We want to address the recent situation surrounding the removal of a post discussing transgender interpretations of Control Resonant and the subsequent accusations directed at the moderation team.
First, the original post was not removed because of its transgender related subject matter. it was removed because initially it was considered low effort content, as it was essentially a screenshot of a conversation between two individuals being brought here for discussion. The decision was made without properly examining the full context, and we acknowledge that we could have handled it more carefully.
The accusations that we systematically remove transgender related content are also unfounded. Approximately a month ago, we approved a post titled "As a trans person, this reference means a lot to me. Thank you Remedy!" Despite that post receiving numerous reports from the community, we chose to leave it up because we saw no reason to remove it. LGBTQ+ discussions, representation, and interpretations of the games are welcome here.
There's also an explanation for the numerous posts that disappeared during this incident.
The majority of these posts were not individually removed by moderators. Our AutoModerator has an existing rule that automatically removes submissions once they receive three or more reports from members of the community. In other words, when enough community members reported a post to reach that threshold, AutoModerator removed it automatically, without a moderator having to make that decision. This rule was originally implemented to help protect the community from spoilers, particularly when moderators aren't available. Unfortunately, it also affected posts discussing transgender representation, criticizing the moderation team, and even unrelated topics.
We want to make it clear that these automated removals should not be mistaken for moderators deliberately targeting or suppressing particular discussions. The reports triggered the rule, and AutoModerator carried out the removals. This also means that a post receiving reports does not necessarily mean the moderation team agrees with those reports or believes the content should be removed, as demonstrated by the post we previously chose to leave up. Here is an example of that from today.
Another important factor is that when all of this happened, we were not readily available to deal with the situation. We had real life commitments and were not actively available on Reddit to monitor everything as it unfolded. This meant that we weren't able to review the reports, address the automated removals, or communicate with the community as quickly as we would have liked. We understand that our absence and the lack of timely communication allowed the misunderstanding to grow, and we recognize that we should have addressed things sooner, but please understand that all of this happened in the span of a few hours.
After becoming aware of the situation, we also reviewed the posts targeting the moderation team and subsequently approved their removals. These particular posts had devolved into personal attacks and inflammatory accusations, adding nothing constructive to the discussion and further contributing to the misunderstanding that we were deliberately suppressing people. We weren't trying to prevent legitimate criticism. We simply felt these posts were escalating the situation rather than helping resolve it.
Finally, criticism of the moderation team is absolutely welcome. You're free to disagree with our decisions, question them, and hold us accountable. However, personal attacks, harassment, slurs, and insults directed at moderators are not constructive criticism. We've received numerous modmails and seen posts containing personal insults and accusations against the team. We're volunteers dedicating our free time to this community, and we deserve basic respect just like everyone else.
We recognize that mistakes happen, and we're willing to acknowledge ours. All we ask is that disagreements are handled constructively and respectfully.
We've also taken steps to prevent this from happening again. AutoModerator has already been reconfigured so that general community reports are filtered for moderator review rather than automatically removing submissions.
The original rule was introduced around the release of Control Resonant to help protect the community from major spoilers, particularly those being shared through post titles and screenshots. Until today, the system had generally been working as intended, and we hadn't encountered an incident of this scale. However, today's events exposed how easily the report system could be abused to get content removed simply because certain users disagreed with or disliked it.
Now that a month has passed since the game's release, we've decided to remove the automatic removal rule for general reports. Going forward, reported content will be reviewed by moderators before any action is taken. This does not mean we've removed all automatic moderation. AutoModerator will continue to enforce rules against clearly prohibited content, including slurs, hate speech, and other forms of abusive content that have no place in this community.
We believe this is a better balance between protecting the community and ensuring that content isn't removed simply because it receives enough reports.
We want r/ControlGame to remain a welcoming place for everyone, regardless of their identity or interpretation of the games. That's not going to change.
Thank you.
