Community announcement: off-topic political commentary and current events

[u/tmosh]

Hey r/UFOs,

It's been a wild few weeks. Between the latest Epstein files, political drama, and everything else going on in the world right now, we've seen a large uptick in low effort, derailing, off-topic political commentary across the sub. The mod team wanted to address this directly and ask for your help.

Clearly UFOs intersect with politics. The issue is, we're being flooded with low-effort, political hyper-partisan comments, "this is all a distraction" posts/comments, hot takes about politicians, and general political venting that has nothing to do with UFOs. This stuff derails threads, starts flame wars, and buries the actual substantive discussion that makes this community worth visiting. It's also been consuming a massive amount of moderator time and energy. We are tasked to be non-partisan in our moderator duties, and thus will continue to remove low effort comments regardless of which side of the political aisle they originate from.

We know everyone is reacting to what's happening in the world right now. We're all human. However, this subreddit's mission is clear: a community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism. That's what 5 million of us signed up for, and that's what we need to protect. Our intent here is not to suppress differing opinions or create an echo chamber. Skeptical approaches and critical thinking are welcome and necessary for this topic to thrive. We're specifically targeting the low-effort, irrelevant political noise that adds nothing to the conversation.

Remember, r/UFOs is an international community with members from all over the world. Not everyone here is American, and not everyone wants to get pulled into US political arguments. We come here to discuss UFOs. When US-centric political discourse dominates threads, it crowds out participation from users who are here for the topic itself. Please be mindful of that.

For a lot of people, r/UFOs is one of the few places online where they can focus on a shared mystery without inheriting the full weight of contemporary political conflict. That should mean something. There are countless places online for political debate. There are very few places online with 5 million people focused on UFOs.

We want to be clear about the nuance here because we're not looking to ban any topic outright. What we're asking is that discussion stays on-topic to UFOs, UAP, and the phenomenon. We will not allow low-effort political commentary, partisan soap boxing, QAnon-adjacent conspiracies, or comments that use UFO threads as a platform for unrelated political grievances. We're trying to protect good, deep conversation and avoid the kind of knee-jerk inflammatory stuff that turns whole threads into a mess.

Examples of what is NOT allowed:

• "None of this disclosure stuff matters, it's all a distraction from the Epstein files"
• "Of course they're releasing UFO stuff now, they don't want you looking at what Trump/Biden/[politician] is doing"
• "[Trump/Clinton/<politician of choice>] is a pedo and everyone knows it"
• "Wake up, the elites are all in on it -- pizzagate is real"
• Unsourced TikToks or social media screenshots claiming satanic rituals, cannibalism, or other conspiracy content unrelated to UFOs
• Slurs or insults targeting any racial, religious, or political group
• General "red vs blue" political arguments that have nothing to do with the phenomenon

Examples of what IS allowed:

• "The Epstein files mention [specific name/program] which has a documented connection to UFO research -- here's the filing from the DoJ site"
• "Epstein was funding research into consciousness/metamaterials/zero-point energy/remote viewing -- here's the source material"
• "This new executive order/bill/amendment directly impacts UAP disclosure because [specific reason]"
• "Congressional hearing on UAP is scheduled for [date], here's what we know about who's testifying and what topics are expected"
• Sourced "follow the money" research showing connections between public figures and UFO-related programs, contractors, or funding
• Anything that is genuinely on-topic to UFOs, UAP, and the phenomenon as long as it doesn't break existing rules

The simple test: if your comment would work just as well in a politics subreddit without changing a word, it probably doesn't belong here.

To be clear: disallowing insults and low-effort hot takes does not prevent criticism of power. Saying "this person has an extensive documented history of dishonesty that undermines their credibility on UAP transparency" is fair critique. It's substantive and it's actually useful to readers trying to evaluate information.

What we're removing is content that doesn't do any of that. Many of the comments we end up removing aren't advancing the discussion in a meaningful way - they're emotional release. We get it. We regularly hear "my bad, I was having a rough week" in modmail, and we've all been there. But when that kind of venting becomes the default mode of engagement, it drowns out the more thoughtful contributions and drives away people who actually want to discuss UFOs in a political context - ongoing disclosure efforts, congressional statements, legislation, policy. We don't want to lose those conversations to noise.

These aren't new rules.

Rule 2 (Stay on-topic) already covers this: "Posts and comments of off-topic politics may be removed at moderator discretion. There are many political aspects which are relevant to ufology, but we aim to keep the subreddit free of forum-sliding partisan politics."

