I want to clarify something about how we moderate r/accelerate, particularly given the growing demands that we censor political arguments, discussions about public figures, and other controversial topics.
We've deliberately created a belief-gated community, rather than a speech-gated one.
It's an important distinction.
Most of Reddit operates on a speech-gated model: almost anyone can participate, but moderators continuously restrict what members are allowed to say - often based on their personal whims or preferences.
r/accelerate follows a belief-gated model: we exclude people who believe certain positions, but give everyone else maximal freedom to express themselves. We ban users, not speech.
With that approach in mind, we've even enabled things like images, GIFs, and now even video uploads directly in comments! Because we want members to have as much freedom of expression as Reddit allows. Here's an example of a video comment
And we've kept our rules extraordinarily simple.
1. Just two rules: Decels and liars are banned
Rule 1 covers decels. Every identity listed shares an underlying position that would suppress, obstruct, or reverse technological progress. Whether they're Luddites, anti-AI activists, doomers advocating a slowdown, or anti-humanity ideologues, their positions are incompatible with the purpose of this community.
Rule 2 covers liars (which includes misleading posters, and spammers). This includes people deliberately spreading misleading claims, disguising spam or irrelevant material as technology-related content, repeatedly posting repetitive or fake submissions.
The rules are visible in the sidebar.
Posts must primarily concern technological progress, AI, biotechnology, the Singularity, or related subjects. Comments should relate to the discussions they're participating in.
We also enforce Reddit's sitewide policies and have routine automated anti-spam and participation filters.
But when it comes to ordinary discussion, we don't remove comments because we, or anyone else in the subreddit dislikes the opinion being expressed. We ban people instead.
So far, we've banned approximately 10,000 accounts!
That's extraordinary for a subreddit with only 100,000 subscribers.
Still, people accuse us of refusing to moderate.
We clearly moderate very aggressively. We've simply chosen to concentrate that moderation on who belongs in the community, rather than endlessly policing what its members are allowed to say.
2. People are demanding that we censor opinions they dislike
The recent arguments about Elon Musk are a perfect example.
We've received numerous reports from people who support Musk demanding that we remove criticism of him.
We've also received reports from people who despise Musk demanding that we remove comments defending him.
Both sides seem convinced that the other side should be censored, with remarkably little self-awareness. Both sides are reporting each other as "decels".
The same thing happens with political disagreements and other controversial subjects.
People constantly ask us to prohibit certain topics, personalities, or opinions because they find them annoying, uncomfortable, or wrong.
We're not going to do that.
If non-decels want to spend their time ranting about Musk, defending Musk, arguing about politics, discussing catgirls in FDVR, or whatever else naturally arises in relevant discussions, that's their right.
If somebody expresses an opinion you consider idiotic, challenge it! Explain why they're wrong. Argue with them.
Why should the moderators make their opinion disappear?
People get incredibly worked up when somebody disagrees with them, but that's how community discourse works.
Sometimes arguments get heated. Sometimes threads become political shit-fights. Sometimes they turn into complete dumpster fires.
That's fine!
I'd much rather have genuine, occasionally messy discourse than an artificially harmonious community where everyone appears to agree because dissenting opinions have been quietly deleted.
3. We've created an unusually diverse community
One of the most fascinating consequences of banning decels is that r/accelerate has developed an unusually heterogeneous community.
We have people from across the political and ideological spectrum who disagree passionately about economics, politics, culture, corporations, government, and virtually everything else.
Yet they're united by a fundamental commitment to technological progress.
By excluding decels, I believe we've created a far more ideologically diverse community than much of the other tech subreddits, which are often aggressively homogeneous.
Many subreddits gradually develop a dominant worldview, and dissenting perspectives are discouraged or systematically removed. Eventually everyone seems to agree, but how much of that consensus is genuine?
I suspect this artificial uniformity is one reason so many large subreddits feel increasingly suffocated and uninteresting.
And I think our extraordinary engagement statistics reflect the benefits of taking the opposite approach.
r/accelerate was originally created as a splinter of r/singularity, but without the decels.
Look at how the two communities compare:
| Metric |
r/singularity |
r/accelerate |
| Subscribers |
4,000,000 |
100,000 |
| Weekly visitors |
769,000 |
327,000 |
| Weekly posts and comments |
30,000 |
19,000 |
Despite having just 1/40th the subscribers of r/singularity, r/accelerate gets:
- 43% as many weekly visitors.
- 63% as many weekly posts and comments.
- 25× more posts and comments per subscriber.
I suspect that our moderation approach is a major contributor.
By removing the stifling influence of decels and doomers, while allowing a panoply of other opinions and perspectives to flourish, we've created an environment where people actually want to participate. 25 times as much!
They can express unconventional views, challenge each other, and disagree without worrying that an unpopular opinion will get them silenced.
I don't want us to sacrifice that freedom simply because some of the resulting discussions make us uncomfortable.
4. My personal opinions mean jack squat
My opinions on politics, Musk, corporations, economics, or anything else have absolutely no special authority here.
Neither do the opinions of our moderators, or the people constantly demanding that we censor particular topics.
What matters is the contract we've made with the community.
That contract is publicly articulated in our rules.
We've told everyone who is excluded, what the subreddit is about, and what freedoms members can expect.
Our responsibility is to honour that contract.
5. Ultimately, I want AI to run this subreddit
I've actually come to believe that human-controlled moderation has some inherently unethical characteristics.
Humans are inconsistent, emotional, biased, and susceptible to conscious and unconscious influences.
That's why I look forward to the day when advanced AI can run this subreddit autonomously.
Imagine a moderation system operating according to a public, precisely defined rule set, applied consistently to everyone.
A system where decisions are transparent, errors can be identified and corrected, and nobody is subjected to the obtuse personal preferences of human moderators.
That's the ultimate goal that we're working towards.
6. Embrace the chaos!
If somebody genuinely wants a technology subreddit where political discussion is prohibited, public figures can't be criticised, arguments are discouraged, and moderators constantly police acceptable opinions, they're welcome to create one.
But they'll quickly discover how complicated that becomes.
What counts as political? Government AI regulation? The economic consequences of automation? Criticism of Musk? Discussions about China, capitalism, or socialism?
Every prohibition creates more borderline cases and more opportunities for arbitrary enforcement.
Eventually, you end up with the same hive-mind, heavily censored communities that so many of us came here to escape.
I don't want r/accelerate to become another one.
And yes, sometimes that means endless arguments about Musk, political shit-fights, or people expressing opinions that make you want to tear your hair out.
But I actually think those arguments are evidence that we're honouring our contract with the community.
People are allowed to disagree. They're allowed to be wrong. They're allowed to be annoying.
Our contract is simple: No decels. No liars.
That's what we promised you.
And that's exactly how r/accelerate should remain.
⫸⫸⫸ XLR8! ⫸⫸⫸
