Bitcoin.

Evidence that the mods of /r/Bitcoin may have been involved with the hacking and vote manipulation "attack" on /r/Bitcoin.
Dear Reddit Admins: We need to talk about /r/Bitcoin
Bitcoin.com is a top 2,000 website in the USA, while .org is just a top 4,000
What /r/bitcoin mods desperately don't want you to see!
If you are confused between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Core in the Bitcoin.com wallet, you are a liar or mentally handicapped.
Enough is enough. Reddit admins, I'm calling you out. Tell the community why you support censorship, attacks, brigading, malicious misinformation, character attacks, etc.
We are in danger of losing net neutrality. I feel like the path bitcoin is taking lately is a direct reflection of what the internet would be without net neutrality. Huge fees and high waiting times. it’s time to take a stand and take charge of our liberty once again!
SegWit and technologies built on it are grossly oversold - u/deadalnix
Paradise Papers leak confirms that Phil Potter and Giancarlo Devasini own Tether
Reddit admins have r/bitcoin's alleged vote manipulation scandal on their radar now. Let's see.... ��
Bitcoin is nothing more than an elaborate Ponzi Scheme right now
/r/Karma Court: The people have charged r\bitcoin mods with 'Crimes Against the Internet' for systematic silencing of opinion
Forum Wars: r/Bitcoin Mods Accused of Hacking and Vote Manipulation - Bitcoin News
OOPS - Blockstream's Greg Maxwell caught using sockpuppets!
Bitcoin Cash poster spotted on Market Street in SF!
18 dollar fee an hour ago and still no confirmation. Thank you Core. You have intentionally screwed Bitcoin. I AM OUT. Selling every last Satoshi.
I've reported all of /r/bitcoin's false 1-star reviews on bitcoin.com's Android app
Let's take a moment to thank u/Deadalnix for Nov 13th DAA Hardfork. It has successfully 'dampened' oscillations in BCH block generation rates, to attain stable target rate of ~6 blocks/hr.
“It's on you @reddit . You've been warn countless times and did nothing. Now you look complicit.”
I'm not here to get rich. I'm here to get rid of banks
Fucking love that there is a tipbot here but not in /r/bitcoin. So encouraging!
Warning Signs About Another Giant Bitcoin Exchange - NYT on Bitfinex
A Reddit Admin answered my complaint. Hopefully they will take the right action and cleanup r/bitcoin from the corrupt admins
Bitstamp To Launch Bitcoin Cash Trading
"I normally only use Dash, but I had to download the Bitcoin.com wallet and try it out, leave a deserved 5-star review, and mark every single astroturfed "hurr durr btrash" comment as spam. Every. Single. One."

Evidence that the mods of /r/Bitcoin may have been involved with the hacking and vote manipulation "attack" on /r/Bitcoin.

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 07:25 AM PST

While running the Censorship Notifier Bot, we generally try to stay out of any specific situations regarding any subreddits we monitor. But the very nature of the CNBot requires it to collect and store large amounts of data, and requires us to be aware of normal trends within a subreddit to ensure the bot is running correctly. Specifically, the bot needs to know exactly what was on the site at a specific time, and when things disappear from the site. This data positions us to diligently analyze events and check real data as we go. When we first began looking at the massive downvoting attack as shown in BashCo's previously stickied thread last week, the first thing we noticed was that both of the bot-voted comments ( Image of #1, link to #2 ) would normally trigger our censorship notifier detection. Both "censoring" and "censorship" are trigger words we have found triggering automatic removal, something we later confirmed again. This would imply that either the comments were explicitly approved by the moderators at that time, or our understanding of the subreddit's policies needed updating. We began to dig into the data available, and those findings lead us to the conclusion that we must publish what we had found. Note: All times are in UTC; Some references are moved to the end of the document, tagged as [REF-1], [REF-2], etc.

