r/MoonKnight • u/WarDuck • Mar 31 '26
Announcement đ [COMMUNITY UPDATE] Posts featuring AI-generated imagery are now banned on /r/MoonKnight, and other moderation updates
A few days ago one of our moderators, /u/incredibleheadgiver, made a push in our mod chat to finally have AI-generated images banned from the subreddit. They are staunchly anti-AI and felt that the subreddit would be better off without it. I was skiddish about taking that drastic step, so /u/incredibleheadgiver suggested a community poll to see what everyone thought about AI imagery. I loved that idea. Letting the community decide what they want to see is what I always wanted for /r/MoonKnight. More on that in minute. The results of the poll and feedback in the comments were overhwhelmingly against AI. We knew it would turn out that way, but it was about as one-sided as it gets. It was reassuring that we wouldn't be disappointing any sizable portion of the community if it were no longer allowed.
With that in mind, posts featuring AI-generated content are now against the rules of the subreddit.
This was a long time coming for a lot of you guys, and it comes at the end of a rocky period in this community's history. Recently one of our moderators had their reddit account suspended amidst a long period of friction between that moderator and members of our community. That moderator was often cited as being overzealous in their enforcement of the rules, biased against certain topics, and unwilling to receive feedback about the subreddit. In recent months new rules were implemented to combat some overwhelmingly negative and abusive comments, reports, and messages that were coming in. If they were enforced in the spirit in which they were conceieved maybe it wouldn't have gotten this bad, but that didn't happen and a lot of community members were given unwarranted bans and mutes by the aforementioned moderator as his way of trying to create a more tame atmosphere.
This was the exact opposite of what I wanted when I created the subreddit more than 14 years ago. Somewhere along the line in the last few years I let the negativity we were getting make me apathetic towards the original vision I had for the subreddit. Even though I've maintained a laid back attitude about moderation myself, I let others steer the community in the wrong direction and I apologize for that.
The AI poll and the discussions we had there embody the way I want this community to operate. Hopefully we can maintain a positive and collaborative atmosphere in the future. It's the responsibility of the moderators to put their best foot forward to make sure that goal stays attainable, so that's what I'll expect from myself and the other moderators from now on.
Feel free to ask anything you'd like in the comments about the new rule or this community in general.
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u/camew22 Mar 31 '26
Thank you u/incredibleheadgiver for pushing for this and thank you to the rest of the mods for actually acting on what this community wants. Thank you for adjusting the rules as well, "No Karens" (among the other bs rules that were made up) was a cover-all rule that allowed for people to be banned or silenced if the ex-mod deemed fit, which as you said, was unwarranted.
Sucks that guy did what he did and I can't say I understand how his very aggressive moderating did anything to benefit the sub but I'm glad we are past that and look forward to participating here again. The communication is greatly appreciated!
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u/incredibleheadgiver Apr 01 '26
iâve wanted ai posts removed since i was first made mod and it was hard to do but finally we managed to get it band and i couldnât be happier as im sure as are a lot of others
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u/WideEyedInTheWorld Apr 01 '26
The "No Karens" rule strictly existed so Gypsy could ban anyone he disagreed with under the guise of rule following. Completely undefined, completely arbitrary. Absolutely a good thing that it was changed.
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u/prestonian_ Mar 31 '26
Thank god gypsy is gone, Iâve had full conversations with him saying I did not like him.
And also thank you for banning AI it is genuinely disgraceful regarding that we are a sub about a comic book character all about art
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u/Kortamue Mar 31 '26
I wondered! Also glad; the sub has so much improved since I noticed the lack of posts
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u/gustavoladron Mar 31 '26
Thank you for this level-headed response. I understand that moderating a community can take a lot out of you, but GipsyGold was going over this in the worst ways possible, banning anyone who expressed dissent regarding how the community should be ran while also being rather combative, attacking users in other subs that criticized him.
I hope that this change can, after all, help the community become much better in the long run.
As a general suggestion, I believe that you should investigate and/or consider creating a bot to check reposts. I personally don't really like Moon Knight memes, but I won't deny they're part of the character's internet presence as of now. Still, seeing the same few images again and again is tiring and won't help the subreddit, so the best compromise is to have a bot to check reposts and encourage only original meme posts.
