I covered some of the turmoil recently, that moderators of the Technology section of social news site Reddit were blocking specific topics, and that the community of people subscribed and submitting stories to the subReddit were unaware of the ban on certain words and terms. This came to a head when it was discovered (via a snarky moderator message) that all posts related to Tesla Motors had secretly been banned.
Late yesterday it was leaked that r/Technology would no longer be a default subReddit. It’s an important distinction for the community. Default status means that every person who signs up a new account automatically gets subscribed to a number of communities. It pretty much guarantees that the community will remain popular as all new members are more likely to encounter it. At the time of this writing, r/Technology had over 5 million subscribers.
Popularity might actually be the kiss of death for some of these subs. As Reddit’s work force is largely volunteer, communities which get too large can be difficult to manage, and there is always the fear that a few people at the top of the moderator list could be co-opted by an outside party looking to profit off of a community. r/Technology now joins r/Politics and r/Atheism on the list of former defaults which crumbled.
Reddit user Doctor_McKay posted a timeline on the r/Technology scandal. What remains to be seen is if another technology community will rise to take their place on the list of defaults.