Overview

We'll start out by giving a rough picture of the events that transpired. The bots which were downvoting comments and posts on /r/Bitcoin and upvoting posts on /r/btc began their attack on 11/14/2017 at around 18:00 utc. A similar unusual pattern of voting appeared on /r/btc around the same time the day before, though less dramatically. The bots seemed to be pushing people to buy Bitcoin Cash in such a blatant way that it even left a bad taste in the mouths of Bitcoin Cash supporters. Both the attack the day before and the /r/Bitcoin bot voting attack on 11/14/2017 ended before or around 22:00 utc [REF-3]. The bots attacking /r/Bitcoin upvoted posts complaining about high fees and downvoted about 30 other /r/Bitcoin posts. At the same time they upvoted posts on /r/btc. We identified 65 comments downvoted by bots in /r/Bitcoin and 2 upvoted. The conclusions appeared to indicate that the bots were promoting Bitcoin Cash and /r/btc and harming /r/Bitcoin.

Suspicious comment #1

We began investigating into the comments that caught our eye at first, referred to as [CU-1] and [CU-2] for short. [CU-1]'s content can be seen here as it originally looked. Immediately we noticed the next oddity - How were people able to see votes in /r/Bitcoin to discuss voting in the first place? /r/Bitcoin has blocked votes from being visible on comments during discussion for years. When did that change? We found that it changed right before [CU-1] was posted. BashCo stickied a comment stating they would "pull back the curtains" at 20:49, and archive.org confirmed that scores became visible between 20:32 utc and 20:50 utc. That, oddly enough, was just 13 minutes before [CU-1] was posted at 21:02:25.

We have determined that [CU-1] was indeed blocked by /r/Bitcoin's automoderator rules as we expected. The screenshot taken by /r/Bitcoin moderator StopAndDecrypt clearly shows this, as the "moderator approved" checkmark is present. We also tested automoderator rules with an aged account with karma and confirmed that "censors" and "censoring" were both blocked [REF-1]. Note that the poster, darwin2500 (under control of hacker, please don't ping them; they aren't a Bitcoiner) could not have been an "approved submitter" - they seem to have only had one comment in /r/Bitcoin before the hacking. So why was the comment manually approved? We are not aware of any other approved or allowed comments that blatantly reference censorship like that in the last several months. The obvious answer is that after "pulling back the curtain" and making votes visible, the /r/Bitcoin mods wanted to give people an opportunity to see this voting manipulation in action.

Except this idea did not hold up. We found 10 similar comments from the same time period which were not approved or were explicitly removed unlike [CU-1]. Some of these were uncannily similar to the original comment. For example this one was submitted 8 minutes after [CU-1] and never approved. Another here supported neither subreddit and was blocked at 21:48 and never approved. This one accused /r/Bitcoin mods of being paid by Blockstream and was manually removed at ~22:35. A fourth was identical to [CU-2] and blocked at 00:12 and never approved. The same account of [CU-1] submitted a second comment 5 minutes after [CU-1] and was blocked and not approved. The other 5 things blocked or removed around the same time were: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. The existence or absence of most of these comments around the claimed time can be verified independently of the censorship_notifier, see [REF-2]

But the why wasn't the only oddity. [CU-1] was submitted, approved, upvoted, and screenshotted all in less than 180 seconds, as shown by its screenshot ("2 minutes" rounds down on Reddit). That is an extremely short time for an automoderated comment to be approved based on what we have observed and in checking other subreddits open modlogs on approvals. Perhaps the moderators were very snappy about approving comments within this particular thread? Once again, this idea did not hold up. This comment appears to have been manually approved as it wasn't seen until the third scan after its supposed creation, ~11 minutes of delay. Perhaps only when the comment was a direct reply to BashCo? Still no - Here's a comment that was a direct reply to BashCo, but didn't show up in scans for 45 minutes. Here specifically the our data can be independently checked - This snapshot does not show the comment, but this one does.

Despite all the comments being blocked or removed as normal that we found, what we did not find was any other examples of anti-r/Bitcoin comments approved or allowed except the comments the bots upvoted. Three snapshots([1] [2] [3]) of the thread in question show no other strongly anti-r/Bitcoin comments present except [CU-1] and [CU-2]; Why did the moderators specifically allow [CU-1] and [CU-2] and nothing else? Perhaps they wanted to reveal the voting patterns, but then why only those comments? Further, by the time of [CU-1], the bot had not upvoted any comments at all. Why would the moderators assume that particular comment and no others would be upvoted, a mere 13 minutes after they "pulled back the curtain?"

