47
votes
"What do we do with Jacob Geller?" (Self admitted sexual assault, removed from Nebula streaming)
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- Title
- What Do We Do With Jacob Geller? - Epilogue Gaming
- Authors
- Flora Merigold
- Published
- Oct 2 2026
- Word count
- 3002 words
I find the way a lot of people are talking about this story somewhat unsettling (this includes @Barney 's top comment).
I am/was a huge fan of Geller's work. I've watched every video of his for, what, five years? His perspective has more than any other single creator shaped the way I view games and other forms of art, but it's not just that he makes really good videos. He's used his platform to do charity work that I really respect, raising tens of thousands of dollars for women's health, or to support trans people, or for legal aid for victims of ICE.
Whatever he did (confessed to doing) a decade ago, in my opinion he has paid whatever social debt he incurred in full. He is almost certainly not the same person now that he was then. I would certainly not advocate for further punishment, if I was even carcerally minded to begin with. Fuck, if there was no one else safe nearby, I would probably trust him to watch my drink. I will still never watch another one of his videos.
I preordered this guy's book, my (pseudo)name is in the back in the 'backers' section. Looking at it on my shelf after the news broke I felt sick. I have experienced sexual assault myself from someone I trusted and this wasn't that, of course, but those same feelings still came dripping back in miniature. Because I respected this guy; at least, I respected his work, his perspective. And now, anytime I think of him, it will be associated with that feeling.
When a lot of people say, "holding someone accountable even decades after it happened is very hypocritical," I think they're coming from a good place, a 'people can grow and change and should be allowed forgiveness' place. But I still often hear it as a, 'your reaction is wrong' place, a 'why would you stop watching his videos nothing about them has actually changed' place. Let me spell it out: People reacting to stories like this, in the privacy of their own heads (even, sometimes, in a professional capacity), is not an extension of cancel culture, or carceral logic, or Christian morality. It is normal to be shocked, hurt, and betrayed when you discover that a person you respected and looked up to was by his own admission capable of that kind of immense harm. Especially in our culture of sexual violence; especially when you're a survivor yourself. The offense may be long past, but the information is new.
And maybe you'll say, "well, fine, Evie, no one's saying you have to watch his videos, I totally get where you're coming from. But what about him being dropped by the MinnMax podcast? What about the professional consequences he's facing, the collaborators who are disavowing him? Isn't that a little much?"
I'll take the MinnMax example here. MinnMax is a small gaming network (I donate to their Patreon every month, I started watching them years ago to see more Jacob Geller), a place about "games, friends, and getting better." It's an outlet of like, what, about a dozen people? With several very prominent female hosts, with a popular weekly show, "Pew Pew Bang" about games for women and women's experiences with games? This Geller controversy is probably the most online attention the cohort has ever gotten, because their close colleague (alleged friend) hid this past offense from them, effectively ensuring them maximum damage when it became public. Not only is it the rational thing to cut Geller from a business perspective, just to avoid backlash, I think it's a very normal reaction for the people on the MinnMax team to have. The offense may be old, but who am I to say that Kelsey Lewin, or Janet Garcia, or Sarah Podzorski, or Ben Hanson, or Leo Vader, shouldn't feel betrayed right now, should be just fine working with this guy professional consequences or no?
I know I sure as hell wouldn't be able to watch the part 2 of the Control Resonant deepest dive featuring Hanson, Vader, and Haley Maclean if it came out featuring Geller as was planned.
I think men tend to have a much easier time than women saying "digital judgment is almost always extremely overbearing" and "refusing to accept growth is unconducive to a progressive and supportive society" after a guy ADMITS to committing sexual assault (says himself that his punishment was nowhere near enough). To some extent, you know, the people saying it aren't even wrong, not all the time, not in the abstract anyway. But it still feels extremely invalidating. Because, they can step back, and they can show that they think logically about the situation, and sure enough they have an impressively high minded view. But in our rape culture, women like me don't get to step back to begin with.
