Newly re-elected President Barack Obama may be the most powerful man in the world, but he still has to bow to the uncontested might of Reddit moderators. A screengrab posted to Reddit shows that the president’s much-reported last-minute post to r/politics was actually dead on arrival. Forum moderators briefly snuffed it out of existence after enough redditors had reported that the title was “editorialized.”
“Reddit, this is important,” was all Obama had written as the headline for a post that linked to his campaign website.
Though r/politics leans very strongly to the left, post titles are supposed to be neutral, and the section’s moderators—who are volunteers and have no official association with Reddit, Inc.—will remove posts if they receive enough reports.
In the end, order was restored. Obama’s post was reinstated. We’re not sure if the conversation below was started by an Obama staffer or just a concerned redditor. But it was apparently enough to get the attention of the moderators, who set the post free and put President Obama back on his path to front-page glory. We’re sure that was on his mind as he gave his victory speech last night.