In addition to the data we're referenced, our claims about the moderation of [CU-1] can be verified by either the admins or any current moderators of /r/Bitcoin, as moderator log events cannot be deleted. If anyone sends us an image of the moderator who approved this comment(preferably with full HH:MM:SS timestamp!) we will add the image to this post and keep their identity anonymous.

How did the bots pick targets?

The next thing we investigated was the behavior of the bots during the "attack". How many posts and comments did they downvote? How many did they upvote? What did they pick and were there any obvious correlations? We initially identified only two posts inside /r/Bitcoin that were upvoted by the bots - Both being posts about long delays on the OP's transaction confirmations. The first post was removed by moderators but otherwise no one seemed to notice the sudden upvotes. The second post upvoted on the other hand had users commenting on the upvotes within 8 minutes of it being posted and had several comments downvoted within it by the bots. Generally (but not always) the targets of the bots got 200-250 votes, either up or down [REF-3]. Even before the moderators of /r/Bitcoin revealed comment scores, users were commenting on the obviousness of the downvotes (edits). We found images from hacked users which showed what posts the bots chose to upvote and downvote, which further helped us identify as many of the posts as possible [REF-4] [REF-5].

The comments upvoted, too, were specifically chosen. Both comments upvoted were ones attacking /r/Bitcoin over censorship, and without any subtlety. Both comments were in the primary stickied thread with most of the comment downvotes. We quickly determined that the account that posted [CU-1] was under the control of the hacker, something other users also concluded. [CU-2] was posted by a clear /r/Bitcoin supporter based on history. Both comments used words that /r/Bitcoin's automod rules normally silently block [REF-1]. Other comments that subtly denigrated the subreddit's policies were noticed by the bot - but were downvoted instead of upvoted. Why?

The comments and posts chosen for downvoting were all over the place. Many of the comments chosen for downvoting seems to have been simply "because they were there in the thread" - For example every single comment visible in before 20:50 was downvoted. BashCo was targeted more than any other user(8 comments), but the bot generally didn't seem to focus on specific users. The vast majority of comments downvoted(54/65) happened in the stickied post, with 6 more happening in the second upvoted post. The remaining 5 comments downvoted were scattered across 4 different posts [REF-3]. The bot specifically went after comments and posts talking about downvotes, the accounts hack, or the attack itself [REF-5] but they also downvoted neutral posts. The voting seemed to come almost exclusively in waves targeting one thing at a time, which made the bot votes obvious to anyone who was looking for them - which people were, since many posts targeted were about the downvotes.

We also noticed that an extremely high number of /r/Bitcoin and /r/btc users were reporting that they themselves were hacked and part of the bot attack. We identified 35 such users, but the highest number of votes seen on a single thing indicate between 250-300 accounts involved with the attack. Over 10% of the hacked users were Bitcoiners, what are the chances of that? Well, Reddit has (very) roughly 50 million accounts, and the CN database indicates that about ~50k are regular or semi-regular /r/Bitcoin and /r/btc users, which is 1/1000th. 35 / 300 of hacked users being regular Bitcoin users and feeling the need to post about it is > 1/10th. Whoever was running this bot seems to have intentionally chosen Bitcoin users - It seems like they wanted the hacked users to see the results of the hack.

The result of all of this was that many many people commented on the blatantness of the voting, with many of them suspicious as to why anyone would do such a blatant attack. More examples: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]. Amidst all of this there was one exception so subtle that we almost missed it - There were two posts voted on that ran completely contrary to the rest of the behavior of the bot. The first image showed upvotes on a pro-/r/Bitcoin post "PSA: Attack on Bitcoin" thread and a downvote for the anti-/r/Bitcoin "awkward meme orgy" /r/btc thread. At first we thought maybe this was a legitimate vote by this user mixed in with bot votes, but archive.org showed us that indeed that /r/btc thread got a sudden wave of downvotes in less than 23 minutes. Perhaps the bot forgot which side it was pushing for? But both changes were subtle and not noticed by any users as far as we can tell.

