Stated reason != real reason. A common method reddit uses is to first ban all the mods, not accept any request for other users to take over the sub, then ban it for being unmoderated. Attempts to recreate the community will result in another ban, since you are recreating a banned community. If they want a sub gone, they will generate a reason to remove it.

Exactly this...

I created a music sub 3 years ago on Reddit, ran it for about a year and a half when I made one cross post to a relevant subreddit and got permanently banned with no explanation and no due process. Reddit still has the sub up with all of my (custom) content and comments. My sub was orphaned right when it was picking up steam. I decided to simply build out my own site for posts after that point, IG, TikTok, FaceBook etc, are all operating in the same monopolistic ways with content now.

Honestly, I think reddit was started as a crowd sourcing test that was really meant to build the platform's notoriety, and once it grew in dominance, they simply ditched the independent creators in order to run their own profit and IPO up.

I also think this is why reddit forces most people away from using links to external sites like YouTube, because they want all the traffic on their own site.

By uploading video and images to reddit's CDN, you have no idea of the amount of times items are being used. Tons of content is literally ripped off YouTube and TikTok and then re-hosted on Reddit's CDN and that leads to lower views for the original creators of the content. It's really corporate piracy that preys upon small creators. One day there may be a class action lawsuit, but I doubt it will result in anything fair for the lost time and damage done to content creators.

I don't really see why they need a reason, I thought they could just delete the sub?

Community trust and goodwill is the primary reason to not go around deleting subs without precedent established via TOS or past actions.

By that logic, I have seen hardcore misandry on many of the feminist forums. Many even talk about killing their partners or harming their body parts routinely. Even moderators respond positively to those comments sometimes. But hey, it doesn’t fit their narrative and there would be a shitstorm if they banned such forums. “Reddit bans popular feminist forum, paving a new way for misogyny”

My point is they only ban the ones that don’t fit their narrative or their political views and they know they can get away with.

The only thing reddit cares about is negative PR. If you generate enough negative press about that sub you can get it banned.

I feel like this is where our litigation-based society has gotten us.

Laws don't decide things anymore, outrage PR + a potential/real wave of lawsuits do.

If you think about it, that doesn't seem too bad until you realize a lot of of the negative PR is manufactured by only taking part of the story and using it out of context. Sometimes even approaching propaganda or conspiracies.

I thought /r/FemaleDatingStrategy was banned. It's still up though.

It was quarantined but not banned.

What's wrong with it?

The women there see men as porn addicted, revolting, abusive pigs. I think I'm understating it a bit. But you get the gist. It's the female incel.

It could basically be renamed "/r/HowToGoldDig" and still be accurate

And what's wrong with that? And why is that against the rules?

Of course, they're a private business. They don't have to have a reason to delete a subreddit, just the desire. The community can leave as well and form their own equivalent forum. You have the right to speak your mind, but no one can be forced to listen to it on their own website.

The problem I have with this logic is that many of these sites have become so big that they are effective monopolies. Alternative sites are hard to have your voice heard on and sparsely populated. Its a problem when the biggest forums for discussion on the internet takes their cues on free speech from North Korea

There are also incel subreddits and super open misogynists subs on reddit. It is not just true that they somehow don't exist.

The few that got closed regularly went out of their way to brigade other subs. But the rest of them is happily flourishing there.

"My point is they only ban the ones that don’t fit their narrative or their political views and they know they can get away with."

What evidence do you have for this accusation?

twoXchromosomes,or blackpeopletwitter are unapologetically bigoted subs which stay untouched.

Blackpeopletwitter is not bigoted, and definitely not unapologetically so.

It may come across that way to you, but black people talking about their actual experiences caused by non-black people in a way that makes a non-black uncomfortable does not mean it’s bigoted.

Things might have changed since I was forced to unsub due not being able to comment because I refused to prove to a few subreddit mods that i am indeed a person of color.

Around that time, many if not all of the threads ended up being closed due to the the dramatic arguments that formed when users posted political/racial commentary to the sub; which is to be expected. I believe the real problem was when comments from users who portrayed themselves as POC felt their voices were less pronounced due to the downvotes and negative replies. Understandable

So they decided to lock the sub down for anyone except those who accepts a segregated bubble and willingness to prove their "blackness" in order to post an opinion

That lockdown happened for a brief period of time, and was not something the BPT community wanted in the first place.

Requiring users to send pictures of themselves in order to tag them black / not black and restricting posters in specific threads to black people or nonblacks that pass a test is absolutely 100% bigoted. It may be bigotry some are open to accept, but it's bigotry nonetheless.

And even ignoring that, Reddit would never allow the reverse to happen.

How do you know?

And what about r/conservative?