And I'm not saying, "therefore, harassment is justified; therefore, Geller should never work again." At least in my communities where I'm discussing this, I haven't seen anyone saying that (I don't use Twitter, Bluesky). People I've talked to are just, for the most part, feeling hurt. I accept that Geller has grown, and respect him for it. I will continue to feel hurt.
I think lot of our societal sensibilities tends to conflate a lot of very complex and nuance topics into a general umbrella of immorality. Harm, abuse, cruelty, prejudice, discrimination. And I do believe that a lot of online "discourse" on this topic on either side amounts to performative outrage (this is in reference to knee jerk/meme reactions and opportunistic content creation; not genuine discussion and voicing ones views/experiences. I wouldn't even think of posting my thoughts like this on larger platforms like reddit or even substack).
It's like how the original essay author sort of compares their relationship with his work to the way they see Harry Potter. Works by someone that is deliberately and intentionally dedicating their time and resources to do harm to people that often lack the recourse and platform to sufficiently defend themselves; all while claiming that their cruelty is not only justified, but in service to a greater good. Geller did harm to another person. Assuming even a minor event, it still is a profound and egregious harm capable for permanent damage. A harm that he admits to and as far as we know, one that he is ensuring to never repeat. I'm not saying that the author is wrong to have this view, it's just an example on the gap in proportional nuance to the situation. Both people do harm. Only one I would view as an abuser.
There's also the blatant injustice in the system that plays part in the reaction. Not a lot of people believe that abusers will ever be held to account. Everything about the Epstein and the Trump admin is a testament to that. But also the fact that Geller only received a short suspension. Even if that was enough to reform his behavior and it might have even been a punishment proportional to the harm done. But it also could have been far worse and there are plenty of people that go on to simply resume their behavior after the slap on the wrist. As unproductive as it seems for some people to lean into criticizing Geller, it makes sense when we know mow much worse is treated with the same disinterest.
Specifically for this hypothetical: if the whole event made him reform / turns his way, and improve society as a whole, then it's that job well done? I think your specific phrasing icks me; I acknowledge that your point is probably that judges are be too lenient too often in their sentence and that some monitoring and/or better evaluation is warranted, but the concept of punishing someone unnecessarily is not compatible with the concept of proportional justice you mentioned.
Fair assessment and I think the spesific wording here is in reference to thoughts I didn't type. I wasn't trying to defend Geller's actions or imply that the case was perfectly handled as is. That should be for the victim to decide.
I should have said that there are abusers that are able to navigate the strict classifications and metrics we use to define abuse in order to effectively maximize the harm they do. By having a broad net to define Sexual Abuse, we loose sight of the systems of abuse that facilitate the dozen rapes that are not reported for the one that is. These systems are hell to dismantle because everyone knows that everyone knows. And in a way, that implicates everyone involved in the abuse done to every victim.
Social media mobs allows people to get the catharsis of sticking it to a single abuser, while allowing the systems and the people that uphold them to make a show of reforming and rehabilitating.
I may have been inaccurate in my post.
This is the bulk of what I was trying to say. People with a criminal past, such as petty theft, vandalism, drug abuse etc. should not be viewed as criminal forevers, if they are able to change. Proportionate punishment, acknowledgement of growth and repentence is how we advance as a society.
I did not say that. You are well within your rights to not watch any of his videos. (And again, I wasn't even talking about him.) A lot of the sentiment, however, seems to describe people as something they did or were in the past and make that their eternal, defining trait. Should someone convicted with possession and use of drugs at the age of 21 be viewed as a druggie their entire life, even after they've been clean for 10 years? Of course not. That doesn't mean their past should be treated as if it had never happened, but it should not be their defining trait forever, particularly when they've clearly changed.
I did specify that I was not talking about his case, but about criminal pasts in general. I do appreciate you responding in a much more civil manner than @286437714, and for the short apartes after quoting me.
