Welcome back to EarthPorn. Why was the sub private? Read this to find out.

Hi there landscape lovers,For the last 24+ hours /r/EarthPorn has been in private mode, which is a subreddit status that only allows mods and approved users to see/post/comment. During this time we have received thousands of requests to become approved users, and many messages of support for the stance we decided to take. There were also quite a few confused messages from users who incorrectly assumed they had been banned or somehow reddit was broken. Let me try to explain.On Wednesday there was a post on /r/vaxxhappened by /u/n8thegr8 which (briefly) called upon the reddit site admins to do something about the rampant misinformation which is present on the platform.This post which was heavily upvoted and contained a great deal of information outlining the problem and the concerns of various reddit communities was ultimately responded to by /u/spez who is one of the creators of reddit and currently serves as CEO. This response was widely panned and characterized as tone-deaf, insulting to the communities of reddit who favor science, and frankly dangerous since there was no room left for discussion and the ability to reply was turned off.Following the reply there was a great deal of confusion about what to do next, with some people advocating blackouts and others trying to figure out how to hit reddit in the pocket book in order to make this message reach someone with the ability to change spez' mind.While EarthPorn is not typically a subreddit which gets political, in the past we have occasionally taken part in site wide protests including the battle for net neutrality which is actually our highest upvoted post of all time.Reacting to the wider reddit community drive towards action in the face of spez' comment, I personally decided that EarthPorn would go private in support of the protest. I notified my fellow mods shortly before I undertook this action but ultimately I acted unilaterally and without mod team consultation. While the team was supportive of my decision I alone deserve any repercussions for my actions. I acted on my authority as the top position moderator of the subreddit, which I am aware breaks the community moderator guidelines.Today I decided to back off from the position of holding the subreddit private. There are several reasons for this.acting unilaterally is wrong, and I shouldn't use my position to force others to pay attention to me.the volume of requests from the community made it clear that people greatly miss the content on EarthPornultimately reddit controls the content of their site, and by tacitly enabling misinformation, there aren't many options for moderators to fall back on other than to continue to work diligently (for free) to remove dangerous, anti-science propaganda.Unlike spez I will certainly allow comments on this post, and I will do what I can to clear up any misconceptions. Kindly excuse any delays in replies as I work a regular job outside of reddit. via /r/EarthPorn https://ift.tt/38k85Jy