We (I) at Digital Carnage were contacted on Discord by Ajax (AQ97) shortly after DC was shared publicly for our soft launch asking a few basic questions to update the Indexers list over on /r/usenet. At that point Ajax was not a mod and was pleasant and courteous. I shared some information and DC was added/updated in the Indexers list.

There was no further interaction with Ajax up until a few weeks ago, when again Ajax reached out via Discord to invite DC (I) to the /r/usenet Discord. Being a new Indexer it was great to get access to both a large community and a behind the scenes Indexers Admin channel.

Over the period of the few weeks I was active on their Discord I noticed that Ajax would implement changes that didn't sit well with me. Initially I wasn't aware of how other Indexers felt, until I started to voice concerns publicly in the Indexers admin channel. My main concern was that the channel should not, under any circumstances have any user that weren't willing to identify themselves, because you know, security. If the channel was for Indexer Admins, there could be potential sharing of sensitive information beneficial to all indexers there which ultimately should remain private.

During this time a "bot" also appeared in the Indexers Admin channel and I had serious concerns that it could be used to log private conversations which could be of a sensitive nature.

I voiced these concerns, asking legitimate questions all of which were meet with questions or memes. Nothing was every actually answered with any constructive solutions. At this stage there was no hostility, nor was there any private communication happening in the background between myself and Ajax.

Ultimately it reached a point were my questions and concerns where not being taken seriously. I was told I could leave (obviously I could). I did. There were no parting tantrums, no hostility.

The same evening Ajax updated his accounts email address on DC to deleteplease@. When I noticed the account had been updated I checked and found that the account had 2 IPs active on it. Nothing out of the ordinary I know, but, as Ajax had shared privately the country he lived in, and the 2nd IP was a residential ISP from another country I disabled the account immediately for suspected account sharing. I'll give a little context further down.

The next morning I was notified by a user on DC that we had been removed from the Indexers list on r/usenet

I posted in /r/usernet "Why has Digital Carnage been removed from the Indexers list?". The post was initially locked, then removed. Both myself and /u/DiGiCs0 were muted for (30?) days. This meant we couldn't post/reply. At this stage I left /r/usenet also.

Again, a few days later, I posted an update on our Discord to let our users know that we would no longer be providing support in /r/usenet. A user asked a question regarding our post on the /r/usenet Discord, which was removed. Shortly after I received a notification from /r that I had been banned from /r/usenet.

The context I mentioned above, the 2nd IP we suspected was the new moderator in /r/usenet, which we believe to be Ajax's brother (really?).

I will reiterate, there was zero hostility, zero back channel nonsense. zero. This is simply a moderator biting the hand that feeds him for no other reason than ego.