Some of you who've read my posts/tweets in the past may know I'm no stranger to getting harrassed by reddit mods, but for Hayden Clay they took it to another level.
It started out with Hayden sharing his work on the /r/art sureddit, a commenter had asked for more information about a particular artwork to which Hayden had mentioned that he has a whole mini-series surrounding it and that it's also available in print. Implying available for purchase to anyone interested. Bear in mind, this was in the comment section with a different reddit user being the one asking for more information. Apparently, this triggered some reddit mod because they're very strict on self-promotion in that subreddit, so the simple word "print" triggered a subreddit ban on Hayden, meaning he won't be able to post there ever again. Quite brutal if you ask me, usually you'd maybe give the person a warning or only delete the post, not straight up ban the user completely, but maybe the mod was having a bad day so Hayden decided to ask the moderation team:
Wow. I mean, I've had similar confrontations with mods, but this one took it quite far. Deleting all post history is quite a big deal in terms of SEO, one of the few ways people sharing their work on reddit could potentially benefit from it long term.
In the end the mod also reported him for harassment, which usually entails a 3 day Reddit-wide ban for the user, something that happened to me as well. Similar to my actions to appealing the ban, Hayden was unfortunately not as lucky as the Reddit admin sided with the moderator - i.e. they agreed that the direct messages above constituted "harassment".
Hayden turned to Twitter and the tweet rightfully blew up:
This caused a lot of people on Reddit to start posting in the subreddit, protesting the ban and causing moderators to have to work overtime to start banning and muting people. I guess at some point it became too much and they decided to... quit?
After some time, Reddit decided to re-instate the subreddit with 20 new moderators. They also promised to look over the history of bans and see if they were justified or if the team of previous moderators, with potential affiliations to admins, had overstepped their boundaries on more occasions.
Turns out, they had, A LOT:
Okay, so without making this too much about Hive, I wanted to point out a few differences between this part of Reddit and Hive communities.
When post/author mutes happen here, they're stored publicly on the blockchain, so other readers can see when these mutes occur and usual conversations between moderator and author happen publicly. This gives others the option to look over what made the decision of a mute take place to ensure it wasn't a moderator overstepping their role. This also gives people a track history of certain moderators past mutes to see if there's a history of "bad decisions". Lastly, communities on Hive are just numbers, meaning there can be 100 "Art" communities called Art, it's about the subscriber count and activity, so if some moderators are misbehaving, artists can choose to stop sharing in that community and make another one the popular one.
Anyway, I'm glad this occurred, powertrippy moderators are not uncommon on Reddit unfortunately. I know artists like @hiddenblade who've been close to receiving bans on /r/art for sharing their work there cause of the moderators which has lead to countless artists deciding not to share their work there. While I do believe that it's good they added new moderators, these are problems that are not going to go away since the problem is the at the root of it. Unpaid moderators who usually aren't appreciated and almost at no point gain anything from a subreddit/community growing along with their well done work.
Power is the only thing left for them to get anything out of.
It's probably a much bigger issue than I can put into words here, but don't wanna make the post too long. Instead, I'd like to showcase some of Hayden's work with his permission to write this post and give this hero some credit for making a big change for the better for artists on one of the biggest art-related communites on the internet.
Let's start with the one that started this whole banning frenzy:
Clear Boundaries VIII
https://haydenclay.shop/products/clear-boundaries-viii
I'll add some of my favorites I found on his website
H.O.A.
Clear Boundaries
Nosy Neighbor
Which seems to have a great title, given how someone had straight up copied without giving him any credit or mention 🙄
There's a lot of great ones under the suburbs section, along with videos that I can't share here so I recommend checking them out:
https://www.haydenclay.com/suburbs
Here's also his Twitter account, make sure to give him a follow!
I'll be liquidating the rewards from this post and sending Hayden all of them, so give him some love with your upvotes, maybe I'll mange to convince him to check out Hive and share his work here as well! :D
It's a good thing that social media itself will help to expose jerks like that and make them accountable for their actions. I don't know what their problem is but i really don't see any reason to erase all of that dude's data. That's just power hungry mods exhibiting absolute trash behaviour.
I was also banned from some reddit communities before without any reason. When I ask them why they don't even bother replying so I comment less and browse more on reddit these days.
I was never a fan of reddit. I've had people tell me that r/saintsrow banned them for critcizing the reboot when it first came out.
I was also banned off of the r/canada subreddit because they were complaining about the freedom convoy protest and I responded asking what they're opinion was with all the BLM rioting that was happening, and if they were fine with that they should really be keeping their mouths shut.
I think a lot of mods, like in this case, just go power hungry. They think because they are a mod of a subreddit they're some big shit, when in reality they're nothing more than insecure babies.
I saw some gossip about a mass mod resignation on Reddit, but I never really looked into the story. This kind of pervasive power abuse is news to me, but not surprising. I never really felt like Reddit or Twitter scratched my itch for a social media platform anyway. Aside from Facebook by necessity and some specialized forums, Steemit/Hive was the only one where I found any traction. Best of luck to Hayden now that the issue is getting resolved, but I also hope he does join us.
I personally see subreddits as online magazines - each has their own policy. I don't take it personally when they delete. But sometimes they cross all red lines of sanity, like this screenshot I found in r/Anarcho_Capitalism:
The guy said nothing about supporting Trump but was banned for expressing a point that wasn't aligned with the Democratic Party's agenda. In political subreddits, like many liberal political subs, r/socialism or r/Republican, they openly say if you express an opinion against their agenda, you are banned. But this screenshot is about banning in r/comics! Loved this "This subreddit is for patriots only", lol - so totalitarian!
