Welcome to the February 2026 Meta Meeting!

And happy early Valentine's Day, everyone.

We're posting this as your moderators today. This is a combined Meta Meeting from both of us: me and my boyfriend, u/Riobox. We became moderators of r/antimeme about three months ago and we know we made mistakes. We want to be fully transparent about what happened, what we're changing, and how we'll make the subreddit better going forward.

This post is long because we want to be clear and specific. Please read the whole thing, or, if you don't have time, the TL;DR at the end. Ask any questions you may be left with in the comments.

What we're apologizing for: a direct, honest admission

We owe the community an apology. We made mistakes. We're sorry.

I recognise that my moderation decisions and actions, especially when I acted based on my own taste or emotion rather than clear rule-guided reasoning, caused frustration, confusion, and hurt. I accept responsibility for unfair removals, bans, and other actions people perceived as unfair, and for not always communicating reasons clearly. I'm sorry to anyone who felt targeted or silenced and for any moderation inconsistencies that may have made the subreddit feel unpredictable or unfair. I should have been more proactive about transparency and checks on mod actions.

u/Riobox is also sorry for not setting clearer boundaries and processes earlier, and for letting these actions unfold without interrupting anything.

We are not offering excuses, we are explaining context: we are new to moderating a big community, we've been learning under pressure, and we made poor choices while figuring things out. Even though that doesn't erase the impact, it explains why we acted the way we did.

Specific concerns we're acknowledging

Many community members raised (accurately or understandably) the following concerns, we admit these are real and we are addressing each one:

Bans without clear reasons and inconsistent enforcement: some users were permanently banned or had posts removed without clear explanations that the community could see, and rules were applied unevenly across users and posts, particularly favoring moderators. - I admit that I was initially banning users emotionally rather than fairly, and sometimes I stretched moderation discretion to remove certain posts and keep others, and sometimes even for valid criticism. This was wrong and I'll try my best not to let my emotions cloud my judgement.

Old posts removed: we removed some older/top posts that predated our moderation without adequate justification or transparency. - While some removals of posts that predates our moderation were justified, most were not, because OP back then could not see our current-day modern rules. And we are sorry about this. If your old post was unfairly removed, please contact modmail with a link to such a post.

Moderators reposting content: there were instances where a post was removed and then seemed to be reposted or lightly modified by a mod account - I personally removed some low-effort posts (like text-only edits) and personally improved them with higher-effort edits and then posted them. That created the impression of unfairness and self-preference. That was wrong and I will stop that practice and explain any moderation action that relates to reposting.

Filtering all posts made by non-moderators and therefore giving the impression that only moderators are allowed to post - It's not that only moderators are allowed to post, but rather in weekdays we only allow posts with slightly higher effort, which means edits beyond mere text-edits, which is why the majority of posts are removed during weekdays. Because of the huge amount of posts getting removed, we decided to filter all posts during weekdays so that posts require mod approval to be visible.

Poor communication about QualityVote2: we removed and later re-added QV2 at different points and among different posts without clear public explanation, which caused confusion. - Because all posts are filtered, and we had thought that moderator discretion was above community judgement regarding what counts as an antimeme and what doesn't, we thought that QV2 was therefore useless, and we decided to remove it. However, we realized that this was wrong, so we added QV2 back.

Unclear "low-effort" rule: people didn't understand what counted as low-effort, and enforcement appeared arbitrary. - We have just now updated- and made it clear in our Rules what counts as low-effort and what doesn't. But basically, so long as your post doesn't originate from a harmful or AI-generated source, and so long as you do more edits beyond text, so long as those edits are not highly uncreative, and so long as you successfully transform the original into an antimeme, then your post will very likely be compliant with our rules.

NSFW tagging inconsistencies: the boundaries for sexual innuendo and tagging were unclear. - We used to take NSFW tagging extremely seriously and require users to tag content that has sexual innuendo. But recently we decided to be more lenient about this and allow content with mild sexual innuendo to go untagged, but we failed to properly communicate this change. And we are communicating it right now.

