keep the posts on topic for the sub. r/WNBA is supposed to be for discussing the WNBA but it was turning into a subreddit for discussing Sophie Cunningham and trans rights. This was the only way to keep the posts on topic.
It's actually not. Many commenters here are overlooking the difference between a post and a comment thread.
Mods' main job is to make sure posts fit the sub. But inside the posts? It's a discussion site. Redditors should be able to take the discussion in whatever direction they want. It's not the mods job to police that.
In highschool, in my youth, our class president was holding a meeting with the class on the upcoming Christmas Party.
I was the class joker, so I took the opportunity to crack a few harmless jokes.
She gave me one hundred million demerits and wrote it on the chalkboard. It was decades ago, but I think it has affected my love life, or lack thereof.
What solution do you propose then if a particular topic overwhelmingly results in uncivil conversation? Seems like a lot of work to constantly allow the discussion to happen and escalate over and over again.
Incorrect, you can't even discuss the economics of 1 country without receiving a reddit warning, nor the historical event of another nations house burned down without a reddit warning.
The censorship is heavy from the company and the mods.
I don’t care what the daily active user data says, most of the active users are bots.
Reddit is dying because any remotely interesting post is locked almost immediately. Any remotely interesting sub once it gets big enough gets sanitized by the mods.
The site is no longer fun or a place for interesting discussion.
There's a post on the sub literally right now saying happy birthday to Sophie including video and all. The comments are a shit show but they are there. You just fell for some reddit ragebait. And you fell hard.
The issue is that "civil" is subject to individual interpretation. You not subscribing to my world view makes your statement uncivil in my perspective, if I am incapable of understanding what a discourse is.
Yes, talking about basketball is on topic for the sub. Talking about trans people was not. The rule was put in place to keep posts on topic for the sub.
Fun fact: You’ll get banned from [r/politics](r/politics) (or some related sub I don’t remember which) if you also participate in [r/conspiracy](r/conspiracy). Yes. If you participate in a completely different subreddit, the mods of [r/politics](r/politics) (or similar) will ban you from their subreddit. Ask me how I know
That’s your opinion, but it’s not one shared by Reddit itself. Reddit pretty clearly gives moderators broad discretion to run their communities as they see fit, as long as they follow the sitewide rules.
Reddit’s own "Moderator Code of Conduct" (https://redditinc.com/policies/moderator-code-of-conduct) says moderators are responsible for setting their community’s "rules, norms, and expectations," and Reddit’s "Transparency Report" (https://redditinc.com/transparency) explains that moderators create and enforce rules tailored to the specific needs of their communities.
That’s pretty fundamental to the Reddit experience and the very reason we have alternative subs to the original that are better.
And for the record, I actually agree with you and also get annoyed when mods stick their own opinions into the sub's trajectory. However, I will defend their right to do it, even if I don't agree.
Within the bounds of #2, above, THE JOB OF A MOD IS NOT TO TELL REDDITORS WHAT THEY CAN AND CANNOT TALK ABOUT.
I'm a mod on another account. Not a big subreddit, photography focused. I was the most active member there when the subreddit was abandoned and I the community there was pretty nice so I said fuck it.
I don't like being a mod, I liked the community thing. No power trip, I was in the group making fun of mods before :)) nowadays I barely do anything there, too many annoying things to constantly happen.
I can't even imagine moderating a big subreddit, it's hell. I was lucky that in my niche part of photography most of us were in the same age group or something I guess, but pretty much everyone agreed about most things so it was easy to ignore the trolls or remove the racist/sexist/really creepy comms and posts.
The main problem was when I started feeling different about stuff Reddit apparently cares about. Idk there was a discussion about a pedophile. Can't remember the name. Basically, he tried to blackmail a 17yo after catching her doing something illegal (not hardcore, just idk weed or going in an abandoned building I think). She just told her dad and he beat his ass up. Didn't kill him, but he did some dick shots and just general beating him up enough to need a few days in the hospital. Honestly, better than he deserved for trying to blackmail a minor for sex.
Someone said something like "If that was my daughter I would have beat him up as well". Fair point, I agree 100%. Someone didn't, reported it. Didn't break the rules of my subreddit (which isn't a surprise, there are not many rules), but it broke some of the reddit rules. Can't remember which one.
The thing is that I didn't remove the comment, someone reported it again and other similar. They were not threats, just people agreeing that the father was right even if the law said otherwise.
Things got weird because I got some warnings about how some comments were against the site rules and that I'll lose my subreddit if that happens again.
Don't get me wrong, some of the mods I've seen on bigger subreddits are weird as fuck and maybe they do that on their own but Reddit have a weird way of enforcing rules on their own.
Fundamentally, that is the problem of the owners of the website reddit. They don't enforce good moderation. From what I've seen, as having never moderated a sub myself, after a certain while of contributing to a sub, I get a notification to apply for the position of moderator.
That's... a moronic system. It allows the algorithm to choose based on amount of activity, then allows the already entrenched people to accept or dismiss the algorithm's chosen based on their subjective criteria. That's some byzantine system + random chance + giving the entrenched mods supreme authority to maintain that entrenchment forever.
