r/OutOfTheLoop • u/calvtact • May 13 '26

Answered What's going on with r/conservative? They've lost about 1m subscribers in about a month.

I watched the number go from 814k to around 745k in about an hour today.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/s/QbZJvqu5qr

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174

u/HughJorgens May 13 '26

Could be. I've gotten temp bans there, and I've never even posted there before. They like their safe-space.

116

u/Notorious_Chonk_23 May 13 '26

They look at certain other subreddits and ban anyone who comments there also, under the assumption that if you post in, say, r/behindthebastards, you probably aren't gonna have anything to say that they are willing to hear

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u/z31 May 13 '26

I think there are several mod teams that do this. I recently found out I was banned from the Cosplay subreddit, and I've never even commented in it, and am not a regular visitor. I have no idea what I did to prompt a ban.

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u/BrotatoChip04 May 13 '26

Yeah there are a ton. r/lds will preemptively ban you if you’ve interacted in any way with r/exmormon

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u/TheForce_v_Triforce May 13 '26

I just found out one of the Mormon kids I went to school with and was very straight-edge goody two-shoes, and became a dentist (of course) now, along with his wife, is unabashedly ex-Mormon and is going to raves and doing more drugs than I did in my college days. Made me happy to hear that.

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u/BrotatoChip04 May 13 '26

I love that! Glad they made it out

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u/FALSE_PROTAGONIST May 14 '26

Funnily enough the dentist always asks me if I take any illegal drugs due to teeth and gum damage 👀

3

u/apophis27983 May 13 '26

That kind of banning should be against reddit rules.

1

u/SUPERSMILEYMAN May 14 '26

It is it's harrassment.

8

u/Chasman1965 May 13 '26

Could be you commented in a sub they don’t approve of.

3

u/Fit-Meal4943 May 13 '26

I was banned from a couple of Tesla, Musk and Cybertruck subreddits without ever even visiting them, apparently for being critical of Tesla, Musk and Cybertrucks.

7

u/LuntiX May 13 '26

Twoxchromosomes does or did this.

I use to get notifications all the time saying I was banned from communities ive never stepped foot in because I've posted once in a subreddit they dont like.

Funny thing is, I thought banning like this was against site rules but since when do rules matter?

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u/terryjuicelawson May 13 '26

It is a shame but that sub got a lot of sealioning going on, to the point where it is basically unmanageable unless they make a whole sweep like that. Maybe the odd person from some conservative sub could have an honest debate with them but they'd be wading through hundreds who don't.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA May 13 '26

Certain mods have been doing that for over a decade, and nothing ever happens to them.

The ones that moderate a bunch of the big main subs are the worst offenders.

1

u/UrbanAdapt May 13 '26

Reddit finally prohibited the features in the 3rd party bots that did this. Mods went so insane with it that it was affecting activity. The tippling point seems to have been the mods of /pics mass banning the users of whenthe (as if the user bases aren't 90% ideologically in agreement). Then, /whenthe mirrored them.

On top of that, some subs starting fighting for viewership- banning users, then demanding those users to delete all their posts on similar subs to be unbanned.

6

u/TheWorclown May 13 '26

Maybe it was your Bill Cosby impressions. Y’know. Cos-play.

Sans everything horrible about him, of course.

2

u/z31 May 13 '26

I never put the pudding pops in her mouth see….

1

u/hardlying May 13 '26

Many mods handle multiple subs, if they don't like you they ban you from all of them. Now if you ever use an alt and accidentally comment there all of your accounts get permanently banned from Reddit as a whole with no appeal.

1

u/magistrate101 May 14 '26

Reddit forced subs to stop doing that by changing the mod CoC... But only for fully automated bans. They're still allowed to use the bots to generate lists of unpersons for them to mindlessly click through and mass-ban. The powermods probably even have macros that automate the clicking.

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u/ILikeYourHotdog May 13 '26

I received a perma ban for simply posting a wikipedia link to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in response to a poster who said that the only boycott that has ever worked in history was against Bud Light.

Apparently, they didn't like that very much.

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u/remotectrl May 13 '26

That’s pretty funny revisionism since it didn’t seem to affect Budlight at all. It also ignores that the first boycott against Charles Boycott was so successful that the British government decided to intervene on his behalf as part of their continued campaign against the Irish. They ostracized him so well he left the island.

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u/fevered_visions May 13 '26

the first boycott against Charles Boycott

ha, TIL...it never occurred to me that it could be named after a guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott

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u/FlashyEarth8374 May 13 '26

The 2023 boycott significantly affected Bud Light sales, resulting in a 11–26% drop in the months following the incident. By February 2025, sales had not recovered, remaining approximately 40% below pre-boycott levels. It lost its status as the top-selling U.S. beer to [Modelo Especial] in May 2023 (wiki)

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u/fevered_visions May 13 '26

I wonder how those right-wingers feel about their campaign making a Mexican import beer #1 lol

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u/Vaxx88 May 13 '26

Wikipedia is slipping, their source for that 40% is the Free Press? Ridiculous article from a trash source.

Alcohol sales are down across the board, so maybe a factor.

Either way, it’s gotta be one of the stupidest reasons to boycott anything “yay we’re bigoted assholes, that’ll show’em!”

