Many of you have messaged me and commented on your concerns regarding /u/AssuredlyAThrowAway and /u/Flytape submitting and stickying "The First Official /r/Conspiracy Podcast is Now Live, With Flytape as Our First Guest" Without and input or opinion from the r/conspiracy community.

I understand many of these concerns myself and would like to assure our readers that the podcast is in no way a collaborated effort between the entire mod team, /u/AssuredlyAThrowAway and /u/Flytape acted on their own accord and this alone has left me disappointed and frustrated with their actions. All moderators and the community should have had input and opinion with something like this, that's the way new ideas have always been handled on the sub, that's how it will remain in future.

My own personal thoughts are that the podcast itself was clumsy, poorly edited and has only served to marginalize the sub and cause infighting on the page, this can't go on. Originally i removed the post yesterday when i first became aware of it (I'm based in the UK so time-zones are always a factor with my responses.) The original message from myself to the rest of the mod team is here. Again and with much disappointment on my part i have found the post has been re-approved by /u/AssuredlyAThrowAway and is still active and live on r/conspiracy, much to the anger of many contributors and readers.

Images such as this can in no way be viewed as helpful or representative of this sub, it certainly isn't representative of myself and i find this kind of behavior, even if supposedly for comedy value, distasteful and troubling. As to why the podcast itself had /u/Flytape masquerading as some kind of extra from Eyes Wide Shut with the bizarre mask and background settings is beyond me, any rational person could see that this was going to backfire. The idea of the occasional podcast isn't a bad one, but i would never have agreed to one being presented in such a oddball manner, many of you have expressed the same obvious concerns.

Moderating is a caretaker roll, the moderators do not own the page and it is right and just that if any ideas or concepts are to be implemented onto a page with over a quarter of a million subscribers they should always have a say in those decisions. That has not been the case here for some unexplained reason.

I also find it disturbing that trusted contributors such as /u/WideAwakeNWO and /u/George_Tenet have now been banned without fair warning by /u/Flytape.

The current situation with the moderator team has become unworkable and as such /u/Flytape has been removed from the /r/conspiracy moderator team.