You’ve understated it. Engagement was normal until a couple weeks before the season when the show producers revealed they were killing off the feeds, a fundamental part of premise.

Then engagement actually spiked, as followers decried this seemingly self-limiting choice. And the user protests were sensible, given that this same community of social media engagement had helped rescue the show from cancelation a couple times before.

But an odd thing happened a couple days before show began. An unhinged mod decided nobody could question the feeds issue. Except there was no rule change or discussion. They just started hiding and deleting posts, or banning users, as previously mention without an actual published rule.

I very civilly suggested they put this secret enforcement up to a meta discussion, or at least add it to the published rules.

The mod went ballistic. I could hardly believe their response. It started with crazy accusations that I was the owner of some competing social media source. Then it devolved to deranged threats and lies. I was commanded not to question the moderator.

And then despite not having made a public post or disobeying the mod’s unwritten rules, they rage sanctioned me anyway. Had to file a report with Reddit Admin that was finally upheld a couple days ago.

I watched as numerous other posts would pop up, vanish quickly, and the user would just be... gone. Presumably those users are being mass banned by the moderator.

So your theory is probably quite sound... that the subreddit isn’t so much being impacted as they are probably a very large part of sabotaging themselves.

The choice of one moderator to be an unofficial propaganda organ and practice heavy suppression/bullying is playing out fairly predictably. The other moderators are letting it happen because they engage during the US Big Brother season. It illustrates most of the themes of how some people react to having small amounts of power.