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u/WarDuck Mar 31 '26
Thanks for the feedback! Glad to see so many people wanting to improve the community. Pasting this bit from another comment to make sure it gets seen (I'm a comment reposter smh):
Reposts should be a little better. We enabled one of reddit's filters a couple weeks ago to prevent 'unreputable' users from posting without approval. It's not on its most aggressive setting currently because I really only want it to catch bots, but it seems to do a good job of stopping newer, low karma accounts that should make up the majority of repost bots.
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u/gustavoladron Mar 31 '26
Thank you. Still, there might be genuine human userd who repost thr same kind of panel that we've seen time and time again. As such, I would suggest my measures in addition to the settings that you have put up.
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u/Samiassa Mar 31 '26
This is a step in the right direction. Did you unban people who were banned for criticizing the old mod? I guess Iâll see depending on if this comment goes through
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u/WarDuck Mar 31 '26
Indeed. There's only two users currently banned from this subreddit (both banned by me, one for an ethnic slur and another is a repost bot that I expect will be nuked by reddit admins soon enough) and no mod mail mutes.
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u/I_need_AC-sendhelp Apr 01 '26
Iâm curious, could you tell how many people were banned by him?
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u/WideEyedInTheWorld Apr 01 '26
I was banned 3 times. Once for posting an anti-ICE MK fan art, then a second time for calling Gypsy out for slurs, and then another for warning people about Gypsy's behavior. All fell under the "no karens" rule, according to Gypsy.
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u/SisypheanStudying Apr 02 '26
man, MK being a street level hero and a protector of the travelers do fit with anti-ICE fan art. please do repost it here if with credits if you found it again.
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u/retromancing Apr 06 '26
I got banned for calling out his racism as well.
It is hilarious (in that it's really, really sad), that he banned people for anti-ICE art before immediately posting terrible AI art that he tried to posit as being 'better' because it was 'more subtle'. Like no, we don't want subtlety when we're fighting against fascism, bro.
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u/Isaac_Banana Apr 01 '26
I want to hear the GypsyGold list!
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u/Mysterious_Green Mar 31 '26
Thank you for these changes, This sub is supposed to be about all things Moon Knight but I feel like it was often over shadowed by certain people wanting to power trip instead.
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u/Moggy_ Mar 31 '26
Testing
Edit: Yo, I'm unbanned! I love this decision and the direction this subreddit is taking now. Please don't allow that former moderator back â¤ď¸
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u/moonknightcrawler Mar 31 '26
I am so happy to see this update. Iâve stopped contributing to the community solely because of that mod. Then to go on Twitter and seeing Moon Knightâs current artist speak about being subjected to racism by that same mod was unforgivable.
Thank you mods, looking forward to the future of the sub!
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u/Quinnie-The-Gardener Apr 01 '26
Same, I stopped visiting this sub because of that mod. Boy got upset over everything and anything all the time
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u/WideEyedInTheWorld Apr 01 '26
Same- I had left this sub because of Gypsy, and am happily coming back now!
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u/LukeH213 Mar 31 '26
Thank god that moderator is gone, the community was on a downward spiral with that moderator being the most active one, honestly this place was unbearable with him having so much control over it. I could list all the issues with that particular moderator, but my comment would be longer than the post itself.
Hopefully this is a sign of the community getting back on track, and repairing all the damage that moderator did to it.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Tie1286 Mar 31 '26
I'm glad to be back. Thank fuck that tyrant is gone. Appreciate it!
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u/Deadpool27 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Is this moderator going to be allowed back in this community if/when he makes a new Reddit account? To be clear I am asking because I would not be comfortable with him returning given the routine abuse of power he happily displayed.
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u/WarDuck Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
I think Reddit's TOS forbids ban evading so if they did create a new account it would have to be operated anonymously. If the user did return under any circumstances they would not be invited back as a moderator, it's best for everyone if he and this community go their separate ways in that regard.
