Archive.org links for the relevant content:
The original call to address vaccine misinformation
The Admin post this post is in response to
This is what the post says:
Response to Yesterday’s Admin Post
Yesterday, over a thousand communities on Reddit made posts to their subreddits, calling for Reddit to take action against harmful misinformation on their site. These posts collectively gathered hundreds of thousands of upvotes, with users showing their support in the comments, and several large media outlets picking it up. Subsequently the admins posted a response to /r/Announcements, in which they stated that this misinformation would be allowed on their site, and that they will continue to action communities that violate their sitewide rules, including encouraging fake vaccine cards & “encouraging harm”. They finished the announcement with a thinly veiled threat of punishing moderators who have participated in this protest, if it continues. The post was immediately locked, making it impossible to directly respond to.
This statement from the admins is hypocritical, dishonest, and misrepresentative of the situation on their site. They are portraying the misinformation as simply discussion that criticises the majority opinion, when it is far more than that: It is discussion that actively advises against government guidelines, opting to follow disproven studies and anecdotal evidence. As stated in our original letter, this type of misinformation is dangerous. The admins are pretending like it is not. As redditors, we should come together against this harmful propaganda.
Reddit’s CEO /u/spez is claiming that the admins will take action on communities that “encourage harm”, while allowing subreddits that advocate not taking an FDA-approved vaccine in favor of taking unapproved drugs, the effects of which have not been studied. Most notably is Ivermectin, a drug used to treat parasites and that the FDA has explicitly advised against using for Covid is often recommended by antivaxx subreddits, most notably r/Ivermectin. This type of misinformation is actively endangering people. The admins are simply sticking their head in the sand, and refusing to take any responsibility for the damage that their inaction is causing.
Until Reddit takes action, we will continue to speak out against subreddits which exist solely to spread medical disinformation.
This is no different to any previous ‘incidents’. As long as it doesn’t affect the revenue stream or draw too much attention from external media, they don’t care. And when it does attract attention, they carry out only performative action to stop the noise.
With all the paedophilia/‘lolita’ [retch] subs, they only jumped into action when Anderson Cooper lifted the rock and shone a light on it and even then all they did was throw 1 specific guy under the bus.
With a recent incident of people pointing out that all the top subs were moderated by the same 5 mods, there was no way they could perform their tasks adequately and that it was because those account were being run by teams of marketeers. Those mods were doing stuff like removing posts by people that were gaining traction then re-posting them under the mod account. They were also hyping posts by obvious astroturfing accounts & removing comments pointing this out.
All the admins did was remove threads, block a sub called /r/fuckthe5mods and ban peoples accounts who were most vocal about it.
Reddit has got away for much longer what caused Digg to collapse almost overnight