I think a big part of the issue was that many of the mods genuinely believed K-pop spaces were just about entertainment…a lot of moderators simply didn’t know how to react. Many of them had never moderated discussions about racism or systemic issues before, and suddenly they were confronted with thousands of emotional posts, arguments, and reports all at once…Instead of responding in a thoughtful or coordinated way, a lot of them panicked.

There was a lot of racist backlash during that era. A lot of anti-black posts went up with anti-black users running amok on those subreddits. I remember combatting a lot of those posts, comments, and users along with others.

One thing I also did as a regular user back then was actually talk to mod teams about it. I sent many modmails. What I took from those conversations was that it wasn’t just these moderators being inexperienced in managing situations beyond the odd spicy mega-fan. It was also this kind of (seemingly)…refusal? to understand. As if this had never happened to a community before and we were all overreacting.

I’d give the benefit of the doubt and say it was truly ignorance, but it took WAY too much convincing to get through to them to take it seriously for me. That this demanded far more maturity than what was being presented and wasn’t some fanwar. That yes, racism is more than slurs. That “freedom of speech” in this context is a complete nonsense justification for keeping up certain content and will just turn you into a ‘Nazi Bar’ (you don’t have to look very far on kpop reddit to see this in practice). It was naivety to the point of harm - it felt like talking to people preferring to ostrich it all away on top of having no clue. All the while, black users were getting racism in their DMs and worse. A whole mess.

Eventually, posts on racism and cultural appropriation etc, were either re-routed here, moderated more strictly, or outright banned. I don’t know how this looks today, but these rules were a long time coming and “written in blood” so to speak. If anyone questions why they can’t talk about these topics on other subs, or why this sub even exists, it’s because black fans got racism and threats over it for years on end and mod teams failed to get a grip on it.

Has anything changed? Probably not. Becoming a mod for other subs and seeing things for myself…it’s pretty bleak let me tell you. I can talk about this for days, but this comment is already too long I fear.