For a data analysis, compare the weeks before the moderator went to war on the users versus after. I suspect you’ll see a marked inflection point when they began suppressing comments and pushing away the users who had been driving engagement.

Unfortunately your API probably can’t access data for threads and comments they suppressed.

Nobody knows the true reason. Lots of clearly false ones were floated by the show operator.

The most plausible is that it’s a combination of misguided groupthink and a desire to create something catering to brand sponsors.

There’s a few important pieces of background. One is that there’s a very co-mutual element of social media promotion to Big Brother Canada production. One can’t exist without the other. Social media influence has saved and boosted the show on several key occasions.

Also, BB Canada relies heavily on corporate sponsors who fund the commercials and in return get heavy in-show product promotion and exposure. Really heavily.

In some ways, it’s inspired work to see brands being so heavily included. Every episode is jam packed with sponsor branding, including competitions and regular events. Players eat at a mini Wendy’s drivethrough. Regular meals come from a meal kit subscription business and the house refrigerator is a sponsored billboard. The rooms are sponsor themed and decorated.

So anyway, the likeliest scenario is production promised sponsors increased social media presence in the form of these so-called “digital dailies”. That much was obvious as many of them were just players doing practical informercials for products and services. Like meal kit subscriptions or home cleaning appliances.

But it appears that to hedge this bet on “digital daily” infomercial-laden content, they were scared to have that compete against the traditional video feeds, which couldn’t be curated and contrived for sponsors.

So, having decided to kill feeds, they need a cover story. They chose to first blame fan toxicity, and to try and fraudulently claim some kind of mental health high road.

That was debunked pretty quickly, so the next excuse was cost.

But people saw through that. The feeds are a free byproduct of the show’s production of filming everything. Video streaming is pervasive in 2023. All the same costs are already sunk, so feeds doesn’t add any cost, and that lie was kind of obvious.

The next was to claim feeds can’t be monetized. Yes, people actually tried claiming this. In a world where ad-based video streaming is incredibly pervasive and commoditized. Where there’s scores of platforms that could have been instant turnkey revenue.

So they switched to pretending the daily releases were going to be better, unfiltered but more distilled.

But once revealed, they were clearly not. They were late, limited, and infrequent. Excuses were floated about the semantics of what “dailies” are, or should be.

The subreddit moderator going to war on the fans who questioned this hasn’t helped.

And now, this week, production has suspended the “dailies” without explanation. And yes, of course, subreddit moderator is still telling people not to critique it. This is the mod’s current statement:

“Complaints about the lack of live feeds will be removed” along with this fake justification: “as to not clog up the thread.”

Or this gem: “frustrating as this news is, please don’t […] post to vent frustrations about the lack of live feeds.”

Yes the dither/crosshatch is quite hard to make out.

I would have suggested one season’s data elements all be shades of a colour, and the other season’s constituents be shades of a different colour. Like s10 all shades of rose, pink, red. And s11 be aquamarine, teal, blue, etc.

> something seems to have seriously murdered the subreddit

That’s one potential interpretation. But from observing it closely, it’s probably more of suicide than a homicide.

The show opted to terminate viewer feeds. Subreddit engagement actually increased when that was announced, as fans protested.

But right when the season began, a moderator arbitrarily started suppressing that protest, attacking and threatening users who did so.

I’d be interested to have OP crunch some data on that period, from before the season. Some data (like how many users were just driven away by the suppression and being made unwelcome by the sub) may be impossible to get.

Interesting.

Although your headline conclusion may not align with the reality of the situation. Sure, it’s one conclusion that could fit. But others fit too, and fit better with the qualitative parts of the situation.

For example, right before the season started, one moderator arbitrarily decided to not allow critique of the show’s last minute decision to kill off viewer threads.

They went heavy handed, hiding and censoring posts and attacking users. I was falsely accused of being a shill from another social media source, then threatened and sanctioned.

The messages from the angry mod were... disturbing.

Whether the mod liked my opinion or not, my posts got heavy engagement. But with them actively attacking and threatening me, it was an easy decision to not bother helping support them with interesting content contributions. It would be interesting to see data on what other content contributors they’ve driven off.

The mod became an unofficial propaganda organ for the show’s production, suppressing critique while activively promoting the shift to “digital dailies”, a minimal and contrived substitute.

I watched as any posts contrary to the mods militant stance would pop and vanish shortly after. Users would disappear.

So your hypothesis that the show killed off your subreddit might be a little off. The subreddit itself may have a big hand in killing off its own engagement by going to war on their own user community.

You’ve understated it. Engagement was normal until a couple weeks before the season when the show producers revealed they were killing off the feeds, a fundamental part of premise.

Then engagement actually spiked, as followers decried this seemingly self-limiting choice. And the user protests were sensible, given that this same community of social media engagement had helped rescue the show from cancelation a couple times before.

But an odd thing happened a couple days before show began. An unhinged mod decided nobody could question the feeds issue. Except there was no rule change or discussion. They just started hiding and deleting posts, or banning users, as previously mention without an actual published rule.

I very civilly suggested they put this secret enforcement up to a meta discussion, or at least add it to the published rules.

The mod went ballistic. I could hardly believe their response. It started with crazy accusations that I was the owner of some competing social media source. Then it devolved to deranged threats and lies. I was commanded not to question the moderator.

And then despite not having made a public post or disobeying the mod’s unwritten rules, they rage sanctioned me anyway. Had to file a report with Reddit Admin that was finally upheld a couple days ago.

I watched as numerous other posts would pop up, vanish quickly, and the user would just be... gone. Presumably those users are being mass banned by the moderator.

So your theory is probably quite sound... that the subreddit isn’t so much being impacted as they are probably a very large part of sabotaging themselves.

The choice of one moderator to be an unofficial propaganda organ and practice heavy suppression/bullying is playing out fairly predictably. The other moderators are letting it happen because they engage during the US Big Brother season. It illustrates most of the themes of how some people react to having small amounts of power.