API access aside, reddit has other extremely serious problems. The head of the fish began to rot severely a couple of years ago when mods were directed to purge undesirables from the platform.

I personally had a 10 year old account permanently banned for a joke in a literal comedy subreddit that a mod did not like. Not a racist joke, or a homophobic joke, or a sexist joke…just a joke that they did not care for.

That account had contributed hundreds of long-form posts and well researched comments to my interest groups over the years and it was banned with zero genuine recourse to get it back.

I will not be returning to that platform because it is too risky. Literally years of research, editing and content creation up in smoke because a single mod didn’t like what I had to say in an unrelated community. The way that moderation is run on reddit has become insane.

The fediverse and lemmy need to address this issue now whilst the platform is in its infancy and decide where they stand, and how communities will be moderated.

From my own perspective I believe people have a right to moderate their own community as they see fit, but there should not be any such thing as a sitewide permanent ban for any reason at all - and mods should think twice about permanent banning people from any community.

If you exclude ‘undesirables’ from the conversation, you deny the opportunity for discourse. You deny the opportunity to prove them wrong with evidence, and you shunt them into echo chambers where their bad ideas can prosper and be amplified by like-minded individuals. It’s the most unproductive and childish way to handle anything.

I guess what I’m saying is, I am extremely pro free-speech and if I get the slightest wiff that this isn’t the place for me or that single individuals are being empowered to control the discourse on any given topic then I’m gone from here too.