r/art subreddit under new management after an artist was banned for mentioning their art prints
On November 24, 2025, Artist Hayden Clay (reddit user Strawbear) was permanently banned from the r/art subreddit for mentioning their art prints. In addition, all their content-- many years' worth-- was also removed from the subreddit.
r/art has always had extremely strict rules against self-promotion, to the extent of being actively hostile to artists. For example, if you post your art there, you are not allowed to have a link to your website in your reddit user profile, and you may not put a watermark which includes your social media handle. As of December 3, 2025, their official rules stated:
- DO NOT SPAM. No art sales, no links to social media, stores, or anything spammy.
DO NOT mention SALES or SOCIAL MEDIA. AT ALL.
DO NOT MENTION ART SALES. AT ALL.
DO NOT LINK TO SOCIAL MEDIA. Or talk about your social media, or include any watermark that references your social media.
DO NOT link to a sales site, or have a link to your sales site in your personal profile, or have a username that refers to a sales site.
Basically, if your Reddit account exists only to sell your art, DO NOT post here.
Broken record time: This applies to anything that looks like spam. ANYTHING. For example: product marketing, fundraising, charities, surveys, contests, collaborations, exhibitions, requests for submissions, research projects, business ideas, requests for prints, social media usernames, links to sales pages, website promotions, sneaky usernames, and whatever else we feel is spam.
If you still think, somehow, your spam doesn't fit this list, DO NOT post here.
Hayden Clay's post prompted plenty of backlash against the r/art mod team. On November 27, Hayden Clay tweeted that the r/art mod team rage-quit, leaving the subreddit locked. CORRECTION: Sorry for my mistake-- the mod team did not rage quit, it was one mod that removed everyone and then pretended like everyone decided to quit. Thanks to @teaearlgraycold and @CannibalisticApple for the correction!
On December 2, the r/art new mod team introduced themselves. They are promising to have updated "non-draconian" rules in the next few days. They understand that artists need to make a living and advertise their work, and want to moderate the subreddit in a way that balances that against spam. They've been unbanning users (including Hayden Clay) and they said that out of 5000+ bans issued in 2025, only 60+ had a valid reason.
UPDATE: As of December 4, r/art has been reopened, with updated rules in place. I think this is much more fair with regards to self-promotion:
- Advertising / Self-promotion
Promotion/advertising of products or services (e.g., art materials, software) is not permitted without mod approval.
Links to personal sites/socials/merch should be in your Reddit profile, and can be mentioned once in your post body and sparingly in comments if asked. Direct links to personal sites/socials/merch should only be shared in our weekly Wednesday megathread.
Promotion of OnlyFans or other pornographic sites is not permitted.
I remember being new to reddit and thinking about sharing my art in the r/art subreddit, but then I was turned off by their anti-artist rules. I'm pleasantly surprised by this turn of events-- though I wish it had happened earlier. The new mods sound reasonable, and have expressed dismay about the negativity of the previous mods:
Honestly it's pretty insane and a bit depressing seeing the modmails from the old team. Very rude, disrespectful, and extremely harsh to people making simple, innocent mistakes, older people or non-English speaking people misunderstanding little things, etc. Those mods were seriously troubled.
I'm glad that it looks like reddit's most established art subreddit has a better future ahead thanks to the new mods.
I wish the new team luck with this balancing act of self promotion vs spam. Speaking from experience it is a lot tougher than many people realize.
I agree they certainly have a lot of work on their hands, especially since it's such a huge sub.
I would probably have something like "you may only post your work once a month, and you may include one link in your post" as the main rule. It's simple and I think a fair restriction based on the size and activity of the sub.
To a degree that works, until you suddenly find multiple accounts posting the same link. Technically no rule is being broken, even if it is clear enough there might be a relation to the accounts.
I suspect that this sort of wack a mole might have lead to the original blanket ban on any sales link.
Also, allowing any kind of self promotion will see an increase in people trying to self promote. You can think something like "voting will sort that out" but that isn't true either. The people that now actively look at new might find it less interesting now because the type of content will change.
