Jason King, a well known Bitcoin enthusiast, has been in the Bandwagon since the early days of the cryptocurrency. He had joined
“the most popular subreddit because it was the coolest place to hang out.”
However, after years of being with the community, moderating the subreddit, he was finally removed. He says it is not the place it used to be most of the content it is now censored.
In an interview on the Humans of Bitcoin podcast, King talked about the early days of the community and how it’s growing toxicity made him realize that it was not the same place he joined all those years ago. He recalled decisions about the content control that he didn’t agree with how it was becoming more of a propaganda-ish community rather than honest discussions.
When he was a part of the community in the early days, he enjoyed to be a part of it, and he was elated when he was made a moderator. He said that in those days, even when there were disagreements between members, there were no hard feelings. All of them wished each other well.
An authoritarian lead moderator:
King also said that being with the moderators, he constantly that maybe the owner of Bitcoin was manipulating the community by modding bad content and overriding. Especially when the discussion about bigger blocks started, he saw the strong sentiments from the lead moderator, Theymos.
He says that Theymos control the community and other such communities were not just a few, but hundreds of discussions are deleted to stop people from talking something they didn’t want to hear. King expressed his unhappiness with how things turned and how it is still being controlled.
The concerns that come with it:
If what King says is true, then there’s an active community of people who are not being all the information and keeping them in the dark to make. This raises serious concerns as people of the community to have the right to know what must be known because why else they would be there? This controlled release of content offers a serious threat to open thought and discourses which helps in making things better.
If there are no discussions, how would the communities come together to solve problems in terms of crisis? Bitcoin, being a cryptocurrency, should be the least to be a part of some centralized censored release of data because obviously, it’s a decentralized currency itself. Uncensored information is as much needed today as is decentralized currency and only through such discussions, we could help shape a better tomorrow.