In Geller's case specifically, whether someone can look past what he did is up to them. You are completely justified in feeling hurt and not consuming any of his content going forward is, even in my opinion, not a disproportionate response to his past. I wasn't trying to insinuate that.
I think this is an excellent post, asking important questions, and I appreciate the author declining to try and establish a specific answer. Hopefully we are all improving over time. Hopefully we're all better people than we were a decade ago. Is there a point in our lives where moral judgement for our actions should crystallize to allow for unchanging judgement of us, or should we be judged on some combination of our path and our trajectory?
In the absence of a shared religious or cultural framework to determine justice and moral rectitude, it might behoove us to attempt to build a coherent structure of moral philosophy. Without it, we collectively flail at each new outrage without saying what it would look like to be in alignment with the polity. But how does that happen in an environment of cultural fragmentation and siloing of attention?
I quite enjoy Jacob Geller's body of work, and I certainly didn't expect anything like this in his personal history. Then again, many people on the left have been former right-wingers, some of them violently so, so expecting a spotless record is maybe on me. For what it's worth, I don't forgive him, largely for practical reasons. I've not been assaulted, so I can't forgive him for this crime, only the victim can, and I doubt they will considering it would mean going public.
If you ask me - and frankly, you probably shouldn't, having been socialised male I carry a significant privilege that my non-binarity will not magically absolve me from - I really can't think of a way he could have handled this situation better, though. He admitted that he did it. He expresses his regret. Without knowing him or the victim, and even if I did, it's not really my place either way, this is probably the best of the available options vis-a-vis a postmortem to the entire situation.
But holy hell, the way that some people on Bluesky are eviscerating him over this. "If you've been an abuser in the past, you should be permanently denied a platform" - "You should not have become a public influencer because seeing you famous could have triggered your victim" - "He basically stole his career from other promising game critics who didn't commit this crime" - what the hell is going on? Is this what conversation on the topic looks like now? Are all the genuine good things he's done, like collecting money for Palestinian war relief efforts and transgender rights, suddenly any less good?
Fine, I guess before I get labelled a rape apologist, I won't watch his videos any more. The world has been made better.
I wonder how much of the response is due to the surprise and how the information was discovered. But on the other hand, when is it appropriate to bring that up on your YouTube/Nebula channel unprompted? Honestly, I can't see when he could have/should have mentioned it.
Yeah, I see a lot of "he should have disclosed this earlier; he should have told MinnMax; he should have told X; he should have told Y"
Where in society do you just approach someone in any fashion and go, "hey, FYI, I did this crime"? (referring to crime in general, not SA specifically; the fact that it's one of the most egregious crimes possible makes it even more inappropriate to bring up)
Unless someone explicitly asks for your criminal record, I don't see this happening, so these requests feel like just a way to virtue signal.
I don't know Geller, I have no attachment to him, and the debate around whether or not he can redeem himself is interesting, but these comments are not.
If Nebula or MinnMax are running things competently - and I don't know if they are - they may have required him to disclose if there's anything like this that could be dug up. But as for his audience, there's not really any good time to declare this.
Yeah, that makes sense; I'd assume he was more of a contractor than a Nebula employee so them requesting a criminal record is less likely; as for MinnMax, I do not know much about them so I won't speculate there.
Nebula is a co-op so I think he was a partial owner but I don't know all of the details.
We do have a mechanism in place that mandates this exact scenario: Megan's Law.
Sexual offenders of a certain danger level need to tell their neighbors when they move.
I have mixed feelings about the law, but it definitely lands on "It provides far more benefit than harm."
Convicted sex offenders - which means it isn't the exact scenario. I wouldn't want laws like Megan's law to be broader, likely, but we have a broken system. And we have a societal issue with rehabilitation and no standard for it. And , and, and.
Idk.
Yea, it's a hot mess where the USA is probably the least-qualified country to be able to untangle and develop some process that is simultaneously just, humane, and safe for everyone.
