However, others cheered Reddit’s actions

So that wasn't cheering. That was a well-coordinated, site-wide digital lynching, even by reddit's standards. It's still ongoing. In the many threads rejoicing at my ousting, you will find thousands of TOS violations directed against me, included calls to violence and to doxx me and my family.

In many ways what happened to me was a scaled-down version of what transpired with Trump literally the next day. As above, so below. They cut me off from communicating with my forum and prevented me from defending myself in the ensuing chaos, while the rabid masses cheered in their state-sanctioned 2 minutes hate.

saying the former head moderator had a documented penchant for banning those who disagreed with him

She actually cites a Top Minds of Reddit thread for this, one of the most notoriously toxic forums in the history of the internet, and that's not even hyperbole. What this claim fails to address is that the vast majority of accounts that I banned were all serial violators of the rules of our sub (or alt accounts evading their bans). In the many threads celebrating my removal, multiple users admitted I had banned "dozens" of their alt accounts, a clear violation of reddit's TOS and vindication of my efforts.

We have a really transparent process when it comes to bans. EVERY user banned is given an opportunity to appeal the action before the entire /r/conspiracy mod team. We frequently unban users who pledge to follow the rules of our forum...it's not a difficult process in the slightest.

The idea that I was solely responsible for whether or not people could speak on our forum is absurd on its face, and the fact that this "journalist" used TMOR as a source unironically is peak clown world journalism.

and elevating those who shared his often-extreme views.

Here she links a ridiculous article from a few years ago that I will address in another thread that essentially accuses me of being a Russian agent for not being convinced by Russiagate as a conspiracy theorist. They never forgave the conspiracy theorists for refusing to jump on board the "muh Russia" hysteria, so they went the "CT=domestic terrorist" route instead.

In a post on r/SubredditDrama sharing the news

Ah, so "sharing the news" means "hundreds of comments threatening and even calling for the user's arrest" now. I've lost track of the number of these unhinged individuals who claim to have "reported me to the authorities/FBI". FOR WHAT?!? These people...

She then quotes a random user on SubredditDrama, as if he was some sort of authority:

axolotl_peyotl was far right

Not true. In 2016 I was on record multiple times saying I would've supported Tulsi Gabbard over Trump. I was portrayed as "far right" like most conspiracy theorists in 2016 when I didn't immediately believe that Trump was in on some massive conspiracy with Russia.

I also was portrayed as "far right" because I had the audacity to allow right leaning opinions on /r/conspiracy as top mod. Apparently permitting speech equates with endorsing it. What happened to the notion of agreeing with someone's opinion but still defending their right to express it?

extreme pro-Trump

...see the above. I allowed pro-Trump content on /r/conspiracy and I questioned Russiagate. That's all it took to earn that label, apparently.

anti-vaxx

I'll admit I'm skeptical of most vaccines and at what age children receive them. I composed two megathreads called "The Skeptic's Guide to Vaccines" several years ago, but I included a disclaimer saying they were NOT meant as medical advice, and no where did I say you shouldn't get vaccinated at all. It's about being informed. I'm skeptical of the increasingly aggressive vaccine schedule, and I think the COVID vaccine is completely unnecessary, so if that makes me "anti-vaxx" then so be it.

anti-Semitic

Completely false. This is the same trap they lay for every conspiracy theorist that questions Israel...you're immediately labeled "anti-semitic." I barely even mention Israel these days because of it.

Six years ago, axolotl_peyotl took heat for stickying a pro-Hitler documentary to the top of the subreddit

Ah, the "Greatest Story Never Told" saga. Here's what actually happened: as /r/conspiracy mod, one of my projects was a weekly "featured documentary" where the community would spend a few days voting for a film to be pinned for a sub-wide discussion.

I've stickied many hundreds of films over the years because of this, and indeed on every wide-eyed, high octane conspiracy imaginable. At the time I recognized the optics on pinning that film weren't the best, but it's a consequential conspiratorial film no matter what way you look at it, and I didn't feel it was my place to simply "decide" as a /r/conspiracy moderator that it didn't deserve its time in the sun to be simply discussed, especially since it was actually what was voted up by the community.

He also faced accusations of banning users for disagreeing with an anti-vax stance

The "source" for this is literally a google search for "axolotl_peyotl vax"...smh.

and trawling through user histories to find reasons to ban them.