To be clear, I not saying it is impossible. But if you don't want to get flooded by people trying to self promote it is going to cost a lot of work and effort.
Not to mention people claiming to be self promoting, but that aren't actually. Reselling art on etsy that they bought from alibaba (or something like that, I'm pretty sure the general idea holds even if the specifics doesn't).
The blanket rule of no self promotion cuts down significantly on the time needed to investigate from the mods.
They should just add a rule: "Must be art"
(sarcasm)
Thats where the rule: Don't be an idiot comes in.
A blanket rule to remove those who abuse the rules.
I've operated a lot of online spaces and usually include some version of, "Don't be a dick" for exactly that reason, but if the people running the online space are themselves the dicks it can quickly sour the whole community. Even then there are countless instances where I've spoken to someone who broke that rule who would swear up and down that they had not. Some people just love to argue, others might genuinely not see whatever behavior as dickish.
Same goes for the self promotion. If I am self-promoting then my threshold for what's too much is likely much lower since I stand to gain much more.
The cynic in me says that the quality of /r/art, whether we're talking about moderation or about the submissions, is so low that this is one of the rare instances in which whoever runs the sub is free to experiement because either they succeed or little value was lost anyway.
Oh, to be clear, I have no specific opinion about the subreddit itseld. I left reddit during the api debacle. My comments are based on general experience moderating subs and interactions with other mod teams in the past.
Yeah, I don't mean to say that that should be the only rule. I think the mod team should definitely have some flexibility and discretion in trying to deal with people who are just finding loopholes / "rule lawyering".
Over time I found it’s better to be more chill about self-promotion. I now tend to reapprove OC that users mass-report more often than remove it. Those are also the most interesting because it’s either AI/controversial or reported for petty reasons.
Self-promotion in these cases is impossible to moderate without community input because the community wants to see successful OC and support the artist but some people report it out of jealousy if it’s a successful post and others just report low-quality OC as spam.
Who has time to philosophize about that? Mods should respect the upvotes and downvotes of the community - it does the thinking in a sense when it comes to self-promotion.
Downvotes and many reports = probably a bot
Downvotes but no reports = low quality, but can stay up
Upvotes and many reports = check comments for reasons, decide depending on rules/reddit policy.
And of course, real objective spam follows the porn heuristic: you know what it is when you see it.
This does contradict with what you wrote just before this. Also, what is the community here? On subreddits alone there is hardly one singular community. Not to mention the external factors from r/all and popular (or whatever those feeds might be called these days).
Hard disagree here. Obvious spam will be... well... obvious. People get very creative in their pursuit of self promotion and spam. Not to mention situations where well meaning users post something that in itself is actual spam but they didn't recognize at such. A recent example of this happening on Tildes comes to mind.
So to circle back to
Good question, but actually being able to think about it and having that time does make for better moderated subreddits. Given the ridiculous amount of time I spend on reddit moderating communities and building mod tooling I also agree that most people shouldn't spend that much time thinking about this. Because it will slowly burn out people and cause all sorts of issues. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem here, since reddit also isn't inclined to invest more than strictly needed.
But, given that you said that I feel like you should have reached the opposite conclusion from the one you did. As you recognize that, it is actually is a lot more complex than you have time figuring out. Which, to be clear, is fine by me. Recognizing limits and doing the best you can do within those limits is a healthy approach.
I've been following this, and it's even crazier than you make it sound. So allow me to make a small correction: the old mod team didn't resign, they were removed by the power-tripping moderator who was the one behind this whole mess.
One of the former mods talked about the situation on the SubredditDrama thread. This particular incident (and likely many others, given the number of bans) was mainly set in motion by one power-tripping moderator. While he wasn't the head moderator, he was the highest ranking active moderator, so he reordered the list to be at the top and then removed everyone but a bot he controlled.
Another former moderator shared this screenshot of a chat with him about it (imgur link). Basically boiled down to him talking to his wife and realizing people might try to doxx the mods, so he went for the nuclear option and removed the whole team. With no prior discussion with the other mods, so several of them just logged on to chaos, harassing DMs, and minimal context for WTF was happening.
