Ever since becoming one of the most popular subreddits on the site, The Donald has faced mounting censorship at the hands of Reddit admins.
And now, in a move that one of its top users is suggesting will kill the subreddit, users of The Donald are reporting that half of the top moderators have been purged and will be replaced with Reddit approved moderators.
In a message sent to the remaining moderators, Reddit admins wrote that they had banned some moderators because they had not “acted in good faith” to bring the community “in line with our policies.”
The Reddit admins will be giving the remaining moderators a “list of vetted and approved applicants” they can choose from to replace the banned moderators.
Users that have more than 500 karma in quarantined subreddits outside of The Donald will not be allowed on the list of approved applicants.
The Reddit admins also wrote that they had started enforcing the new rules around upvoting that were announced yesterday and had already warned users for “upvoting policy-violating content.”
Under these new rules, users can be warned or even suspended for simply “upvoting policy-breaking content within quarantined communities.”
One of The Donald’s former top moderators, shadowman3001, who was removed during this purge, responded to the decision by declaring: “Reddit is dead. The_Donald is dead.”
Other users of The Donald are also very skeptical of the new moderators being approved by Reddit admins and suggesting they will be used to either “turn the_donald into an anti-trump sub” or destroy The Donald from within.
shadowman3001 is now urging users of The Donald to move to TheDonald.win – a platform that was set up last November in the face of mounting Reddit censorship.
The decision to remove long-standing moderators and install moderators that are approved by Reddit admins follows The Donald being censored and sanctioned several other times over the last year.
In June 2019, The Donald was quarantined hours before the first US Democratic presidential debates – a decision that severely limited the reach of posts from The Donald on Reddit.
Then in November 2019, The Donald was threatened with “further consequences” for posts discussing the impeachment whistleblower, despite Reddit saying it would not censor the impeachment whistleblower’s name.
The timing of the decision to purge these moderators is also notable.
Just like with the quarantining of The Donald, their removal happened just before one of the US Democratic presidential debates.
