- The r/MakeupAddiction community on Reddit, which has more than 1 million subscribers, is open again after being frozen when all of its moderators banned themselves.
- Almost all of the previous moderators left once the subreddit’s founder stepped in.
- The founder is now taking applications for new moderators, but community members are also demanding deeper change.
Earlier this month, Reddit’s largest cosmetics community, r/MakeupAddiction, was thrown into turmoil.
In a crisis that spun off from the misapplied ban of a single user, every moderator temporarily banned themselves and stopped every user from making new posts.
After around two days, the subreddit was un-frozen. But the community, which has more than 1 million subscribers, wasn’t prepared to go back to business as usual.
The subreddit’s founder, G3m, whose real name is Gemma, returned after a period of inactivity and swiftly took over.
As the founding subreddit moderator, she has the ability to remove other moderators, and she used it: Moderators who froze the subreddit either resigned or were kicked off the team. One former moderator apparently even deleted their account.
"I just want to apologise for the way this entire thing has been handled," Gemma wrote in a post. "We accept responsibility completely. The way this sub has been run is unacceptable. Things will be changing drastically."
Gemma is now taking applications for new moderators.
Read more: A massive makeup community on Reddit is in turmoil after all the moderators banned themselves
The community has been pushing back for more changes. The new moderators have proposed clearer rules and guidelines to explain why a person would get banned, as well as more transparency around rule enforcement.
But some critics say it was the lack of a swift correction and response that led to the community falling into disarray in the first place.
Community members also want moderators to more closely police the content in the subreddit. The most upvoted posts on Monday were criticizing what users see as neglect from the previous moderators, who they say let the subreddit turn into an Instagram-like flood of polished selfies rather than discussions and recommendations about makeup.
Users are also asking that moderators to be on the lookout for brand "shills" - either paid staffers or influencers for cosmetics brands who build buzz for products through fake accounts.
Five current or former moderators didn't immediately respond to INSIDER's request for comment.
- Read more:
- A massive makeup community on Reddit is in turmoil after all the moderators banned themselves
- Reddit's misogynist incel community is upset about Zac Efron's serial killer movie
- 'High School Musical' actor Corbin Bleu has more Wikipedia pages than almost anyone else on earth and Reddit may have just solved why
- The social media company behind Fyre Festival lost more than 200,000 Instagram followers after being accused of plagiarizing its posts