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In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations in mid-2013, moderators at /r/technology configured filters to automatically censor posts containing "politicized" words, based on findings by creq. This censorship appears to be ongoing. The banned words include NSA, Comcast, Anonymous, CISPA, SOPA, Swartz, FCC, net neutrality, GHCQ, EFF, ACLU, and others.
The admins claim they simply configured their bots to delete "politicized" posts. Yet their filters (which were not announced or explained) effectively precluded meaningful discussion of contemporary issues. Could this reflect willing government collaboration by Reddit's admins, or might they have been served with an NSL to force compliance?
News coverage of the censorship is at the Daily Dot. A fuller list of banned words are available on pastebin. The reddit post reporting censorship on /r/rechnology.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Serial_Priest on Thursday April 17 2014, @07:05PM
r/technology is one of the main subreddits, and up until this censorship was exposed, it was moderated by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian ("kn0thing"), among other interested parties. See this series of posts: http://www.reddit.com/user/kn0thing [reddit.com]
In theory, you are correct that "admins" and "user-moderators" are separate. In practice, they overlap significantly, both on Reddit and elsewhere. It is disingenous to suggest that this censorship was divorced from the site owners' intentions.