Hi /u/kn0thing

I wanted to reach out to the admins with my story and figured this would be the best place to do this given my goal. On the off chance that this is something the admins still don't understand, I'd like to explain why I'm posting comments like this one (currently the top comment in the stickied thread on /r/videos).

Before I get into my side of things, I'd like to say that I empathize with your situation here. I've been making indie-games for about six years now and my games have been downloaded over 20 million times. As someone who has to deal with App Store reviews and support emails I know where you are coming from.

• "Bad game!!! I hope the dev dies in a fire for wasting my time. I downloaded this when it was free and I paid too much. The game is way too EASY.

• "What a piece of crap game. Way too HARD. Playing this game makes me wish I were working in the twin towers back in 2001. Here are a list of things the developer needs to change to justify their continued existence on this planet.

I quickly learned that it is impossible to please everyone, those that are displeased are often VERY displeased, and those that are vocal about it aren't always a joy to interact with. Believe me when I say that I've responded to support emails in ways that were far worse than your comments here. I don't have a boss. I don't have a VC telling me what to do. If I want to respond to vitriol with a simple, "Fuck off," I can. But I don't.

Because I eventually learned that this was the wrong approach. Not because of the potential impact it could have on revenue. Not because of my precious ego. But because every one of these people is the main character in their own story. And almost all of them can be transformed, with the right approach, into an advocate in the same amount of time it takes to be snarky or rude. Someone willing to fight beside you in your battles. Someone willing to support you when things get tough. Someone with a unique perspective that challenges your own cognitive biases. Yes, some of them just want to watch the world burn, but they are few and far between.

If you respond to your customers, in an authentic and honest way, if own your mistakes and treat your users as allies and not that thing standing between you and a payday, your whole world is going to change. At the present moment nothing that has been communicated to the community by the admins comes off as genuine. We need an authentic and honest announcement. Not a white washed non-answer signed off by venture capitalists.

It's not important that you please all of your users and it's not important that you try. It's not important that you agree with all of your users. It's not important that your values and goals align with the values and goals of every one of your users. What IS important is that you approach this community authentically. Writing an announcement intended to placate the offended will not work. Vague, disingenuous, politically correct apologies written for the masses don't work. If creating a safe space is your number one priority, don't shy away from that and pretend you guys are against censorship. If you guys are trying to appeal to advertisers, don't pretend you're not. It's your website, it's your choice. But when you treat your community the way that you have, this is exactly the response you should expect. And even if this dies down, even if this goes away, it's only a matter of time before things are going to blow up in your face again. That will continue until you communicate how you truly feel about this situation, whatever that may be.

This problem has very little to do with firing employees or censoring speech. I don't like these things but I support your right to do both. Your real problem, and the reason why so many different groups have come together on this one, is that you don't care about your users. You don't care about the hardworking moderators that volunteer to help make reddit great. All of these people, with all of their conflicting values, share this one belief. The belief that you don't give a shit about them. The belief that they are nothing more than dollar signs. If this is true, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. If it's not true, fixing this problem is incredibly easy.

I'd like to end this post by explaining why I feel this way. Maybe you shadowban me for it. Maybe you right a wrong. Maybe you continue to ignore me. It's entirely your right and your choice.

I've been a redditor for over 5 years. My last account was /u/geareddev. For five years, I made what I felt was a positive contribution to this site.. Several months ago, I was unjustly shadowbanned. When I reached out to the admins, I was told that I was shadowbanned because one of my threads "looked like" it was being voted up by bots. LOOKED LIKE. Was it? I don't know. I don't know if the admins know. But I do know this. I have NEVER used a vote bot on reddit. I have NEVER hired or paid someone to vote up my thread. And I would have had ZERO motivation to do so with content that was doing very well all on its own. What pissed me off the most about that situation was that the admins simply stopped responding to me. After contributing to this site for five years, I was just tossed aside. Thrown in the garbage. Zero evidence. No appeals process. Nothing to do but sit in bewilderment and consider how little the admins must care about their users. Self promotion is a really tricky thing but I believe I did it right. Hell, when I had even the slightest bit of doubt, I always PMed the moderators before posting my stuff. When I was banned, I had almost two years left of reddit gold on my account. Worse than that, when I was banned, I WAS RUNNING A PAID REDDIT ADVERTISEMENT!

That was the moment I stopped loving reddit. That was the moment I sat back for the first time and thought, "Wow. They really don't give a fuck."

So that's why I'm pissed off. That's why I'm watching the live feed. That's why I'm taking screenshots of threads I know are going to get removed. That's why I'm sitting here hoping reddit burns to the ground. That's why I'm not your ally any more.

It's very simple. I feel used. I feel betrayed. Logical or not, rational or irrational, there are a whole bunch of users on this site that feel the same way. You are free to make whatever choices you want with your company and I'll defend your right to do so, but man, I really hope things change.