Yeah, me too. The pattern of people relentlessly dogpiling on FS that he was terrible, in conjunction with the fact that he was active at removing propaganda from his communities, was very sad to me. If his inactivity is connected to the fact that people were constantly insulting and harassing him, that would make perfect sense. And now here is a post which is attacking Jordan, not for any of the various objectively terrible moderation decisions which he’s come out at various points to defend, but because he removed some propaganda.

I have seen the end-stage of a gradual community takeover multiple times on reddit, where a group of bad actors (either corporate-friendly or with a particular political goal) eventually manage to take over a subreddit and run it exactly how they want. That kind of pattern is honestly part of why I am so against Jordan’s “well the mods set the rules so fuck your opinion” attitude as pertains to moderation, even if I don’t really get the read that he is malicious in any way.

I have no idea if this particular instance of pointing some abuse at Jordan because he came out against some propaganda is a piece of a community “takeover” by mods who are quieter and more malicious (or even if the harassment of Squid had anything to do with a pattern like that.) But if it did, that would make good sense. I definitely have noticed one moderator of LW communities who consistently makes pro-propaganda decisions, and they’re super quiet about their reasoning and decisions, letting people like Jordan come more to the front to speak to the community about them.