This person is laughably incompetent if they're legitimately oblivious as to how moderating internet forums works.

If we see a user violating one of our rules, it's literally our job to check to see if they have a history of rule breaking on our sub. Does she think that every new comment made is a clean slate?

If you have dozens of rule violations, you get banned, and we have to go through your history to check. Reddit makes it easy too...comments that have been removed by mods in the past are red, so you can simply scroll down quickly through a user's history that's currently under review.

If a significant portion of their user page is RED, they've had a ton of recent rule violations and that's a very strong indicator they aren't operating in good faith.

Axolotl_Peyotl has also weighed in on his mod removal and suspension on conspiracies.win, another conspiracy-minded site he’s been pushing on Reddit for the past month.

I wasn't "pushing" it, I knew I was about to get fucked by the admins and I made sure to have a contingency plan in place, that everybody knew about it, and that it was publicly linked to me (and not an impostor).

Looks like getting conspiracies.win up and running when I did was a pretty darn smart thing to do.

(quoting me): “There's already considerable more freedom at conspiracies.win...like a breath of fresh air."

Amen and awomen!

However, others cheered Reddit’s actions

So that wasn't cheering. That was a well-coordinated, site-wide digital lynching, even by reddit's standards. It's still ongoing. In the many threads rejoicing at my ousting, you will find thousands of TOS violations directed against me, included calls to violence and to doxx me and my family.

In many ways what happened to me was a scaled-down version of what transpired with Trump literally the next day. As above, so below. They cut me off from communicating with my forum and prevented me from defending myself in the ensuing chaos, while the rabid masses cheered in their state-sanctioned 2 minutes hate.

saying the former head moderator had a documented penchant for banning those who disagreed with him

She actually cites a Top Minds of Reddit thread for this, one of the most notoriously toxic forums in the history of the internet, and that's not even hyperbole. What this claim fails to address is that the vast majority of accounts that I banned were all serial violators of the rules of our sub (or alt accounts evading their bans). In the many threads celebrating my removal, multiple users admitted I had banned "dozens" of their alt accounts, a clear violation of reddit's TOS and vindication of my efforts.

We have a really transparent process when it comes to bans. EVERY user banned is given an opportunity to appeal the action before the entire /r/conspiracy mod team. We frequently unban users who pledge to follow the rules of our forum...it's not a difficult process in the slightest.

The idea that I was solely responsible for whether or not people could speak on our forum is absurd on its face, and the fact that this "journalist" used TMOR as a source unironically is peak clown world journalism.

and elevating those who shared his often-extreme views.

Here she links a ridiculous article from a few years ago that I will address in another thread that essentially accuses me of being a Russian agent for not being convinced by Russiagate as a conspiracy theorist. They never forgave the conspiracy theorists for refusing to jump on board the "muh Russia" hysteria, so they went the "CT=domestic terrorist" route instead.

In a post on r/SubredditDrama sharing the news

Ah, so "sharing the news" means "hundreds of comments threatening and even calling for the user's arrest" now. I've lost track of the number of these unhinged individuals who claim to have "reported me to the authorities/FBI". FOR WHAT?!? These people...

She then quotes a random user on SubredditDrama, as if he was some sort of authority:

axolotl_peyotl was far right

Not true. In 2016 I was on record multiple times saying I would've supported Tulsi Gabbard over Trump. I was portrayed as "far right" like most conspiracy theorists in 2016 when I didn't immediately believe that Trump was in on some massive conspiracy with Russia.

I also was portrayed as "far right" because I had the audacity to allow right leaning opinions on /r/conspiracy as top mod. Apparently permitting speech equates with endorsing it. What happened to the notion of agreeing with someone's opinion but still defending their right to express it?

extreme pro-Trump

...see the above. I allowed pro-Trump content on /r/conspiracy and I questioned Russiagate. That's all it took to earn that label, apparently.

anti-vaxx

I'll admit I'm skeptical of most vaccines and at what age children receive them. I composed two megathreads called "The Skeptic's Guide to Vaccines" several years ago, but I included a disclaimer saying they were NOT meant as medical advice, and no where did I say you shouldn't get vaccinated at all. It's about being informed. I'm skeptical of the increasingly aggressive vaccine schedule, and I think the COVID vaccine is completely unnecessary, so if that makes me "anti-vaxx" then so be it.

anti-Semitic

Completely false. This is the same trap they lay for every conspiracy theorist that questions Israel...you're immediately labeled "anti-semitic." I barely even mention Israel these days because of it.

