One of Reddit’s most popular subreddits has provoked an uproar in the Reddit community, after it was revealed that moderators were actively censoring news posts that contained certain key words.
Users of the subreddit r/Technology discovered that certain posts containing keywords such as “Obama”, “National Security Agency”, “Congress”, “Anonymous” and “Bitcoin” were being taken down by its moderators. It transpires that the moderators – who are all unpaid volunteers – had placed a filter on the section so that they didn’t have to deal with the large number of news stories that were posted about controversial topics.
The issue, which was first discovered last week by user ‘creq’, has led to r/Technology being downgraded, as it will no longer be a default subreddit.
Speaking to the BBC, Reddit communications director Victoria Taylor told the BBC: “The moderation team lost focus of what they were there to do: moderate effectively. We might consider adding them back in the future if they can show us and the community that they can overcome these issues.”
The main thing that confuses me about this news story is that these moderators are unpaid volunteers. If they didn’t want to do the work, why didn’t they just… err… stop doing the work?
