Throughout the history of reddit, the primary mechanism for curtailing abuse by those in positions of trust on the platform (mods/admins) has primarily focused on public discussion of on-site issues such as censorship and payola.

Examples of this phenomena from the early days of reddit include Saydrah, Solinvictous, and Cinsere (three heavily influential moderators who were found to have various conflicts of interest, thus sparking community outrage and their eventual replacement).

Although the form of the corruption that each of the above named mods engaged in were quite different, the pattern was the same insofar as they all were brought in front of the community and shamed for their actions in a very public way accessible to all users of reddit (logged-in and logged-out alike).

Within the past few years, the reddit admins have silently gone about segregating the userbase of reddit in such a way to prevent just that kind of oversight from occurring.

For those unaware, the way reddit is presented changes when one is logged-in with an account versus when one views the site logged-out simply by going to reddit.com. The main way for a logged-in user to see popular submissions from "all" subreddits is to view reddit.com/r/all, a collection of popular submissions from across every subreddit (subreddits do have the option to delist themselves from /r/all should they choose). Reddit ceo spez has said in the past that daily visits to /r/all account for roughly 4% of reddit's total traffic.

However, /r/all is not the default sorting page for those who view the site from a logged-out account (which, if the above 4% statistic is to be beloved, thus represents the largest share of reddit's daily traffic). For logged-out users, it is actually /r/popular which is presented as the default landing page (to ward off any confusion, for many years the set of subreddit submissions presented to a logged out user was called the "default" front page. this has changed recently, as the site has switched to a new model using /r/popular).

The differences between what subreddits are allowed to have a presence on /r/popular (which is seen by a majority of reddit's daily traffic) and those subreddits allowed on /r/all (only 4% of reddit's daily traffic) is how subtle mechanisms of control can be exerted by those who run the website, in order to specifically thwart community oversight of those moderators whose subreddits are allowed to be on /r/popular.

While every subreddit on the site can theoretically reach /r/all should a post become popular enough (*as a side note, there is some debate as to whether the sorting algorithm for /r/all favors or disfavors certain subreddits based on ideological grounds, but that is a discussions for another time), only subreddits with the blessing of the reddit administrators may reach /r/popular.

Is it is a standing testament to the subtle mechanisms of control on reddit that this post would not be welcome on any subreddit that is included in the /r/popular listings, thus relegating it to, at a maximum, exposure to only 4% of reddit's daily traffic.

Furthermore, those subreddits which do gain the ascent of the administrators, and are thus included in /r/popular, are given special standing with regards to slack access to the site administrators. This thus creates a structural mechanisms of reinforcement, whereby the moderators within that select circle of "/r/popular approved subreddits" encourage the administrators to reduce the public visibility of oversight-posts related to corruption, and the administrators of reddit, in turn, can speak to the moderators of those large, logged-out user facing, subreddits with only a moments notice should there need to be a removal related to "corporate forces".

One can see why fiasco such as the "Fuck Sears" incident, in the early days of the sites history, have incentivized the administrators of reddit to reduce community oversight of nefarious corporate influence over select groups of moderators, as there exists far more corporate pressure on reddit's administrative structure than perhaps one would imagine.

It is perhaps no surprise, in light of this seemingly insurmountable structural barrier to community oversight of moderators close to the site's administrators, that the site's chairman, Alexis Ohanian, runs a social media consulting firm called "Antique Jetpack", and has, according to documents obtained by wikileaks, offered his "social media consulting services" to Startfor in the past.. it should be noted that the documents also suggest that former reddit general manager Erik Martin is a partner in the firm, and was involved in the introductory meetings with Stratfor.

Alexis (who goes by the username /u/kn0thing -aka, "you. know. nothing"), was interviewed by Luke Rudowski of WeAreChange regarding the Startfor email leak at SXSW a few years back (/r/conspiracy even gets a shout out in the video) wherein Alexis explains his desire to do "social media consulting" for startfor was because "they provide good coverage of the Balkans region", however Alexis' demeanor and tone, imo, are a bit hostile in nature.

Although the complexity of the picture painted here is no doubt evident, that very structural camouflage is perhaps the best example of the ruthless efficacy of a system designed to move silently, strike constantly, and facilitate a subtle shaping of a community's hexis in a way that would make even Edward Bernays fawn.

What we have seen unfold on reddit, in more ways than simply those outlined in this explication, is the fine-tuning of a system of soft power unlike any which has ever been seen in the history of modern information dissemination; what was once the dream of a beautiful boy seeking to engender the free exchange of information has now become a near totalitarian structure of control, which treats information as social/civic/economic/and political capitol in order to further the ends of a small group of monied factions.

Perhaps the parallels from the idealistic dream of a now dead founder collapsing into a system of nepotistically riddled pay for play schemes of control are relevant to more than just the 4th largest website in the United States, and in this way, much like our fledgling Union, perhaps there are indeed some brave, lightening-in-a-bottle, individuals capable of righting a ship clearly sailing far off course.

Now that I think about it, there was once a reddit CEO who compared the inner workings of the platform (and thus the way in which the battle over control of information unfolded) to the mechanisms of a Republic. Perhaps he wasn't so far off after all.

Thanks for reading, and apologies that this got a bit long; I wanted to ensure I covered the context of how the segregation of /r/all and /r/popular effects how information flows on the platform.