The lies told about r/nzpolitics and the Mountain_Tui account

This afternoon, I logged in to find a comment from a Reddit user who I recall used to post early on in the r/nzpolitics subreddit and r/newzealand before I got banned.

And the user said to me: "As though this sub isn’t just your own pet project to promote your website, YouTube, etc, etc…"

And my response to myself was "Ah that's a lie and one I've heard before now - from another mod, no less."

So I wanted to clarify the position here - because these types of rumours and lies are intentional and quite childish. But still, easy to debunk.

This was my post to the user, with slight edits for the wider audience:

"That's a lie perpetuated by some folks for sure, but as you had been here at the beginning, you would know that I was here from December/January and posted singularly on Reddit linking primarily to media sources and not owning any of my own for most of that time.

Until enough of you complained about me for writing egregious posts like this one and this one that copped me a ban from r/newzealand, I was posting on both subreddits - but again, only on Reddit.

I stayed here for months after r/newzealand moderators banned me for ... let me think, different reasons, being a novelty account, being suspicious for having blocked accounts, or apparently there were too many complaints about me - half of them were about me! and some moderators there gave me a hard time while others were kind - but after I went back and found that I was disallowed to post on a post I had spent 1-2 days on in good faith and even though I kept to my agreement, I deleted my old u/mountain_tui account

At the time, I had too much respect for certain r/nz moderators to push back so I guess I took it out on my own account, which I really liked actually...

And only then in July 2024 did I join Substack reluctantly at someone's suggestion (as I had deleted mountain_tui) where I wrote my first post: Why I left Reddit

And then some time after that I realised it was easiest to explain when people can see for themselves so I started a Youtube Channel which I link to as a picture/video tells a thousand words - and those are often used in my articles to help my readers understand what I am writing about."

So hopefully that clarifies and if anyone is in doubt, r/newzealand moderators like u/TeHokioi remembered when I took over r/nzpolitics and even allowed me to post about it there (he was the one that made me aware of this subreddit in the first place, after pointing political discussions here during Christmas even though this subreddit was locked, lol. That was a fun time and I'm sure a few of us chided him about it)

I still have a lot of respect for many of the moderators there, even though I feel that the way they treated me was unkind and unfair and unjust - esp as I had followed every changing directive they gave me.

To be clear - this was my personal experience and no-one should approach r/nz or their moderators about it. And anyway, it's all old news by now.

I am merely writing to clarify why I even have a Substack account and Youtube account and why it is categorically false that r/nzpolitics is used for my channels, in fact it was always the other way around i.e. I was always interested in sharing posts and information and help more Kiwis to understand what was happening around them - so it came to be that since I now have my own Substack etc, I can use that to link in here rather than write the volume here.

TLDR: If I didn't get banned or stopped from posting on Reddit by some, I would never even have started elsewhere and that's never how the original mods and I started and operate this subreddit.