Yes, they can. It's their site, and no one is holding them accountable, so Admins do what they want.

Story time.

--- SKIP PAST THIS STORY BREAK IF YOU DON'T CARE ---

I'm an r/drama user from back before Admins actioned the sub (removing username pinging, disallowing links, etc etc). A year or maybe two ago, r/drama mods were warned a few times about the "culture of harassment" their sub apparently is. r/drama mods decided "fuck you Admins", and set the sub to only allow users to post or comment using emojis and emoticons. After a while, they loosened it up so post links were allowed as long as it wasn't to Reddit.

During this, an r/drama user made an offsite variant for the sub, and users flocked over there while maintaining their Reddit accounts. Reddit users began linking to the offsite, and now any links shared to the offsite (including redirects) are shadowbanned and removed by Admins themselves.

Fast-forward to today, or at least, 2022. During the r/place April Fools event, dramatards got over-eager and instead of just making a picture, went all-in and used pixels to spell out the name of their offsite. 2 specific Admins were upset, and used their personal accounts to erase those pixels.

A half-assed apology from an unrelated Admin was issued when the story broke all over Reddit. During the 2-3 days this happened, over half the remaining r/drama mods found their accounts (mains and alts) perma-banned for participating in the pixel art, whether the original picture or the text.

Many of the mod and user accounts remade themselves and/or broke out alts that weren't banned. They continue to taunt the Admins in various ways, using r/drama to do so.

The result is that the sub is dying a slow and painful death, while the offsite exists and is flourishing. Admins know that if they ban r/drama, users have zero problem making a huge stink on social media, news, etc etc. Share screenshots, posts, archives, anything and everything. That's the r/drama way, blow everything out of proportion while letting people see and come to their own conclusions, and sit back and laugh at the results.

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I made r/LGBAlliance on Reddit. There was literally nothing in it, it was private and I was setting it up with design/CSS so LGBA would have it whenever they were ready to take on Reddit. It got banned for hate speech without warning.

I Reddit-requested a sub called r/AntiTrans, and repurposed it to be an FAQ sub. It was locked, and gave Q&A for trans-positive, trans-negative, and middle-ground users. No judgement, just "you found your way here, what are you looking for?" and answers for users to find the right sub. Banned for hate speech without warning.

Plenty of subs are being manipulated by Admins to not immediately be banned, but instead fade out and be taken over by approved powermods. Admins will tell the current mods to restrict this, action that, and wait for an anonymous user to misstep so they can pretend mods weren't doing their job and in the wrong all along. WatchPeopleDie, Drama, WatchRedditDie, DeclineIntoCensorship ... TumblrInAction, Cringetopia, 2Balkan4U. There are so many, and I can't name them all.

That is the goal of Garl. He doesn't care if the sub is banned and gone, or colonized and repurposed by the Admins. Either solution would be acceptable to him.