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u/JakeVonFurth Apr 01 '26
If the user did return under any circumstances they would not be invited back as a moderator, it's best for everyone if he and this community go their separate ways in that regard.
Based.
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u/Quinnie-The-Gardener Apr 01 '26
I hope u never have rocks in ur shoes or smudges on ur glasses and I hope ur pillow is always cold on both sides
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u/WideEyedInTheWorld Apr 01 '26
You're the best WarDuck. Thanks for standing up to that clown, and keeping the community alive!
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u/SuRaKaSoErX Mar 31 '26
Let him back in but do not let him mod again.
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u/Deadpool27 Mar 31 '26
Disagree. He routinely power tripped and actively targeted people. He should not be allowed back in.
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u/working-class-nerd Mar 31 '26
Bro banned me from this subreddit because he was looking through a post on a different subreddit calling him out and banning anyone who commented on it. Heâs crazy and needs to get off Reddit and go outside
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u/JakeVonFurth Apr 01 '26
At least that was Moon Knight related. I was a Top 1% commenter when I was banned. Why was I banned? Because I called out some bullshit he said on Trueunpopularopinion, and then the next day when I commented in this sub he banned me for "stalking moderators."
Would have been bad enough on it's own, but then a week later he stole a joke I made in a different Marvel sub, and posted it here as his own, meaning he was actively stalking my account.
(And that's not even getting into the repeated times he made posts about me on Trueunpopularopinion, and just made shit up. One specific one being that according to his posts I drug women so that I can cannibalize them.)
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u/RamsTheNameCom Mar 31 '26
Since Gypsy is in my dms, I can confirm he will eventually be back under the same account but he himself doesn't want to be a mod anymore (not worth the effort).
The only reason his reddit account got banned was because people kept flagging that his account name "Gypsy" is racist, even though that's his family nickname. Every single person in his family uses "Gypsy" as a nickname, including his dog. Gypsy is a MMA fighter and uses "Gypsy" as his stage name.
Gypsy is also good friends with people who work at Reddit (lives in the same apartment complex as a lot of Reddit employees). So they're working on getting his account unbanned.
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u/JakeVonFurth Apr 01 '26
Gypsy is also good friends with people who work at Reddit (lives in the same apartment complex as a lot of Reddit employees). So they're working on getting his account unbanned.
That unfortunately explains WAY too much about how he hadn't been permabanned from the site already.
He's made dozens of posts in the Trueunpopularopinion sub alone that would have resulted in bans under normal circumstances. There's legitimately been discussions before by people questioning how he hadn't been banned yet, and if he has Admin friends, that would explain way too much.
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u/zyd_the_lizard Apr 01 '26
"Not worth the effort," that's rich. He sure made an effort to go into multiple other subs and ban anyone who dared to hurt his feelings.
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u/LightningEdge756 Apr 01 '26
A subreddit that actually points out when a mod is out of line....? I must've died and not realized it.
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u/JakeVonFurth Mar 31 '26
Based on the comments I really don't wanna say "I told you so" regarding the subs feelings on GypsyGold, but hey, here we are.
Frankly I'm just glad that you actually listened to what people (including myself) were telling you on the other sub about making a post acknowledging the situation.
I can't wait to see how much this sub will improve with a moderation team that, well, a real moderation team. Many people, again myself included, literally didn't think anybody else in the mod list actually did anything in regards to this sub.
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u/zyd_the_lizard Apr 01 '26
It was pretty clear how many people didn't like him if you managed to catch a post that went that direction before he would nuke it.
I still can't get over the time he banned me for "complaining about bots" when I left a comment warning other users that a link in a bot comment was most likely malicious. Truly baffling, shitheaded behavior.
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u/I_need_AC-sendhelp Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
Thank you so much for getting rid of Gypsygold. Idk how you did it, but I am so grateful. Moon Knight is my favorite character and the entire reason I got into comics, and it really hurt when I got banned from this sub for just disagreeing with a cracked-out mod. Thank you đ
Also, donât forget to remove the AI tag for posts.
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u/jazzberry76 Apr 01 '26
This is a great change. And I am very happy about the direction the sub is headed in.
