Reddit can be a wonderful or terrible place, depending on your point of view. However, what it has always been, is a free place for people to share content, and make their opinions heard. Its system of allowing content to naturally float to the top, or get buried, based only on the opinions of its audience is not perfect, but does allow viewers to effectively decide what types of content they want to see. The very principle was based on the site being a complete democracy (in the true sense of the word, things being decided by the people with no official representation.) Now, it seems, that democracy is in jeopardy.

Last month, the reddit account of well-known eSports journalist Richard Lewis was permanently banned from the League of Legends subreddit for "sustained abusive behavior after having warned him, warned him again, temp banned him, warned him again, which all finally resorted to a permaban." However, the moderators didn't want to take things too far, stating that "That permaban led to a series of retaliatory articles from Richard about the subreddit, all of which we allowed. We were committed to the idea that we had banned Richard, not his content." At this point, I have little to argue with. It's certainly well known that Mr. Lewis had a way of conducting himself that some might find offensive, and if he was given the opportunity to change his behavior on several occasions and declined to do so, it's understandable that action needed to be taken. So far, everything seems to be in order.

It's the next part of the post put up by the mods earlier today where things start to veer off course.

However, as time went on, it was clear that Richard was intent on using twitter to send brigades to the subreddit to disrupt and cheat the vote system by downvoting negative views of Richard and upvoting positive views.

Now, we have a problem. In the post, the mods linked to several of Mr. Lewis' tweets. While they are critical of the mods/subreddit, and do link to specific posts/comments he disagrees with, none of them include a call to action. Not one asks his followers to upvote, downvote, or do anything else. He is simply using Twitter to express his displeasure about certain things, as millions of people do every single day. The claim of "twitter brigades" appears to have absolutely no basis whatsoever, and seems to serve more as a justification for the part that, frankly, made me a bit sick.

Because of these two things, we have escalated our initial account ban to a ban on all Richard Lewis content. His youtube channel, his articles, his twitch, and his twitter are no longer welcome in this subreddit. We will also not allow any rehosted content from this individual. If we see users making a habit of trying to work around this ban, we will ban them. Fair warning.

This is the part where "democracy" no longer comes into play. If his behavior has been out of line and he won't change, go ahead and ban Richard Lewis' account. That's alright, most people should take no issue with that course of action. No one should get special treatment, and his account should be banned for the same things that would cause any other account to get banned. However, making a public spectacle of it is wrong, and banning anyone at all from posting anything at all that came from Richard Lewis is downright absurd. This is no longer about doing what is right. Now it's a childish reaction to someone the mods don't like. They were upset that Mr. Lewis' made a habit of criticizing them, and have now twisted their own rules to try to get back at him.

If it seems like I'm taking this a bit personally...it's because I am. Not because I have any real personal connection to Mr. Lewis (he likely has no idea who I am,) but because as a journalist in the eSports industry, there is a certain commonality between us. We may have different methods, different attitudes, different personalities...but in the end, we all know the same struggle to remain relevant in this ever-changing space. The idea that a group of people with no real training or experience in the field can have such power over any one of us is more than a bit infuriating. As most by now well know, the ability to have your content perform well on reddit is actually a huge part of being successful in this industry. To say that this ban will make things more difficult for Mr. Lewis would be an understatement. Though I may not always agree with the way he expresses himself, his indisputable status as an important and influential member of the eSports media has earned my utmost support.

In an effort to maintain my journalistic integrity, I will conclude by stating that if any of the information or opinions expressed in this article are based in falsehoods, I will be happy to completely rescind my harsh criticism of the aforementioned mods, and even apologize for my words. However, until irrefutable proof presents itself, I will stand by my statements, and I sincerely hope this situation is the catalyst for some real change.

Image credit: SuperNerdLand