HugBunter Deleted: Reddit Erases Dread Forum Administrator

Reddit banned HugBunter's entire account, erasing the administrator of Dread, the world's largest darknet forum with thousands of active users. Dread launched February 2018 after Reddit banned /r/DarkNetMarkets and related communities in March 2018.

That subreddit had nearly 180,000 users when Reddit implemented a new content policy banning communities facilitating transactions. Within three months of the Reddit bans, 12,000 users migrated to Dread. Aaron Swartz co-founded Reddit in 2005 when Infogami merged with the platform. Swartz rewrote Reddit's codebase in Python and described himself as a free speech absolutist who believed information should be freely available. He died in 2013, and Reddit removed him from their founders page.

Reddit announced API pricing changes in June 2023, charging $0.24 per 1,000 API calls starting July 1st. Apollo would've faced a $20 million annual bill under that structure. Reddit went public with its IPO on March 21, 2024 at $34 per share with a $6.4 billion valuation. Google pays Reddit $60 million annually for API access. Reddit signed data licensing deals worth $203 million over two to three years.

The company killed third-party apps users preferred, drove away active moderators, and experienced site-wide protests. HugBunter received warnings months earlier that Reddit was hostile to free speech. The platform transformed from Swartz's vision of free information access to a corporate data-mining operation banning darknet forum administrators while monetizing user content and selling data to AI companies. HugBunter posted a PGP-signed message that can be verified with his public key.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

[November 19th, 2025]

Hi!

We have been down for many hours now, the servers are up and running,
however I am experiencing an issue causing the main VM to crash.
This means that, currently, the web server is not running and you won't
be able to pass the captcha to access Dread.

I am working on this issue and will be trying to avoid sleeping until it is back
up and running. I'd like to say 24 hours maximum before I can solve it,
hopefully a lot sooner and definitely hoping it won't be any later.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thanks for your patience,
Stay safe!

Share this where possible please as Reddit just shadowbanned me, so I'm unable to get the word out.

- - HugBunter
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