Reddit BTC moderator “Jratcliff63367” officially resigned from the subreddit due to its dysfunctional operations and limited discussions. In his official statement, Jratcliff stated emphasized the censorship on both the Bitcoin subreddit and BTC subreddit, expressing his concerns over two of the largest bitcoin discussion communities.
For a long period of time, the Bitcoin subreddit operated by main moderator Theymos has been the most successful and popular bitcoin community. It still faciliates some of the most important and collaborative discussions with developers, users, businesses and enthusiasts.
However, as Jratcliff notes, the Bitcoin subreddit began to receive harsh criticisms from non-Bitcoin Core supporters for being censorship-heavy. Theymos along with his other moderators of the Bitcoin subreddit was accused of eliminating any pertinent discussions in regards to Bitcoin Unlimited or alternative solutions other than the technologies being developed by Bitcoin Core.
Logically, the reasoning of Theymos and the rest of the Bitcoin subreddit moderators in censoring non-Bitcoin Core discussions can be justified, as the current Bitcoin network is overseen by the Bitcoin Core development team and with the codes the team has written over the past few years.
Arguments of Ver and Others
However, for bitcoin to evolve, bitcoin investors including Ver believes a group of developers or experts need to receive baton to continue the development of bitcoin, the same way bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto passed on his vision to his successors.
Bitcoin Unlimited supporters, as well as many miners, firmly believe that the censorship of Bitcoin Unlimited and non-Bitcoin Core solutions doesn’t necessarily benefit the long-term health and development of bitcoin. In fact, they seem to believe that granting one development team the monopoly over a bitcoin network is stalling the development of bitcoin.
Evidently, if Bitcoin Unlimited developers and supporters want to force a hard fork in order to place Bitcoin Unlimited on top of the bitcoin protocol, they can simply initiate a hard fork. No organization or individual can stop Bitcoin Unlimited supports from executing a hard fork. Currently, they simply don’t have the support from miners to do so and that is what the Bitcoin subreddit moderators are emphasizing.
Censorship in BTC Subreddit?
Jratcliff specifically mentioned in his statement that the BTC subreddit, despite what it was structured to be, is no longer a platform wherein users freely discuss various solutions, events and activties within the bitcoin industry. As Coinbase Director of Engineering and Litecoin creator Charlie Lee states:
“Sadly, /r/btc is becoming a cesspool. It’s basically a Core/Blockstream/SegWit-bashing, BU-praising echo chamber. /r/bitcoin is much better.”
Former /r/btc moderator Jratcliff offered a similar insight to Lee, stating “Today, I find the /r/btc community to be highly dysfunctional. It is not operating as an open and engaging discussion for all things bitcoin. It has become something else.” He adds that users including himself can’t share off-chain scaling solutions on /r/btc due to the community’s ignorance to off-chain scaling.
“I no longer think that increasing the on-chain blocksize by any amount will accomplish much of anything. I have a lot of views on this topic. And I have tried to share them both here as well as /r/bitcoin and other forums such as ‘Let’s Talk Bitcoin’. I can no longer share them on /r/btc because any post or comment I make immediately receives dozens of downvotes and is hidden from view.” explained Jratcliff.”
To summarize, both subreddits are censoring discussions and promoting Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited respectively. Thus, it is dishonest and unfair for any of the moderators of the two subreddits to claim censorship and attempt to appeal themselves to the community as victims.
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