So there's some recent major reddit drama at the admin level involving a recently hired admin turning out to have hired their now-convicted pedo father post-arrest during a brief journey into Britbong politics. This has completely exploded over the last couple days after posts on /r/ukpolitics were force-removed, a moderator was suspended (then later reinstated) for linking to an article from the Spectator, and there have been horrifically broad automod rules implemented which were nuking any links to that and more articles, alongside accusations made regarding this admin by name (username and IRL name).

Now, we aren't getting into the weeds on the accusations, but the overwhelming admin level response to them, including mass comment hard nukes (they show up for moderators as [removed] and cannot be reapproved at all), mass user suspensions, as well as the hard block on links to actual news sites (IIRC the Spectator, Independent, and a couple others were included) is something we cannot remotely condone. There's such a thing as a proportional response, and this from the admins is not it.

To add to the mess, we recently felt it necessary to implement a broad "no transgender discussion of any kind" policy on KiA (Reddit, not here) to head off the rather insane Anti-Evil removals and warnings/suspensions issued, including a warning issued to me personally for using the term "chick-with-a-dick" in reference to Polly from HuniePop2 as "promoting hate". When I approached the admins to get clarification on their policy, including a request for a full list of what they consider to be "trans-related slurs", I was given the run around with half-scripted answers before I asked to be escalated to a senior community team member. My request was never escalated, and it now turns out that the admin who gave me the run around was the admin at the center of all this drama. That makes the admin decision a total conflict of interest regarding actual sitewide policy enforcement.

All this put together - the bans, hard comment removals, link blocks, and the direct policy interactions with this admin - have caused us to make the decision to speak up the best way we can to make reddit take notice, by going private alongside hundreds of other subs for at least a day (we will see if it goes longer or not). We just have one benefit that most other subs do not in that we can link to a post here to more clearly explain why we are doing this, instead of just relying on a link to another post on reddit by someone who is not completely representative of our position.

A few of us will be around on and off today to maybe answer some questions, though this is almost fully in the laps of the admins to decide if they are going to continue fucking up their enforcement policies, counter to how things have been run in their own rules regarding public figures for years. Our own Rules 2 and 5 regarding personal info of people were built on the original interpretation of those sitewide rules with admin help. Going completely counter to that makes it impossible for anyone to enforce rules evenly, and the admins need to pull their collective heads out of their asses to understand that.

EDIT: So the admins sacrificed the employee on the altar to appease the masses, but failed to actually address any of the real issues this mess created around sitewide rules, automated moderation, etc. We are going to stay aimed at a target of roughly 24hours of staying private, in hopes that something gets addressed by a redname on that side of things. So figure somewhere in the 5am US Eastern timeframe, give or take, then the sub should be public again.