The whole mod team needed replacing anyway, but it's just wild to see this chaos was largely the result of one person going unchecked for so long. I heard from a Youtube video that this problem moderator was also behind a controversy a while back where an artist was first banned with accusations of using AI, and told to change their art style. I can't find a direct source, but if that claim is true, then it's no wonder this moderator was on such a power trip. Not getting removed after that incident would give anyone a head rush and make them feel invincible.
Is it? Reddit is full of stories about power mods ruining or reshaping communities on a whim.
I don't miss it at all. We deserve better places to commune and share.
Not unique, but wild that we're now 20 years in and still hearing of this. This dynamic on "seniority controls all" should have been reeled in a decade ago, and the attempt at controllingp power mods proposed a few months back doesn't seem like it'll change much.
Just as some simple checks, for every sub over 100k subs
There should be a veto mechanism based on 2/3rd majority against a more "senior mod" (of human mods, of course). This will also apply if a mod wants to kick another mod. Clearly, the discretion of a single person can't be trusted. There can be a fast track action for inactive mods after X days.
welcoming a new mod and any major community change should be done on simple majority vote. Pretty straightforward. A single person shouldn't be able to force a sub private, subject/take a sub off r/all, or to add a new community rule.
Terms. I propose 1 year terms. Mod rankings are based on a combination of the mod team and community (to be clear, the team itself is much more strongly weighted, and the community is more of a tie breaker here). You can only be head mod for 2 consecutive terms unless no one else desires the spot.
Just small checks within the community. Of course, the admins control all and their word is final, but this could prevent so many interventions to begin with.
I feel that way about this, and a few other problems that plague reddit. Eventually I concluded that they must either not care about these problems, or intentionally allow them to persist.
Yeah, they definitely at some point figured it was simply fires they'd put out in real time, not a community to foster. The Blackout of 2023 (so, when it was rebelling against them and hitting their bottom line) seemed to be the only true trigger to cause some longer term thinking, and that was more for the sake of IPO'ing.
Thank you! I've edited the post with the correction. Thanks for the additional info too. It's pretty crazy that this one person was able to go on like that for so long!
/u/preggit, the former /r/art mod who commented in the SubredditDrama thread regarding the reasoning behind the sub's blanket peddling ban, suggests in his replies in that thread that /u/neodiogenes was the mod behind the AI ban fiasco. He never says outright that "yes, it was the same guy," but he does say that neodiogenes had his mod privileges reduced because of that, but that they were reinstated at some point in the intervening months.
I'm surprised it took this long for users to revolt against a tyrannical power tripping Reddit moderator, given all the crap I've seen power mods like Awkward_The_Turtle pull over the years.
Remember the artist who got banned based on false accusations of generating their art based on AI, and how mods dismissed any and all appeals despite the artist providing genuine receipts in the form of .psd files that he created the art himself?
It's a tale as old as time. Get unfairly banned over some hidden rule. Appeal. Have some basement dweller tell you to fuck off and rudely modmail mute you for 28 days. Appeal to admins, get ignored. Try to speak up publicly with receipts showing your innocence. Have the power mods "cwy hawassment" to the admins. Get temp or perma banned from Reddit as a whole.
And why wouldn't the admins side with them? We all know based on the site's history with hosting qurstionable content that the only Reddit founder with any actual moral principles was Aaron Swartz.
Kn0thing is a snake that is going to drag Digg down with him and don't get me started on the Tintin-looking dude who is Reddit's current CEO.
I enjoy seeing this, but at the same time it's one subreddit out of probably hundreds that have the same problem, but their problems are not bad enough to create strong negative publicity either through user's reactions or through mod meltdown, so they're not going to get better.
So for me this highlights that there are huge problems all over reddit, but there's no process to solve them and when it happens it's essentially random and requires someone to fuck up comically badly.
During the API changes mod strike I spent some time in /r/theoryofreddit after some years because it became temporarily unmoderated, so random people started to come there and complain about the state of reddit, and many subscribers were reddit mods, often powermods of active in multiple subreddits or activist metasubreddits, pushing on admins to be more strict on certain issues etc., and they engaged with the random users. This led to very interesting discussions because you could see the opinions of mods and powermods on various topics related to the state of reddit.
