In 2014, the subreddit /r/undelete, which aimed to preserve deleted content and promote free speech, became embroiled in a significant incident that exposed the vulnerabilities of Reddit’s moderation system. After gaining popularity, the subreddit was targeted by organized groups that employed various tactics to undermine its mission.
Key Events:
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Coordinated Trolling: Users from subreddits like /r/oppression and /r/conspiritard launched systematic trolling campaigns against /r/undelete. They flooded the subreddit with inappropriate content, including graphic images, to disrupt discussions and discredit the moderation efforts of u/Magnora, the original moderator.
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Vote Manipulation: These groups utilized vote manipulation techniques, organizing to upvote supportive content while downvoting dissenting opinions. This manipulation altered the visibility of posts, effectively suppressing opposing voices and controlling the narrative within the subreddit.
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Shadowbanning: In response to the escalating conflict, u/Magnora was shadowbanned—a tactic used by Reddit administrators to silence users without their knowledge. This action not only removed their ability to participate in discussions but also served as a warning to others who might challenge the status quo.
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Archival Efforts: The incident underscored the importance of archival sites in the fight against censorship. Just as Orwell’s 1984 depicted a world where information was manipulated and erased, the actions taken against /r/undelete reflect modern attempts to suppress dissent. Archiving content is essential for preserving the truth and ensuring that voices advocating for free speech are not lost.
Original Posts
On the takeover of /r/undelete and the subsequent takeover of the backup subreddit /r/undeleteundelete
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2014
Hello /r/conspiracy. I post here because I don’t know where else I can post without this getting deleted. I have a story to tell you about me and reddit and censorship.
You perhaps may remember me from 5 months ago, by the name /r/magnora2 from my /r/undelete meta-post “We are about to reach critical mass.” It got to #5 of all time on that subreddit, and was crossposted to /r/conspiracy and got highly upvoted as well. Here’s the post http://www.reddit.com/r/undelete/comments/27v0oh/we_are_about_to_hit_critical_mass/
It is no longer visible as #5 of all time on /r/undelete because my acccount /u/magnora2 was shadowbanned, which I’ll get in to in a moment.
Soon after this post got hugely popular, maybe a month or two later, /r/undelete was compromised by mods from /r/worldnews and undelete posts started disappearing left and right. I’m sure many of you followed this development and were as pissed off about it as I was. There’s a million other posts about this if you want to read more, I won’t bother covering it here. Suffice to say, it was a sad day for freedom of information on reddit.
I was pissed, so I started a backup subreddit called /r/undeleteundelete. It got about 150 subscribers and I was the only moderator. The goal was to add things that were getting deleted from /r/undelete, and to never ever delete anything ever.
However, I soon started getting trolled. Hard. By /r/oppression, by /r/conspiritard, etc etc. Specifically /u/fritzly and /u/unclesamuel. They were posting all sorts of goreporn and nasty shit all over /u/undeleteundelete. I held to my principles of not deleting anything, even though I probably shouldn’t have. I eventually caved and deleted a couple of the worst ones though. They were absolutely gross pictures.
Then, after deleting these awful posts, those same people (and some other user accounts) made a post in /r/undeleteundelete saying that I should not be a mod, if this is a truly free subreddit. That I broke my own rules of not deleting anything, and therefore am a tyrant or whatever. Not knowing the specific rules of moderating subreddits, I foolishly agreed that no mod would be best since that would guarantee no censorship. So I unmodded myself. Foolish, I now know.
Literally 5 minutes later, /r/unclesamuel posted to a subreddit that I didn’t know existed called /r/redditrequest, that lets you claim a subreddit that is abandoned, and the mods will appoint whoever requests it as moderator. I commented in that thread, saying that it wasn’t abandoned because it did not meet their criteria that required at least a month of vacancy. They did not give it to /u/unclesamuel because of my comments, thankfully. But the clock was ticking and I had no way to make myself moderator again. I felt like a fool. I got tricked. So I dropped it and forgot about it.
Then, one day about a month later, I was in /r/adviceanimals and there was a meme about the then ongoing Israeli-Palestinian massacre. Someone was cheerleading for Israel in the comments, and it was blatantly biased, and so after some discussion I called them a JIDF shill because it seemed like he honestly was one. I was told by a /r/adviceanimals moderator that I am not allowed to do ‘personal attacks’ (which apparently calling someone a shill is) and that if I did not cease I would be blocked from /r/adviceanimals. I stopped. But they blocked me anyway. Not only did they block me, but they shadowbanned my entire account from all of reddit. Not just that account, but 2 of my other accounts too, including one that was over 7 years old. I’m still a bit mad about that.