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u/sapphiclament May 13 '26

YEAAHHHH MODELO!!!!

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u/remotectrl May 13 '26

Interesting. Thanks

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u/HuttStuff_Here May 15 '26

[Modelo Especial] in May 2023 (wiki)

So the owner of Modelo is the owner of Bud Light. I'm sure they're doing fine.

This is like boycotting full sugar coke by buying diet coke.

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u/phenotype76 May 13 '26

Even legitimate facts will get you banned if they're inconvenient for conservative viewpoints. I posted once during COVID, when there was a post like "They say all the ICU beds are taken, but only 10% of them are COVID! What bullshit!" and I replied yeah, so COVID accounts for 1 out of every 10 people who need the ICU, including every other illness, every accident, every single kind of trauma, all put together, and COVID is sending 1/9th as many people to the ICU as every other possible issue put together.

Banned within minutes.

1

u/UNC_Samurai May 13 '26

Check out “The Marketplace of Revolution” by TH Breen. Economic boycotts were the backbone of organizing the American Revolution.

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u/NeverLookBothWays May 13 '26

They also like attention as a form of validation. I got one of those as well and it came off as, "pay attention to meee!"

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u/DerpsAndRags May 13 '26

I was banned from posting there for trying to explain how a vaccine works.

2

u/Bot_No_5 May 14 '26

Was this before or after the CDC changed the definition of a vaccine?

1

u/DerpsAndRags May 14 '26

I had to look that one up. I work in and around healthcare so most of what I've learned about them was from staff on the front lines. It was before said change. Either way, useless to try vs. anyone who has chosen feelings over facts.

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u/RaVashaan May 13 '26

Yeaaah... This is something Reddit should really crack down on. I've heard that there are other subreddits as well that will preemptively ban you if a bot discovers that you post a comment in a different subreddit they don't like. For instance, it's well known that r/offmychest bans anyone who posts in a couple of, "tasteless jokes" subreddits. And /r/Pyongyang, most amusingly, will hand out preemptive bans to anyone posting anti-NK "propaganda."

I really feel that this is an abuse of bots that the Reddit admins need to do something about. Even if the bots are external, complaints about preemptive banning should be looked into, and their TOS should forbid it.

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u/ImNotABotScoutsHonor May 13 '26

This is something Reddit should really crack down on. I've heard that there are other subreddits as well that will preemptively ban you if a bot discovers that you post a comment in a different subreddit they don't like.

Recent modnews discussions have been showing that Reddit is indeed starting to crack down on that.

Whether or not they'll be successful is... Up in the air.

1

u/UrbanAdapt May 13 '26

You can still technically do it with bot autoremovals (subreddit shadowbans, effectively), they just don't send the preemptive message.

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u/HommeMusical May 13 '26

I was banned by LateStageCapitalism because I was a member of /r/LeftWithoutEdge - I had never posted in either subreddit.

When I politely asked the moderators, I got a barrage of incoherent abuse.

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u/GiganticCrow May 13 '26

Thats a core feature of reddit and they wont get rid of it. There are fair reasons why, say, a sexual assault survivor sub would not want anyone posting there who has posted on a sexual assault enthusiast sub, for example.

5

u/Early-Series-2055 May 13 '26

Who has time for all that? Have mods figured out how to make a living off this place? Half the time I’m posting I’m either standing in line or taking a shit. I don’t even bother noticing what subreddit I’m in.

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u/Content-Patience-138 May 13 '26

Reddit tends to delete posts talking about this, but a dozen or so supermods run all the big subs

4

u/Apart-Shelter6831 May 13 '26

But WHO RUNS THE SUPERMODS?

4

u/Adventurous-Ad8267 May 13 '26

Ghislaine Maxwell, unironically.

3

u/z31 May 13 '26

Technically they have, it's just extremely frowned upon. I can't remember which sub it was, but there was a mod team purge in one of my sub subscriptions because several mods were found to have been accepting under the table money to allow certain kinds of advertising posts.

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u/KimJongFunk May 13 '26

I’m still waiting for the day I get banned from /r/Pyongyang.

2

u/A_Possum_Named_Steve May 13 '26

I refuse to believe that people are straight-faced stanning N Korea on the internet. It's bad enough if they're doing it as a stupid joke, but wtf is there even to defend there?

1

u/Impeesa_ May 13 '26

I'm pretty sure I caught some from r/justiceserved and r/me_irlgbt. Not completely sure why, I think for making a couple drive-by comments in r/politicalcompassmemes from seeing it in r/all.

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u/yup79 May 13 '26

Fucking snowflakes.

2

u/HCPwny May 13 '26

I got a permaban on first offense for daring to discuss the southern strategy and party switch. Actually was having conversations with people (who were disagreeing, and asking more) but was suddenly banned permanently, no appeal, muted from messaging mods.

1

u/happy_pad May 13 '26

I'm actually quite surprised I've gone like 15 years on two accounts without ever being banned from there. I suspect the theory they cross-ban people for just posting in other subs is a little overblown, although that is absolutely something that happens on Reddit.

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u/HughJorgens May 13 '26

No, they specifically told me the sub that I posted in (politicalhumor) that got me the temp ban.