Concerns of Redditor safety, jeopardized research amid new mods and API rules.
Did you know that improper food canning can lead to death? Botulism—the result of bacteria growing inside improperly treated canned goods—is rare, but people can die from it. In any case, they’ll certainly get very ill.
The dangers of food canning were explained to me clearly, succinctly, and with cited sources by Brad Barclay and someone going by Dromio05 on Reddit (who asked to withhold their real name for privacy reasons). Both were recently moderators on the r/canning subreddit and hold science-related master’s degrees.
Yet Reddit removed both moderators from their positions this summer because Reddit said they violated its Moderator Code of Conduct. Mods had refused to end r/canning’s protest against Reddit and its new API fees; the protest had made the entire subreddit “read only.” Now, the ousted mods fear that r/canning could become subject to unsafe advice that goes unnoticed by new moderators. “My biggest fear with all this is that someone will follow an unsafe recipe posted on the sub and get badly sick or killed by it,” Dromio05 told me.
Reddit’s infamous API changes have ushered in a new era for the site, and there are still questions about what this next chapter will look like. Ars Technica spoke with several former mods that Reddit booted—and one who was recently appointed by Reddit—about concerns that relying on replacement mods with limited subject matter expertise could result in the spread of dangerous misinformation.
Hey — one of the former mods of r/Canning here.
I don’t want to see people get sick, and I don’t want to see people die from what usually amounts to less than $5 worth of home canned food.
But that doesn’t mean I’m now bound for eternity to Reddit to help ensure they don’t hurt anybody. That only helps Reddit. After what they put us through I’ve stopped any and all contributions to their ungrateful website.
Nor does it mean I have to stop criticizing Reddit for choosing questionable mods to replace us.
Thanks for taking the time to respond, even though I was critical! Sure, I have no disagreement with anything you said in your reply. I’m also involved in hobbies where bad information can hurt people (including canning and foraging for mushrooms), and I’m obviously against knowledgeable people being removed from positions of authority in these communities. This post bolds the text about being worried that new mods may miss something that the old mods wouldn’t, which could lead to someone getting hurt. I saw that, and that a couple of early comments latched onto it as a focus. I had broccoli in a wok that I needed to get back to and just fired off a quick comment as a bit of infernal advocacy that the replacement of mod powers probably isn’t as dire as the quote makes it sound.