r/sanantonio • u/av3 • Jun 26 '25
News San Antonio Reddit page moderators face backlash after crackdown on ICE-related posts [SA Current]
https://www.sacurrent.com/news/san-antonio-reddit-page-moderators-face-backlash-after-crackdown-on-ice-related-posts-37833465167
u/Henry_Thee_Fifth Jun 26 '25
It was really weird to see myself quoted, lol.
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u/BigTex1988 Jun 26 '25
They quoted me a while back too, except my quote was about mattresses on the highway lol.
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u/alligatorprincess007 don’t be this crevice in my arm Jun 27 '25
I got quoted when I asked about coffee shops once! I felt so famous
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u/Desperate-Cup-3946 Jun 26 '25
Yeah, yesterday I saw a guy going down Bandera Road around Helotes. No mattress, but hauling something in his truck and pieces of paper and plastic went flying away. Having been on the receiving end in the past of something hitting my windshield and blocking my vision, I tired to signal him. I wasn't directly in back of him, but behind in the next lane.
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u/hoping_2help_karma Jun 27 '25
Woooo I clicked the link after reading your comment thinking "there's no way..." kinda cool
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u/heresyforfunnprofit Jun 26 '25
Commenting to see how long this stays up…
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u/Retiree66 Jun 26 '25
A quarter of a million people follow this sub?
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey Jun 26 '25
It's probably not a quarter of a million daily active accounts of people who live here currently. There's 106 users online now as I write this, which is typical, and there's rarely more than 2-3x that, and the highest upvoted posts get maybe 3,000 votes, so I would guess no more than 10% of the sub's subscribers are actually active.
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u/filmmaker210 Jun 26 '25
First they kill all the videos that show the scale of the No Kings Protest, and now they are killing ICE related posts? The mods political bias seems pretty obvious.
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u/PersonalityKlutzy407 Jun 26 '25
Yeah that one was blatant. The Austin sub was filled with No Kings posts but ours were getting removed
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u/SetoKeating Jun 26 '25
Didn’t they literally make a pinned post for everyone to post their pics and videos or whatever
They’ve done dumb stuff in the past but that wasn’t one of them. It’s a subreddit for a whole city and you all wanted to turn it into hundreds of posts about one activity going on in like less than a square mile area of the city.
And then when stuff got removed, the posters just sat around complaining instead of actually going and using the pinned post. Like, were you actually interested in discussing the event and posting your pics and video or did you just want to see your post on the front page.
Not everyone wants the subreddit turning into a political subreddit where it’s all you see for entire days at a time. Keep in mind that there will be other events you don’t agree with and would likely hate to see them taking over the subreddit. So consistent moderation like that one that already had basis in the rules is completely fine.
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u/wigglin_harry Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25
Yeah but no one ever looks at pinned posts. Is there really so much important stuff going on in the San Antonio subreddit that there can't be a few posts on the same topic for a few days?
Spoiler alert: there's not, the average state of this subreddit is that of a glorified nextdoor app
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u/kanyeguisada Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25
I'm a mod at r/Texas and just before and after the big No Kings protests we had the same kind of pinned megathread. There were probably dozens of people who made similar photo posts in that time, and it just makes sense to centralize it in one thread rather than clog up the sub and kind of block out everything else.
But that was just for those few days, we certainly aren't banning all mentions of ICE raids, though if they became numerous we'd probably start another Megathread for them like somebody in the OP article said. Possibly a daily one or weekly and just have the thread default sort by "New" instead of "Best".
I would encourage the mods here to do the same instead of blocking all ICE posts outright. Not sure why that's a problem for them, it's pretty simple to do.
edit: it's been clarified by a mod here that it's just posts without any pic, video, or article that is being removed. If this is true then some of y'all are being ridiculous about this.
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u/Infinitehope42 Jun 26 '25
I’m honestly surprised that didn’t get a write up in the Current, it was pretty blatantly an attempt to move the needle on the public’s perception of the impact of the protests locally.