I’m not going to reiterate what has already been said, especially since I think @Evie has done an excellent job. I also know I’m more able than most to emotionally “separate” creator from creation, which I have found often invalidates the generalization of my experience.
What I want to add is that it’s okay to hold public figures to a higher moral standard than an arbitrary individual. Jacob chose to make his face, voice, and public identity part of his creation and his career. Intuitively, I think it’d be different if Jacob had become an editor, writer, or producer rather than the face of the YouTube/Nebula channel.
Even for a video game creator, we must acknowledge Jacob earns a living by presenting a persona in his image to millions of people, and his choice to include his image in that persona now has consequences due to his past choices. Further, we live in an attention-based economy, so online creators literally earn their career via the endorsement and attention of the public.
As someone who believes in forgiveness and redemption, sometimes stories like this disappoint me. Yet, it’s also unrealistic and unfair to expect the public——with everyone’s varied backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences——to simultaneously forgive and withhold their scrutiny of a public persona. The author concludes this piece excellently: we must hold multiple truths.
As someone who has met him and loved his video essays this is really shocking for me. I wish I could have clarity on what he did. I found zero description searching.
My partner has been really upset about the Cornell case and now this comes out. Seems UNC, like Cornell, did not take serious action. I am not surprised as someone who witnessed they drag protestors by their hair and
teargaspepperspray people at point blank for standing up against killing.I find things like this deeply unsettling. People on the internet seem to be completely disconnected from reality and digital judgment is almost always extremely overbearing.
I have no idea who this guy is, so take everything I say as my opinion about holding people accountable on the internet decades later.
First of all, what even is "sexual assault"? In many cases, certainly legally, an unwanted kiss on the cheek qualifies. In other cases it's used as a more formal phrase for rape. At some point we need to acknowledge those things are not even remotely close to being the same severity. The internet really likes to jump to conclusions and that's not a good thing.
An example I'd like to bring up is Daniel Greene's sexual assault case from around a year ago. He was effectively burned at a virtual stake before the entire story (by Naomi King) turned out to be fabricated, and she later acknowledged that their physical relationship was consensual. While the allegation of assault was retracted, the public fallout had a lasting impact on his reputation and livelihood.
Second, even minor crimes or vandalism expire after 5 to 15 years under statute of limitations laws, depending on where you live. Holding someone accountable often decades after it happened, particularly if it happened in a person's formative years as a young adult, is very hypocritical. People on the internet love acting like saints when it comes to someone else's wrongdoings, but I guarantee you that almost everybody could be found having done something that would "warrant" a beating according to the internet.
I think we would all benefit from a little introspection and seeing people for who they are now and how they've grown instead of a fossilised, set-in stone picture of what they were in the past.
Naturally, some actions are so severe that they cannot be undone and the consequences will linger throughout the person's entire life. Even still, I believe that people can and do change, often drastically, and shunning benefits nobody. Refusing to accept growth is unconducive to a progressive and supportive society. This goes for former drug addicts, former bigots, former homophobes etc.
I wrote out a long reply to your comment. I had an extensive bibliography and what I believed was well-reasoned response that highlights the rhetorical fallacies you're either knowingly or unknowingly deploying to further cast doubt on women who experience sexual assault, and defend men who are accused.
My draft got deleted as I accidentally closed the tab. Initially, I was annoyed, because I'd put so much work into it. After an hour or so of thinking, I'm glad.
Your stated concerns and 'won't anybody think of the perpetrators?' line of reasoning are easily disproven by a cursory read on the subject. The amount of effort I put almost certainly wouldn't have convinced you anyway.
The point of my reply, and what I didn't put in, was that I am disgusted that this comment is so highly upvoted. I am so tired of trying to explain to people who have not experienced sexual assault its impacts, why the 'False accusations are really bad!' is such a pathetic defence.
But mostly I'm just angry. Especially after this week, with what was revealed at Cornell, to see the following words written and - seemingly - broadly agreed with.
