"Censorship is getting worse every single day" Justin Tabb

Dec 6th 2018

Hi, my name is Rui Pedro Moreira, you might know me as rpdorm on reddit. I've been an active community member on r/substratumnetwork for over a year and my reddit account is 4 years old. I am writing this little essay (rant) to clarify some things that were left unspoken, and mainly to draw Substratum's attention to a pressing issue that needs to be addressed ASAP in regards to their PR strategy. While I do agree that FUD posts such as these and those should be stopped, as they add nothing to the discussion, I also firmly believe that it is in Substratum's best interest to provide proper information to those who are new to Substratum Network.

There have been some claims over the past year about posts getting deleted and users being banned (on Substratum's reddit, telegram and slack server) for no real good reason. For the purpose of this post, I'll focus on reddit platform.





These are a couple of examples with almost a year gap between them.

While there are plenty of people out there that can confirm this, there are some mods and admins who refuse to admit it to be true. Not only that, they are completely silencing those who opose them. Just head down to redditsearch.io and see for yourself the sheer amount of removed posts. Simply type [removed] on Search Term and SubstratumNetwork on Subreddits, and do not forget to set period of time to All.



Like so.

Who are those people?

Currently on reddit, 80% of moderators are not part of Substratum development team. So let's break this one down, shall we?

Username Substratum Team Member? Claimed Given Name Acc. Creation date Last Seen Activity (Posts / Comments) flippingstones No James 16-06-2017 12-01-2018 >10 / >10 eastcoastcurrent No Dane 29-09-2017 05-01-2018 0 / 3 chronic_crypto No - 04-08-2017 03-12-2018 0 / >10 briannloboo No Brian 22-07-2017 07-05-2018 5 / >10 christian-pope Yes Christian (verified) 16-01-2018 04-12-2018 5 / >10 abramcookson Yes Abram (verified) 22-01-2018 23-01-2018 1 / >10 dcatt47 No - 24-05-2014 06-12-2018 >10 / >10 OmeDuo007 No - 12-01-2018 31-10-2018 4 / 7

As you can see there is a single moderator whose account was created way before the altcoin ICO boom, and only two are members of Substratum's staff. Six out of eight have done nothing else on reddit other than posting on crypto related subreddits.

If we roll back a year, there was only four of them (AmanuelManny left for some reason), and the way briannloboo was appointed in January 12th was hilarious to say the least. Coincidently (or maybe not), that was the exact same day flippingstones was last seen, and OmeDuo007's account was created.

Just ten days after, I posted my concerns about the stagnation of the subreddit, and this is the result:





Needless to say, Mike's work got diluted and much of it's content was copied to a sticky post done by the proud newly appointed moderator.





What about that guy, 707bwolf707? You might ask...

As we all know by now, censorship has been on the daily menu with this one, which is quite ironic. He bought during ICO and resisted the temptation to sell at $1, $2 or $3, claiming it to be the "Best investment i ever made". Shameless shills everywhere coupled with referral codes before joining reddit.

A year ago, the general attitude towards honest basic questions in any crypto related subreddits where often met with "GTFO DYOR!" between all that euphoria. Everyone was doing it, me included (I do assume mea culpa on that one). As the markets crashed and dust settled, things started to be a bit less toxic, but bwolf insisted and still does in perpetuating this unacceptable behaviour. Perhaps out frustration for holding the bag for so long. I can only assume! He firmly believes no one shall have a different opinion other than his. He's the exact opposite of The Old Man of Restelo, being overly optimistic and vocal about it.

With that said, let's get to the facts.





The image above is pretty self-explanatory. Bellow, you can see their modus operandi when it comes to censor the reddit community.





a rare case of public coercion

A Tough Week





Upon reading this I decided to intervene and politely cast some truth to it.







What followed is a complete shit show of false accusations and misunderstandings, manipulation and gaslight, and ultimately censorship.

Allow me to paste my censored OC

This short lived post was taken down just 30 minutes upon it's submition. Curiously, and as you can see bellow, only 3 minutes have passed between bwolf's reply and my perma-ban.









This proves to me that this is indeed a shill cartel. Not really the vision I subscribed for a year back, and definitly not Substratum's vision, or at least I like to convince myself of that.

While we're at it, allow me to to refute right here the above statement (lie) by bwolf.





Solutions

Now that we cleared all the trash that was swept under the rug, it's time to address SubstratumNetwork's CEO and CMO.

We, the real community, would like to let you know that we're tired of this dictatorial treatment. It is in your best interest to get rid of such bad players who only give you a bad rep, and take full ownership of your own PR and Community Management in order to get your reputation back up and running full steam ahead without any more dramas. We need to be able to ask sincere questions without being bashed or silenced, wouldn't you agree? Fortunatly I am not alone in this one, I'd paste dozens of screenshots of private conversations I've been having for the last couple days regarding this issue, only if I had permission to do so. I fully respect people's choices not to get publicly involved in this. Christian Pope (CMO) has been made aware of all this, and I keep on waiting his reply.

Edit: Stellar's Community Vision just came out. What a lovely piece of text, specially in the Reddit Governance section. Enjoy it!

Disclaimer

This is not a FUD article, much less a paid one.

I'm only here for the technology and I sold my bag back in February which means I am not monetarily invested in $SUB.