One of the worst aspects of modern culture is that many people have gotten used to living only in their own media bubbles. Any differing opinion must be wrong and all information from outside our own echo-chamber is automatically labeled FUD, Russian propaganda or #FakeNews. Sadly, some in the bitcoin community not only do this but also resort to unethical behavior to hurt free discussion they disagree with in other forums. Such is the case of r/btc being targeted by someone who can’t handle competing ideas.
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r/btc Mod Hacked
Reddit administrators have confirmed users’ complaints about a compromised r/btc mod account. Whoever took over the account redirected the forum’s stylesheet to point to /r/bitcoin, messed around with the configurations to automatically remove all new posts, and made numerous childish changes to the subreddit’s style and layout. The matter has been resolved and the offending account was deleted.
One reason that someone has decided to attack r/btc in this way is that the forum is rapidly gaining momentum. Only two weeks ago we reported that the subreddit reached 100,000 subscribers for the first time, and today it is already acceding 125,000 participants.
Continued Censorship on r/Bitcoin
While the hack is important to try and clear out in public, if you wanted to discuss this incident on the largest cryptocurrency forum on Reddit, r/Bitcoin, you might not be able to so. The moderators of the subreddit have begun locking and deleting references to the hack, effectively trying to shut down the discussion.
Such censorship is, of course, nothing new to anyone keeping an eye on the behavior at r/Bitcoin. A recent exposé showed that it is a standard practice for the subreddit, with mods routinely trying to skew the free flow of information in order to manipulate what users are allowed to see and say. The main point of disagreement these days, and the issue they most want to suppress, is bitcoin cash and anything related to it.
For the time being this approach appears to be backfiring as more and more people are joining r/btc to be free of censorship.
Have you experienced any censorship on r/Bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.
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