You equating sexual assault to 'well, it could be a kiss on the cheek, we don't know!' sounds exactly the same to me as 'you can't say anything anymore!' If you genuinely don't know what sexual assault is, I'd look up your local state or federal criminal code. It ranges from unwanted sexual touching to forced penetration of an orifice. It is sexual activity without consent. It is not a difficult concept to understand, nor is it unclearly codified in law.
Your entire comment is about giving someone the benefit of the doubt, as if some online mob has formed and visited these consequences on him. He was fired by two workplaces, because he lied to them, and his co-creators did not feel comfortable with him being there.
I wish it was that straightforward in non-cooperatively owned workplaces. His colleagues decided to terminate his employment. Each will have their own reason. This is not an example of internet mob justice.
In the US, 975 out of 1000 sexual assault perpetrators who are reported to police will walk free, with no felony or lasting record of the crime due to the way the justice system utilizes plea deals and places excessive burdens of victims. However, most sexual assaults go unreported. The most commonly cited reasons are 'I will not be believed' and 'I do not believe the police will help'.
This reasoning appears completely sound, and comments like yours contribute to a culture where victims feel a sense of hopelessness - especially if the perpetrator, as is so common, is in a more powerful societal position than them.
Mostly, however, after the revelations of what happened and the lack of consequences at Cornell this week, I am so, so tired of hearing the type of comment you wrote.
@Evie wrote a beautiful comment about what the emotional impact has been on them, and they are one individual. If I was braver, I would do the same. Every woman I know well has been sexually assaulted, and after decades of campaigning and hoping for a change in laws, attitudes, or even just slightly less tolerance for sexual assault in society, I am still disappointed.
But those are really broad sentiments, so I would like to be more specific. I am disappointed leaping to the defense of a perpetrator is still a society-wide issue; I am angry to see it so highly upvoted here.
I didn't touch on it but it is slightly frightening to me how some people (usually men) online will immediately hear the words sexual assault and jump in as quickly as possible to equivocate, to empathize with the perpetrator, to argue that even the most loathsome of victimizers deserve another chance, to (oh by the way just incidentally) bring up entirely unrelated false accusations. Even in a case where the act in question, and the insufficiency of the punishment at the time, isn't under dispute. I don't usually see this defensiveness with other crimes online (usually the opposite) although maybe my perspective is biased.
There's this huge mismatch between how women see this issue and men see it I think. For women, it's like, half of your friends have been harassed or assaulted (at least!), there's virtually no hope of help from the system, of justice for the perpetrator much less a crumb of prevention. So you feel powerless, like "fuck, it could happen to me
(again)at any time and I'd still have to go to work, do the dishes, put moisturizer and a smile on my face like nothing fucking happened the next day," it's nightmarishly mundane. I start to accept it as the price of existing in society and it just becomes white noise.And then for men it's like, none of that exists. Most of them seem almost totally blind to it, like they only hear about the stuff that makes the news (I wonder why false accusations are so often made newsworthy). They don't have to worry about it, I guess. It's not a personal issue for most of them. And they don't have a sense of the ubiquity of the problem.
Like clockwork. It is extremely predictable.
'I have read about a time where there was a false accusation!'
It's interesting how that's never brought up in such panicked, 'maybe she's lying!' tones when other horrific crimes that aren't men sexually assaulting women come to light. Men charged with murder against other men don't get given any latitude. They're so comfortable presuming guilt in so many areas of crime because they haven't been convinced by decades of cultural fearmongering that there are conniving women waiting in the wings, desperate to destroy men's lives.
I have never seen a woman who's been sexually assaulted and tried to address it through the justice system not have her life destroyed. And by that I mean: severe impacts to career, mental health, relationships, and the near-inevitable lack of justice through a system and policy framework designed by and for men.
I think your last point is very insightful. Rape and sexual assault are framed as Someone Else's Problem; 'What if it's a false accusation! That can happen you know!' is framed as an existential risk.
