So back when Coronavirus was first blowing up people started to notice that the main corona subs (/r/china_flu, /r/coronavirus, and /r/covid19) as well as some of the minor ones and disease related subs like /r/epidemics that weren't explicitly corona-related were all being run by one guy whose account only dated back to January and who had only one non corona related post: CLO_Junkie. CLO systematically banned people posting 'alarmist' content, conspiracies, and criticism of the mod team. Eventually alternative subs were made, the most important being /r/wuhan_flu and these were immediately attacked by CLO and his team. /r/wuhan_flu was quarantined three days after it was created with no explanation given to the owners and CLO was caught trying to ban their discord as well. It looked like this was just going to continue until the virus ran its course but then the leak happened.

The following leak was originally posted by Alan_Krumwiede and all the work involved besides my copying it was his. Original post here

First off, a little bit about me. This alt account is less than a month old. I made it to have a designated Coronavirus account with a fitting name. After just 6 days of posting I was added to the China_Flu mod team with limited permissions and after 10 days I was on the Coronavirus mod team. After 20 days I was invited to join the exclusive senior mod Discord channel where we coordinated high level subreddit activities and CLO_Junkie would talk about other mods behind their back.

Now back to the topic at hand.

As CLO_Junkie once said, "Mind the human."

With that in mind let's take a closer look at CLO_Junkie as a human and not just the "CCP shill mod" they're accused of being:

Here's a video of CLO_Junkie that they posted to reddit ~19 days ago. | Archive

CLO_Junkie can be seen on the right discussing 'Reddit as a p2p health information exchange forum' with another reddit mod.

CLO_Junkie would regularly lie to users without any issue. As Relik explains here, CLO_Junkie lied about how they "rarely ban people" themself. The truth was that CLO_Junkie would mass ban users they disagreed with and then go brag about it on Discord.

Here's a screenshot of the time CLO_Junkie joked about quarantining fellow mod DeadlyKitt, who is one of the nicest people I've come accross on reddit.

Here's a screenshot of the time CLO_Junkie was abusive towards another mod Kimmey12. CLO_Junkie would remove mod permissions if anyone they disagreed with stepped out of line. Here's a screenshot of CLO_Junkie in the senior mod discord saying Kimmey has been a PITA since they joined. Sorry Kimmey.

Here's a screenshot of CLO_Junkie describing their hunt for the leaker with -Ph03niX-.

Here's a screenshot of CLO_Junkie being a hypocrite and telling other mods not to post memes on China_Flu and then posting a meme themself under their alt account 'DesertAlt'.

Here's a screenshot of CLO_Junkie talking about using feedback threads as a way to attract dissenters and perma ban them since "there is no place for them here. Ideally, ban them in both subreddits."

Here's a screenshot of CLO_Junkie getting frustrated that they can't double ban users from both Coronavirus and China_Flu for a rule violation in one subreddit. Another one.

After I leaked the mod logs a few days ago CLO_Junkie spent a large portion of their time hunting down the possible leaker. Instead of just taking the time to reflect on why the logs were leaked they simply wanted to silence all opposition on the mod team the same way they've done on reddit. Even when CLO_Junkie was starting to consider the idea of public mod logs they decided to bring -Ph03niX- on board. Since -Ph03niX- is a terrible person and a power mod of hundreds of subreddits, including TopMindsOfReddit and AgainstHateSubreddits, they persuaded CLO_Junkie to not release the logs and continue the censorship without user oversight.

Finally I'll finish by saying I'm not exempt from any blame. I talked badly about the anti-subreddits and the free speech fanatics. I censored a lot of posts and comments. I stood by silently as CLO_Junkie hunted down and banned innocent mods. Most of these were necessary evils in order to expose some of the mod abuse occuring behind the scenes.

Here are the automoderator configs for China_Flu and Coronavirus at the time of my departure if you're curious what words, websites, and subreddits are being filtered.

To all the other mods reading this, speak up next time. Quit the bullshit and make the mod logs public.

Shout-out to a few of my favorite members: SecretAgentIceBat, DNAhelicase, kimmey12, barber5, pat000pat, BurrShotFirst1804, FlyingDutchman1337, DeadlyKitt4, and Shrine.

Appologies to justcool393, king_of_the_ayleids, Meepo69, and any other mods that were hunted by CLO_Junkie because of their tech experience and previous posting history.

Alan Krumwiede signing off.

OP here again. So in the aftermath of the leak the subs that CLO controlled went to shit. Mods were banning anyone who even brought up the leaks or CLO's behavior, never mind linking to it (you still get banned for that). Eventually this and this happened. CLO_Junkie wiped his account and stepped down on all his subs but one and the other mods suddenly pretended not to have known anything about his behavior, ignoring calls for public modmail, banning CLO, and oversight of their discord. I haven't been able to confirm this bit but allegedly a bunch of new mods got added out of nowhere so it's been speculated that CLO is still active under one or more alts. The AHS/TopMinds powermod that Alan mentions in the leak also showed to defend censorship and the hounding of whistleblowers who leak abuse of mod priveleges. The only real change so far is that you're allowed to link to subs that CLO and his crew had deemed unreliable, which was banned before. Other than that it remains to be seen what if any actual steps are going to be taken to make the sub transparent and it's still not entirely clear what CLO's deal was.