Open letter to Roger Ver re: shadowbanning transparency on Reddit

[freetrader]

Hi Roger,

I recently read the article "Roger Ver speaks out against /r/Bitcoin censorship". Thanks for your stance against censorship.

I don't know if you are aware of the recent shadowbanning of a Reddit user (/u/satoshisbitcoin) who posted information in /r/btc and /r/cryptocurrency about a full fork of Bitcoin he was preparing. He quotes the censored post here:

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-col ... post-17078

It is unknown what supposed Reddit rule was violated by the user's two posts.

I am hoping that someone with your media profile might be able to ask the Reddit admins to look into how it came about that the user in question was shadowbanned. In other words, elicit some transparency.

I submit that you may also want take a particular interest in this case, since the post was highly Bitcoin-topical, and your subreddit /r/btc was affected by the Reddit admins' actions.

Thank you in advance,
freetrader

UPDATE: I also note that I respect your advocacy work on Bitcoin and liberty issues very much, and I am not trying to put you in a spot in this issue, as the circumstance that this affected an /r/btc poster is in no way your responsibility (or that of the /r/btc moderators) and you're not obligated to assist. I would completely understand.

[freetrader]

A fact I also wish to add to the discussion (in case someone hasn't read the bitco.in thread on this subject):

This reddit user was a new account, using TOR.

It has been reported by others that they have been shadowbanned when using TOR, but this does not seem to be a consistent policy on Reddit's part. In fact, I could also not locate a specific TOR-related policy on Reddit which would indicate that a shadowban would be warranted on that basis.

So an argument could be made that, because the user was only shadow-banned for a short time, this is not really worrying.
But I find it more worrying that a user never learns WHY their account was shadow-banned, esp. when it was a new account posting information in topical subreddits (it's not like he posted to /r/cows).

Even if the account was classified as sockpuppet based on voting behavior or otherwise, I think the transparency should be there to inform about it. Otherwise the door is opened to censorship through arbitrary temp-banning at convenient times.

[rogerver]

I've personally already given up on /r/Bitcoin after having my own, very relevant posts censored.
The final straw was when they banned my own article on Bigger Blocks: https://news.bitcoin.com/bigger-blocks- ... n-bitcoin/

Everyone else who is upset with the nonsense from /r/Bitcoin is welcome on /r/BTC, this forum, or Bitco.in's forum as well.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I took out a paid reddit ad on one of Theymos's other subs and as soon as it started to run every thread I tried to start on /r/bitcoin was immediately deleted or didn't appear for hours after posting. He didn't want the models advertising on /r/girlsgonebitcoin so I bought an ad for the site to get around that and I guess this was the only way he could retaliate.