this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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r/art Moderators Resign After Artist's 'Print' Ban (x.com)
submitted 3 days ago by PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com to c/reddit@lemmy.ml
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Late Wednesday, all human moderators of Reddit's r/art subreddit quit en masse, leaving the 30-million-member community locked and bot-run with no new posts allowed. The trigger was Clay's ban under Rule 9, which strictly prohibits any mention of sales, commissions, or prints to keep focus on art critique. Clay shared screenshots of the curt mod response and his locked view of the pinned resignation notice, calling it absurd while selling prints of the moment. The episode exposed ongoing frustrations in online art communities over rigid rules and moderator decisions.

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[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 10 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I'm out of the loop. Reddit's global rules prohibit sales? If that's the case, it's weird to say this, but even Facebook is more reasonable. Sales aren't illegal in most places of the world, and in an user-fed website, I'd expect at least some to be interested in doing sales.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Reddit has a weird obsession with wanting original content, but hate self promotion or any attempts to monetize. Except for porn, apparently that can be promoted.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

And then all the users then hate people making money from that too. They just expect everything for free.

[–] DundasStation@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't think Reddit's global rules prohibit sales. Otherwise, all the porn subreddits promoting OnlyFans would've been nuked. /r/art's own rules prohibit sales, as seen here:

IMHO, this rule is a bit extreme but it isn't without reason. Without this rule, the subreddit would be flooded with people trying to sell art. Selling art isn't a problem, but if the entire subreddit is just people trying to sell their own artwork, then the community will just turn into FB Marketplace. And I would imagine the users wouldn't like that.

The issue isn't the rule. The issue is that the mods are powertripping assholes who just outright banned the dude and purged his entire post history on /r/art.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The issue isn't the rule. The issue is that the mods are powertripping assholes who just outright banned the dude and purged his entire post history on /r/art.

Something doesn't add up here. Because it was a human mod who was an asshole to the guy. Did he quit as well, in protest of his own behavior?

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

It was the one mod that powertripped crashing out because of the backlash and demoting everyone else before himself, according to another comment.

[–] DundasStation@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Because the entire mod team resigned, it could either be:

  1. The entire team got fed up with the drama and resigned.
  2. The top mod got fed up with the drama and booted everyone out, including himself.

I don't think it was a protest from the other mods against the powertripping one as I don't know how resigning is going to do anything useful. It's more likely that this incident invited a lot of people to the subreddit and the mods just got tired of dealing with it. And because mods can't close the subreddits like they did in 2023 anymore without Reddit's permission, they all just resigned or the top mod just purged everyone.

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 days ago

It was the one mod that powertripped crashing out and demoting everyone else before himself, according to another comment.

[–] winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The /art/ subreddit's rules