The final thing the bot did as far as we have identified was to upvote [CU-2], and then the attack seems to have stopped suddenly. That comment wasn't upvoted until 21:55 - 22:05. So what about that comment? Why was that the only comment not under its own control upvoted, and why did the attack stop suddenly afterwards?

Suspicious comment #2

The CN database gave us some hints. Both the [CU-2] and this comment were deleted by the user, likely when they took back control over their hacked account. [CU-1] was deleted at 21:23 +/- 1 minute, ~21 minutes after creation [REF-6], and not present in that snapshot. The votebot operator probably didn't expect this to happen so quickly. After that deletion there was no obvious comment showing their upvotes on the thread, and there were no obvious choices to choose from. It seems that they wanted a comment that wouldn't vanish, so not a hacked account, and also that they preferred a comment that could ultimately be used to make /r/btc look guilty.

4n4n4's comment [CU-2] provided exactly this, and it was posted to the thread ~5 minutes after [CU-1] was deleted - at 21:28. [CU-2] was never blocked by automoderator, it was picked up in the next CN scan ~1 minute later... Seemingly because 4n4n4 is an approved submitter. They have a long history of pro-/r/Bitcoin comments; we archived 5 pages of comments. The moderators left the comment in place and the bot didn't touch it for at least 27 minutes. With the similarities listed above, [CU-2] made the ideal next target for the bot's upvoting. Almost immediately after it did so, 4n4n4 screenshotted, archived, and edited the comment. And then the bot's voting attack instantly ceased as far as we can tell [REF-3] [REF-5].

But 4n4n4 was not a hacked account. So who is 4n4n4?

So who posted that?

We have a surprisingly large amount of evidence indicating that 4n4n4 is /u/nullc, the CTO of Blockstream.

The biggest indicator we found is that nullc has the very frequent pattern-- of writing--his sentences with two dashes separating words. This by itself is somewhat rare, though we confirmed that he uses it more times than anyone else in the CN database, the much more unusual habit is using two dashes with no spaces on either side. The CN database stored 860,000 comments for us to compare with, and very quickly confirmed the similarities between the two. His history is littered with examples, but we also used the bitcoin-dev email list to confirm the unusual habit. Like 4n4n4, nullc also has examples of using this--specific pattern twice in one sentence, which was extremely rare in our searches.

But there were many more things we noticed. We found several examples of 4n4n4 picking up nullc's conversations and continuing them. One such case was 4n4n4's third comment ever. 4n4n4 also referenced many of nullc's writings and posts. 4n4n4 referenced this code change that originated from nullc multiple times. 4n4n4's [CU-2] comment edit used the words "rbtc playbook," something our database confirmed was extremely rare but is a saying nullc likes.

And that was just the beginning:

Very knowledgable about Bitcoin Core development & the history of the scaling conflict.
4n4n4 picked up a thread after many replies by nullc arguing that low fees and empty mempools are actually a problem.
Just like nullc, 4n4n4 liked BIP148 but did not "support" or "endorse" it.
Seems to know an awful lot about nullc's life.
Used the phrase "Bitcoin's creator", a major nullc trait previously documented
Talks about nullc. A lot.
Somehow knows who is working on what within Blockstream.
And even responded directly to nullc in support of a claim nullc had made multiple times within that thread

Conclusions

After the massive amount of research we put into this, we believe that at least one moderator of /r/Bitcoin must have been either aware of the bot's plans (and allowed it to place blame on others), or have executed the attack themselves. This is most likely the moderator who immediately approved the [CU-1] comment. Other moderators may or may not have been involved. Meaning, yes, we believe that a moderator of /r/Bitcoin either directed or was complicit in the hacking of many of their own Bitcoin Reddit user accounts.