Thanks to that I rearned that some of the very active powermods truly are a walking "reddit mod" stereotype and it's no wonder the situation feels as ridiculous as it does. Although I find some of your language kind of annoying, what you say seems to be the reality. And over the years it's been getting worse, not better.
Not really. If you don't like a moderator on Reddit there isn't that much you can do. If you find a place to complain most of the time the Reddit admins will not do anything.
There's more to it than that. I'm not sure how to feel about that situation after reading this thread. I don't know enough about AI art to understand what was AI-generated and what wasn't, but it doesn't seem as cut and dry as I originally thought.
I kinda understand intention of these "drakonian" rules. Authors of these rules made a decision that they don't want this subreddit to become a marketplace, and thats fine I think.
I also understand that artists wants to be able to sell their work..
The issue is not the rule itself, the issue is that the way in which it's enforced is idiotic. If the situation was "we removed your comment mentioning your store, which breaks rule 9, don't do that again" or "we removed your post for breaking rule 9, you may resubmit without mentioning any socials or store", this would be a non-issue.
Remember that this is the same subreddit that removed the post of an actual digital artist for being AI generated, and when the artist submitted a .psd evidence with layers etc. the mod doubled down and told him that his art sucks because it looks like it's AI generated and to not post again. This is doubly ridiculous considering how low the average quality of /r/art posts is and considering that obviously generative models were trained on digital art, so they're literally designed to create output similar to actual digital paintings.
I understand the intention of not wanting the subreddit to be overrun with spam, but I disagree with having a space for art that actively prevents artists from benefiting from their work. Not even allowing artists to link to their website in their own profile, not even in the post itself? So only artists who "purely make art for art's sake" without needing to make money are actually welcome. That's skewed towards artists coming from a privileged background, and hostile to artists from the working class and from marginalized groups.
I understand your position. From other side, its not a black-and-white situation.
On the other side of the spectrum I quite often see profiles on reddit that not a profile of a real person, but marketing profile. Profile with only available profile information about product to sell and all comments strictly advertisement.
I think its a decision that should be made: allow such profiles to spam all related subreddits or no.
I've been following this fiasco from the beginning and it's a very good reminder that Reddit's moderation structure is inherently very flawed and communities can just get destroyed overnight with little to no recourse.
There is another large subreddit that I follow with over a million users that only has 1 moderator who refuses to engage with the community and removes any posts discussing the state of the sub or bans users calling him out. As a result, the community is basically dying and has fewer and fewer active users every year, with tens of sub communities popping up as a result and fragmenting discussion. It's such a shame.
There really should be a built-in streamlined way to depose moderators that are actively harming communities, especially larger communities. Or at the very least there should be guardrails to a moderator going ballistic like this.
Large subreddits (I'm talking a million or more users) should never have only one moderator with all the decision power.
I also hope r/art really does let artists promote themselves to an extent because it is ridiculous that you couldn't even have a link to your social media in your bio. While it's going to require more work from the mods to vet, artists making a living is not spam and shouldn't be treated as such by default.
It’s flawed but ultimately I don’t think there’s a system that isn’t flawed in some way. Having ways for users to “depose” mods causes all kinds of problems. How do you prevent that from being abused? What if, during the GME thing, Gamestonks enthusiasts deposed all the mods and now all the subs are run by GameStop stock cultists?
A lot of people on Reddit consider Deimos a power user, abusive moderator. You see it a lot when tildes is mentioned on Reddit.
Views on that kind of stuff are inherently highly subjective.
This is fundamentally a soft form of governance, and just like with actual governance, we know not of any perfect solutions.
I don't like the idea that just because something is flawed that means we can't replace it with something less flawed. In my opinion there are always areas of improvement we should we at least discuss.
I understand why the system is what it is today and how it made sense at the time it was created. But it's just not working properly anymore and we see it more and more with cases like this.