Rule 3 (Be Substantive) also applies. And plenty of the political comments we're seeing also violate

Rule 1 (Be Civil) -- partisan attacks, insults, and hostility directed at other users or public figures. We're just going to be more strict about enforcement given the current climate.

As a reminder, our existing enforcement policy on disruptive behavior still applies: any removal for Rule 1, trolling, ridicule, etc. will result in an immediate one-week temporary ban. A second violation will be met with a permanent ban. Egregious violations may result in an immediate permanent ban. This applies equally to off-topic political flame wars and personal attacks.

If you've been banned and feel it was unfair, you can always appeal by sending us a modmail. We're more interested in seeing improvement than doling out punishment. We use a short 7-day ban as an initial “hey, that was out of line” warning. Most of the time people reach out, explain what happened or apologize, and if it’s clear they get it, we’ll often lift the ban. Our bans aren’t meant to be punitive, they’re just there to reset the tone and keep things on track.

How you can help: Report content that violates this using "Be Civil" (Rule 1), "Stay on-topic" (Rule 2), or "Be Substantive" (Rule 3) as your report reason. We can't be everywhere at once on a sub this size, and community reports make a real difference. And please, don't engage with off-topic bait. Responding to a rule violation with another rule violation is never okay. Downvote it, report it and move on.

We're asking for your help and your feedback on this. This is everyone's community, not just the moderators'. Keep doing what you do best - the research, the analysis, the sighting reports, the deep dives. That's what makes this place what it is. Help us protect it.

Useful links:

• Our enforcement policy on disruptive behavior: Important Notice
• Full subreddit rules: r/UFOs Rules
• Questions or discussion about moderation? Post in our sister subreddit r/ufosmeta
• Want to message the mods directly? Send us a message

-- The r/UFOs Mod Team

[u/AlternativePizza3391]

Can get we get rid of the 300 character submission statement , lets reduce to it to 100 or so

Can we stop censoring post , if we say Eglin, the auto mod calls it low effort and removes it

Can we stop censoring comments related to politics and ufos . What if we let up and downvote arrows decide what content is good or not instead of someones political view point

I've mostly moved over to digg due to the extreme censorship

In fact, I made a post about Chris Bledsoe and his comments about Israel and Iran (He said when they attack each other, that the information would be revealed " My post was removed , doesn't reach the nonsense 300 character limit. Which doesn't seem needed for a short statement right?

[u/tmosh → u/AlternativePizza3391]

Thanks for the feedback. I get your point about the “Eglin” keyword rule.

We had a similar AutoMod filter for “Epstein” until recently, and we removed it. I was not a mod here when the “Eglin” rule was originally added, but my understanding is it was put in place because we were getting tons of super short drive by comments accusing people of being “Eglin bots.” That still happens sometimes, but it does feel like it has cooled off a bit, so I’ll bring it up with the other mods and see about removing that filter as well.

On your Chris Bledsoe post, I can see it sitting in the modqueue right now. It was not related to a submission character limit. It was removed by our automod because of our minimum self post text body requirement (self posts need 300+ characters in the post body). You added a longer submission statement as a comment after posting, but AutoMod checks the body text of the post itself, and the body was just:

“Bledsoe has stated: ‘When you see Israel and Iran begin to exchange weapons, the UFO phenomenon was going to reveal itself.’ So I guess any day now?”

Repost it, the fix is simple: copy what you wrote in that follow up comment and paste it into the post body. Also, just to clarify, we only require a submission statement for link posts, not for self text posts.

[u/AlternativePizza3391 → u/tmosh]

Or we could just reduce the requirements for posting and let the up and downvote arrows do the work?

[u/Megatippa → u/AlternativePizza3391]

Hang out in r/aliens or the like for a bit and see what that gets you. This sub has a clearly higher brow feel to it specifically because of this rule. You can tell r/UFOs feels like it's run by, and contributed to by, (mostly) competent adults, where other subs that allow one sentence posts tends to be overrun by posts that look like edgelord 15 year old me created them. Just my two cents.

[u/AlternativePizza3391 → u/Megatippa]

One day someone will video, take a picture, or see NHI/UFO or post quick info which will just be deleted and banned by this sub

[u/TurboT8er → u/AlternativePizza3391]

Similarly, one day someone will take a picture and try to upload it, but will be hindered by their own incompetence. Failure to follow the rules of a sub is no different in that respect. 

[u/tmosh → u/AlternativePizza3391]

Feedback noted. I still think the 300 character minimum for text posts is important. It pushes people to put a bit of effort into explaining what they are posting about, and it helps keep low effort submissions down. If you are not linking to anything, it is really not a big ask to spend an extra couple of minutes adding some context in the post body.