We believe that it is likely that /u/4n4n4 aka /u/nullc was also aware of or involved in this attack based upon the suspicious timing and similarities of [CU-2]. A Core Developer of /u/nullc's experience would certainly have the technical abilities to pull off such an attack, but that is true of many others on both sides of the debate as well. Some users reported that the IP addresses the bots logged in from were vultr instances and that vultr 1) requires tracable payment methods like credit cards, and 2) takes an aggressive stance against abuse of their systems, so perhaps more information can come to light about this yet.

We encourage the Reddit admins to carefully review our claims and to validate them. If our claims here are true, surely some type of strong action is warranted. Please note that we have tried to make sure all of our links are archived, but they were archived under the www.reddit.com domain and not the np.reddit.com domain.

For any people who found this post helpful and want to tip us, please donate your tips to archive.is and archive.org (not us). Without those two amazing services none of this research would be possible.

References

[REF-1] - Exact steps to confirm automoderator rules, on a aged account with comment karma: Before http://archive.is/ngxZk -> direct copy of [CU-1] (blocked) http://archive.is/yq52B (showing) http://archive.is/qPJTo -> "censoring" (removed) http://archive.is/geSvJ (showing) http://archive.is/muQzT -> "censors" (removed) http://archive.is/neMwe (showing) http://archive.is/2OLal -> After (showing) http://archive.is/LdZMb userpage: http://archive.is/SwCQ2.

[REF-2] - Links of userpages showing comments removed and subreddits showing missing: [1a] [1b] [2a] [2b] [3a] [3b] [4a] [4b] [5a] [5b] [6a] [6b shows missing]. These additional archive.org links show several of these items missing (or visible) at the snapshot time: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

[REF-3] - Data dump of all comments posted around the time of the event, with notes. CSV format.

[REF-4] - Images from hacked users: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

[REF-5] - Final vote tallies for all posts up to 24 hours prior to the event's end, with notes. CSV format.

[REF-6] - Records from the CN database regarding when darwin2500's comment was deleted. "minutesAlive" is incremented every time the item is seen and starts from the first_seen_live

submitted by /u/censorship_notifier
[link] [comments]

Dear Reddit Admins: We need to talk about /r/Bitcoin

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 10:45 PM PST

We know you are well aware of the censorship problem on /r/Bitcoin, because it's been brought to your attention many times.

I've messaged the admins several times over the past year and a half. I even replied to a standing offer by Reddit admins /u/AchievementUnlockd and /u/Chtorr offering to discuss the issues facing various communities on Reddit. Although I'm not a mod, I did make the offer to put them in touch with the moderator team of /r/btc. My messages have always been ignored.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has even confronted Reddit CEO Steve Huffman about the issue directly, in a July 2016 conversation (video).

Steve Huffman: "Our feeling is, we want people to be able to express themselves. [...] Where we can confidently draw the line is, are you affecting other people in a negative way? First starting on Reddit, and then the world in general."

Brian Armstrong: "Have you ever thought about doing things like elections for moderators?"

Huffman: "There are a lot of product decisions that we've made over the years, that we didn't consider at the time the long-term ramifications of them. The moderator hierarchy situation is one of them. We're often in these situations where we see these communities, we see moderators behaving in a way that we wouldn't behave if we were running it, and that kind of go against our inclination to let things play out and generally be open. And we've seen that on the /r/bitcoin community, I don't disagree with you at all. But we also try to put ourselves in a position right now, our opinion is we generally try to stay hands off unless they are breaking other site-wide rules."

/u/spez: The silence from the Reddit admins on this major issue plaguing the Bitcoin community has been deafening.

You say you want people to be able to express themselves, yet you tolerate an insane amount of censorship and discussion manipulation on a very large subreddit dedicated to a topic that is very much part of the public zeitgeist right now. The censorship goes far beyond simple curation and deep into straight-up "thoughtcrime" territory. By now, at LEAST thousands of users have been banned from the subreddit for the sole offense of questioning the moderators decisions or having a difference of opinion with them. Bannable offenses include asking why the fees on the Bitcoin network are so high right now, or stating the obvious that high fees are undesirable. You can't even type the word "censorship" in their subreddit, because that word is one of many on their "forbidden words" list (you can't make this shit up).

