Late Wednesday, all human moderators of Reddit’s r/art subreddit quit en masse, leaving the 30-million-member community locked and bot-run with no new posts allowed. The trigger was Clay’s ban under Rule 9, which strictly prohibits any mention of sales, commissions, or prints to keep focus on art critique. Clay shared screenshots of the curt mod response and his locked view of the pinned resignation notice, calling it absurd while selling prints of the moment. The episode exposed ongoing frustrations in online art communities over rigid rules and moderator decisions.

  • Auster@thebrainbin.org
    1·
    2 months ago

    I’m out of the loop. Reddit’s global rules prohibit sales? If that’s the case, it’s weird to say this, but even Facebook is more reasonable. Sales aren’t illegal in most places of the world, and in an user-fed website, I’d expect at least some to be interested in doing sales.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      2 months ago

      Reddit has a weird obsession with wanting original content, but hate self promotion or any attempts to monetize. Except for porn, apparently that can be promoted.

    • DundasStation@lemmy.ca
      2·
      2 months ago

      I don’t think Reddit’s global rules prohibit sales. Otherwise, all the porn subreddits promoting OnlyFans would’ve been nuked. /r/art’s own rules prohibit sales, as seen here:

      IMHO, this rule is a bit extreme but it isn’t without reason. Without this rule, the subreddit would be flooded with people trying to sell art. Selling art isn’t a problem, but if the entire subreddit is just people trying to sell their own artwork, then the community will just turn into FB Marketplace. And I would imagine the users wouldn’t like that.

      The issue isn’t the rule. The issue is that the mods are powertripping assholes who just outright banned the dude and purged his entire post history on /r/art.