Anyway, as a consequence of all this, I was no longer moderator of /r/undeleteundelete. My popular post about censorship from /r/undelete no longer appears in the top of all time list. They shut me down.
So all this was about a month ago.
Today, I log in to /u/magnora2 for the first time in a long time just for kicks. I see that I have a new mail. How odd, since that account is shadowbanned. I opened it up, and this is what I see. Read the first message:
http://i.imgur.com/tt9vPBt.png
“Guess we won this round.” And guess who the mods of /r/undeleteundelete now are? /u/UncleSamuel, /u/fritzly, and /u/Semebay
Well fuck me sideways.
And to top it off, compare what I see at /r/undeleteundelete when logged in to /u/magnora2: http://i.imgur.com/aljJrWo.png
to what everyone else sees when they go to /r/undeleteundelete: http://i.imgur.com/HUBs84U.png
Notice the difference? The post that makes Israel look bad is gone.
And just you watch, now that I’ve referenced these subreddits and these people and told this story, they will start trolling this thread and posting all kinds of defamation about me, just like before. Just watch. They will sound so logical and well thought out and even-tempered, but you will see their intent is to make me look crazy and stupid.
That is, if this post doesn’t get deleted from /r/conspiracy before anyone sees it. Or downvoted to oblivion by the aforementioned users and subreddits. I have hopes that this is one of the last remaining places free of censorship on reddit, and I hope I am not proven wrong. Please give this visibility. I had to get this story out there so people would know just to what depths people on this site are willing to go to suppress information and troll users to discredit what they say.
I’ve given up on reddit as a whole. But at least now you know why.
/u/Magnora here with a 48 hour update after I was shadowbanned for my post “On the takeover of /r/undelete and the subsequent takeover of the backup subreddit /r/undeleteundelete”
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2014
Hello again, /r/conspiracy. /u/magnora here. After I wrote On the takeover of /r/undelete and the subsequent takeover of the backup subreddit /r/undeleteundelete about 48 hours ago my account was shadowbanned about 1 hour after posting it. I was only able to write one comment response out that was visible before I got shadowbanned. I tried to create a new account, but apparently /r/conspiracy has limitations on new accounts posting, they have to be 12 hours old or something. So I found myself able to post, but the posts were not appearing in the threads at the time, so no one could see what I was saying. It’s all settled now though, I’m able to post again with a new account.
I want to thank user /u/gameshowissues for making this thread letting everyone know I’d been shadowbanned. I also want to point out the crosspost to /r/undelete that got completely overrun by trolls almost immediately: http://www.reddit.com/r/undelete/comments/2m7ju8/on_the_takeover_of_rundelete_and_the_subsequent/
Let’s talk about these trolls. From what I gather, they belong to a group called Antique jetpack. This group is based around a user named /u/BipolarBear (edit:/u/BipolarBear0, excuse me), from what I understand. They coordinate in IRC chat, which according to this post “our mod assuradlyathrowaway found their hideaway chatroom, which is hidden on snoonet in the room #yiff”. I don’t know if that’s all true, but this is my understanding of the situation.
I now realize I did have a couple details confused that I would like to make corrections about. /r/deletenothing was the initial subreddit I made as a backup to /r/undelete. It was the one that was trolled by all those guys with the goreporn and that I stopped modding and that they eventually claimed on /r/redditrequest. /r/undeleteundelete was my second try (after learning I shouldn’t un-mod myself…lesson learned) and they didn’t take that one over until I was shadowbanned and THEN they requested it on /r/redditrequest. So essentially they did their sub takeover technique twice. Very dedicated people. I had gotten this minor detail incorrect and wanted to make a correction. If you go to /r/deletenothing you will see all the posts where they try and defame me.
Back to the /r/undelete crosspost, there was one good thing that came of it. This post in the comments. Literally every one of those people showed up in that thread to defend themselves and talk to each other to defame OP and other commenters who agree.