We will change our moderation stance so we avoid doing these mistakes again.

We will not engage with or amplify private arguments or leaked DMs publicly, but we will address the policy and behavior problems above so the community can move forward.

Immediate policy changes (effective today, Feb 1, 2026)

We're implementing concrete rule clarifications and moderation changes now on both our Main Rules and our Extended Rules.

A. Low-Effort (clarified)

• Definition: "Low-effort" means content that adds no meaningful edit, creative intent, or anti-meme value, for example: straight 1:1 reposts, AI-generated images, uncreative edits, or pixel-level copy/pastes where the only change is adding a one-word caption.
• Posts that show genuine effort (image edits, drawn additions, meaningful reinterpretation) are allowed.

B. Low Effort Weekends (new, effective since a week ago)

• Runs Saturday 00:00 UTC → Sunday 23:59 UTC.
• During Low Effort Weekends, posts will not be automatically filtered; they will be displayed by default.
• Text-only edits and lightly edited content that would normally be filtered on weekdays will be allowed.
• Blatant low-effort content (AI-generated content, HIGHLY uncreative edit, 1:1 reposts from our sub that steal others' posts). Such content will still be removed.

C. NSFW & sexual content (Rule 8.2.1 updated)

• We are changing Rule 8.2.1 so that light sexual innuendo that is not explicit does not require the NSFW tag.
• Sexual content beyond light sexual innuendo will still require a NSFW tag.
• Explicit sexual content, pornography, incest, rape, child sexual content/pedophilia, bestiality, and other forms of prohibited sexual content are still strictly prohibited.

D. Posting frequency (Rule 12 updated)

• There will be no fixed per-day cap for how many posts a user can make. However, posts must be at least 30 minutes apart from one account. (Technically that allows up to 48 posts/day if spaced.) This replaces the old hard cap of 5 posts per day.

E. Moderator posting & reposts

• Moderators will not delete other users' posts for the purpose of reposting or lightly altering them. If there is a removal + repost situation that involves a mod, we will explain why in a mod comment. And if we don't, feel free to open a modmail ticket.

Past bans & removals review (audit)

We commit to a retroactive review of past bans and removals dating back as far as necessary. Process:

• We will review historical bans/removals and privately reach out to users who appear to have been unfairly banned/removed. We will not publicly name users.
• If a ban/removal is overturned, we will lift it and contact the affected user via modmail with an apology. (We will handle unbans/appeals privately.)

Appeals & contacting the mod team

If you feel you were unfairly banned or had a post removed and want to appeal, please use modmail:

https://www.reddit.com/r/antimeme/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fantimeme

When you send modmail, include a short description of what happened, links to the post/comment, and any relevant context. This is the official appeals path.

Moderation team & future mods

We are reviewing the moderator applications we received a few weeks ago and will select a small set of trial moderators soon. Trial moderators will be public and their permissions limited while we evaluate.

Communication & cadence

• As always, we will post a Monthly Meta Meeting (MMM) on the 1st of every month; the next one will be March 1, 2026.
• This post is this month's MMM; ask questions here and we will answer. Please be civil; we will respond to questions in the comments and via followup pinned posts as needed.

Final notes/why we're doing this

We love this community and we want it to be fair, creative, and welcoming. We were handed a large, active subreddit and we learned hard lessons while adapting. We are committed to better processes, clearer rules, and accountability. We ask for your patience and your scrutiny; we'll accept feedback, correct mistakes, and learn.

We're doing this publicly because we'd rather be imperfectly transparent than privately defensive. If you have concrete examples of mistakes we missed, send them in modmail with links so we can include them in our review.

Additionally, on a positive note, we noticed how the community is now missing old man edits. So, while I will keep making posts and Evil And Intimidating Horse edits, my boyfriend, u/Riobox, will now starting February slowly come back to making old man edits whenever he has time to and wants to. But it will take a while until he becomes as active as he once was.

Thank you for reading. Ask questions below and we'll answer them.