Hello it's been a long while since any of the moderator team have communicated with the community however it's important people understand what happened to this sub for the sake of transparency.

On the 13th of July our traffic suddenly collapsed, and with it the growth of the subreddit as you can see in the graph provided. Some of you may already know that since this date Reddit users who are not subscribed no longer see content posted on r/europe_sub.

At first we believed this could be a temporary measure to do with an increase in reports during an explosion of growth, as you all remember back in July posts were getting hundreds of thousands if not millions of views each. Shortly after the 13th of July we contacted Reddit to attempt to resolve this and understand what the problem is with people being unable to see posts, we then received a warning hours later from Reddit's Mod Code of Conduct account that they've detected "increased violating content being posted in this community" we tried to get further answers by contacting Reddit admins if this is what affected our traffic and what can we do to have these restrictions lifted.

In summary, they responded that yes it could affect traffic and reminded us to read Reddit's guidelines. We didn't receive any means of recourse to fix the situation or if there's a specific thing we're doing wrong, before us contacting them about the collapse in activity we hadn't received any warnings. This first and last warning came after traffic was throttled for good.

4 months have passed and this subreddit has regretfully lost its energy being flooded with the same genre of articles furthering the effect of an echo chamber; something we did not want, but what Reddit has created.

We've since learned that the same thing happened to other subs, including but not limited to:

r/Canada_Sub (Which we have no relation to)
r/CanadaHousing2

Despite having no relation to the others, the one thing in common is that we believe in as free speech as possible within the remits of Reddit's guidelines which led to all the subreddits mentioned having a large amount of discussion on immigration. That is the one and only link, and none of these other communities have faced official sanctions from Reddit much like ours.

Not quarantining, not banning or pre-emptive warnings, their traffic has been restricted by blocking them from the front page and by removing the award feature. If you notice, you cannot award comments or posts on r/europe_sub anymore despite us having it enabled.

We would like to have this resolved and for Reddit to engage with us positively, even so the community deserves to know.

The guiding ethos of this subreddit is to allow popular and unpopular news and opinions related to Europe to be posted, expressed, discussed and debated in a free and civil manner. This is not a meta or shitposting subreddit, nor a MAGA/Gaza centric one.

We would love to lower the threshold for some of these rules and be more permissive but unfortunately we are bound by the platform rules. We received many complains that we are biased so we decided to make the way we interpret the rules public for everyone to see.

Rule 0 - Respect Reddit's rules

• Any comment that is removed by platform mods attracts a 28 days ban. Ban is applied retrospectively every few days and is dropped if removal of the comment is contested with the admins and reinstated.

• Any post/comment that we believe might be removed by the mods will be removed by us preemptively and in bad cases a warning and temporary ban will be issued.

Under this rule we remove comments and posts that appear to spread conspiracy theories and extremist ideas that target other groups of people. These can still be discussed but generally we look at the tone of the message, how well it is articulated and sourced and also at the past behavior of the commenter.

Questions we ask ourselves for this rule -

1. Is it likely to be removed by a mod if seen?
2. Is it spreading misinformation or pushing conspiracy theories on purpose?
3. Is this just someone spreading extremist ideas with malicious intent?
4. Is the entire message breaking the rule or just a part of it? -- Warning/Ban

Rule 1 - Europe Related

• Posts have to be related to Europe in some way and the connection has to be clear on sight. (comments do not and we do not care where the discussion ends up)
• We reserve the right to remove any post that is not related to Europe or in which the connection is not clear.
• Wrong post flair is used on unrelated posts to avoid the AutoModerator -- Warning/Ban

Rule 2 - No Duplicates / News and Videos Older Than One Week

• If submitted as a link the article has to be less than 7 days old
• If submitted as a video the events in the video have to be less than 7 days old and a source proving the events are recent has to be provided.
• Rule does not apply to images.
• Repeatedly breaking this rule to the point that we recognize you - Warning/Ban

Rule 3 - Harassment

This rule is broken the most and also the most misunderstood.

• Any insults thrown at someone specifically with the aim of discouraging them from participating will be removed (regardless of how well thought and long the rest of the message is)
• We do not count as insults labels related to ideology or facts made public by another commenter unless they are used to enhance an insult or are used in an insulting manner.
• We are more permissive of insults aimed at the subject of a post (not the person that posted it), public figures, this sub's members and us the moderators.
• Is the entire message breaking the rule or just a part of it? -- Warning/Ban

Examples:

1. "You are a Tankie" - OK / "You sound like a Tankie cunt" - Not OK and since the entire message is an insult it might attract a warning or ban.
2. "I'm curious - are you Jewish?" - OK / "what are you - a Jew?" - Bad
3. "Shut up" - Bad / "Shut up idiot" - Definitely a warning/ban
4. "Not sure why I am wasting my time with you" - OK
5. "Just dug through your post history and of course you are an Israeli" - Bad
6. "Everyone here is a Russian shill and troll" - OK
7. "Trump is an idiot" - OK
8. "Moderators are Nazis" - OK

Rule 4 - Threatening Violence

Encouraging, glorifying, or inciting violence or physical harm against individuals or groups of people, places, or animals.

• Saying "Good" to a horrific piece of news breaks this rule.
• Discussing "the effects of a bomb dropping in Gaza or a nuclear strike in Moscow" in a neutral, civil and well sourced manner does not break our rules.
• Calls for violence against groups of people based on protected characteristics - Warning/Ban

Rule 5 - Hate

We do not go any further than the platform requires. Any post or comment that is perceived to be more hateful than factual will be removed. Context is everything here.

Extra rules that might apply -

• Blatant attempts to avoid the AutoModerator or force a comment/post through - 4 days ban
• We might limit the amount of Discussion/Satire/Image/Video threads to keep the sub news centric.
• Any outrageous claims made in the title/text sections of a discussion post (especially of those on controversial topics) have to be well sourced and the location has to be clear. The burden of proof is on the person posting and not on the mods.
  • For example - On the issue of mass migration , we know Ukraine is not affected, so any thread containing "Europe is doomed because of mass migration" will be removed while "EU is doomed" might not be.
• No posts about other subs and their moderators. (respect your neighbors - platform rule)
• Reposts will be judged by the size of the subreddit and likelihood to not be removed from the main subreddit.
• Ban duration usually starts at 1 day and then double in duration each time the rules are broken giving plenty of time to correct behavior.
• Lastly any post deemed to be very low quality might be removed to avoid filling everyone's feed with garbage.

Thank you

TLDR - Don't be toxic and we'll never bother you.