The real problem, I think, is that most real solutions require more involvement from Reddit Inc. itself, which means more funds, and that's something they don't typically want to do. It also would "rock the boat" which again is something they avoid.
But beyond more direct oversight from admins, I also really think my comment on "one mod should not have all the power" is at least one guardrail that could be implemented. I really hate the idea of a single person being hierarchically above all others in a subreddit just because that's how the system was built in the old days. If a subreddit hits a large enough size, nobody, and I mean not even the subreddit's creator, should have sole discretion to destroy an entire subreddit (by destroy I mean drastic actions like remove every post or remove every mod).
The admins have done a lot to address this. Over the next few years, I’m pretty sure they’ll implement more changes to install Reddit-Inc.-approved mod teams in all the bigger subreddits.
The top-mod of r/art rage-quitting is the best thing in the world for Reddit Inc. and the community. The new mod-team will be more open to new features and official monetization schemes, the community gets a more stable drama-free mod-team.
I’m not too happy about all this as a mod because the independence of the mods kept corporate Reddit in check, but I also see how it’s sustainable for reddit to align mod-teams to Reddit Inc. goals. It’s a good example of liberty vs. stability.
It's hard to see what solution there could be that wouldn't leave subs open to brigading. I've seen alt-right discord servers target subreddits in the past with a view to taking over the mod positions. The only thing I can think of is for admins to be more active overseers. If they see a stream of legitimate but mod-critical posts being deleted, that should be a red flag. Poor ratios of mods to user activity, red flag. Etc.
Very much agree! I'm glad to see the updated rules today stating that links in the user profile are now allowed, and may be mentioned once in the post body / sparingly in thread comments. Direct links are allowed in a weekly thread. This is much more fair and reasonable.
The intro post mentions the admins stepped in when the sub shut down, I take it these are actual employees of Reddit? I wonder where they sourced this crop of new moderators from, I can only guess they screened volunteers from the subReddit users.
Honestly it's the kind of thing I have wished for in the past for subreddits that are technically functioning but not very well.
A lot of mods moderate multiple subreddits, I would suspect that the new mods are experienced, trusted mods from other subs.
I get all of my Internet news from the long-haired Florida man that goes by cr1tikal online. He has a few videos on this episode of Internet drama. What he says is that the mod team didn’t rage quit. There is one mod in particular that removed all of the other mods and then falsely claimed, under the cover of an anonymous account, that the team had collectively decided to quit.
Thank you! I've edited the post with the correction.
Part of me misses reddit, but then part of me remembers all the time I've wasted on different subreddits trying to post something that seemed related to whatever their theme was and having to go through all their dumb, stupid rules to figure out what was allowed for that particular subreddit and what stupid formatting they required for their post tiles, and still getting posts removed for some arcane rule that didn't allow for that specific type of post. It'd be so infuriating having to spend that much time just to shitpost (or even serious-post) and getting posts removed across multiple subreddits. Its just too many individual rules to learn just to post on any one individual subreddit.
What you describe has made me hate using reddit -- so many times I've posted something that I thought was interesting and relevant -- had it start to gain traction, and then suddenly the post is deleted for some stupid reason.
That, combined with being banned from one subreddit for something I didn't do, and the general decline in the UX has made me not want to spend time there. There are a few niche subreddits that I still use, but all of the big ones are trash now.
....and my reddit account is old enough that I remember reddit before subreddits existed.
It isn't clear to me that the Reddit admins did anything out of the ordinary ( as in doing "something" ).
Once all of the mods leave a subreddit the subreddit automatically shuts down. After that, almost anyone can ask for the subreddit at /r/redditrequest.
Is that what happened? After purging all of the mods, did the psycho-mod then quit the subreddit too?
No, there is a new policy for subreddits that are important for reddit. A bot account called u/ModCodeofConduct takes over the subreddit and the admins choose the mod team. They introduced very thorough programs to train mods over the years and have a pretty solid roster of well-behaved mods.
I think the admins actually managed to bring in some stability to the mod teams. On the flip-side, Reddit Inc. has more control.
What has to happen for /u/ModCodeofConduct to take over?