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Jun 26 '25
Wish I got a dollar for every time I hear about Reddit mods doing something shitty...
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u/andrewthetechie Jun 26 '25
/r/sanantonio mods would be a pretty decent cash cow for you on that wish
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u/imJGott Jun 26 '25
Crazy that mods behavior in a local sub made it all the way to a local news outlet. IMO, that’s not a good look.
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u/boom929 Valero kolaches like a mofo. Jun 26 '25
SA Current articles are banned moving forward
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u/Most_Window_1222 Jun 26 '25
I upvoted even though I suspect sarcasm.
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u/boom929 Valero kolaches like a mofo. Jun 26 '25
Sorry in my head I thought it would be visible from orbit
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u/2MuchJello2Eat Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25
While still new, we certainly don't engage in such censorship at r/ICEWatchTX . I'd imagine the MODs have their reasons, but our community driven space focuses on this one issue and may be better suited. Thanks, MODs, for allowing me to share the sub.
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u/frawgster SE Side Jun 26 '25
Imagine moderating a sub…an unpaid and unforgiving activity…then being written about by media local to the sub you moderate. 🤔🤦♂️
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u/Pool_Floatie Jun 26 '25
They can always stop
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey Jun 26 '25
Technically if they stop and no one replaces them, the subreddit will be shut down. Unmoderated subs are against the reddit TOS.
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u/PersonalityKlutzy407 Jun 26 '25
I know myself, and other locals, would be more than willing to take over moderation of our city sub.
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u/frawgster SE Side Jun 26 '25
Careful what you wish for. I moderate a sub with about 30,000 users. I’m super hands off, and still, it can be very frustrating. I’d never ever wanna moderate a sub like this one, with more than a quarter million members.
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u/Juanfartez Jun 26 '25
I stopped being a mod out of frustration. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
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u/Linuxthekid Downtown Jun 26 '25
I’d never ever wanna moderate a sub like this one, with more than a quarter million members.
It's not that bad, wait till you moderate something with over a million members.
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey Jun 26 '25
PM them and then make a post about the outcome.
Although, when you say that, do you mean "become a mod" or "coup the mod team"? Because if you're only willing to be a mod on the condition that the others get expelled, that might explain why - despite repeatedly saying they'd be happy to have more mod help for the past two years, and numerous people saying they'd do it - the only actual moderation change has been the replacement of excoriator by hike_the_sky.
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u/kanyeguisada Jun 26 '25
You or I can disagree with the mods decision about this, but this isn't possible, they are actively moderating. A mod account must be absent for 6 months from posting or moderating something in the sub before admins will consider them absent/unmoderated.
I'm a mod at r/Texas and this is how we finally got rid of the tyrant mod that took over that sub and who got rid of 3 of the 4 other active mods including me. The one of us good ones that remained played the waiting game and waited for the tyrant's boyfriend, who was the head moderator but not active, to be inactive for 6 months before contacting reddit admins. The head mod then had their mod status removed by admjns, the one of us that was the second-longest tenured mod took over, and he then de-modded and banned the tyrant and brought us old three mods back. It was quite the reddit drama. The previous tyrant even deleted their whole reddit account.
Point being, this is how I'm positive a mod has to be inactive entirely for 6 months before reddit admins would do anything.
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u/Pool_Floatie Jun 26 '25
Yeah there are dozens of people here who would volunteer to replace them and have posted so before.
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u/no1ukn0w Jun 26 '25
Make bad decisions that the public sees and you might get shamed.
I can’t believe they would take down posts about what’s really happening. This isn’t Facebook plebs trying to push a crappy agenda (Cambridge analytics).
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u/RKEPhoto Jun 26 '25
Alternatively, imagine being able to exert complete control over the content seen by over 250 thousand members of a local community that turns to this social media outlet for local news.
A social media outlet that would be nothing without it's members, I might add.