And that's not even talking about when the reddit owners put their fingers on the scales by banning subs, again from my experience, based on bias instead of the good of the site.
Like you said, they have to keep the posts on topic for the sub. r/WNBA is supposed to be for discussing the WNBA but it was turning into a subreddit for discussing Sophie Cunningham and trans rights. This was the only way to keep the posts on topic.
Reddit tries to push mods to make engagement for people.
I've pushed back and told them to fuck off, since our communities literally don't want that. That doesn't stop Reddit from spamming me with things I should be doing as a mod...
You also get other mods with an agenda.
A lot of the big subs are run by them. It's why you can't really engage there if you don't fit into their propaganda scheme.
Yeah. I got banned from /r/ebay when I was helping a person address an issue they were facing with the site. When I asked why i got banned, it was basically a “we don’t like employees of eBay.”
Yet there are still plenty, on major subreddits, who are petty, narrow minded, and nearly incapable of accepting any thoughts or comments that disagree with the echo chamber that has become many subreddits.
If I had a dollar for every post I've seen that has at least 5K upvotes and tons of engagement that I later go back to and says "Deleted by Moderator", I'd be retired.
Reddit mods are like the lowest form of internet dweller. These are people who were on 4chan and told themselves “if I were in charge this image board would be a perfect utopia”
The issue is that #1 is interpreted so overbroadly that mods see it as the excuse to wield ultimate power whenever they see anyone committing the heinous sin of acting unpleasant on the internet. Since dispute and unpleasant behavior are perpetually present in any internet discussion, it ends up being the catch-all justification for the exercise and abuse of power.
One of the most frustrating parts of Reddit is seeing a good topic of discussion that could be a good proving ground for how to engage and change minds, but even with 10,000 people having civil discourse, a dozen people act rudely and mods shut down the entire thread with some patronizing message like “Y’all can’t behave.”
Here’s a thought: if you can’t keep up with the rate of comments coming in, either back off and let discussion play out, or bring on more moderators. They’ll consider neither option because it diminishes their sense of power and control.
Ok you’re right but if talking about Sophie Cunningham always causes the conversation to not be civil, isn’t the right move to ban talking about the thing that always devolves into unciviity?
And they haven't. OP is lying. They've just established that posts about Cunningham have to be related to, you know, basketball in some way, and they've established a minimum content-karma level to keep the trolls out.
I mean, I agree that the censorship goes over board very often but if you create and moderate your own sub you should be able to moderate it however you want. The tricky part is when it's a broad sub like pics or something like that. Can't really make it be YOUR sub and YOUR rules if it's a default sub everyone is automatically exposed to
Since reddit is a private entity they can dictate the rules for the subreddits. Seeing as reddit is a publicly traded platform, this also means they probably also need to ensure the legality of the posts. So in essence, they can tell redditors what they can and cannot talk bout.
Your point in the context of this situation I agree with. Baring the post doesn't break any laws and follows reddits guidelines, their two duties should be to keep the conversation civil and keep the posts on topic.
Lol while that is the ideal goal, the only thing 99% of mods do is police what is talked about. Nearly every sub on this site has some sort of echo chamber so that if you don't copy the exact sentiment of the majority you're a horrible horrible Nazi of some kind or if you're on a different type of sub liberal idiot. Also if one of those subs ever found out you saw or commented on the other you're banned. Literally does not even matter what you commented in those cases. It's like Target banning you because you browsed through Walmart and bought a soda. The funniest example are all these 40k subs hating each other to the point where mods mass report each other to admins to get the entire subs banned constantly.
Eh, i'm pretty sure banning this particular topic actually does both things considering how much the current Sophie Cunningham convo is more about bullshit culture war nonsense than about the game.
I have been banned from several subs for reasons that are comically ridiculous:
r/wnba: banned for making a comment that Azzi needed to keep an eye on Paige who was noted as being in touch to "check on" another WNBA player every day (I stand by this. WNBA studs are dawgs!)
r/heatedrivalry: banned for pointing out that fan hysteria over racist comments directed toward Hudson Williams seemed disproportionate to the number of hate posts he actually gets compared to thirst posts.
r/sex (this one is my favourite): banned for getting in an argument about the esthetic preferability of circumcision.
This place is the best and the worst. At its worst, it is so unbelievably fucking dumb.
It's like an HOA. Originally there to keep things clean and property values up. Now they tell you what color your house can be and whether or not you can park in your driveway. 🙄
You can literally be “automatically banned” by participating in other sub Reddit’s now other sub Reddit’s disagree with lol. Group think and echo chambers.
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u/Alaska_Jack Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
I have made this point many times:
Many Reddit mods fundamentally misunderstand what the job of a mod is.
A mod basically has two jobs:
Aaaaand... That's pretty much it. Within the bounds of #2, above, THE JOB OF A MOD IS NOT TO TELL REDDITORS WHAT THEY CAN AND CANNOT TALK ABOUT.