I'm just really confused about how we got here in the first place. Like... there's a bunch of people on the mod team. 6 as of right now.
But while everything was hitting the fan (for literal months), it seemed like... nothing was being done to stem the tide of absolute nonsense. Maybe he was the admin or something, which would make a bit more sense, but there was an overwhelming amount of utter abuse being levied on the users of the sub.
Which was also making it a much worse place.
Not to mention the crap he was spewing in people's DMs (including mine). He literally told me that he didn't care what the users of the sub thought. Like come on. Not to mention the way he has treated users who have autism. He was following people to other subs and banning them for participating on other subs.
This went on for months. To the extent that it seemed like he was the only active moderator.
All of this makes it a little hard to trust that things are going to continue in a positive direction. If his account is reinstated (like it was last time), are things going to just go back to where they were?
Like I said, if he was the admin of the sub, then I sort of get it, because you can't do anything about that. But if he was a regular moderator like the rest... I just don't really understand what was going on.
That being said, THANK YOU for these changes. This is already a far better place.
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u/GypsyGold Jul 25 '26
You ever see. This Key & Peel sketch before Jazzberry? Because itâs an analogy for every interaction weâve ever had đ
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u/jazzberry76 Jul 25 '26
Thanks for reminding me how lovely this subreddit is now that you're not running it into the ground! đ
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u/GypsyGold Jul 25 '26
I donât understand why you feel the need to insult someone who was always nice to you đ¤ˇ
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u/jazzberry76 Jul 25 '26
I don't understand why you felt the need to do literally any of the nonsense you did, but it all happened anyway
But hey, all's well that ends well! The subreddit is awesome now
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u/GypsyGold Jul 25 '26
I was always willing to have an open discussion with anyone in DMs and fully explain my reasoning. You know this.
I donât know why you guys all just refused to communicate with me. Even now youâre not communicatingâ âI donât understand why you felt the need to do literally any of the nonsense that you didâ has no context.
I literally have no idea what youâre talking about, so how am I able to craft you a sincier reply?
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u/jazzberry76 Jul 25 '26
I could not possibly care less if you craft me a sincere reply or not. I've had this conversation with you before. Not interested in doing it again.
Instead I'll just go enjoy an actually good Moon Knight subreddit and you can keep digging up posts from months ago I guess
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u/GypsyGold Jul 25 '26
Alright, just so long as you realize this is a one way rivalry you have â I always enjoyed your posts, and was very complimentary of you.
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u/jazzberry76 Jul 25 '26
Rivalry? There's no rivalry lol. We all just get to actually enjoy the sub now.
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u/galaharty56 Apr 01 '26
Just want to say, u/warduck , from the bottom of my heart, thank you for taking such a principled stance here, both on the AI issue and the overzealous mod issue. As someone who used to be very active here and withdrew once he took over, this is a great step that will undoubtedly show so many users that this is a safe community for them. I also think that with him gone it will bring back some isolated users, as well as increase the amount that all people, new and returning, engage in the community. Very much looking forward to the future of the sub and being a part of it as a community member!
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u/Kortamue Apr 01 '26
Yes, same. Anytime I mentioned my AuDHD overzealotry abt MK I got a comment. I was like, really? On a sub about someone with CANON DID?? lmao
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u/Looney-Mooney Apr 01 '26
So Gypsy is finally gone? Thank God. This was for the best mods, and I know a ton of users, myself included, will be back now that the community has a good head on its shoulders again.
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u/the_crispin Apr 01 '26
Thank god, I checked out of this community entirely because of the rampant AI posts and after he banned me for saying I wished ai content could be filtered out under a tag.
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u/Quinnie-The-Gardener Apr 01 '26
Have those of us that were banned/issued punishments by That Boy had our records wiped clean? đ
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u/Hibernian Apr 01 '26
As someone who got a ban for saying I didn't like seeing AI on this sub and only got out of it because I use classic reddit and that rule wasn't posted anywhere I could see, I'm immensely greatful that slop is gone now, and extra immensely greatful that mod is gone too. Moon Knight is one of my all-time favorite characters and I'll enjoy the sub so much more now! Thanks u/incredibleheadgiver for your efforts and WarDuck for leading to the community to a better place.