It's really disappointing how often I've this comes from the self-identified data driven rational actors. The data in unequivocal, but as you say, it's not treated as a personal issue. For the most part, they're safe, and they're very unlikely to attract women who feel comfortable sharing their experiences. They haven't seen it or heard about it, so it mustn't be real (again, despite the overwhelming evidence presented in decades long data sets).
'What if it was just a kiss on the cheek' is definitely the most extreme example I've seen, providing it wasn't done as an attempt at wildly inappropriate dark humor.
I should not even bother reading your comment after the outlandish accusation of supporting the perpetrators, but I will.
When the third sentence of my post was
I was neither talking about this specific case, nor about sexual assault. I was talking about disproportionate outrage and response to various actions one did in the past. I was not defending anyone and the second half of my post is what I was trying to say. The fact that your accusations and attacks are marked as "exemplary" is baffling. What makes you think that you're allowed to throw unfounded attacks around? This is the internet and people are way too comfortable accusing others since there are no repercussations for their actions.
You're still thinking that I am talking about him and this case, when I made it clear I was not. You're really trying to read something into my post that I did not say. This is unfortunately becoming increasingly common, where people respond to what they want to engage with and not what the other person was saying. Sort of like a reverse motte-and-bailey.
I wanted to have a discussion about accountability and what it means or should mean to live with a criminal past, but every debate seems to devolve into twisted interpretations and fabricated outrage these days. Truly unfortunate.
I understand what you are saying and you are preaching to the choir. I agree with the overall content of your comment, but it was neither related to what I said, nor was it appropriately phrased or delivered.
This is the problem exactly though. Your comment neglected the case entirely, the admitted crime, and the victim. When compared to actual sexual assault and rape, false accusations are an extremely rare occurence - so why did that come to mind in this thread, that is about an actually admitted crime? Why was this the discussion you wanted to have?
The problem isn't that it also exists, and re-reading your comment I agree there's definitely issues about accountability etc. But it's a different subject. It's almost off-topic. It minimizes victims. So what your comment comes across to me and others responding to you is as much about what's in your comment as what's not in your comment.
I don't think you posted in bad faith or anything by the way. What is worrying is the seeming general lack of empathy from men towards women because most of us have very visceral reactions to a crime like this, and like @evie posted, "now, anytime I think of him, it will be associated with that feeling", and yeah, like you say, refusing growth can be harmful, but something like this just doesn't go away for a lot of us.
For me it's not about refusing growth. It's about that he committed a harmful, traumatizing crime, and it could have been me. He can have a journey of all the introspection and growth I can possibly imagine, but I'm not ever going to accept him. Ask any rape or sexual assault victim if they are going to un-shun the one that did it to them. The answer is going to be no. And the answer will continue to be no against most anyone who committed a similar crime - just because he didn't do it to me? No. What we see isn't some guy on a journey of personal growth and learning and bettering himself. What we see is what happened to us. We have every right to completely shun that type of person.
We are not going to go out of our way to accept someone's growth just because he seems like he is rehabilitated. We are going to protect ourselves and the idea that it can be about anything else than what he did is upsetting. That's why you got the kind of replies that you got.
I want to add that there's also an issue of time here. The visceral reaction is fresh, because the revelation of his past actions is new. The frame put on by comments (many from men, but not solely) that focus on what he's done since then is "look how long ago this was." We're experiencing different time streams.
For folks who might process their visceral reaction and be willing to consider re-engaging with him in the future, that will take some unknown amount of time, and cannot be rushed or persuaded into rushing that processing. And as you described, that may still never happen.
I think it really does come down to whether the victim is humanized or even exists in one's narrative or whether the only person humanized is the accused.
You say in succinct words what I try to say with many words
I think this is an interesting case regarding the humanization of the attacker and the victim, as we know very little about the victim at all. For reasons of respect for her privacy, all we have is an attacker. Any details that might humanize the victim are dredged from inside ourselves or put onto her from the broad tapestry of similar abuses. And so this isn't a specific abuse, but every abuse. How do we humanize a victim we know nothing concrete about?
