BobQuasit t1_jd8dvyy wrote on March 22, 2023 at 3:57 PM

It wasn't deleted. He took it private. My guess is that he didn't delete his account, and is just keeping his head down and dreaming of a comeback.

Given that he was such as well-known karma whore, it never made sense to me that he'd give up 161k+ karma by deleting his account.

As for the recent unpleasantness, that sort of thing happens all the time - at least on privately-owned forums, which is pretty much ALL of them these days. You couldn't see something like that happen on a truly free forum like Usenet. A takeover wasn't possible, because there was no central authority to corrupt or usurp. But when a forum has an owner, speech can never be truly free.

We got lucky this time. Usually forums die when someone like Linus-Is-Best takes over. But he made the mistake of assuming that ky1e wouldn't come back. Normally that would have been a safe bet.

I've seen a lot of subs which were taken over or even literally bought out. Not to be too specific, but in the run-up to the big primaries and elections, lots of political groups on Facebook and elsewhere were taken over and destroyed. Apparently the buying price for a decent-sized group was $10,000.00. Of course that was quite a few years ago, before inflation. It got to the point where there were literally no groups of more than a few people that covered certain political points of view!

Which was the intent all along, of course. You don't spend tens of thousands (realistically, hundreds of thousands) of dollars to silence dissent if you're not going to make a profit out of it.

Can I stop sounding paranoid now?

majoroutage t1_jd8fgew wrote on March 22, 2023 at 4:07 PM

His L-i-B account shows as self-deleted. But it goes without saying that he likely has alt accounts to replace that one.

Imaginary_wizard t1_jd93ap0 wrote on March 22, 2023 at 6:36 PM

He had said in his personal sub he had multiple accounts

caminandoennubes OP t1_jd8k12v wrote on March 22, 2023 at 4:36 PM

You're right, taken private. I just mean it's inaccessible and likely to remain so.

There was a true-crime sort of thrill reading it, I got sucked in. And I'm not generally a true-crime stan. Also there was a sense of control - I was reading & finding out more about somebody on what seemed like a personal level, even as it seemed even more sinister or threatening.

I doubt that was all fake, given the months-long engagement and more. More likely to be a professional group operation making a character, than one person writing from a fake personality. But just one person dealing with their issues seems most likely to me.