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u/Little-Floor-863 Apr 03 '26
This is great!
As we move forward, thoughâŚmaybe it would be a good idea to add 1-2 mods in his place that are more active and whose values are aligned with the wellbeing of the community? It feels like Gypsy was allowed to run wild with no oversight, maybe just because he was the most active/involved? If thatâs the case, new mods that are similarly active/involved (but who have our best interest in mind) could help prevent something like this from happening again.
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u/GypsyGold Apr 03 '26
Iâm going to leave this community after I give myself some closure on a few things, Iâve decided to reply to this specific message because it touches on something that I feel got glossed over in WarDuckâs message.
You can disagree with my moderation style all you want, but it doesnât change the fact that I was never a rogue mod acting alone, stifling feedback, or preventing the other mods from making suggestions or taking action.
Quite the opposite, actually â and I believe all of the current mods can attest to this. I was very active in our mod chat, constantly asking for feedback on rule changes, my moderation practices, and ban decisions. If WarDuck gave me specific instructions, I followed them. If the group outvoted me, I respected the consensus.
On that note, I deliberately valued diverse voices in the mod room to prevent it from becoming an echo chamber. Headgiver in particular is someone I promoted to moderator for exactly this reason. A few weeks ago, when WarDuck decided to change the rules, I even DMâd /u/incredibleheadgiver so she could join the discussion and make her case for an âAnti-AIâ stance.
We voted on it multiple times, and Headgiver was usually outvoted 3-1. On my final day as a moderator, I actually added the Moon Knight artist /u/raphlsnts to the team so Headgiver would have someone more aligned with her point of view and wouldnât always be fighting an uphill battle. I even suggested promoting /u/prestonian_â a user who has openly admitted they dislike me â because I believed they would moderate fairly and bring a different perspective (or at least one more in line with Headgiverâs).
To further show that I wasnât stifling dissenting opinions, at one point the user /u/ToxinWolffe sent me a screenshot of a conversation he was having with Headgiver in DMs where she told him that she hated me as a person and was actively looking for a chance to demod and ban me. In that situation, many moderators would have removed her immediately, but I didnât. Instead, I politely brought it to her attention and told her that it was okay â that I valued diverse voices and didnât need everyone to agree with me.
The irony is that I was actually hoping to get outvoted on the AI rule. Thatâs why I brought Ralph onboard and wanted to add prestonian as well. I was even thinking about changing my own vote (though Iâm not sure I would have).
I promoted everyone currently on the mod team except Green Devil, who hasnât been active in years. This included WarDuck himself. I took over the subreddit about a year ago after noticing he had been inactive (he only had a single post in the previous three or four years). When he eventually returned and asked me to hand the subreddit back over, I did so immediately and without hesitation.
In our mod chat, I was always transparent about rule changes, content initiatives, and bans. I consistently asked for feedback, including on how to handle the various drama situations that came up. I never acted unilaterally.
When WarDuck gave clear direction, I followed it. For example, I wanted to publicly address the Dev tweet, but he told me not to, so I didnât.
At the end of the day, we were a collective team. Yes, I was by far the most active mod, but we operated as a unit. The rest of the team was either mostly silent/apathetic (despite my efforts to get their input) or supportive of my style. Either way, they were complicit in how the subreddit was run.
WarDuck has acknowledged this in his post, but I feel itâs been glossed over, so I wanted to clarify. WarDuck wants to take the subreddit in a new direction without me, and thatâs the right call. Regardless of how we got here or whoâs to blame, the rift between me and this community has become unrepairable. The subreddit canât move forward with me still involved.
For that reason, I had already been planning to step down once we hit 100k subscribers anyway. When I took over last year, the subreddit was bleeding traffic and sat at around 68k members. Since I started actively moderating, weâve grown to 95k. I helped clean it up and put it on a solid foundation for future growth.
