Roger Ver and Brian Armstrong criticise censorship on Reddit

‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Roger Ver shames Theymos and Greg Maxwell for censorship on Reddit /r/Bitcoin. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, is looking to dump Theymos as a moderator.

The censorship on Reddit has become a hot topic since the beginning of the block size debate. The confrontation of the two camps of bitcoiners (Bitcoin XT then Bitcoin Classic against Bitcoin Core) has been often compared to a civil war, provoking long online quarrels where both sides accused each other of venality and disregard for the future of the cryptocurrency.

These debates, however, sometimes disappeared from one of the most popular bitcoin discussion arenas, the Reddit /r/Bitcoin channel. Notably, in December 2015, the moderator Theymos rеmoved Armstrong’s tweet about Coinbase running Bitcoin XT “as an experiment,” provoking an outcry among the supporters of the block size increase, who accused Theymos of blatant siding with Bitcoin Core.

Recently, the discussion regarding the Reddit censorship has been rekindled by both Armstrong and Roger Ver. In a post on the bitcoin.com forum, Ver criticised those “who have turned Bitcoin’s open and inclusive ethos upside down” and complained that “free and vigorous debate is no longer allowed on the most popular discussion platforms.” He accused Theymos of deleting his /r/Bitcoin posts and Greg Maxwell of ignoring the situation and called on bitcoin users to “publicly shame them.”

Some of Ver’s supporters accused Theymos of following “monied interests”. Theymos answered the accusations in a Reddit thread:

“There are no monied interests influencing /r/Bitcoin moderation. I've never been an employee of a Bitcoin company. I receive nothing whatsoever from Blockstream, nor do I have any financial interest in their company. I don't get any compensation whatsoever for moderating… /r/Bitcoin policies are what they are because I/we think that they are the best policies for /r/Bitcoin and Bitcoin. It's possible to reasonably disagree, but resorting to conspiracy theories isn't an argument.”

Still, there are many stakeholders in the bitcoin community who would like to see Theymos step down from his position of moderator. In his recent firеsidе chat with Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, Armstrong hinted at this, asking if the possibility of removing a moderator has ever been discussed. However, Huffman replied that while he was aware of the situation in /r/Bitcoin, the management at Reddit prefers to “try to stay hands-off” unless more important rules are broken.