A Member of our Community Was Silenced by Reddit

He is just one of many whose voices have been stifled by intra-reddit politics and unaware admins who avoid the real issues of Reddit.

Reddit, the popular social media platform for submitting and sharing articles, ideas, popular Ask Me Anythings, and more, has permanently suspended the account of one of the moderators of political_revolution.reddit.com, u/Tyree07. They did this for reasons partially unknown, but it is believed to be as a result of u/Tyree07 participating in a thread that was reported. I would like to call attention to the thread in question and get answers as to why Reddit admins are focusing on something so trivial and not dealing with the much larger issue of r/The_Donald, which is a hotbed for abuse.

The account ban at first was a 3-day suspension, common for first time offenders or minor offenders. Then, after 3 days of waiting, the account was permanently banned. The offense cited was ‘vote brigading’. The thread in question that was participated on was this thread:

“No, it really is a fact. That subreddit is a safe haven for racism, hatered, and bigotry — and trolls use wotb’s Laissez-faire approach to moderation in order to astroturf under the guise of being a Bernie supporter.” — u/GalacticSoup moderator speaking officially for r/SandersforPresident

The thread in question that was linked to was part of a series of moderator “Q&A’s”, in which members of the community were encouraged to engage. Not only that, in recent months, r/SandersForPresident mod u/9AD- actually reached out to the r/WayoftheBern community to try and bridge some of the prior friction that has caused these intra-community struggles in the first place.

The thread on r/WayoftheBern was then reported by r/SandersForPresident mods which subsequently resulted in the banning of multiple accounts of both r/WayoftheBern, r/SandersForPresident, and r/Political_Revolution subscribers.

r/WayOfTheBern exists because of a few reddit subscribers who wanted to create a sub-reddit with a one-rule policy, to counterbalance the heavy-handedness of other progresive subreddits. r/SandersForPresident shutdown in July of 2016 after the Democratic National Convention, which caused a flood of subscribers to go to r/WayOfTheBern.

As a previous moderator of r/SandersforPresident myself, and one who fought not to have the subreddit shutdown, I actually understand the frustration of r/WayoftheBern subscribers. These subscribers are often described as brigaders and trolls, however, they remain one of the most active post-Bernie subs on Reddit. Why is that? And why are we demonizing their subscribers then running to the Reddit admins?

For clicking on the original thread mentioned, and voting in the r/SandersForPresident thread, u/Tyree07 was permanently banned. Is he a Russian troll? No. He’s a trusted member of the progressive-Reddit community.

The Reddit admins obviously don’t know about the prior context of all of this. They did their due diligence, looked into a thread where ‘vote brigading’ was reported, and banned suspicious accounts.

What u/Tyree07 and probably more than a few other Redditors did was just to go to a community they were a part of and downvote the questionable comment made by r/SandersForPresident moderator u/GalacticSoap. The comment in question has about -3 downvotes as an aggregate score (shown above), hardly enough to warrant being called a brigade. The suspended users can be found guilty of just using the platform the way it was meant to be used, and nothing more.

And actually, as of Monday, February 26th, (the day I went to publish this account of what happened), u/Tyree07’s account was unsuspended. However, none of us have received a response from the administrators. Myself and other moderators of r/Political_Revolution have reached out directly to Reddit admins to express our frustration.

The subreddits affected are all part of the progressive-left wing of Reddit. While trolling is not an issue to any one community alone, the subscribers to the three communities, r/Political_Revolution, r/SandersForPresident, and finally r/WayoftheBern, are in no way attempting to do anything but affect the future outcome of politics and not cause personal harm to people, but in fact bring about positive change. I believe that sincerely. And in the case of u/Tyree07, who is one of the most active moderators of Political_Revolution and who has organized the third most upvoted AMA on Reddit of last year, this kind of reaction by the Reddit admins is totally unwarranted.

I am empathetic to the job of Reddit admins; Reddit communities are entirely autonomous and each have their own way of operating. Who are they to know when they’ve unwittingly stumbled onto a nest of subreddit drama?

However, even with all that understood; why are Reddit admins rushing to the aid of this progressive community and not others, and why the heavy-handed punishment? There are communities far more guilty of stirring up not only small intra-Reddit drama, but of sexism, racism, and general bigotry like r/The_Donald, which remains one of the most controversial subreddits.

r/The_Donald, notorious not only on Reddit but across the internet, has been soft-quarantined by Reddit admins… and that’s it. By ‘soft-quarantined’, I mean Reddit admins gave people the ability to filter r/all to be able to filter r/The_Donald, which had previously been a gold-only feature. Why such lenience?

There are multiple reports of r/The_Donald’s attempts to brigade; they are notorious not only for targeting communities within Reddit but outside of Reddit too, where they attempted to brigade a poll by the city of Alexandria VA to rename the Jefferson Davis Highway in an effort to name it Donald J Trump Highway. They’ve been reported several times for hate speech, sexism, and abuse.

Yet, all we’ve seen is that the Reddit admins have had a ‘talking to’ with r/The_Donald mods.

The only issues cited here were issues with r/politics, and no mention of the real issues at the core of this sub-reddit, which are mired in bigotry. And again, no real action was taken. No account suspensions, no real answers.

Where is the justice? This sub-Reddit, as recently as last week, was caught making fun of gun shooting survivors of the Parkland shooting, going as far as trying to doxx (obtain and abuse personal information) them. This is what the admins should be focusing on.

By reporting all of this, we hope only to receive answers. Why is the progressive community fighting itself? Why are the Reddit admins taking such extreme measures for some communities and not others?

The irony is not lost on us that today, of all days, there’s a day of action for Net Neutrality, and the title of the post on r/announcements is “Upvote the Downvote”. What’s happening in Congress is also happening right here in Reddit.

We are approaching the 2018 midterms and r/Political_Revolution is fully focused on electing as many progressives as we can. Part of the reason is that we believe the progressive message can overcome a lot of the divisiveness in this country and in our own community.

America right now is at a crossroads. The way we choose to treat others, and the way treating others is understood, will have a great bearing on politics in years to come. We must condemn the mistreatment of others, and abuse and ignorance in the face of intersectionality, but we must also find balance and tolerance in ourselves to be able to heal these rifts instead of perpetuating cycles of hate.

We want to see more community projects and goodwill in our own community and the communities we partner with, and hope that we can set an example for the global community of Reddit.

Let’s practice tolerance in all we do.

All the best,

Glo

Political Revolution Mod and Digital Director

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