You say you want to stay hands-off unless site-wide rules are being broken, or if the subreddit is being used to harm people. Yet you tolerate the /r/bitcoin moderators' blatant CSS manipulation [image], circulation of "enemies" lists (https://archive.is/er916) featuring prominent Bitcoin figures they don't like, frequent character assassination campaigns against people or companies they don't like, and actively organizing vote brigades to do things like flood the app of a company they don't like with 1-star reviews calling it a scam (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

It's pretty clear that the /r/Bitcoin subreddit is in violation of multiple of your stated principles, yet you continually ignore it. Does this look like a healthy community to you? How about this?

When /r/Bitcoin right-hand censor /u/BashCo made his hysterical (and we now know falsified) post about the attack perpetrated by /r/Bitcoin mods and certain members of Bitcoin Core, Reddit admin /u/sodypop showed up in no time to apologize and communicate with the community. Have the Reddit admins ever addressed the /r/btc community, which has a lot of legitimate grievances about the censorship on /r/bitcoin?

/r/Bitcoin head moderator /u/theymos once wrote:

If 90% of /r/Bitcoin users find these policies to be intolerable, then I want these 90% of /r/Bitcoin users to leave. Both /r/Bitcoin and these people will be happier for it. I do not want these people to make threads breaking the rules, demanding change, asking for upvotes, making personal attacks against moderators, etc. Without some real argument, you're not going to convince anyone with any brains -- you're just wasting your time and ours. The temporary rules against blocksize and moderation discussion are in part designed to encourage people who should leave /r/Bitcoin to actually do so so that /r/Bitcoin can get back to the business of discussing Bitcoin news in peace.

Theymos has previously stolen millions of dollars of donated funds and funneled them to his buddies, never delivering on the software he was supposedly paying for to be developed.

We also know that at least one /r/Bitcoin moderator, /u/BashCo, is involved in coordinated trolling attacks and character assassinations through his involvement in Bitcoin Core's "Dragon's Den" propaganda group.

I can't imagine you haven't seen these articles by now, but the history of the censorship on /r/bitcoin has been well documented:

Are these the kinds of people you want representing such a large and prominent subreddit on your site?

The question I'd like to ask the Reddit admins: Do you define a community by its moderators, or by its members? For all the talking about "community" you guys do, you certainly don't seem to have a problem with the massive disruption of the huge open source Bitcoin community that has been largely driven by moderation policies of /r/Bitcoin.

While I respect Reddit's stated position to allow communities to manage themselves as they see fit, the Bitcoin community is much larger than /u/theymos. His actions, including blacklisting entire companies and deleting posts that speak favorably of certain software proposals, have been the leading factor in driving a wedge through the $136 billion dollar open-source digital currency project that is Bitcoin. For years /r/Bitcoin was the central hub of discussion for the Bitcoin community, but today this divide has created an air of toxicity and all out civil war within our industry.

I understand that Reddit chooses to defend free speech, but allowing /u/theymos and his team to remain moderators of the 430,000 member strong community /r/Bitcoin has the opposite effect and contributes to the stifling of free and open discussion.

I propose implementing open moderation logs and replacing the /r/Bitcoin moderation team with a team of neutral third-party moderators who can be counted on to uphold the responsibilities of moderating such a large and important community.

I'm probably talking to a brick wall here, as continuing to ignore this elephant in the room would be perfectly in line with all of your past behavior. I hope you prove me wrong, admins.

submitted by /u/BeijingBitcoins
[link] [comments]

Bitcoin.com is a top 2,000 website in the USA, while .org is just a top 4,000

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 05:45 PM PST

No wonder they are so mad.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcoin.com

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcoin.org

submitted by /u/MemoryDealers
[link] [comments]

What /r/bitcoin mods desperately don't want you to see!

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 01:11 PM PST

submitted by /u/BitcoinXio
[link] [comments]

If you are confused between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Core in the Bitcoin.com wallet, you are a liar or mentally handicapped.

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 05:42 PM PST

submitted by /u/MemoryDealers
[link] [comments]

Enough is enough. Reddit admins, I'm calling you out. Tell the community why you support censorship, attacks, brigading, malicious misinformation, character attacks, etc.

