Reddit is a social news aggregator and forum that is used to share content among various users. The Reddit subgroup r/electronics has experienced recent changes in policy enforcement and moderation. how to gain more followers article will discuss the current state and future potentials of censorship and moderation on r/electronics.

> I made a [...] post [...] to [...] Reddit 
I think I found the root-cause of your problem.

I totally agree with the comments here, the mods on r/electronics are way too heavy handed. Moderation on reddit can be ridiculous.

I've been on that subreddit for a long time and I try to answer what questions I can and help people out. At some point I found out that I had been shadowbanned because I posted to a different subreddit and a moderator sent me a message that my post wouldn't make it through because of the ban. Shadowbanning doesn't tell a user anything or give any indication at all, it just makes it so that your posts don't actually get posted, although they look like they do to yourself.

I had to contact several reddit admins until one finally responded to me and looked into the ban. It turns out I had been flagged by some anti-spam system when I posted a link somewhere and had been shadowbanned automatically. The admin unbanned me, but it's still an incredibly frustrating experience. All that effort that I spent to carefully answer people's questions and provide references was wasted, I had no idea that people couldn't see my posts.

I'm getting so sick of power hungry people, especially on the internet. I got blocked a few times for things and couldn't even figure out why. I even asked the moderators and never got a legitimate response. I've started spending more time here instead. There are a few subreddits I still enjoy, like the leather working and some of the niche craft ones. I've been seeing a lot of this pattern lately where the bigger a group pf humans gets, the lower the quality of almost all aspects of life. Like drivers in a big city or subreddits.

I've actually unsubscribed from that subreddit entirely as well. I used to make 30 second clips of a project I was working on, post a several paragraph description of what I was building in the comments, and then at the end say "For more, check out the full video here" and post a link to the full video on Youtube. Despite some of these post getting 500+ upvotes, the moderators felt that because I linked to my Youtube in the comments I was crossing the line into self-promotion. I got put onto a no-post list and every post I made, regardless of content or comments was immediately deleted by the auto-moderator. No explanation, no warnings, just instant soft-ban. It's quite sad really as there are a lot of smart people over there, but the moderators have made it inaccessible for me.

Here's an example of the type of posts I would make: https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/j1x2bs/building_or_nor_nand_and_out_of_vacuum_tubes_in/

649 upvotes, 61 comments, excellent discussion and engagement with the community, but I can no longer make posts like this because they are self-promotion.

That's particularly frustrating. I've run into similar issues myself. I have given up entirely on posting to most subreddits, as the rule lists seem to go on forever.

That's some good content too! Did you end up posting them anywhere else?

Under-moderation of course can cause issues, so I fully understand why moderators are absolutely necessary. However, over-moderation, as Mario stated, can drive out any innovation or interesting content, resulting in a group that devolves into the same rut of memes and "what resistor is this" posts. It's truly a shame as it's a massive turn-off for the younger crowd or those just getting into electronics. Then again, this is nothing new. Look at any established community and if there isn't clean and clear moderation, it always degenerates into the old-guard looking down upon and deriding the up and comers.

Thanks for the compliment on the content! Unfortunately, it takes the better part of half of a day to make the 30 second clip and write out the description. To put that much effort into a post and then have the moderators just write it off "self-promotion" was... dis-heartening. So, I figured it would just be better to spend that energy elsewhere, and gave up on making the 30 second clips.