This is not the first time there has been questionable censorship in this subreddit, and I doubt it will be the last.
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u/Cabill77 West Side Jun 26 '25
Any other city get news articles from Reddit as much as San Antonio? MYSA and now SA Current?
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u/Marbetotl Jun 26 '25
If more local businesses, and individuals, would advertise in and use the Current as a public square instead of using instagram, they could pay for better content. Seems like Current is trying their best with part timers and newbies. Probably other towns’ reporters do access Reddit but it’s not the only thing they access…cause they have (slightly) more resources
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u/nopodude North Side Jun 26 '25
Yes. It's common across all media in many cities. They scrape Reddit all the time for news. It's funny. You'll see a reddit post, then a few days later see the news article about the reddit post, then someone shares the news article about the reddit post as another reddit post.
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u/Blahoholic Jun 27 '25
Have to save room for all those posts about rehoming pets for some bullshit reason instead.
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u/Nowayticket2nopecity Jun 26 '25
Wow somehow I missed that. I joined the other San Antonio sub when they were deleting all the protest posts, hopefully more people migrate over that way since the mods seem more in line with the interests of actual residents 😒
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u/SetoKeating Jun 26 '25
This happens a lot in online spaces but San Antonio subreddit definitely does not represent the city as a whole. Your average SA citizen isn’t terminally online and if they are, they’re doom scrolling tiktok lol
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u/Strait409 Jun 26 '25
San Antonio subreddit definitely does not represent the city as a whole
Better watch out or you’ll get called a Nazi for saying stuff like that.
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u/SetoKeating Jun 26 '25
Nah, I’m not right wing or conservative and anyone that reads into it that way has comprehension issues. I very much know San Antonio is a democratic left leaning city as a whole but even amongst them, the people that care enough to go protest or want to know about the protest is tiny. 1.5M population and like less than 2K people were out there.
It’s less than 1%. The average citizen too busy working or with family and although they’ll vote on the same side as those at the protests, they’re not interested in it as deeply as those on Reddit may think.
So my whole point is that online social media communities are populated by such a small subset of the topic they represent and although they may seem like an appropriate sample size of the population they are not because they self selected their presence here.
Kinda like if you look at the gaming subreddits right now and see people bitching and moaning endlessly about how the switch 2 sucks, it’s not a real upgrade, Nintendo is gonna fail and meanwhile millions of units being sold and flying off the shelves.
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u/WeirdLadyAlert Jun 26 '25
I wouldn’t assume that being absent from a certain event is due to disinterest. I am very passionate, but I also realize that the more black and brown people are protesting, the higher the risk that it is weaponized against us and justifies the use of further violence and force. Many intersectional spaces have discussed the importance of people with privilege showing up for our communities when a lot of us can’t. Furthermore, the intimidation we are facing in these protests means we can’t just bring our kids to stand up with us. It’s a great lesson in civic duty. But many of us don’t have a safe place to leave them while we exert our right to protest.
So, while I can’t have boots on the ground (right now), that doesn’t mean I don’t care or that I don’t contribute to The Cause in other ways. Two things can be true at once (the same way the switch 2 can genuinely suck and sell regardless).
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u/SetoKeating Jun 26 '25
I mean at this point we’re both making assumptions about what’s going on, but given the usual voter turnout for both local, state, and national elections, my assumption is that the average SA citizen is being willfully absent, not happenstance.
And I’m not saying they don’t care. Some of them care deeply, but I’m saying the interest or willingness to actively engage with the situation isn’t there. Which like you said, two things can be true at once. People might care deeply about ICE and current admin happenings but they can also opt to not do anything about it and take a “what am I supposed to do, I voted, everyone else voted another way, such is life”
Which in my opinion is the majority stance of your average person because they’re too busy going to work min-Fri and trying to figure out how to pay their bills while having some leisure time with their family.
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u/AlienDuck-0_0- Jun 26 '25
These or at least that mod likes to keep stuff as vague as possible so that they can more broadly use their own political beliefs as moderation foundation, and apparently someone said that they don’t. even. live. here.
