We are the League of Legends community.

Over the past five years, the League of Legends sub-reddit has become

our home and our primary source for industry news, tournament

results, game play updates and discussions. While not all of these

discussions are intelligent, the point of Reddit has always been that

everyone has a voice. Everyone has the right to speak their mind. In

many ways, Reddit is the pinnacle of free speech in the internet age.

The moderators sole role is to prevent discrimination, spam and

ensure that everyone can exercise this right to free speech equally.

Unfortunately, the moderators of the League of Legends sub-reddit

have taken it upon themselves to abandon this duty and censor

important content. This is not the first time and, until a higher

authority steps in, will not be the last time.

This morning (being May 8th,

2015) , one of the industry's most reliable sources published a

seemingly innocuous article about a competitive team picking up a

player. Incarnati0n joining Cloud 9 is hardly a surprise, and as far

from an incendiary a news story as you can get. It contained official

statements from the organization and essentially functioned as a

press release. The rumors had been flying for months and most of the

community assumed that this roster move was only a matter of time.

Still, Incarnati0n joining Cloud 9 is major news and the article his

the League of Legends sub reddit. Then it was deleted. Not once. Not

ten times, and probably not even 100 times. Each time someone tried

to post the article to the League of Legends sub-reddit, a moderator

deleted it. We understand that there are rules, and that the

moderator team has the right to ban a specific person from posting to

the sub reddit, but what the LoL sub-reddit moderator team is doing

goes far beyond what anyone might consider reasonable. They also

deleted any posts that mentioned Incarnati0n or Cloud 9 by name. They

even started deleted posts that referenced a nameless European player

joining a nameless North American organization. Any post that in any

way referenced Incarnati0n joining Cloud 9 was deleted. Simply

because Richard Lewis was the first to break the news story. As soon

as another news source reported the roster move, direct links to

those news sources and posts that referenced Incarnati0n joining

Cloud 9 were allowed.

Right now, you're probably asking

yourselves why. That's a good question, and one the community has

been trying to get an answer to for a while now. The article in

question was written by Richard Lewis of the Daily Dot. Richard Lewis

has been arguably the most important journalist in the history of

competitive League of Legends. He has broke a wide range of news

stories from player acquisitions, to organizational abuses, internal

Riot (the developer of League of Legends) issues and the abuses acted

upon the journalistic community by the League of Legends sub-reddit

moderator team. He is absolutely a necessary existence for the League

of Legends community as a whole and that community relies on the

League of Legends sub-reddit for easy access to all League of Legends

related content. However, the sub-reddit moderators refuse to allow

any of his content and any content that references his content to

exist. To the League of Legends community at large, this is

unacceptable. We understand that there are rules, and that the

moderator team has the right to ban a specific person from posting to

the sub reddit, but what the LoL sub-reddit moderator team is doing

goes far beyond what anyone might consider reasonable.

Many of us are not Richard Lewis's

biggest fans. It's not easy being Woodward and Bernstein. When you

report on the darker sides of the industry, you make enemies. But

that is why Richard Lewis is so indispensable. He's a throwback to an

age where journalists strove to make a difference over making a buck.

We need more journalists like Richard Lewis.

Reddit is a longstanding opponent of

internet censorship. We as a community, and you as a company, have

fought against SOPA, PIPA and any other legislation that threatened

the freedom of the internet. We've fought against corporate attempts

to segregate the internet based upon how much websites and users were

willing to pay. Legislators and Corporations believe themselves

powerful enough to simply bulldoze their way through. Fighting

against such blatant censorship is easy. It's the knife in the dark

that you have to worry about. We are here to shine a light on the

darkness.

The problem is, our hands are tied. We

have tried to discuss the moderator's behavior, and the general state

of journalism in eSports, but the moderators delete any such attempt.

We've tried to appeal to their sense of justice, and the letter of

the law, but those appeals go unanswered. If we could impeach our

moderator's, we would. But we don't have that power. You do.

Thus, we the undersigned, hereby

petition the Reddit Team to intercede on our behalf and end moderator

censorship to ensure that the League of Legends sub-reddit is allowed

to operate in the manner it was intended. A community where the

veracity and importance of its content is decided by the users, not

by the moderator team.