Hey there, random administrator. I've been a Redditor for a while now and I've taken quite a lot of interest not only in the content itself that is posted, but the community as well. I think that Reddit is a wonderful website which reaches out to people of all interests, and it's definitely one of the best sites on the internet.

But Reddit is not perfect, and I think that if these issues are not corrected, Reddit could end up going the way of Digg, which suffered many of the same problems (though not always in the same way). I don't know if the admins are aware of this, or to what degree they know, but I don't see any action being taken about such obvious and serious problems, so I've decided to try and speak with you about it.

I had actually originally contacted Dacvak off-site about this. Me and Dac go back a long way, actually. We met on a GameFAQs board several years ago and were involved in what was basically the modding scene for a particular game. I lost contact with him a couple years ago, but re-united with him after noticing he was an admin here. As I said, I already brought this up with him, but he said that he's on medical leave and there's really nothing he can do about it at this point, and doesn't really know much about the situation in the first place, which is, again, why I am here asking the rest of the admins.

So let me get down to business.

Admins, there is a serious issue with government and corporate astroturfing here on Reddit. For those of you who don't know what that means, it refers to an individual who acts as a common user, but is actually an employee of an organization, who's job it is to sway public opinion under the guise of Joe Everybody.

And the worst part? There are several of these users - users who have an obvious and aggressive bias towards a specific belief that moderate major subreddits. This bias is clearly beyond the "just a supporter" level, and even a glance at their history can show you how obvious it is that they're working for someone.

This has previously popped up in the mainstream with /r/technology, where the mods were banning several popular terms and deleting posts which discussed products or beliefs that were counter to what the mods were allowing to be there. I don't think I need to elaborate more on this particular one since I'm sure you all know what went down with /r/technology.

But this is bigger than just a technology sub. Subs where people get their daily news are being manipulated by people with a clear and biased agenda. /r/politics, /r/news, /r/worldnews and tons of other popular and even default subs are moderated by users with such clear biases, histories of censoring content, verbally attacking users who post things which question the status quo, blatant trolling and being regulars on subs which encourage vote brigading (which is very much against the terms of use of Reddit), such as /r/conspiratard, /r/subredditdrama and /r/shitredditsays.

And yes, before we get any further, I know these vote brigading subs officially state that you cannot vote brigade and must link with np, but it's obvious that nobody listens (and deletes the np from the url) since anything that gets linked on these subs gets a heavy influx of downvotes shortly after. They exist for no other reason than for paid shills to gather and point out where their fellow shills are supposed to vote brigade and who they are supposed to harass. And yes, I've been a victim of this before - I had one of my posts brigaded by /r/subredditdrama and for several days I received an endless stream of harassing and insulting PMs and even death threats, and I ended up deleting my old account just to get away from it all. This is what these subs do, and some of your mods on major subs are VERY fond supporters of these subs.

Just some of these shill-mods include /u/BipolarBear0 [-111], /u/75000_Tokkul [-35], /u/agentlame [-28], /u/emr1028 [-39], /u/davidreiss666 [-23] and /u/TheRedditPope [-17], among a plethora of others. Each of them has a very clear and biased agenda, with an interest in censoring content (especially anything that goes against the status quo), mocking political dissent, harassing users who question the government, military or corporations in any way, and just being general jackasses who do not have the integrity to moderate the major pages on a major website like Reddit.

There is a clear conflict of interest going on in many of these subs. Why is a user (BipolarBear0 in this case) who clearly mocks anyone who questions the US government's actions allowed to moderate dozens of politically sensitive subreddits? Why does anyone need to moderate dozens of subreddits anyway? How CAN they? If he's paid to do it - to censor undesirable content and mock dissenters, then he should have no problem, but no one in their right mind would do something like that, especially not all day long as he does, unless he were being paid to do so.

Why is another user (emr1028 in this case) who moderates a subreddit which has a history of political censorship (/r/politics) and is a big fan of all these things I've mentioned before, a moderator on /r/undelete, a subreddit which is intended to be AGAINST censorship? It's a conflict of interest, just as it is with BipolarBear0 and everyone I mentioned before. He especially needs to be removed as a mod (or outright banned) from every sub he moderates ASAP.

And this is just touching the surface. There are many, many other users in moderator positions who are very clearly paid shills, shown by their actions and behavior. There are other users who are NOT mods of major subs yet are still very clearly and obvious shills for a particular organization (for example /u/JF_Queeny [-2] and /u/adamwho [-1], who post almost around the clock in support of Monsanto, spreading lies and propaganda about them), and I believe the admins need to take note of, and investigate ALL of these extremely active users with a clear biased agenda.

So what can be done about them? Well, I think the first thing to do is to ban some of the more obvious shill accounts. Pretty much everyone I've mentioned here needs to be deeply investigated and in my opinion, banned completely. Even if they weren't shills (which I can almost assure you that they are), they are still responsible for vote brigading, trolling and harassment on a massive scale, and that much cannot be denied whatsoever. These things are very clearly against Reddit's terms of use, and it would be highly irresponsible for the admins to not do something about it.

I think all mods of major subreddits should be investigated and if it looks fishy, then bans should be issued on them too. I also believe that the major vote brigading subs /r/conspiratard, /r/subredditdrama and /r/shitredditsays need to be deleted, just as you have done to malicious subs in the past, and all of their mods need to be investigated as well.

I'm deeply concerned about the state of this website - a website I love dearly. I can see the abuse of these individuals clear as day, and many other users see it as well. The admins MUST make an effort to stamp out these shills, because if you don't, it will surely mean the death of Reddit in no time at all.

It wasn't only the redesign that killed Digg, you know. It was also due to the users realizing that the content was being manipulated by advertisers and other shills to sway public opinion one way or another. That's why everyone - including me, fled to Reddit, because we were sick of ads making the front page (which is another issue on Reddit, check out /r/hailcorporate for info on that) and being told by "power users" and mainstream "news" sources that it was okay for the US government to be committing war crimes. These are the kinds of things that are plaguing Reddit today, and it needs to be fixed, or Reddit will end up just like Digg.

Admins, please. Do something about this. Don't let them manipulate this website any longer. Reddit used to be a place where we could find out the truth of what was going on in the world, and there are users who try harder and harder every day to fill this site with lies and censorship.

Please send me back a reply with your thoughts on on the matter. I'd appreciate if each and every admin would respond to this message. I'm sorry that this is so long-winded, but it all needed to be said, and it all needs to be addressed.