Six years ago, axolotl_peyotl took heat for stickying a pro-Hitler documentary to the top of the subreddit

Ah, the "Greatest Story Never Told" saga. Here's what actually happened: as /r/conspiracy mod, one of my projects was a weekly "featured documentary" where the community would spend a few days voting for a film to be pinned for a sub-wide discussion.

I've stickied many hundreds of films over the years because of this, and indeed on every wide-eyed, high octane conspiracy imaginable. At the time I recognized the optics on pinning that film weren't the best, but it's a consequential conspiratorial film no matter what way you look at it, and I didn't feel it was my place to simply "decide" as a /r/conspiracy moderator that it didn't deserve its time in the sun to be simply discussed, especially since it was actually what was voted up by the community.

He also faced accusations of banning users for disagreeing with an anti-vax stance

The "source" for this is literally a google search for "axolotl_peyotl vax"...smh.

and trawling through user histories to find reasons to ban them.

This person is laughably incompetent if they're legitimately oblivious as to how moderating internet forums works.

If we see a user violating one of our rules, it's literally our job to check their history to see if they have a history of rule breaking on our sub. Does this woman think that every new comment made is a clean slate?

If you have dozens of rule violations, you get banned, and we have to go through your history to check. Reddit makes it easy too...comments that have been removed by mods in the past are red, so you can simply scroll down quickly through a user's history that's currently under review.

If a significant portion of their user page is RED, they've had a ton of recent rule violations and that's a very strong indicator they aren't operating in good faith.

Axolotl_Peyotl has also weighed in on his mod removal and suspension on conspiracies.win, another conspiracy-minded site he’s been pushing on Reddit for the past month.

I wasn't "pushing" it, I knew I was about to get fucked by the admins and I made sure to have a contingency plan in place, that everybody knew about it, and that it was publicly linked to me (and not an impostor).

Looks like getting conspiracies.win up and running when I did was a pretty darn smart thing to do.

(quoting me): “There's already considerable more freedom at conspiracies.win...like a breath of fresh air."

Amen and awomen!

However, others cheered Reddit’s actions

So that wasn't cheering. That was a well-coordinated, site-wide digital lynching, even by reddit's standards. It's still ongoing. In the many threads rejoicing at my ousting, you will find thousands of TOS violations directed against me, included calls to violence and to doxx me and my family.

In many ways what happened to me was a scaled-down version of what transpired with Trump literally the next day. As above, so below. They cut me off from communicating with my forum and prevented me from defending myself in the ensuing chaos, while the rabid masses cheered in their state-sanctioned 2 minutes hate.

saying the former head moderator had a documented penchant for banning those who disagreed with him

She actually cites a Top Minds of Reddit thread for this, one of the most notoriously toxic forums in the history of the internet, and that's not even hyperbole. What this claim fails to address is that the vast majority of accounts that I banned were all serial violators of the rules of our sub (or alt accounts evading their bans). In the many threads celebrating my removal, multiple users admitted I had banned "dozens" of their alt accounts, a clear violation of reddit's TOS and vindication of my efforts.

We have a really transparent process when it comes to bans. EVERY user banned is given an opportunity to appeal the action before the entire /r/conspiracy mod team. We frequently unban users who pledge to follow the rules of our forum...it's not a difficult process in the slightest.

The idea that I was solely responsible for whether or not people could speak on our forum is absurd on its face, and the fact that this "journalist" used TMOR as a source unironically is peak clown world journalism.

and elevating those who shared his often-extreme views.

Here she links a ridiculous article from a few years ago that I will address in another thread that essentially accuses me of being a Russian agent for not being convinced by Russiagate as a conspiracy theorist. They never forgave the conspiracy theorists for refusing to jump on board the "muh Russia" hysteria, so they went the "CT=domestic terrorist" route instead.

In a post on r/SubredditDrama sharing the news

Ah, so "sharing the news" means "hundreds of comments threatening and even calling for the user's arrest" now. I've lost track of the number of these unhinged individuals who claim to have "reported me to the authorities/FBI". FOR WHAT?!? These people...

