coupland

You're not following what I'm getting at. Reddit wants to have plausible deniability so they reach out to mod teams asking them to Judas on their fellow mods. We don't know how many agreed to turn on you -- maybe it was one, maybe it was 51%, maybe it was all of them.

The mods go to Reddit and say "yes we'll work with you to get the subreddit back up. But we don't have access to demod the head mod." Reddit says "say no more, I got u." They demod you, and say "If you have any questions go speak to your fellow mods. WE didn't make the decision, we were asked to demod you by your fellow mods."

Your fellow mods also have the extra perk that they can deny betraying you. "WE didn't demod you, Reddit did! SEE the mod logs!"

Plausible deniability all around.

From reading the screen shots you shared:

"We are reaching out to any moderators currently on the mod team who would be willing to take steps to reopen the community"

and

"If you have any question regarding your removal, you can contact the moderator team for /r/Piracy"

I mean, it's pretty obvious one or more mods rolled on you. I'm sorry I'm not trying to be argumentative with you, it's very shitty and Reddit sucks. We wouldn't be discussing this here if I was a friend of reddit.

Understood, I'm not saying this wasn't sleazy. Just saying that they appear to have gotten permission from x% of mods on the sub.

Wait this doesn't add up. The posted screen shot isn't coercive. It's asking if anyone on the mod team is willing to betray their fellow mods. If not, cool. Sounds like there were one or more mods on the /r/piracy team who chose the "betray" thing.