Muting posts on Hive can sometimes be more harmful than deleting ones on Reddit - because you aren't allowed to post the same post on Hive again, while you can post a deleted Reddit post again on Reddit. Sad to see "This post was muted" instead of your post on your blog, you might share with friends, sad to know that some of your followers might wonder if you are a spammer or "what actually has happened?" Many curators will ignore a muted post so you lose a part of the author's rewards as well.
For example, a post by @haastrecht:
https://peakd.com/hive-178708/@haastrecht/oscar-niemeyer-international-cultural-center
Maybe he should've tagged @aplusd rather than the community account, I know I for instance wouldn't pay attention to any of my community account's tags. Maybe the post was just ignored after the mute and not looked back on by moderators, either way. These issues still happen here, but we can at least see the post and the author not being certain about why he got muted and in respect us not being able to understand why either which means we can talk about it and bring it up. Whereas on reddit it would just be hidden and unless that user has a large following on Twitter or manages to somehow make noise about it elsewhere, it'd go unnoticed.
Even mij coments in the post were muted, so someone needts to read that before they do that right?
not if they muted the account rather than the post itself
Thank you for sharing this. Sad that it happend, I did put some effort in there.
If you look a bit closer, that community's mod accounts haven't posted/commented in half a year, they're powering down/have powered down most stake, I don't think people should consider it an active and moderated community anymore.
Thanks acidyo for sharing.
On hive our mute is better, we can always redirect to it and fight our case in comment section and make noise about it. Unless community not able to seeing it.
Abuse of power is such a common thing. I first experiences it with certain bus drivers. One came running towards the bus, 20m away, waving - but they closed the doors anyway and drove off.
Internet and anonymity makes that behavior even easier. It's a shame, really, but unfortunately part of what humans are. The checks and balances that I perceive here on Hive are a lot stronger, but not perfect either. And others perceive that very differently, as a certain muted spammer proves.
They are everywhere, I have given up on Reddit, not a place for me.
Being a moderator can be a thankless task. I am sure many of them try to do it well, but some will abuse that power. Obviously we have our own issues on Hive, but we have some freedom. Communities need moderation, but anything goes for general posts.
oh woah... that is CRAZY... that is like chopping someones head off of saying they are going to "steal a look at the bread" or something. Talk about an over-reaction with significant cascading effects. wow!
thanks for sharing
Fear of those places where someone can banish you without knowing why or without a chance to defend yourself. Sometimes you do something unintentionally and they don't even give you a hint about what it was so you don't do it again... to err is human and we can learn from our mistakes.
This is all so unfair, I don't like Reddit, they're too exclusive, they've banned all my accounts and I gave up. Every account I created got banned, and they never told me why. It's unfair.
Rest of the mods did not leave voluntarily but got booted by the mod that crashed out to make it seem like the other mods are in his side then delete 15 years of his reddit history, which is actually more pathetic.
Dang, is that what actually happened or are you guessing?
This is what one of the previous mods had to say.
Ah thanks for the insight, didn't see that!
That seems a good chance to onboard him 🤣
Mods on reddit often ban without a warning, I must have collected 20-30 bans along the way, I never broke any rule and when asking for a reason I get no answer... It's just a lost battle discuss with mods there, at least he achieved a overall win
This is as bad as bad can possibly get. Some of the mods are so aggressive I have to say, sometimes before sharing a post on Reddit, I panic a little bit. The rudeness can get to another level, as if I'm stealing their blood. Really sorry for such a treatment.
Imagine the number of bots liked this post. Is this good to have these many bots on chain?
no fees leads to people wanting to automate their accounts
That's how you get meaningless posts or spams (to be more specific)
stake is all that matters, most of the votes probably provide no value
Power can do funny things to people.
Yep, Reddit is read only now for me. Way too toxic of an environment for me to interact with.
Some people are power hungry, and the minute they get it, overstepping boundaries is assured. I'm happy the way the way this particular issue relating to Hayden exposed how the moderators have been dealing with people all this while. Imagine a large number of 5156 bans in just 2025, and only 63 had valid reasons to be banned?
This shows that most people can't handle power. They get intoxicated by it.
My support for the artist is great, I love the "nosy neighbor" image.
This type of censorship is absurd; it seems to be orchestrated by the dictatorship in my country.
It's difficult when your freedom of expression is restricted. I think it's very commendable of you to do this to support this user, and I hope this user's great talent can be brought to Hive.
NGL, I've seen similar energy from some whales here. Good thing they can't fully ban folks here.
Classic reddit. I mainly read there as most mods in any given group are unreasonable. It seems like the worst personalities end up running the show no matter what
I think the absence of clear communication and transparency in moderation makes the problem worse, thus it is essential for communities to implement improved practices.
I feel like we have seen similar things here on HIVE. People having knee jerk reactions and going on power trips. It's present everywhere I am afraid.
It’s unbelievable that something so unfair could happen! I’m giving an upvote to show my support for this artist.
appreciate it, will post an update when I've sent him the rewards!
I won't read the reset 'cause I'll just get mighty pissed off
You can tell HadClay that he obviously has something important to say.
Artists and writer4s are the first to get shut down in a Mad AI driven Censorship Apocalypse.
My daughter was buried on Google, and has been harassed by ai ever since, because she called Kavannagh, Trump and the boys out so... I'm very proud of her!
And Now I'm off to find @haydclay (who doesnt' come up as a Hive user - I do hope we are not still using external search engines p.s. DuckDuckGo is same same as Google, and so was the so-called FOSS Browser I checked on, so we need our own search engine with no ai involved or external influence involcved = for more accurate results on Hive
p.s. went to visit his site and luff him already
"Liddle boxes, Liddle boxes" :D
I’m not judging. I’m just observing loudly.
are you just AI'ing all your activity? :(
Wow oooo, this is a fantastic job very well done 👍.