She then quotes a random user on SubredditDrama, as if he was some sort of authority:

axolotl_peyotl was far right

Not true. In 2016 I was on record multiple times saying I would've supported Tulsi Gabbard over Trump. I was portrayed as "far right" like most conspiracy theorists in 2016 when I didn't immediately believe that Trump was in on some massive conspiracy with Russia.

I also was portrayed as "far right" because I had the audacity to allow right leaning opinions on /r/conspiracy as top mod. Apparently permitting speech equates with endorsing it. What happened to the notion of agreeing with someone's opinion but still defending their right to express it?

extreme pro-Trump

...see the above. I allowed pro-Trump content on /r/conspiracy and I questioned Russiagate. That's all it took to earn that label, apparently.

anti-vaxx

I'll admit I'm skeptical of most vaccines and at what age children receive them. I composed two megathreads called "The Skeptic's Guide to Vaccines" several years ago, but I included a disclaimer saying they were NOT meant as medical advice, and no where did I say you shouldn't get vaccinated at all. It's about being informed. I'm skeptical of the increasingly aggressive vaccine schedule, and I think the COVID vaccine is completely unnecessary, so if that makes me "anti-vaxx" then so be it.

anti-Semitic

Completely false. This is the same trap they lay for every conspiracy theorist that questions Israel...you're immediately labeled "anti-semitic." I barely even mention Israel these days because of it.

Six years ago, axolotl_peyotl took heat for stickying a pro-Hitler documentary to the top of the subreddit

Ah, the "Greatest Story Never Told" saga. Here's what actually happened: as /r/conspiracy mod, one of my projects was a weekly "featured documentary" where the community would spend a few days voting for a film to be pinned for a sub-wide discussion.

I've stickied many hundreds of films over the years because of this, and indeed on every wide-eyed, high octane conspiracy imaginable. At the time I recognized the optics on pinning the that film weren't the best, but it's a consequential conspiratorial film no matter what way you look at it, and I didn't feel it was my place to simply "decide" as a /r/conspiracy moderator that it didn't deserve its time in the sun to be simply discussed, especially since it was actually what was voted up by the community.

He also faced accusations of banning users for disagreeing with an anti-vax stance

The "source" for this is literally a google search for "axolotl_peyotl vax"...smh.

and trawling through user histories to find reasons to ban them.

This person is laughably incompetent if they're legitimately oblivious as to how moderating internet forums works.

If we see a user violating one of our rules, it's literally our job to check their history to see if they have a history of rule breaking on our sub. Does this woman think that every new comment made is a clean slate?

If you have dozens of rule violations, you get banned, and we have to go through your history to check. Reddit makes it easy too...comments that have been removed by mods in the past are red, so you can simply scroll down quickly through a user's history that's currently under review.

If a significant portion of their user page is RED, they've had a ton of recent rule violations and that's a very strong indicator they aren't operating in good faith.

Axolotl_Peyotl has also weighed in on his mod removal and suspension on conspiracies.win, another conspiracy-minded site he’s been pushing on Reddit for the past month.

I wasn't "pushing" it, I knew I was about to get fucked by the admins and I made sure to have a contingency plan in place, that everybody knew about it, and that it was publicly linked to me (and not an impostor).

Looks like getting conspiracies.win up and running when I did was a pretty darn smart thing to do.

(quoting me): “There's already considerable more freedom at conspiracies.win...like a breath of fresh air."

Amen and awomen!

However, others cheered Reddit’s actions

So that wasn't cheering. That was a well-coordinated, site-wide digital lynching, even by reddit's standards. It's still ongoing. In the many threads rejoicing at my ousting, you will find thousands of TOS violations directed against me, included calls to violence and to doxx me and my family.

In many ways what happened to me was a scaled-down version of what transpired with Trump literally the next day. As above, so below. They cut me off from communicating with my forum and prevented me from defending myself in the ensuing chaos, while the rabid masses cheered in their state-sanctioned 2 minutes hate.

saying the former head moderator had a documented penchant for banning those who disagreed with him

She actually cites a Top Minds of Reddit thread for this, one of the most notoriously toxic forums in the history of the internet, and that's not ever hyperbole. What this claim fails to address is that the vast majority of accounts that I banned were all serial violators of the rules of our sub (or alt accounts evading their bans). In the many threads celebrating my removal, multiple users admitted I had banned "dozens" of their alt accounts, a clear violations of reddit's TOS and vindication for my efforts.

