That person had effectively no mod experience, but was already on the moderator list there - having been added by the old team.

Head mod chose to reopen under protest by turning off anti-scam bots and similar - letting sub continue to function visibly the same, but without the bot-supported protection it had used prior. He somehow talked his way onto the team during the protests, and then went to Admin and arranged to oust the head mod who had shut down the bots and was doing protest stuff in the sub.

He has since been returned to the bottom of the mod hierarchy there, for whatever that's worth.

Like, I kind of get that guy's point in some senses - simply turning off security features that quietly protect users, without announcing it, sure seems like the kind of thing that would hurt users pretty quick - without ever affecting site Admin. Especially when the head mod who shut down those bots wasn't the user/mod who was responsible for them, it's not 'their' bot if they're gonna go home and take their toys, as it were.

Staging a coup and getting Admin to put him at the top of the modlist is hyper shitty, and Admin's decision to promote someone who wasn't really part of that community to that sort of position is utterly inexplicable if we were trying to square their actions with their stated values.

they gave it to someone who wants to implement a system of collecting government ID from participants and tracking their activities. very cool, I'm sure the kind of weirdos who like to mail each other snacks will happily scan their drivers license and send them to this person. no problemo.