Here's HeyMoon's post if you prefer to read that (contains more details about the drama)
(Reposting in case kiwifarms goes down permanently) (edited for clarity) @X (formerly chiobu)_
A reddit admin was caught abusing her position to set her tile cooldown to zero (note: cooldown is 5 minutes and 20 minutes for email verified and unverified users respectively) in order to erase an Orange Cat (A) that was previously posted by Reddit on twitter. (A)
This cartoon cat was the creation of Anton Dimitriev, a Ukrainian artist who is currently living in Kharkiv that is besieged by the Russian military as we speak.
His art station: https://www.artstation.com/mine_flood (A)
His deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/anton-d/gallery (A)
In addition, reddit permanently banned everyone who placed a tile in that area or tried to change her tiles to repair the Orange Cat. Merely placing pixels near the cat resulted in a personal ban, resulting in the bannings of users from /r/AnarchyChess as their subreddit logo bordered the Orange Cat.
People who tried asking about their bans had their posts removed as well
https://old.reddit.com/r/place/comments/tukjit/why_was_my_account_shadowbanned_after_placing_a/ (A)
Reddit went a step further and manually gigabanned the accounts so that whenever you try to visit an account banned for placing a tile - you get this page. (this is the ban crystalvulpine was talking about when he said he received the ChuckSpears treatment)
Example of an account chucked by the admins - they last posted yesterday proving it is a real account. As you can see, this was an active and real account that was not only banned, but deleted (the sub he posted in has now gone private, so this is an archive).
2nd example - proof (A)
Other people caught on, resulting in posts calling it out that reached the front page. Initially the admins tried to do damage control by setting a filter on /r/place to automatically remove any post that mentions the cheating or the Orange Cat that was overwritten. Another reddit admin responded (A) saying admins have been cheating to "keep the canvas safe for everyone," a laughably poor excuse considering they didn't interfere with people drawing peepeees, the 4Chan logo, or swastikas over the German flag.
. Look at the writeup request to see what we're missing or simply make a post about anything important that happened.
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Getting an account shadowbanned or suspended is relatively normal. The gigaban ChuckSpears treatment is when they not only IP ban you and ban any new accounts you make on sight, but on top of that they also change your password so you can't even log into the banned account. Trying to reset it doesn't work either, you'll either not get the email or the link will expire immediately. https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1iefrx/it_appears_chuckspears_rners_mod_was_dunked_by/
Apparently this did happen to the people on /r/place, and considering that's only the 9th time in reddit history they've ever chucked someone /u/Chtorrr must've been PISSED.
Also, that account is not deleted. "Page not found" means it either never existed or is shadowbanned. If it had been deleted it would say "This user has deleted their account". They rarely use shadowbans on non-bots anymore because of suspensions, and when they do it usually means they removed everything that account ever posted or commented. There used to be a bug where this would make their account say "This community has been banned" because it would ban their profile subreddit, which actually happened to my /u/NotAVulptex account. So the fact that they shadowbanned those accounts instead of giving them a permanent suspension is worrying.
Edit: the "deleted" account you were talking about is suspended, not shadowbanned. It may indeed be deleted, but the owner probably deleted it after getting permanently suspended, not the admins. That happens all the time. All indefinitely banned accounts have that "This account has been suspended" page, it doesn't mean they were chucked. That's only happened 9 times:
/u/ChuckSpears
/u/Laurelis-Hygiene
/u/puck_marin
/u/KamensGhost
/u/go1dfish
/u/CrystalVulpine
Every mod and invited mod for /r/RedditHasCancer
/u/vu1ptex (me, again) and /u/Obama_Brigade (although this time our alts were password locked and not our main accounts)
Everyone who placed pixels near the rdrama logo in /r/place
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That degree finally paying off
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