Each sub has a wildly different number of posts, moderation results, reporting of violations, and moderation response times. Unless there is clear evidence of intent making the claim that Reddit makes decisions based on political bias is wrong

> If they enforced the rules consistently then by that logic I could get any subreddit closed down by asking for things that are against the rules.

Some subs do get brigaded by users intentionally posting content that violates reddit TOS. The same happens on Discord. Some are trolls, others are intentionally malicious so they can report things. If you have an inactive mod team in either community, yeah your sub will go poof.

> brigaded by users

Or Reddit employees.

Do you have evidence of this?

Only if that subreddit also allows such requests to stay up.

Reddit closes subreddits for lack of active moderation all the time.

That's not what the GP is getting at. When Reddit management wants to ban a subreddit, they cite all sorts of transgressions and lapses in moderation policy that can easily and routinely be seen on other subreddits - often large ones.

I see all sorts of thinly veiled calls for violence on political subreddits, and even on seemingly mundane ones like r/Texas whenever Ted Cruz comes up. Apparently, calls to get out the guillotine are highly contextual.

To be fair, the stuff going across r/conservative is quite a bit worse than r/politics. Which I expected, of course, because r/politics is a generic discussion subreddit and not intentionally one-sided. But Reddit leaves both alone.

>" To be fair, the stuff going across r/conservative is quite a bit worse than r/politics. Which I expected, of course, because r/politics is a generic discussion subreddit and not intentionally one-sided. But Reddit leaves both alone. "

In my experience r/politics is the most biased and lopsided major subreddit on the entire platform. People criticize r/conservative but I genuinely do not see the same level of wanton hyperbole, demonization of the other side, and calls for revolution in r/conservative that I routinely see in the comments of major posts from r/politics.

Eh, I think moderating the larger political sub is a much harder job. idk how much time you have spent on r/conservative but the comments can get pretty aggressive too, I just imagine there are orders of magnitude less of them, so the mods generally find and remove the ones that call for trans people to be forcibly hospitalized or harmed for example, or that such and such a politician should be shot. You can still find comments saying parents who have gay friends to have their children removed from their custody or whatever though; they have to be slightly more oblique than I think what stays up much longer on r/politics.

Try looking at r/conservative right now. It's fucking batty mate.

I check occasionally, most of the posts there are right wing nuts. Like 100% without merit will get thousands of upvotes and lots of comment from what are obviously russian/chinese/whoever bots.

I sense that your comment is going to attract a lot of attention. I want to point out that r/conservative is worse than r/politics in a way that both conservatives and liberals would agree is bad.

Perhaps 80% of r/conservative threads can only be commented on by flaired users. Certainly all the threads one would actually want to contribute to at any rate. How do you get a flair? You have to post conservative-sounding things elsewhere or in the non-flair-only threads. Only once you've established that you're not going to deviate from the groupthink will you be allowed to participate in the community.

Conversely, r/politics is a free-for-all. Granted, there is clear downvote brigading on alternative opinions but they do not get taken down ever. HN is going to read your "intentionally one-sided" quip and not understand how correct you truly are.

> Granted, there is clear downvote brigading on alternative opinions but they do not get taken down ever.

So /r/politics is much better because instead of taking down "alternative opinions" they just downvote it? I am not convinced. Effectively downvoting alternative opinions not only effectively makes them completely hidden from view for most users (under a "this comment has too many downvotes" barrier), but the users who do stumble upon those massively downvoted "alternative opinion" comments will get a nice dopamine rush from seeing their own opinions further re-enforced because the downvotes must mean this opinion is wrong.

Both are insidious and both behaviors massively contribute to group think bubbles. I don't think the pattern of behavior of one is massively better and more healthy than the other.

'Sort by Controversial' solves the sort of problem you're describing. I know a lot of users who sort it that way by default now.

> So /r/politics is much better because instead of taking down "alternative opinions" they just downvote it? I am not convinced.

Better than moderators doing it. Post something that deviates from what the moderators of r/conservative consider acceptable conservatism and they just ban you. If the community legitimately downvotes you, then at least you're facing garden variety groupthink instead of "my way or the highway" of a couple mods enforcing what is acceptable discussion.

This is a pattern. Trump, at his coyly named "Truth Social" bans more people than Twitter ever did. And not for violent threats, either, but for simply disagreeing with his narrative.

Since many might not know: You can go to r/conservative any day of the week, and see the most batshit insane mind melting garbage you could possibly ask for. Eg, right now the top posts are:

1. Cheering the liberal tears that must surely ensue, as 5th graders are taught how to shoot guns in class.

2. Fabricated Biden attack. Just, invented, like as if it was a funny thing to do, or as if there isn't real stuff to criticise him on.

3, 4. Pictures of tweets from Republicans, both blaming Biden/Dems for systemic issues (problems caused and maintained by both sides).

