Why I left /r/NFT as a moderator. Responding to drama in the avatartrading discord.

I was hoping I wouldn't have to make this thread, but people here are free to check the /r/NFT subreddit and come to their own conclusions. I didn't get kicked out of /r/NFT. I left of my own accord.

About 7 months ago I left /r/NFT as a moderator. I didn't really want to talk about this in the beginning, but I've recently seen people indirectly talking about the situation on discord and saying a bunch of he-said-she-said bull shit.

Why did I leave? There are many reasons, but, the long story short is, even though there were 4 or 5 moderators, I was one of the only ones actively moderating the subreddit. and I forget when exactly I joined, but I left in February 2022. I'm also entirely unaware why the moderator of the /r/NFT subreddit in question is badmouthing me. But let's go into the deepdive...

First, watch this video on an interview with a facebook moderator. No, really, watch it. I had to remove content like this on a daily basis: https://youtu.be/cHGbWn6iwHw
Things I was removing on a daily basis: graphic images of dead bodies, body parts, disected, removed, ampuated, (you name it), bodily fluids and body waste as NFTs, and animated depictions of child pornography. In the beginning there was another moderator who was helping me remove this kind of content from the sub, but then he left later because we weren't able to get any help. More on this later. I just tried to deal with it and thought, "It's fine, we'll get new moderators very soon." I can't pull together an exact timeline, but in December 2021, I told myself, "If things don't improve in a month, I'll just leave this subreddit." There's a screenshot lower down in this post that shows I held out until February through an email on gmail.

When I woke up in the morning, I routinely had over 100 items to moderate in modque. On a good day I could've cleared up the modque and then at lunch time I might have anywhere from 30-50 new items that needed to be moderated.

If you go to /r/NFT and post anything, there will be an automod reply that encourages you to join the discord for the subreddit. There's more active, organic, and real conversation going on in their discord than there is on the subreddit, and I think that's a shame because I like talking crypto on reddit. I wanted to see people posting about adoption of NFTs, I wanted to see people talking about the trends we could expect to see in 5 or 10 years. Instead I just saw, on a daily basis, people trying to turn the subreddit into a substitute for /r/cryptomoonshots.

During the bull market there was excessive vote manipulation. I remember waking up and removing and banning half of all posts on the front page. I remember once it happened with the same "project" two days in a row. The second time I banned OP for VMing the post in /r/NFT, I recieved this DM on discord: https://i.imgur.com/518EUpc.png
Metadata of above screenshot, sensitive info redacted: https://i.imgur.com/Lzc0CXX.png

Another similar example after I banned a person for vote manipulation: https://i.imgur.com/58MzLYv.png

More on vote manipulation: there is a thread in /r/NFT right now that I think very logically is being vote manipulated right now. DM me if you think you know which one it is, but do not post it in the comments to this post. If you can recognize patterns, it's not difficult. When I informed the other moderators of the vote manipulation taking place, I was told to leave those threads up for 12-14 hours before banning the OPs and removing the thread by one of the other moderators, and I won't say who it was. The logic: they wanted more users noticing our the NFT subreddit.

So, what was the final straw? I saw a mediocre NFT collection posted to the top of the subreddit, it was obviously vote manipulated, and I saw some organic commments that said, "This is the post that made me unsubscribe from this sub."

A couple of days later I just got tired of moderating a subreddit with rampant vote manipulation, limited moderation, excessive bought bot comments in each thread. I quietly unmodded myself, I left the subreddit for /r/NFT as well as their discord. One of the mods asked me why I left, and I told them. I just now found the thread and the comments: https://i.imgur.com/aUPMMbW.png

After I left I got a couple of messages from the moderators reaching out and wanting to know what was wrong. I mean the core of the problem is the image above I posted. There were a few times when I would just pop into the /r/NFT subreddit now and then to spite threads that were clearly vote manipulated, but that's about it.

This has been a painfully long thread. Sorry to put you guys through this, but the problems with /r/NFT still haven't been fixed and one moderator has gone out of his way to label me as the bad guy in the /r/avatartrading discord. Please note, I've gone without naming names this entire time, and the problems with /r/NFT still persist to this day even if they are mitigated by a bear market resulting in reduced demand for buying and selling NFTs.

EDIT: I failed to articulate this point - the mods of /r/NFT were much more concerned with leveraging the subreddit to grow their discord than they were moderating the subreddit and catering quality discussion. I would sticky threads from time to time and then find them removed a day or two later. i remember at one point there was a stickied thread that told everyone to join the /r/NFT discord in addition to the automod responses telling people about the /r/NFT discord. I tried to remind people about how to post a promo for their own content, the dos and donts and these threads would be unstickied promptly (maybe two or three days after I would post it and sticky it).

EDIT 2: The entire imgur album of evidence so far - https://imgur.com/a/MxplwAS

EDIT 3: thank you everyone for your support and concern. I think I was fine, but for the longest time if people asked me about NFTs I just wouldn't talk about them specifically because it seemed like 10-20% of all posts were anti-NFT psts and trolls.