Janicide horror stories: Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after 14 years

Meet Lemmy user @vaprz, one of the hundreds of jannies caught in the Night of the Long Mop of 2023. This is his story

They did not provide a reason. There was no further dialog. I just got a system message telling me I was removed.

I was also silmultaniously shadow banned from Reddit and my posts and comments stopped showing up. I had created a post complaining about being removed as the moderator (the only moderator for over a decade) of a sub that I built from the ground up and donated literally thousands of volunteer hours to over the last 14 years. It had zero upvotes or downvotes or comments and was not visible as an anon user.

A friendly reminder that they do it for free.

In the end, I decided to rip the bandaid off and killed my 16.5 year account. I was one of the early supporters of Reddit (user #7758) and had left Digg for good in May of 2007 after the AAC controversy. They showed their authoritarian side in that moment and I knew Digg had reached their high water mark.

Reddit is at that moment now. They won’t be dead tomorrow. They won’t be dead next week. However, it will also never be the same, and it’s only downhill from here.

Much like Digg. Much like Myspace. I am sure there will be a blurb a few years from now as an addendum in some business journal how Reddit sold to a third party for an undisclosed sum and some Skittles…

"It won't be dead next month either. Maybe in a year. Or two. But it WILL eventually fall! And I will be checking for that every single day of my life. And when it does, I will have the last laugh! Alone. And no one will remember this event or associate me with it in any kind of capacity. But I WILL THINK ABOUT IT and about HOW I WON!"

The future is the Fediverse and I’m glad I was forced to remove my Reddit crutch and dive in full force.

Edit 1: The messages are starting to come in faster than I can reply. Thanks for all the well wishes!

Edit 2: I’ll also add, that I was never going to re-open the sub because I knew Reddit wasn’t going to yield. Thus, I was prepared for the outcome. I did hope to string them along for a bit longer and waste resources, but you can’t win them all..

Using one of media's oldest tropes in the book, our hero decides to stay behind and sacrifice himself, hoping to buy the rebels some more minutes to escape Evil Lair with the McGuffin. We should hold this brave fallen jannie in our thoughts, as he managed to... waste resources?

Lemmythread doesn't really have any dramarific comments apart from the normal seethe level expected. Enter The Reddit:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14e3n07/removed_as_moderator_of_rcelebrities_after_14/?sort=controversial

PROTEST WITH NSFW is the way, Fill every sub with porn

The coomlet brain just can't process any kind of information withouth adding a layer of porn to it.

If they are purging resistance mods and putting in corporate sympathizers, then this is not a long term strategy. They will start forbidding NSFW posts on the big subs. They will ban users that are doing things to thumb their noses at Reddit’s taskmasters.

The only hard leverage Redditors have are their clicks, comments, and posts. So the only long term strategy is to leave the platform, nuke your posts and comments, and delete your account.

I know...

It's like ... they own the website or something.

Man... this will be done in 2 weeks. New mods, maybe not power tripping ones... Apollo guys should delete so 1st of July it should be quiet.

Man... you can't go inside someone house and protest to make their walls green.

After that act surprised when they call the cops to get you out.

You own your account and what you posted on it. Anything else... it's just an illusion.

W-w-what???

But also, a good dose of mocking and belittling. All properly downvoted, ofc

Gee, sucks getting treated like one of us "normies" doesn't it? I wonder how many people you did the same shit to in your 14 years of modding. Just banning people for your own pleasure and not telling them why. And then when they ask you mute them.

Welcome to real life, butthole.

Relieved of your internet janitor duties, now go do something useful

It sucks this happened to you but I really don’t feel much sympathy as your “thousands of labour hours”. It was your decision to do this for Reddit for free and you should have never done it in the first place.

You should be happy.

I mean…they said they would do this if people didn’t comply, and they are more than within their rights to force open subreddits as they please.

I’m still pretty confused as to why anyone genuinely believes that this protest and malicious compliance is going to effect Reddit in any meaningful way outside of them just forcing a vice onto the entire site

I don't have anthing witty to finish this post with. I should go to sleep. Sorry for bad formatting