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 09:12 AM PST

Reddit is supposed to be a platform for communities, to share information and ideas, and to discuss projects freely.

You, as administrators, have a duty to your users to at least ensure that subreddits for well-known communities aren't corrupted by those who seek to damage said community, and to ensure that information isn't heavily censored to favor a particular narrative in a community that should encompass a number of projects. This is especially important for huge emerging communities such as Bitcoin, that the people in charge of these communities aren't allowed to continue behaving in a way that goes against Reddit's core values.

You have done great work to rid the platform of hate speech and witch-hunting, now focus on the toxic deception and psychological manipulation that has been going on for over two years, progressively getting worse as it's ignored by those who can step in and fix it.

Against the wishes of the community, the /r/Bitcoin sub was hijacked and turned into a cesspool of censorship that breaks nearly every modiquette rule that Reddit has:

Please don't:

Remove content based on your opinion.

As you can see from the link above, despite immense community backlash, censorship was enacted to do exactly this. It was an opinion shared mainly by a few of the devs who later became known to be on the Blockstream payroll (these are just the 'officially' paid ones)

Hide reddit ads or purposely mislead users with custom CSS.

The CSS is coded so that when they silently remove your posts (normally auto-removed from a large list of banned words that show any kind of support for non-Segwit stuff), it hides the comment to everyone else as if it was never there. (You can check this by making comments yourself and checking in Incognito mode)

Another misleading CSS edit by theymos that was caught, and again you can see people speaking out against around 1 year ago, when that was still permitted.

Act unilaterally when making major revisions to rules, sidebars, or stylesheets.

Literally, against all community consensus, and against outcries of the majority of the thread, strict censorship was instigated into the rules of /r/Bitcoin that were never lifted.

The vote numbers were hidden for a long time which allowed the moderators to re-sort content, having the most down-voted ones appear at the top. This was only changed recently during the ridiculously obvious "vote brigading" false flag that they used to pin blame on /r/btc - with /u/sodypop wading in to back up the comments that something 'was going on' but refusing to engage with any posts on /r/btc that asked for information on how this blatant attack happened to 'slip through' Reddit's complex anti-vote-manipulation algorithms. Now we have some evidence that /r/bitcoin themselves were likely involved in the attack.

The CSS was changed to hide 'silently removed' comments from threads, so the amount of censorship that goes on isn't immediately apparent.

Take moderation positions in communities where your profession, employment, or biases could pose a direct conflict of interest to the neutral and user driven nature of reddit.

Some members of the moderation team are on the payroll of Blockstream, which the CEO Adam Back has publicly stated fully intends to use Bitcoin in order to make profit by selling off side-chains. If that's not a conflict of interest, then what is?

Here is /u/theymos stating that he will use all available platforms to hurt any other version of Bitcoin (in this case XT, but clearly has used them to sew seeds of uncertainty against both the S2X upgrade and Bitcoin Cash)

Encourage or "feed" trolls—just ignore them.

They don't just encourage or 'feed' them, they give them moderator positions. Just look at the comment history of any of the 'latest' moderators.

Long-time moderator /u/BashCo constantly attacks Roger Ver and is dedicated to the psychological manipulation tactic of calling Bitcoin Cash "BCash" (along with some other exemplary reading in the rest of that thread).

New moderator /u/StopAndDecrypt is trying to redirect users asking about Bitcoin Cash to a subreddit that he controls. which is misleading again, as he shows he is not a supporter of Bitcoin Cash. He also claims people to be 'outright scammers' who support Bitcoin Cash.

Here's /u/coinjaf claiming that Bitcoin.com is a 'scam site' and that Roger Ver is a scammer.

Ban users from subreddits in which they have not broken any rules.

There's hundreds of examples of people being banned for asking questions, or simply providing facts that dispute the core narrative.

Interfere with other subreddits or their moderation.

We constantly have members spewing shit over here, that much we accept.

What I do not accept is that /r/bitcoin Private Message users asking about Bitcoin Cash, and then maliciously redirect people to the subreddit /r/bcash which they control. How is this allowed?

