The ban comes after the Current reported on r/SanAntonio’s removal of posts documenting local-area raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Credit: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Alamo City Reddit users are asking why the San Antonio Current is the only publication banned from the r/SanAntonio subreddit.
The ban, which according to moderators took effect in July, prohibits any user of the forum from sharing a link to content published by the Current. A Current staffer’s personal account was also banned entirely from the forum.
Trinity University communication professor Althea Delwiche, who specializes in participatory knowledge cultures, said the r/SanAntonio subreddit’s ban stifles free speech at the local level and mirrors censorship occurring at the national level for media under the Trump administration.
“I think that this highlights a real problem that we’re all facing, as there is an authoritarian attempt to restrict our communication in all sorts of forms,” Delwiche said. “And it’s really unfolding on corporate media as well. We’ve seen what’s going on with, you know, the Jimmy Kimmel thing or what happened with Stephen Colbert. And the same thing can happen even on a site like Reddit, [which] has that sort of anarchistic spirit of the early Internet.”
Users of the subreddit have also pushed back at the moderator’s ban of Current content.
“Why are links to SA Current banned?” reddit user Cigarettesandwhiskey asked in a Wednesday thread, which a reddit user emailed to the Current to alert the paper to the ban. “This seems like blatant censorship of a local news outlet. Who made this decision? There is no rule against it in the sidebar and I’ve never seen any discussion of this, but I just tried to post a link to an article there and got the message ‘Links to sacurrent dot com are not allowed.”
Moderator HikeTheSky responded, “The SACurrent is banned from this sub because of their past brigading efforts.” The moderator further asserted that the publication’s “brigading effort led to direct harassment and attacks on mods.”
In reddit parlance, the term “brigading” — in simplified terms — means interfering with a reddit community.
The moderator also clarified that the Current is the only publication banned from the forum.
“All other news sources are allowed, unless, of course, Reddit bans them, as we don’t have an influence on that,” HikeTheSky added.
“Well[,] now they are giving The Current a golden opportunity for a neat story about selective press suppression!” user Vital_capacity responded to the moderator’s explanation.
The Current reached out to Reddit Inc.’s press office as well as r/SanAntonio moderator HikeTheSky for comment on the ban received no response from either by press time.
Elsewhere in the thread discussing the ban, HikeTheSky stated the ban has been in place since July. On June 30, the Current published an article about the forum moderators’ censorship of posts reporting on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in San Antonio.
At that time, local redditors fed up with what they described as strict censorship within the r/SanAntonio forum were bailing for other subreddits focused on the Alamo City Community. Some said their political posts, particularly about ICE, led to them being banned from the forum entirely.
The banned users went on to start their own local subreddits, including r/SanAntonioTX and r/SanAntonioUSA, as reported by the Current.
The Current frequently reports on free speech issues and censorship, especially in the face of increasing government attacks on First Amendment rights, making the recent departures from r/SanAntonio a newsworthy development.
However, in comments explaining the ban, r/SanAntonio moderators accused the Current of “interfering” with their community through its reporting.
“We don’t allow brigading, and neither does Reddit,” HikeTheSky stated. “The SACurrent did that and needs to live with the consequences.”
“Prove they brigaded you. I don’t believe you,” user Cigarettesandwhiskey replied.
HikeTheSky provided no proof in response to the request. Nor did the moderator offer any evidence that anything the Current published led to moderator harassment — something the publication doesn’t condone and, for that matter, cannot control.
Further, in an official Reddit forum for moderators called r/ModSupport, a top comment defines “brigading” as what happens when users of one Reddit forum flood another to steer conversation in a certain direction.
“Brigading must be a group of users going from one subreddit to another in order to change the way the discussion is going and/or manipulate voting patterns,” user Texmarshfellow explained.
Trinity professor Delwiche agreed that the Current’s article doesn’t meet the definition of the term “brigading,” which r/SanAntonio’s moderator used to justify the ban. However, Delwiche also said that each forum operates as a kingdom unto itself.
“[A]ll these subreddits have different moderators and different policies about what’s allowed, and they vary from group to group,” she said. “The moderators are essentially almost by design, little […] dictators or totalitarians. They run the subreddit and they get to do whatever they want, even this, which is blatant censorship.”
Delwiche added that there’s very little recourse to counter a Reddit moderator potentially wielding power to stifle free speech. This isn’t a First Amendment case meriting a free speech lawyer, she explained, since Reddit is a private enterprise and not, for example, a school or government entity.
However, complaints can be filed with Reddit support if users feel a moderator is abusing their position.
Censorship appears to be an ongoing issue in r/San Antonio, even when discussing censorship.
Within the forum’s thread discussing the Current’s ban, the moderator removed multiple users’ comments and questions. One of the provided reasons for removing a post was “moderator’s discretion,” to which another user responded “lol.”
“It’s like this sub is moderated by the SA Chamber of Commerce,” user cool_guey replied.
“I think its unamerican to abuse moderator authority to censor a news press because you don’t like their reporting,” thread author Cigarettesandwhiskey added. “I wouldn’t ban links to Newsmax even though I think they’re a treasonous fifth column, much less the fucking Current. What’s next, Home and Garden? Food Network? Lawn & Landscape? It seems so petty.”
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