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Comment by vincengomes | Hacker News Reader

Usually, Subreddits are created by fans of the service. This is the first time I'm noticing a complete corporate subreddit. All the moderators are the staff of PIA. [1]

It will be interesting to see how much they accept criticisms on the subreddit about PIA.

1. https://old.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/about/moderat...

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The Go language subreddit had been modded by Google employees. They lost interest and decided to shut it down and there was a bunch of hubbub. In the end they thankfully decided to give the subreddit to the community.

Google capriciously shut something down?!

It's not that uncommon. The stadia subreddit mods are all Google employees as well, for example. I agree it's not an ideal setup.

I seem to recall the "League of Legends" subreddit having a meltdown when its mods were found to be simply compromised by the company, rather than employed by it

Reddit was not happy with the r/Blizzard mods during the blitzchung thing.

Redditors are basically never happy with anything. Their ideal world is some place with no rules except that everyone else is forced to read their comments. Unfortunately, such a place does not exist.

Most forums on the internet are like that and it’s not exactly unexpected because people who care about writing something in an Internet forum will also be pedantic about what they want. This forum is no exception (you can pretty much see this in action whenever electron is mentioned)

Many people try to reduce complex multi-variate situations into simple variable situations and then lambast people on other forums if their chosen variable turns out to be different.

I just saw an example of this last week in mobilereads forum. Unhappy with iBooks and the kindle apps I’ve been reliant on Marvin for quite a time. But the dev has vanished from the scene for last 2 years. I just investigated if creating a commercial replacement would be a good idea but good god, the one forum where people have been talking about Marvin can have extremely ultra specific needs for a very unreasonable price expectation. After reading that forum I’m not exactly surprised that the dev chose to abandon the goal post.

I don't really have a problem with it when anybody can create /r/stadia2 and do a better job.

It's technically against the Reddiquette:

  Please Don't

  ...

  Take moderation positions in a community where your profession, employment, or biases 
  could pose a direct conflict of interest to the neutral and user driven nature of reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette

Something to add though, it's informal.

> Reddiquette is an informal expression of the values of many redditors, as written by redditors themselve

But I guess it makes sense for Reddit to move away from that rule. That's how you get big campaigns with companies like Adobe. Not by taking away their sub-reddits.

Personally I think I even prefer that though. Better than having heavily biased "community moderators", which is the case in way too many sub-reddits.

Happens a few times. For the Endless Space/Legends series of games, we made their community manager a mod (they are essentially running the subs, but don’t have founder status and technically we could intervene if they behave in questionable way). It usually depends on who created the sub. Some of them are set up as official channels, others are community-run but with good relationship with the company (an example for the latter would be the paradox subreddits, they are independent but have a good relationship with Paradox).

The Peloton subreddit is full of non-disclosed astroturfing accounts.

What are they astroturfing? TdF vs Giro? Contaminated beefs? Caliper vs disk brakes?

Edit: or are you talking about something else than r/peloton?

> Contaminated beefs

I’m not that into cycling, what’s this about?

Alberto Contador initially won Tour de France in 2010, but tested positive for traces of clenbuterol. He blamed it on meat he had been eating. It has become a meme in cycling circles.

They may mean r/pelotoncycle, which is for the in-home exercise bike.

Whether critical or loving, we really appreciate any and all feedback from our users and the community. We accept all criticism with open arms and, furthermore, will not be censoring our subreddit as that would undermine free speech - the very thing we are fighting for.

I thought that was against Site Rules? To have employees be the mod's

It's tolerated but advised against as far as I know.

the /r/pfSense subreddit also has a bunch of Netgate staff as moderators

r/bitcoin was taken over by Blockstream corporation and it's heavily moderated.

Open discussion of Bitcoin is at r/btc. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/9lfjrb/frequently_aske...

This is an outright lie.

In fact, r/btc is controlled by for-profit entity (bitcoin,com which has little to nothing to do with Bitcoin the project) and has advertisements blasted all over the subreddit page.

It is the furthest thing from a lie and can be verified by anyone who wants to try posting to both subreddits. Anyone can also go to a site that shows deleted comments and see the discussions that get deleted on /r/bitcoin.

The point is no one even remotely involved with Blockstream is in a moderator position in r/bitcoin.

This is in contrast to r/btc, which is absolutely indisputably run by Bitcoin,com (the business) employees.

That's an obvious lie, people payed by blockstream directly or indirectly have been in control of the sub for years, deleting any thread or comment that contradicts the narrative they want to push.

The difference between my claims and yours is I challenge readers to validate the claims themselves instead of taking my word for it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21614951

This is a well worn topic and I think you know that. Surely you realize that anyone can google bockstream takeover on reddit, but are counting on people not doing research.

https://old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7eszwk/links_related_t...

https://old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/bjysut/ueragmus_works_...

https://old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7h0isc/the_story_how_h...

"Heavily moderated" does it a huge disservice. The narrative is controlled, with any dissenting opinions removed and accounts banned. The sub is completely censored, see for example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/83vgdm/a_collection_of...

https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete-histor...

https://www.trustnodes.com/2019/05/01/the-cryptocurrency-sub...

https://www.reddit.com/r/noncensored_bitcoin/comments/7414nf...

That, of course, has nothing to do with Blockstream.

Except that all Blockstream projects are not only allowed, but promoted on r/bitcoin. If the subs own rules were followed they should be banned.

For example how Liquid, a centralized sidechain that goes against the idea of cryptocurrencies, is promoted as a "solution" to many of Bitcoins problems. But any critique of it is banned.

It's obvious that the mods are somehow associated with Blockstream. Only a Blockstream employee such as yourself would disagree.

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