I always get nervous when someone vaguely references their free speech. Aside from it being a poor argument against most censorship, it also doesn't include any context. There is nothing in this post to suggest the removed comments were anything but spam and threats.
Now I do know a little bit about how Reddit mods operate, and I can fill in some gaps, but I have no reason to believe these were helpful or insightful comments that were just unpopular.
Exactly. Some of the best subreddits were so great because they had heavy moderation.
Probably the best example of this is askhistorians. Made a comment that was on topic but had no sources? Removed! With a clear (and public) comment of why it was removed. It was clearly stated in their rules that this was required, so it was absolutely justified.
We have no idea what these comments were and whether they were in violation of the sub's rules.
Let's shit on reddit for the actual things that are going wrong. This seems more like getting outraged over a picture of your ex with another guy/girl/whatever gender their interested in in the background.
Until the day you write an extensive answer to a question, which is not released, and upon requesting an explanation why, you get a really weird response with criticism that doesn’t actually make sense, only to then find that the mod who responds to you (and who did not have any expertise at all on that topic) just took your comment, rewrote it, and posted it himself.
I'm gonna need some receipts for that one, mostly because as an end user the content quality on that sub is head and shoulders better than anywhere else on Reddit
Also, like, that kinda weird shit is going to happen occasionally anywhere there are power heiarchies. It sucks when it happens to you, but it's unavoidable when a group of humans is given a set of rules to enforce.