How (not) to run a Bitcoin subreddit

Background

I wanted to reflect on the events of yesterday, March 22nd 2024 on /r/btc . It started out with u/althornton2462 returning from a longer hiatus and presumably being upset about seeing that George Donelly was banned from the subreddit.

For context, the decision to ban him was, according to the mod team, originally made after a longer discussion and after the troubled history a George stirring up trouble in the community. Those who were there will remember that George almost tore us apart. Since the subreddit is traditionally very open even to dissenting opinions, the decision to ban him was surely not easily made, but making it as a group was certainly the right way to go.

In contrast, althornton2462 decided unilaterally to unban George without any prior discussion with the other mods. That alone should be ground for removal, which u/ThomasZander thankfully swiftly did.

After then failing to attempt to hijack /r/bitcoincash, althornton2462 used the resulting moderation changes and his removal as moderator of that subreddit as an argument that "full censorship" was happening in both subreddits. That is a pretty wild accusation in my mind, because we frequently observe posts about all kinds of Bitcoin variants without much drama, I can only think of George being a prominent banned person (for very good reasons).

Apparently the censorship complaints found the ear of Roger Ver, who then decided to remove all moderators of /r/btc and to give althornton2462 moderation rights. I believe this was not done out of malice but because he is a strong advocate for freedom of speech. However it lead to the result that althornton2462 immediately using the newly given permissions to in turn add George as an additional moderator to /r/btc, again without any discussions or prior notice. This understandably caused an additional massive uproar after all the drama that had already happened beforehand. Luckily, George has since been removed as a moderator again and a poll was created requestion the removal of althornton2462 as a moderator. Please participate in it although it has no formal meaning yet.

Why althornton2462 has become unacceptable as a moderator

I would argue that the original attempt to unban George in itself would be a forgivable mistake. Just like Roger acted out of the strong support of the freedom of speech value, we could give althornton2462 the benefit of the doubt that he did the same. Dissenting opinions can also strengthen a community and it seems like althornton2462 was not part of the original discussion about the ban of George. He might not have even been aware that this discussion occurred. He alluded to that being the case in his apology.

What is however irredeemable is making George a moderator. He is well known for being misleading, divisive and toxic in multiple of the communities he entered. A person with such a character should never be in any kind of leadership position.

Anyone who was here as long back as althornton2462 must have known that making George moderator is absolutely unacceptable for the BCH community. This also becomes clear because he dodged the question on who made George moderator despite being otherwise very active in that thread. Therefore the only reasonable explanation is that George and althornton2462 conspired to take over the subreddit(s) against the will of the community.

What should be done now

First, althornton2462 should be removed from his moderator position in any BCH related subreddit. Someone who acts this impulsively, unilaterally and against the clear wishes of his community, is unfit to be a moderator, even if no conspiracy had happened.

Then, rules determining the tasks and responsibilities for the moderators should be negotiated and agreed upon between the remaining moderators and Roger as the owner of the subreddit.

One of these rules should be a voting system on critical decisions like the banning of high profile people (as opposed to e.g. crypto scam advertisements) or adding and removing moderators. There should also be defined consequences if these rules are ignored, e.g. by someone unilaterally making changes to the moderator list.

There also should be a more transparent way to document these decisions so that Roger, who apparently is not very active these days, can follow the reasoning of the moderators. Freedom of speech is a good value to uphold but there should also be respect for the decisions by the people who spend every day with moderating the subreddit.

Finally, let's not forget that most of us share a common goal here: making BCH and crypto in general more popular and useable in the world.

Update 1:

Since posting this, althornton2462 has banned an outspoken dissenting user, Ill-Veterinarian599, under the guise of breaking Reddit TOS. Quite ironic for someone being so concerned about censorship.

Update 2:

Roger has reacted to the latest events and removed althornton2462 as a moderator. While this is good news, Roger's reply shows that making rash decisions to change an established system is a recipe for chaos, no matter how good the intentions are.