The day that Bitcoin Cash was launched, there was a sticky made that referred to it as "BCash", and you can see a very clear campaign of psychological manipulation intended to cause confusion about Bitcoin Cash, and to discredit it in an attempt to make it seem unrelated to Bitcoin when in-fact it more closely resembles the definition of Bitcoin that the current coin using the BTC ticker. You can see this through the rampant usage of "BCash" over on /r/Bitcoin - which is the only "discussion of altcoin" that is allowed to remain. If you try to comment anything positive about Bitcoin Cash, it will be removed. As soon as you refer to it negatively, your comment is fine to remain.

They've also organised brigading outside of Reddit, which although you could argue doesn't interfere with another 'sub', it interferes with our entire community. This targeted behaviour needs to stop, as Reddit is being used as a platform for targeted harassment/manipulation.

Reddit admins, I welcome your comments on the matter, mainly why you feel like this is the kind of moderation you want to present as acceptable across such an enormous community, that has clearly been ripped apart by the actions of just a few bad actors. Over the two years they've had due to any inaction on your part, they've amassed new techniques to swing things in their favor, which has clearly influenced new people in the community who head over to /r/bitcoin and see nothing but the vile slander campaign against anything that isn't Blockstream, where any opinions not in-line are censored and deleted, skewing the opinions and misleading the public.

Edit: All tips are very much appreciated however I would prefer that they instead go towards the Bitcoin Cash Community Fund that aims to raise adoption for BCH, and in-turn help combat this ongoing slander campaign against us by telling people the truth about BCH, promoting its technological advantages. It's run by /u/singularity87 who has been an exemplary asset to the Bitcoin community for many years.

submitted by /u/Sha-toshi
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We are in danger of losing net neutrality. I feel like the path bitcoin is taking lately is a direct reflection of what the internet would be without net neutrality. Huge fees and high waiting times. it’s time to take a stand and take charge of our liberty once again!

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 04:11 PM PST

submitted by /u/getsqt
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SegWit and technologies built on it are grossly oversold - u/deadalnix

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 07:35 PM PST

submitted by /u/hunk_quark
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Paradise Papers leak confirms that Phil Potter and Giancarlo Devasini own Tether

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 07:10 PM PST

submitted by /u/ActsJuvenile
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Reddit admins have r/bitcoin's alleged vote manipulation scandal on their radar now. Let's see.... ��

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 03:51 PM PST

submitted by /u/Egon_1
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Bitcoin is nothing more than an elaborate Ponzi Scheme right now

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 09:13 PM PST

The current "store of value" model Bitcoin is nothing more than an elaborate ponzi scheme, whereas the original peer-to-peer cash model was not. It centered on gaining marketshare through merchant and user adoption. The current model is entirely driven by speculation on continued price increases. Ponzi schemes generally require you to constantly bring in new members in order for you to receive payouts and keep the scheme going for as long as possible. Here is where the elaborate part comes in... with Bitfinex printing carwash tokens (tether) to continually drive the price of Bitcoin up, which in turn gets media attention, which in turn brings in new "speculators" trying to jump on this bandwagon. The usual rebuff is that institutional investors/ hedge funds are moving... the CME group etc. It's important to point out that they won't be buying actual Bitcoin but are creating their own financial instruments to speculate on the price of Bitcoin. I expect the CME group to pull off the big short once in operation. Hence the accelerated minting of carwash tokens in recent months pre-empting the loss of control on price manipulation. I've completely cashed out and will be observing from the sidelines waiting on this scam to unravel. We are already seeing alot of traders starting to notice the manipulation. Be safe out there fellow investors/ traders.

submitted by /u/2Coin_Collector7
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/r/Karma Court: The people have charged r\bitcoin mods with 'Crimes Against the Internet' for systematic silencing of opinion

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 09:00 PM PST

Link be sure to see the newer thread on the possible violations of the r\bitcoin mods here

submitted by /u/Pravusmentis
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Forum Wars: r/Bitcoin Mods Accused of Hacking and Vote Manipulation - Bitcoin News

Posted: 21 Nov 2017 05:34 PM PST