Here is the full list (so far) of people known to participate in this:
/u/NWOwon (this is a new account, not completely sure if it should be on the list, but it seems so)
/u/cojoco (moderator of /r/undelete and 200 other subreddits)
I can personally vouch for all these to be shills and/or extremely dedicated trolls, except for /u/eightnote and /u/ky1e, I don’t know much about them but I do see them all replying to each other quite often, and always in support. /u/cojoco made the /r/undelete crosspost and was the moderator that was appointed to /r/undelete right as it got corrupted is also part of this. He does seem to moderate many many many subreddits and spends a lot of time on reddit, and seems to be buddy-buddy with many of the people on this list, which are telltale signs. Same for most of the others. It’s interesting how they get together and chat to back each other up, even using their upvotes to help each other out, which could be considered a form of vote brigading. They coordinate in IRC to locate reddit threads they want to target, and then work together to sway the votes as much as they can and overload the comments sections with opposing opinions. I don’t think vote brigading is rare on this site, but it’s interesting that no one seems to care about it until you start highlighting certain stories (Israel seems to be one common denominator as evidenced in my post 2 days ago), then they go in to search-and-destroy shadowban mode. Anyway, I would like your help filling out this list.
Lastly, I’d like to point out the yishan post that was the 3rd message in the picture I posted 2 days ago: http://i.imgur.com/tt9vPBt.png
I posted this picture by itself to /r/conspiracy and got a lot of upvotes about 2 months ago, if anyone remembers, but I blacked out the name yishan because I didn’t want to get the admin in trouble who revealed this information. To get this info, I had messaged literally every single reddit administrator on the site (about 40 of them in all), asking them why they removed the visibility of the up and down votes individually through RES and if there was any governmental involvement that forced their hand. The individual up and down vote counts had been a feature of reddit and RES for 6 years, and then they suddenly decided to remove it one day. I’m sure many of you remember this, people were pretty pissed. After asking all the admins why, the only response I got was this one from yishan. The same yishan, who I found out yesterday, is the CEO of reddit that just resigned. I did not know yishan was the CEO until yesterday. I still do not know if yishan’s response is genuine or satirical, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Health_and_Human_Services#Strengthening_Communities_Fund is a real link about a real governmental program. I haven’t researched it that thoroughly to see how legitimate a claim is, maybe someone else can help do that, understanding the structure and function of government programs is not my strong suit. I do think it is possible the response is real, and the fact he resigned so suddenly slightly bolsters my case imo.
Finally, I would like to voice one caution relating again to the takeover of /r/undelete. /u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward was originally the sole moderator of /r/undelete. He did a good job running that subreddit for several months until one day the reddit admins messaged him that he had to appoint another administrator to help with the moderation of that subreddit, under the claims that deleted child porn would end up on /r/undelete and they would miss it due to having only one moderator and that would place a legal liability on reddit administrators. He (smartly) refused this, and was open to the community of /r/undelete about it, and instead created a secondary subreddit called /r/undeleteNSFW or something (that’s not it, but I don’t remember what the name was), and the reddit admins agreed to this idea. Then, about 2 weeks later, /u/cojoco (a very questionable mod, if you look at how many subs he moderates and which ones) was appointed as a moderator to /r/undelete, everyone got mad, and then things started getting deleted. This same mechanism of administrators threatening moderators (because they’re allegedly being threatened legally by the government for something) is a mechanism by which subreddits get taken over. They may have been legitimately been threatened by the government in to doing this, I don’t know. Kind of seems like it might be the case, which goes back to my earlier message from yishan.
Now, after posting all this, I again expect these trolls on that list to come out of the woodwork, as they do, to defend themselves and try and explain away why this isn’t the case. I expect them to manipulate the votes of the comments and the thread. I also expect this account will probably get shadowbanned after I post this, judging by what happens after my past posts. But thankfully I think I can depend on /r/conspiracy not to delete this. The mods really proved themselves by not deleting my post 2 days ago, and I’m very grateful for that. Seriously, this mod team is the best.
Anyway, the info is now 100% out there. I’d like it if people built up the list of these troll/shill people, and raised awareness about it. This rabbit hole has gone deeper than I thought it ever would. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction. But I’m tired of it and I know some of you are too. Let’s name usernames and bring this to awareness. Hopefully some of you out there have open ears and are listening to what I’m saying about what is happening on reddit (and possibly by extension internet social media as a whole). Thank you for reading and good luck with everything. Let’s blow the lid off this nonsense.
edit: updated with more accurate information.
edit2: Notice how low the percent upvoted is? I’m stuck between 58% and 65% net upvotes, even though I keep getting more and more overall votes. It hasn’t left that range since it was posted.