We have a really transparent process when it comes to bans. EVERY user banned is given an opportunity to appeal the action before the entire /r/conspiracy mod team. We frequently unban users who pledge to follow the rules of our forum...it's not a difficult process in the slightest.

The idea that I was solely responsible for whether or not people could speak on our forum is absurd on its face, and the fact that this "journalist" used TMOR as a source unironically is peak clown world journalism.

and elevating those who shared his often-extreme views.

Here she links a ridiculous article from a few years ago that I will address in another thread that essentially accuses me of being a Russian agent for not being convinced by Russiagate as a conspiracy theorist. They never forgave the conspiracy theorists for refusing to jump on board the "muh Russia" hysteria, so they went the "CT=domestic terrorist" route instead.

In a post on r/SubredditDrama sharing the news

Ah, so "sharing the news" means "hundreds of comments threatening and even calling for the user's arrest" now. I've lost track of the number of these unhinged individuals who claim to have "reported me to the authorities/FBI". FOR WHAT?!? These people...

She then quotes a random user on SubredditDrama, as if he was some sort of authority:

axolotl_peyotl was far right

Not true. In 2016 I was on record multiple times saying I would've supported Tulsi Gabbard over Trump. I was portrayed as "far right" like most conspiracy theorists in 2016 when I didn't immediately believe that Trump was in on some massive conspiracy with Russia.

I also was portrayed as "far right" because I had the audacity to allow right leaning opinions on /r/conspiracy as top mod. Apparently permitting speech equates with endorsing it. What happened to the notion of agreeing with someone's opinion but still defending their right to express it?

extreme pro-Trump

...see the above. I allowed pro-Trump content on /r/conspiracy and I questioned Russiagate. That's all it took to earn that label, apparently.

anti-vaxx

I'll admit I'm skeptical of most vaccines and at what age children receive them. I composed two megathreads called "The Skeptic's Guide to Vaccines" several years ago, but I included a disclaimer saying they were NOT meant as medical advice, and no where did I say you shouldn't get vaccinated at all. It's about being informed. I'm skeptical of the increasingly aggressive vaccine schedule, and I think the COVID vaccine is completely unnecessary, so if that makes me "anti-vaxx" then so be it.

anti-Semitic

Completely false. This is the same trap they lay for every conspiracy theorist that questions Israel...you're immediately labeled "anti-semitic." I barely even mention Israel these days because of it.

Six years ago, axolotl_peyotl took heat for stickying a pro-Hitler documentary to the top of the subreddit

Ah, the "Greatest Story Never Told" saga. Here's what actually happened: as /r/conspiracy mod, one of my projects was a weekly "featured documentary" where the community would spend a few days voting for a film to be pinned for a sub-wide discussion.

I've stickied many hundreds of films over the years because of this, and indeed on every wide-eyed, high octane conspiracy imaginable. At the time I recognized the optics on pinning the that film weren't the best, but it's a consequential conspiratorial film no matter what way you look at it, and I didn't feel it was my place to simply "decide" as a /r/conspiracy moderator that it didn't deserve its time in the sun to be simply discussed, especially since it was actually what was voted up by the community.

He also faced accusations of banning users for disagreeing with an anti-vax stance

The "source" for this is literally a google search for "axolotl_peyotl vax"...smh.

and trawling through user histories to find reasons to ban them.

This person is laughably incompetent if they're legitimately oblivious as to how moderating internet forums works.

If we see a user violating one of our rules, it's literally our job to check their history to see if they have a history of rule breaking on our sub. Does this woman think that every new comment made is a clean slate?

If you have dozens of rule violations, you get banned, and we have to go through your history to check. Reddit makes it easy too...comments that have been removed by mods in the past are red, so you can simply scroll down quickly through a user's history that's currently under review.

If a significant portion of their user page is RED, they've had a ton of recent rule violations and that's a very strong indicator they aren't operating in good faith.

Axolotl_Peyotl has also weighed in on his mod removal and suspension on conspiracies.win, another conspiracy-minded site he’s been pushing on Reddit for the past month.

I wasn't "pushing" it, I knew I was about to get fucked by the admins and I made sure to have a contingency plan in place, that everybody knew about it, and that it was publicly linked to me (and not an impostor).

Looks like getting conspiracies.win up and running when I did was a pretty darn smart thing to do.

(quoting me): “There's already considerable more freedom at conspiracies.win...like a breath of fresh air."

Amen and awomen!