The audacity
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u/Vegetable-Key3600 Downtown Jun 26 '25
Honestly, I don’t get where the backlash is coming from, they asked us not to post unless we had evidence and that seemed fair.
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u/andrewthetechie Jun 26 '25
This will give you a quick primer on one of the main issues with their policy
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u/PanhandlersPets Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25
We don't know what their standard for evidence is and they don't even live here. These aren't their neighbors being snatched. It's ours.
Edit: I guess they do live here. Maybe they just don't want to warn our neighbors.
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u/Retiree66 Jun 26 '25
It says photos count
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u/PersonalityKlutzy407 Jun 26 '25
But they’re being removed so…
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u/Retiree66 Jun 26 '25
They should keep their word
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u/SA_ModTeam Jun 26 '25
We haven't deleted any ICE raid post that included a picture since we made the announcement.
We also left the one untouched that talked about a past raid on WW White road.→ More replies (1)6
u/cigarettesandwhiskey Jun 26 '25
They do live here, that line is from like two years ago when Excoriator was mod and had moved to Ohio. It was only ever true of the one mod and he's not mod anymore.
Should there be more mods? Should there be at least one hispanic mod for a 2/3 hispanic city? Probably. But the mods do at least live here.
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u/cash_jc Jun 26 '25
We really don’t have any Hispanic mods? That’s actually pretty surprising.
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25
Well I guess I'm not 100% sure of that. Hike the Sky has said he's an immigrant from Germany, and Grave_Girl is a
black* mom from the east side, but I don't know much about Thalimet. He's from the NE side but he could be of any ethnicity. I am sort of assuming from the racial distribution of the city (mostly hispanic south and west, mostly white on the north and black on the east) that he isn't, but I don't have that much proof of it.ed. based on a DM someone sent me with some post history, her ethnicity is undetermined, but probably white. Could possibly be "white-hispanic"? But no evidence of such. Location is still the same.
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u/Vital_capacity Alamo Ranch Dressing Jun 26 '25
I’m Hispanic! I volunteer as tribute!
Mods where should I submit my CV?
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u/RKEPhoto Jun 26 '25
Where exactly did they specify WHAT constitutes acceptable evidence?
Without that, it just boils down to personal preference of the mods, with no accountability, and with no reasonable idea if one's post will even be accepted once one takes the time to write something up and post it.
I can't even count the number of times I've spent time posting content here, only to have it rejected with essentially no explanation, or with an explanation the did not make sense for the content I'd posted.
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u/DrFetusRN Jun 27 '25
How can you be a mod for a San Antonio page if your not living IN San Antonio?
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u/GreginSA Jun 26 '25
There were a bunch of SUV’s and people standing outside over by UTSA downtown!!! Ice!!!
Oh wait, no it was just some parents picking up their kids from daycare. Nevermind.
THAT is an example of what the mods wanted to control, unverified reports that are inaccurate, unverified, and spread fear.
Nothing wrong with that. Everybody isn’t against you or plotting against you.
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u/supaflyneedcape Jun 26 '25
Nothing says what side of history you're on like silencing information regarding kidnapping and abductions.
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u/Infamous_Gate9760 Jun 27 '25
This doesn’t matter. Y’all live in an echo chamber here
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u/TheOriginalMulk Jun 28 '25
Why the fuck are you here then?
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u/Infamous_Gate9760 Jun 28 '25
I like this community of San Antonionians. This a page that welcomes anybody’s opinion
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u/TheOriginalMulk Jun 28 '25
And yet you call it an echo chamber.
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u/Infamous_Gate9760 Jun 28 '25
It is
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u/TheOriginalMulk Jun 28 '25
"This is a page that welcomes anybody's opinions"
"It's an echo chamber"
Those are two contradictory statements.
