In an attempt at damage control, Reddit has downgraded the status of its technology section after it has found that posts containing controversial words such as "Bitcoin," "Snowden," "net neutrality," "National Security Agency" and "anti-piracy" were deleted minutes after posting.
The subreddit /r/technology, which has a user following of five million, will no longer be listed as a default section on the site's home page. It is now much less visible to Reddit users who are not logged in and to those who have not included technology in their subscriptions.
A user nicknamed creq first discovered the deletions. In a message posted on the website, he cited the absence of posts on controversial topics and posted a list of words that he believed to be underrepresented. The list also includes "Restore the Fourth," "Anonymous," "Time Warner," "SOPA" and "CISPA."
It turns out that the subreddit's moderators, who are all unpaid volunteers, were using a bot to automatically filter posts containing controversial words that were linked to topics with a massive number of stories coming in.
"We also added /u/AutoModerator to deal with our mass spam issue and make up for the lacking moderation. At first, it was fine, but as time went on, it started to be used in [a] way I and /u/klyde didn't really like," said agentlame, a technology moderator, in a message posted on the website.
Reddit explains the downgrade is intended to shame the moderators and force them to clean up their mess.
"We decided to remove technology from the default list because the moderation team lost focus of what they were to do: moderate effectively," Reddit director of communications Victoria Taylor told the BBC.
"We're giving them time to see if we feel they can work together to resolve the issue. We might consider adding them back in the future if they can show us and the community that they can overcome their issues," she added.
The technology moderators posted a public apology on the website and have promised "reforms that will give the users of this subreddit the ability to keep their moderators honest."
"As many of you are aware, the moderators of this subreddit have failed you. The lack of transparency in our moderation resulted in a system where submissions from a wide variety of topics were automatically deleted by /u/AutoModerator. While the intent of this system was, to the extent of my knowledge, not malicious, it ended up being a disaster. We messed up, and we are sorry," the moderators stated.
The changes include allowing the public to access AutoModerator's configuration page and view the filter bot's documentation. They also vowed to include reasons for posts removed automatically and manually.
Users, however, are not satisfied and are calling for the resignation of the last two remaining moderators.
The technology section is not the first subreddit to be dropped. In July 2013, Reddit also downgraded /r/atheism and /r/politics following users' complaints about overzealous moderators.