I don't know how to answer that, because I've never had a problem humanizing people. The idea that we can't humanize or would struggle to humanize somebody because we don't know anything for sure about them is a foreign concept to me.
And that is without putting myself into their shoes and imagining how I would feel in that situation
I'm sorry if I misinterpreted what you were trying to say. Text communication is difficult, and if you feel like I put words into your mouth, I apologize.
I read and re-read your post to make sure my understanding of what you were trying to convey was correct, but it seems like there's been a disconnect. Nevertheless, I think even the most charitable reading of your post contains commonly-encountered rhetorical tools used to discussion from centering the experience of the victim to centering the perpetrator of sexual violence.
I understand this was not your intent, but it comes up so frequently in discussions of violence against women that - to use a medical metaphor - when I heard hoofbeats, I assumed I was hearing a horse, not a zebra.
My favorite irony about this piece is that when it was posted in the Gellar thread over at self-styled "progressive community" ResetEra, both the poster who shared it and over a dozen longtime users were banned for a month (or more) simply for saying they liked the article or appreciated the poster for sharing it. Reason: "Dismissive commentary around sexual assault." No self-awareness whatsoever.
Incredibly off-topic, but I am having a hell of a Baader-Meinhof phenomenon with ResetEra this week.
Until 4 days ago I had zero idea it, or its ancestor NeoGAF, existed; since then I keep seeing it or hearing about it every single day, wtf is happening
On the one hand it feels like a melting pot of weirdos, but on the other hand game studios do participate in it (including Remedy, which is how I found about ResetEra; one of the devs posted there) so I dunno how I feel about it. This odd decision around the article doesn't help me out either.
It's a weird situation. The original forum, NeoGAF, was one of the biggest surviving old-school forums in the world, and easily the most influential in terms of video game industry insiders, leaks, etc. It also had a strong progressive streak among the users and moderators. In 2017, the owner Tyler "EvilLore" Malka was exposed by a #MeToo scandal, and the staff and a huge number of users jumped ship for a new purpose built site (ResetEra). GAF, left as a much chuddier/boy's club shell of itself, banned political discussion and made mods anonymous.
Unfortunately, like the Twitter-Bluesky split, isolating the most stridently left-wing members in an echo chamber sharpened their worst instincts and turned them inward. Staff turnover empowered more and more ideologically rigid and contemptuous mods, who grew more comfortable enforcing rules capriciously and doling out lengthy bans for ridiculous reasons, even to longtime, prominent members. Topic blacklists proliferated; you could get banned for merely mentioning Hogwarts Legacy or linking to a disfavored outlet. The most aggressive users became emboldened to pile on others harshly or bait them into a ban. Center-right users were increasingly turfed out, then centrists, then center-left, etc. Developers largely ghosted, fearful of being the next target. There were periodic clashes between mods and various community groups, leading to multiple exoduses. Threads more than a year or two old are graveyards full of normal-sounding commentary from banned or self-deleted accounts. I myself was permanently banned earlier this year for criticizing mods (in the official moderation feedback thread!) for ignoring multiple threads full of people celebrating and calling for violence against tech industry figures, what used to be an ironclad zero-tolerance sort of thing.
It sucks because most of the regular people there are pretty great -- smart, witty, empathetic GenX/Y/Z geeks -- and there are still solid hobby and interest-based groups that are a good resource. Great for media discussion and breaking news with a healthy dose of memes and gallows humor. As far as general-interest forums go, it's one of the last holdouts on an internet walled off and enshittified by social media. But it's domineered by terrible mods and a clique of overbearing users that increasingly narrow the bounds of acceptable discussion and gleefully exile people from their "community" at the drop of a hat -- to the point a dozen people can catch month-long bans for saying they liked the article in this post. It's large and active enough that it's still possible to enjoy if you tread carefully and can tolerate the obnoxious contradictions on display every day. But it's firmly in a downward spiral of their own making.