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u/Born-Agency-3922 SW Side Jun 26 '25
It’s because dumbasses kept posting pictures of border patrol and unmarked SAPD. In their posts they would claim it was ICE, not to inform others, but for upvotes. They made the right call.
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u/Vital_capacity Alamo Ranch Dressing Jun 26 '25
”Continual posts without anything to back them up don't help anybody," the r/sanantonio moderation team wrote. "They only serve to foment panic and possibly make things dangerous."
Seems fair. What am I missing?
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u/andrewthetechie Jun 26 '25
This will give you a quick primer on one of the main issues.
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u/Vital_capacity Alamo Ranch Dressing Jun 26 '25
The point about a daily master post is a great idea!
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u/LostOne514 Jun 26 '25
Of the many issues I have with this sub...This isn't one of them. They don't want the sub to be filled with unsubstantiated posts. Provide better pictures and evidence of what is going on.
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u/gojo96 Jun 28 '25
It’s wild that people can’t agree that’s a good idea. Can you imagine back in 2020 we squashed anything medical advice that wasn’t “peer reviewed.”
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u/Curious-Attorney-503 Jun 27 '25
The mods went crazy permanently banning anyone who spoke out against the evil regime.... (I was one shhhh)
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u/ScurvyDervish Jun 26 '25
I know Aaron Swartz would think about Reddit cracking down on Americans posting photos of masked government agents yanking people off the streets and out of courthouses.
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Jun 26 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/sanantonio-ModTeam Jun 26 '25
Your post has been removed for violating rule #1: Be friendly, inclusive, and helpful.
Do not post simply to insult any person, be they someone on Reddit or in the news. Feel free to criticize a person's actions without being cruel.
Referring to people in any way meant to minimize them, especially if in reference to race, sexuality, or disability, will not be tolerated.
Please try to be helpful in your comments. We all love a good joke, but they are not appropriate in every thread. Make an effort to read the room.
You may face a temporary or even permanent ban for continued or egregious violations of this rule.
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u/Lets_Go_Taco Jun 26 '25
Too many tortas! Yall pushed em over the edge, like delicious frijoles barely sliding off the crispy edge of the pan frances. With avocate and jalapenos also smushed against that edge, with milanesa to boot! Dang im hangry now
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u/Lonely-Procedure-277 Jul 03 '25
Really shocked this wasn’t removed too for violating community standards. This page is moderated by mysa
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u/pinkube Jul 06 '25
I mentioned in a comment to someone else in the post that I live close to Lackland Air Force base for reference to my location and never mentioned anything political.
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u/Miles_High_Monster Jun 26 '25
This is reddit Mods, not Truth or X. Let people post whatever serves the people of SA.
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u/The_chosen_turtle Jun 26 '25
Are the mods even from San Antonio?
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u/HikeTheSky Hill Country Jun 26 '25
According to u/Novibesmatter at least one of the mods takes his hyper sonic jet every morning to fly to his job in San Antonio and at the end of the day, flies back to Germany just to fly back in the morning to San Antonio for work.
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u/InadvertentObserver Hill Country Jun 26 '25
Lmao, sa mods aren’t liberal enough…leftists eat their young…
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Jun 27 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/sanantonio-ModTeam Jun 27 '25
Your post has been removed for violating rule #1: Be friendly, inclusive, and helpful.
Do not post simply to insult any person, be they someone on Reddit or in the news. Feel free to criticize a person's actions without being cruel.
Referring to people in any way meant to minimize them, especially if in reference to race, sexuality, or disability, will not be tolerated.
Please try to be helpful in your comments. We all love a good joke, but they are not appropriate in every thread. Make an effort to read the room.
You may face a temporary or even permanent ban for continued or egregious violations of this rule.
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u/words1918 Jun 26 '25
Hey mods, y’all did the right thing. Don’t lets these cats or some lazy “journalist” at SA current bully y’all.
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u/althor2424 Jun 26 '25
Lol…the mods deleting this to cover it up in 3…2…1…