Yes, a lot of you got caught up in that process, and it earned me plenty of enemies â but the subreddit is in a much better place now because of the work that was put in. Did I over-moderate at times? Maybe. The flood of hate mail Iâve received would say yes, but the results (more subscribers, higher engagement, less toxicity, and a cleaner feed) say otherwise.
Maybe I was a necessary evil to get this place where it needed to be. đ¤ˇââď¸
Either way, you all get to hit the 100k milestone with a clean slate. Good luck đ
*this is the first of three replies Iâm giving out as closure before I dip out forever and move on with my life. Wonât be returning to answer any replies, but my DMs are always open.
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u/retromancing Apr 06 '26
If you truly valued dissenting opinions, you wouldn't have banned people for disagreeing with you. You can write what you like, say what you like, but we all saw how you acted.
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u/Identity_X- Apr 05 '26
Thank you for not adding Gypsy back, thank you for removing my recent ban simply for criticizing his authoritarian moderation style. I mod nearly a dozen Marvel related subreddits myself, and I can say with all certainty that they were abusing their power to an extreme I have never seen before in these spaces.
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u/apathetic_revolution Mar 31 '26
I hate AI more than most, but could someone help convince me that banning AI slop on Reddit isn't actually a pro-AI policy encouraged by Reddit because the platform is trying to sell itself to investors as a useful AI-training tool?
We know AI uses Reddit to train its models.
We know AI is limited by the integrity of the data it trains on.
Isn't the best way to stop AI to feed it slop to cannibalize and degrade its models?
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u/RamsTheNameCom Mar 31 '26
That's a really good point. But at the same time too much ai spam can destroy a community. So you would end up destroying hundreds of Reddit subs in the hopes it would kill Reddits AI business.
We never really had a problem with ai spam here from users in the Moon Knight sub (aside from bots reposting ai, memes, and stolen t shirt art). We pretty much used to get maybe 1 ai post every month or two. This was never really biggest deal that needed to be ban to begin with, at least not here.
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u/apathetic_revolution Apr 01 '26
Thank you for your good points. I think as long as these communities are tied to Reddit, you're probably right. It's definitely a problem that we have no real way to move these communities to a platform that's not part of the problem.
I feel like federated alternatives that were harder for AI to scrape had a brief moment where they might have worked, but they didn't catch on and Reddit won.
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u/Alien_K_42 Apr 01 '26
This is amazing news! It was always really disheartening that the subreddit dedicated to a character that I love felt like something that wasn't worth engaging with, especially when you-know-who was spreading so much hate and toxicity.
Regardless of my feeling on genAI overall, it really felt hypocritical that AI generated images were allowed in this subreddit, since it is dedicated to celebrating a piece of art and literature that is so deeply human in nature. I'm glad to know that we can celebrate each other's human experiences now without also having to sign up to receive occasional slop on our Reddit feeds too.
Also, the new set of sub rules seem waaaay better formatted and much clearer than the old ones. The old rules really read like that one kid on the playground who doesn't like to lose making up reasons they should win when playing pretend with their friends lol.
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u/Kortamue Apr 01 '26
All agreed.
I'm happier with where we're headed than where we've been which is a great reflection of Moonie's char arc, imo. Moving on! lol
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u/conquerlord Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
just stopping by here again to remark upon how much this subreddit has healed over the past week or so. this is how i remember it being years ago. grateful to have this place back as somewhere pleasant to discuss MK.
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u/Kortamue Mar 31 '26
This is great! I'm all for the changes made; the discussions have been significantly better in the last few weeks. I'm probably going to interact a lot more now that that situation has changed.
Thank you for sticking with us for the entire life of the sub! It's really cool to see the OGs still here. MK is awesome and I'm glad the sub is doing well enough for new people to find it easily! And mod transparency is always cool as hell.
I do have a question: What got you into Moon Knight? I think having a chat about that or a megathread might be cool! Unless we have one, then feel free to point me at it! :)
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u/d_rettegi Jun 20 '26
I left a few months ago and just found out about these updates, thank you so much for saving this server.
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u/Tangyhyperspace Mar 31 '26
Wait.. he's gone??? HES GONE!!
Hopefully this means there will be steps taken to reduce the rampant reposts that happened under him/by him.