I was going to write this story up yesterday, but then Tim Schafer happened. Then earlier tonight, Google happened. I’ve just been busy as fuck, to cut the long story short. But I couldn’t let this story pass us by. Some of you may have already heard about this story over on one of my favorite subreddits. In case you haven’t, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.

We’ve talked about how there seems to be different rules for different folks at NeoGAF once before. But we’ve always lacked that smoking gun evidence. Well, not anymore. One brave user decided to share some private messages that he had exchanged with a moderator. He lost his account for it, but we all gained some valuable insight.

Here’s the screens he (Jado) shared:pXoCMkxekv1cfv KcPw38ZfDiH8ys (1)YgguFLe (1)

And part of his statement (here’s the locked thread):

As many of you know, I’ve stood up for a lot of good on this site, but finding out the above threw me for a loop and I was appalled at how blatant it was. Furthermore, I found out how quickly I could have people here turn on me if I deviated and didn’t agree with every single “approved” stance. Toeing the line to an unnecessary extreme and at the cost of expressing my perfectly normal thoughts has been really shitty and brought me to question how it got to be this way.

According to the mod (besada), minorities and females get special treatment on the board due to their status as: “voices that the young, white, male demographic needs to hear.” I can imagine that seems very unfair to a lot of people. “Voices that we need to hear” getting full of themselves and abusing their power is what helped kick-start GamerGate in the first place

Tyler MalkaNeoGAF’s owner, banned the person who made this post on. But then he tried to act like he had nothing to do with the mod’s way of doing business…as if they just created site policy all on their own:

This is a pretty straightforward account suicide and a clear breach of trust with besada who seemed to want to explain his thought processes as a moderator and how he finesses various subjects via some PMs…

I personally don’t give a shit what anyone claims to be or actually is on the internet, and try to only look at their words and actions and whether that aligns with being a good fit for the site. You probably know by now that I step in and publicly take out anyone as necessary with no fucks given. My moderators usually make up for that by thinking things through and being a little more level headed, but I’ve reaffirmed to them today that being thoughtful and level-headed shouldn’t extend to special treatment or protected groups existing. That’s not the right way to foster a userbase that can maybe be more equipped than the Youtube comment pool at talking to people different from themselves. 
Move along now.

So, he admits that the practice was wrong, and vows to change it, but yet he still bans the original poster? Gotta love those NeoGAF ethics. The sooner this cesspool goes under, the better. I will give him some small credit for promising to rectify the sorry state of affairs, but not much. I’m sure it’s just a PR move, since he was called out for giving preferential treatment to a certain class of users.

We’re gonna hold you to your promise, though, Malka.