What is the “Reddit Mafia”?
The “Mafia” is often defined as a group operating outside the spotlight, disregarding rules to amass money and power. While it may seem absurd to connect this term with a website, it raises a critical question: What do we call a group that spreads influence across vast digital communities, controls public discussion for hundreds of millions, and actively suppresses awareness of its own existence and operations?
This is the story of a group that fits that description, a hidden power structure on one of the world’s most influential platforms.
Reddit’s Immense and Underestimated Influence
Reddit.com is an internet institution. Founded in 2005 and once known as “The Front Page of the Internet,” it has rebranded to “The HEART of the internet.” Regardless of its slogan, Reddit is the 7th most visited website on earth and one of the most powerful platforms for shaping opinion and discourse.
This influence is hard to quantify, but its reach extends far beyond its own users. With the rise of AI and generative search summaries, Reddit’s content has found a new, massive distribution channel. Over 40% of major AI citations can be tracked back to Reddit discussions. When platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s AI summaries rely on Reddit content, its influence multiplies exponentially. Reddit is not just the 7th largest site; it may be the single largest source of influence on the internet today.
The 5 Super Moderators and Their Reach
This immense influence makes Reddit a magnet for powerbrokers. Our focus is on a specific group of individuals who sought to control public discourse: the moderators. More specifically, five individual moderators who, at their peak, collectively oversaw over 3,000 separate Reddit communities.
These five names held an incredible level of power:
- Cyxie
- Merari01
- Siouxsie_Sioux
- Gallowboob
- AwkwardtheTurtle
Together, they moderated 92 of the top 500 subreddits, spanning topics like Gaming, Movies, Pics, Cats, Cooking, and Memes. This concentration of editorial power is dangerous, especially when moderators have no personal connection to the communities they control, such as Siouxsie_Sioux moderating the Baltimore subreddit without living there. The key factor, however, is how they used this power.
The Cover-Up: Suppressing All Discussion
In 2020, a user exposed the control these five moderators held over 92 top communities. Within hours, the post was removed, and the user was simultaneously banned from over 40 different subreddits in less than an hour. This was just the beginning.
For years, any thread that mentioned this phenomenon was systematically locked down and deleted. Posts about the Reddit super moderators with thousands of upvotes across various subreddits—from r/conspiracy to r/insane—vanished. A post in r/therewasanattempt about their prolific control garnered 116,000 upvotes before being pulled down by Reddit’s own community team. It became clear that any attempt to shine a light on this power structure was met with swift censorship.
How Did They Gain So Much Power?
Speculation swirled around how five individuals could gain control over so many prominent communities. One potential method involves a little-known Reddit rule: if a subreddit is inactive for 60 days, a user can request to take it over. Many believed these “super moderators” had access to a fast-tracked version of this process.
Another prominent theory suggested they systematically infiltrated communities with alternate accounts. By participating just enough to be promoted to moderator status, they could then execute hostile takeovers, bringing in their allies and removing any critics.
Evidence of Hostile Takeovers
The evidence for these takeovers is compelling. A small community created to air grievances about Gallowboob’s moderation abuse was quickly shut down. The moderator list suddenly included Gallowboob, Siouxsie_Sioux, and AwkwardtheTurtle, who then nuked every post and closed the subreddit.
It happened again. A subreddit called “Thanks Gallowboob,” created for the same purpose, was also taken over and destroyed by the same three moderators. These individuals were inexplicably able to gain moderator access to communities made specifically to complain about them and then purge them from existence.
The Fall of the Reddit Mafia
Ultimately, sunlight proved to be the best disinfectant. As the story gained traction and spread across the platform despite the censorship, the power structure began to crumble.
Merari01 and Gallowboob significantly reduced their moderation footprints. Cyxie deleted their entire account. Most notably, both Siouxsie_Sioux and AwkwardtheTurtle were permanently suspended from Reddit.
The scale of their control was even larger than initially reported. While the initial focus was on 92 large communities, internet archives show Cyxie moderated at least 200 subreddits, Siouxsie_Sioux nearly 300, and AwkwardtheTurtle, at his peak, had control over an astonishing 2,500 different subreddits.
Ironically, AwkwardtheTurtle claimed his suspension was baseless, yet the primary criticism against him was his abuse of widespread power to punish those he personally disliked. The constant threat of being banned from thousands of communities served as a powerful deterrent against dissent.
The Pareto Principle and Lasting Digital Influence
The story of the “Reddit Mafia” is a classic example of the Pareto Principle, where a small number of causes (or people) are responsible for the majority of outcomes. A small group of power-seeking individuals held a lion’s share of influence over the content seen by hundreds of millions.
While this particular group has collapsed, the structure of Reddit allows for such power concentrations to form again. Moderators control what is posted. Those posts inform AI models and search engines. That information, in turn, shapes what the masses see, believe, and discuss. Hijacking communities to vindictively control narratives is the work of a digital mafia, and this may not be the last time we see one.
What are your thoughts on content moderation and power on social media? Share your opinion in the comments below.
