We’ve tried to spell it out at clearly as possible, but some are having a hard time grasping its intent and execution.

This policy has been in place for years. It is not new, and it hasn’t changed. New attention on Metallica and this sub doesn’t mean that we, the mod team, are doing anything different than before.

Intent:

1. To prevent this sub from being infested with political pandering, hatred, toxicity, or any of the other shit that overwhelms much of Reddit. Why? Because it’s fucking annoying and we’re trying to have a good time here.
2. To help facilitate a smaller, more approachable mod team by reducing the friction that necessitates a larger, less personal mod team with less accountability. In other words, w

e try

1. to keep our mod team down to the bare minimum so that we don’t have 50 moderators crushing the life out of this su

b a

1. nd holding no accountability because everyone just ignores modmail. We t

ry

1. to respond to every reasonable message that comes in to modmail and make decisions fairly. Some may not believe that to be true, but those are usually the people who message us with insults because they had a comment removed. There are plenty of people who will testify to the fact that we have indeed admitted when we’ve made a mistake, and we have also reversed decisions just because the user was polite and recognized why we made the decision we made. You don’t get that with larger mod teams. The downside to this is that we don’t have the numbers to tackle massive breakout fights, and if we allowed politics, that would be a daily thing. People are always trying to make some sort of political statement, and it will always bring the fights.

Execution:

1. Discussing the political themes of song lyrics is permissible. Attempting to connect them to modern events, or use those lyrics to beat your particular ideological drum, is not. For example, if you were to discuss Eye of the Beholder and its themes of censorship and political manipulation, it would be OK right up until you started naming politicians or political parties. Like the song, we can discuss the themes without making a partisan statement.
2. Except as outlined above, politically charged post and comments are simply removed.
3. Users who post politically inflammatory posts or comments have their content removed, and may either be warned, temporarily banned or permanently banned, depending on the severity and repetition of the violation.

We have not, and WILL not push any political agenda on this sub. If you believe that to be taken place, message the moderators with your concerns. The moderation team consists of people across the political spectrum by design. I never asked anybody what their politics were before hiring them on as a mod, and the whole point behind that was to make sure there was balance. Despite some toothless smart ass comments I may have made on a different subreddit, no, there is no chance that I would be choosing people of any particular political persuasion to be a mod. Ask any of the moderators on the team whether I’ve ever asked them who they voted for - I do not care as long as they do the job and keep politics off of this sub.

Anybody who believes they have had content removed for political reasons is encouraged to message the moderators or even me directly. You may not think you will get anywhere by doing that, but the only way for you to know that you will, is to try.

I will give one example of a time where we had to remove some content, and were accused of doing so for political reasons.

A user posted a piece of artwork that drew out some bigoted responses from other Redditors. We left the post up for a period of time and worked to remove the offensive comments and ban the users leaving them. At some point, the task of babysitting that thread to keep the bigoted comments at bay became too much for the current moderation team to stay on top of, so we removed the post. And I may be wrong, but we messaged the user who made the post and explained this to them and I believe they were understanding.

I believe that I also put up an offer to add additional moderators after that incident, and may have added one or two because the response was fairly low. Keep in mind, just because we ask for moderators doesn’t mean we get many responses, and the only other option is to take on moderators who don’t have any interest in this community and just want Reddit power.

Edit: formatting broke. Editing doesn’t fix it. Sorry.

This thread is where all discussion related to James’s statement at The Sphere is to be contained.

James’s statement

>Unless you live in Vegas, you've come a long way to spend some time with Metallica. We're grateful for that — your travels, the money you spend, the time it took, thanks for coming to celebrate with us. And I just gotta say, Metallica is not here, like some other 'entertainers', to influence you with their bullshit, OK? We are here — no bullshit — we're here to forget about all the outside shit, OK? Metallica's agenda is love, energy and heavy music, baby!

GROUND RULES:

1. This discussion is NOT about current or former politicians or political agendas. There is no need to highlight any specific political agenda. In this discussion, we are speaking broadly about whether entertainers should use their platform to attempt to influence others, and whether and entertainer who has had broad political messaging in their work is in the position to make this statement. Any comment referencing any political agenda will be removed as that is not part of the discussion at hand.
2. ONLY civil discussion is allowed. You are allowed to carry any opinion you want, but you are not allowed to attack or insult others for theirs. Any instance of such will result in a 7 day ban - this is your one and only warning. If you want to engage in the discussion, just behave. If you do get out of hand and attack somebody and then we ban you, do not try to pretend like we are suppressing your politics. The reason for your ban is because you violated the civility rule. Just wanted to make that clear.
3. Put some effort into your thoughts. Drive-by insults or support will not be tolerated and will be removed. For example, if all your comment says is “James is right”, it will be removed. Likewise, if all your comment says is “what a dumb thing he did”, it will be removed. Explain your stance, explain why you feel the way you do and do so respectfully.

Onto another matter: the annual explanation for why the sub is so adamantly against political discussion.

There are two reasons.

One is that it’s too fucking hard to moderate. We try to keep the moderation team small here so that it’s easier to manage. If you’ve been on Reddit long enough, you know that massive moderator teams become faceless machines that abuse their power and don’t care about your appeals. In order to avoid that happening to this sub, I have wanted to keep our mod team just big enough to handle the job. But when political posts get made, the workload increases exponentially due to the toxic political climate of today.

The second reason is because I’m tired of toxic politics infecting every single thing that I enjoy, and I do echo what James said- I want to forget about all the outside bullshit and just enjoy music sometimes. I did not come in here and make this decision all by myself, this was a popular sentiment when I took charge of this community and I’m pretty sure we even took a vote on it, whether to outright ban politics or find some way to moderate it better.. in the consensus was to ban it outright, we don’t need this community being yet another political battleground. But every time some situation like this comes up, some people feel that if you don’t participate in debate, that’s as good as endorsing fascism. But that’s an unfair charge because I’m willing to participate in the debate in the proper channels, I just don’t believe that this is one. Maybe we need to make another sub Reddit called “MetallicaPolitics” or something.

If you believe that politics should be discussed openly, everywhere, all the time, then this community is not for you and I strongly recommend you find one that is a better fit. You are also welcome to create your own.

As always, if you have a post or comment removed and you don’t understand why, you are not only welcome but you are encouraged to message us and discuss it. We always accept respectful discourse, and we will explain things to you. We have also admitted mistakes and corrected those mistakes. Sometimes, because we are humans, we interpret something differently than it was meant to be interpreted and all we need is a clarification. There are plenty of users out there who, if they were willing to speak up, can attest to this fact- we have apologized and admitted we were wrong countless times. But if you show up in modmail guns blazing, you’re not likely to get anywhere. There is no utility in that, so please don’t do it. You are not expected to grovel or be overly polite, just don’t be a dick. That’s all.

Enjoy the discussion and please keep it clean.