Oh no! "Evil Mod X" Has Taken Over My Favorite Telegram Group! What should I do?

Imagine the following scenario:

The moment you have dreaded upon is here.

Your beloved Telegram channel or subreddit has been taken over by Evil Mod X and/or the mods have sold their accounts and gone evil, what do you do?

1. First, take a deep breath.

We have to be sure they are evil and not just having a bad day.

Is their behavior consistent and regularly evil?

It may be time to politely escort them out.

Is their tone completely different? Did they use to promote only BCH but now they only seem interested in and promote HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu?

There is decent chance they sold their account and again it is time to escort them out.

2. Alright then... second we need to make sure you are not an asshole.

Did you stop and ask yourself, AITA?

If it never occurred to you that you could be just an asshole or you immediately discounted the idea that you could even possibly be an asshole... you very well might be an asshole and need to to look inward for a bit.

Even if you did before, lets take another moment to really look in the mirror and see if the troubles you are having are in fact not just you being an asshole.

Ask yourself right now AITA?

Deeply consider all the events that lead up to the point where you need to consider taking action against the moderator(s) and consider the reactions of the people whom were not directly involved in the drama. Did they seem to be on your side of the debate? Was it split 50/50? Were they generally silent? Did they also "attack" you like Evil Mod X? Consider a bit the answers you just gave.

Since you have double checked with yourself and confirmed with yourself that you are indeed not an asshole, its time to move on to outside sources.

That means you are going to have to talk to some other people. People you know and have a trusted relationship with and also people you do not know and do not have a relationship with.

If at this point you are so confident that whatever grievance you have with said mod (they thumbs downed your post, they did not support your plan or idea, they banned or restricted your account, etc.) that you do not need to seek outside council.... bad news, you are probably the asshole.

There is no easy solution to stop being an asshole. It takes a lot of self reflection and effort to correct this kind of a problem. But as with most things, with enough focus and energy you can certainly pull through. Just like quitting smoking or chronic masturbation, if you really want to change and it is super important to you, sheer willpower will carry you most of the way and being open and honest about your problem with yourself and others will amass you enough support to push you over the finish line.

If the idea of seeking council outside yourself or close friends does not bother you, congratulations! You may not be an asshole and may actually have a case and we can move on to step 3..

3.

Next it may be a good idea to take your grievance to not only your friends but trusted people in the community, privately, and ask them if they have noticed anything about Evil Mod X without first laying out your concerns. This will help to make sure they are impartial and also help you confirm the problem exists outside of your head.

If when asked, these people express similar concerns, it is pretty clear that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with and you can move on to step 4, making a plan of attack. If your friends and the trusted community members did not see these problems in advance, it does not mean they do not exist, it just means they did not see them for whatever reason. At this point you should probably ask these people if you are an asshole and lay out the things you saw/experienced and listen to their feedback WITHOUT trying to convince them you are right. This part of the process is just evaluation and making sure you are correct. The last thing we want to do is harm the reputation/business/project of someone due to false accusations.

If after listening to your story these people agree with you, it may indeed be time to move onto a course of action.

4.

Since we have reached step 4 it is pretty clear to you at the very least that SOMEONE needs to do SOMETHING about this Evil Mod X. But what can be done and who is going to do something? Luckily since we have already reached step 4 it is pretty clear that the SOMEONE is you. But the something is still not clear. What can you do? There are several options. Different social media platforms have different power structures (owners vs admins vs moderators etc.) But luckily methods of change are similar.

Scenario A: If the person in question is the Owner of the group/channel/account and they are indeed evil there is not much you can do to initiate change. If their motivation is truly evil there is little chance words will convince them to abandon their scheme. If they are using a platform such as Reddit or Telegram you can attempt to contact the platforms own police squad to have them shut down. If they are running a scam or doing something illegal/immoral it should be relatively easy to have them canceled. If however the problem with them is that they removed people from their groups/channels for whatever reason.. you are probably shit out of luck. They are King/Queen of their nation and rights are granted and taken away from you at their leisure. You can have no expectation of rights or freedoms. It is an unfortunate reality.

If the above is true, your only real solution is to SPLIT and form a parallel or alternative group/community. This takes a lot of work and effort. Network effect is a really difficult thing to build naturally. Humans tend to lean towards whatever is the most popular or trending at the time.

This is also the story of BCH so you are in good company. BCH continuing to thrive and grow and develop is a testament to how this solution is valid. Trimming off the fat and casting off corruption allows you to be both agile and focused. People with similar thoughts and alignments will join you in your new group assuming you have the strength and will to push for it and take it to the next level. Do not worry. If your cause was righteous, the others that join you will be happy to take some of the burden off your back to propel you and the community even further!

Scenario B: Evil Mod X is not owner and is just staff. This is the more likely scenario and has the greatest chance to fixable. There are a few variables that come in to play that may make this harder for you but there is still hope.

If Evil Mod X is good friends with the owner of the group/channel then it will be a bit more difficult but not impossible. Any reasonable owner will listen to the entire community up in arms about one of their staff. Going to the owner and complaining without an impartial advocate will probably not help your case though as the owner will most likely trust Evil Mod X more than rando DM person out of the blue. It may also work against you as they are busy people and are probably tired of daily random DMs. Assuming there is a group of mods, the other mods however may be your best ally at this stage. They may also have noticed that Mod X has become Evil Mod X and be working behind the scenes to convince owner they are a bad dude. If this is the case, REJOICE! The other mods will probably do most of the work for you!

Pass on whatever evidence you have gathered and be done with it. Mission accomplished!

If the other mods do not agree with you, you can work to build community consensus that Evil Mod X is a problem and should be removed from their position. This will take time and effort as well. But it is something you need to weigh for yourself. If you can preserve the network effect and community it may be worth putting in that effort vs starting a new group/channel at 0 and convincing people to move over to your group.

Scenario C: Give up.

Volunteers

Please try to remember a lot of us especially in the BCH space are volunteers. We do what we do because we want BCH to become money for all of humanity. I explained in a previous post why I do what I do. As you can see above from the sample of some of the things written about me there is a lot of criticism and negativity. Sometimes it gets to be a bit much when in your own brain you know you have dedicated yourself and time and effort to something at great personal and financial cost and for free. Cats have feelings too. We mods are trying our hardest to do what we think is right. There is always room for improvement and if the mod you think is actually Evil Mod X did something you think is terrible, why not DM them your concerns? Maybe you read something wrong, maybe their native language is different than yours. Maybe it was a big misunderstanding and they were never Evil Mod X at all.