5. Outrage that Sunday morning shows aren't talking about the man on serious meds, who called Emergency Services saying he was going to kill Kavanaugh (for trying to loosen gun control regulations).

... Fucking. Crazy. That's not politics, it's not discussion; it's mental assault on morons. And you are not allowed to post or comment there without affirming your conservatism.

They are constantly raising the bar on what "lack of active moderation" means. Also as the site gets bigger moderating even a small niche subreddit can become a part time job and Reddit does pay moderators of some subs, so it's being used to editorialize more now than ever.

> They are constantly raising the bar on what "lack of active moderation" means.

If they are I haven’t seen it.

Plenty of subs out there with zero moderation… sadly.

Reddit historically only cares about a subs moderation when it generates enough negative attention to become a problem for Reddit (the company, as opposed to Reddit the “community”).

They’ve typically been quite happy to let quite toxic and otherwise rule breaking subreddits to exist so long as they don’t cause (too many) problems.

They're constantly raising the bar on what "lack of active moderation" means as it pertains to certain specific subreddits very selectively.

The magic the gathering subreddit has to moderate out the word "proxy" or risk getting banned. seems plausable like there are just a lot of speicfic rules you gotta follow to be a subreddit

Why is that? Was there an announcement?

I can track down the actualy post if you want I don't recall there being a specific announcment, but the logic goes something like this most people who use proxy are referring to fake magic cards printed to look like real ones and therefore talking about proxies how to make copies etc will lead to people cheating or stealing.

For what its worth i used the term proxy for a decade almost exclusively to mean a cheap paper copy of a magic card (or even just writing the word on a sheet of paper and sticking it in a sleeve over a land) and I find this restriction wrong-headed.

I don't know of any social media site that has been able to "consistently" enforce moderation at scale. When you have millions of humans they will find every edge case and workaround to any specific legalese you come up with.

Courts struggle with it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhWCk2f2alI

Smaller sites like HN do better compared to twitter or reddit, because it's easier. But ultimately it all depends on what kind of communities the company wants to nurture.

While it would be nice if social media companies actually said the truth about moderation rather than pretending there's some content neutral principals they're applying, I also think a lot of people would be better off if they accept that social media is what it is, and move on if they don't like it.

They all can't moderate because they don't want to sacrifice profit... That's the explanation. They are also too large, but moderation and proper community support were once requirements for communities and now it's gone... It's a really selfish and lazy way of just collecting profit, and it also disrupts the ability of vital information, honest people, and key commercial entities to function on the platform.

This behavior has been occurring on Reddit for years, Social media companies also work hard to suppress dissent and complaints from public view... It's really creating the ideal that hostile, anti-competitive, and abusive behavior towards user bases is the new norm... Especially when they are paying most users to contribute, it creates a grim future for social media overall.

It's just far better to create a web site and pour that effort and time into it instead of working in an abusive and exclusionary community like that.

> If they enforced the rules consistently then by that logic I could get any subreddit closed down by asking for things that are against the rules.

No, because the rules specifically mention soliciting. As far as I can tell, the only other time this is mentioned is for "soliciting or facilitating illegal or prohibited transactions".

>If they enforced the rules consistently then by that logic I could get any subreddit closed down by asking for things that are against the rules.

They just change the rules as needed. Look at /r/blackpeopletwitter, they have a rule that you can only post in "country club threads" if you have sent a picture of your skin color in to the mods to verify you aren't white, since they don't want white people posting in there.

When people pointed out the obvious hypocrisy of Reddit endorsing racial discrimination by one of its largest subs, they just re-wrote the rules to make it kosher.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/us/reddit-race-black-peop...

I’ve seen folks try that.

Didn’t work.

Another “politically oriented sub” had users who got pissed that they were banned for spamming a sub that I frequented.

They made new accounts (they did that a lot…) and posted a couple normal posts in our sub and then again spammed but this time pretending to be organizing a brigade vs … their sub.

Admins didn’t act when they complained because it was all pretty obvious and we moderated the brigade posts.

In my experience it’s not just “hey there are a few posts” that triggers these kinds of actions.

> I’ve seen folks try that.

Okay, but this goes back to the condition:

> If they enforced the rules consistently

Which reddit does not - and you are right:

> it’s not just “hey there are a few posts” that triggers these kinds of actions.

There is an agenda, and then motivated reasoning to find justification for the agenda.

What I described wasn’t an “agenda” it was just recognizing that the local moderators were acting and the content wasn’t actually from the local users.

That’s just common sense.

> I could get any subreddit closed down by asking for things that are against the rules

Pretty sure that's how every subreddit that's ever been banned got banned.

ah, the heckler's veto. I had only heard of that happening on college campuses recently. Never expected it to happen on someplace as big and diverse as Reddit