Besides offering the denizens of /r/subredditdrama a heaping helping of drama popcorn, Unidan’s copypasta and subsequent responses suggested a kind of public meltdown in which he vigorously defended the jackdaw from being described as a mere crow. Soon after Unidan was shadowbanned from the site, which meant that his comments and postings would no longer appear (nor would his account page be accessible) to anyone but him. According to administrators, shadowbans are only employed when users break one of reddit’s rules, most often related to spamming the site, doxxing others, or manipulating votes. Many redditors presumed that Unidan’s ban was due to vote brigading, in that he commented and voted in both the /r/subredditdrama posting that chronicled the event and the original posting in /r/AdviceAnimals (everyotherredditor, 2014). However, one of reddit’s community managers clarified that Unidan’s ban was actually issued for vote manipulation. The prolific biologist had created multiple puppet accounts to downvote comments by those with whom he disagreed and upvote his own new submissions. All this was an effort to accrue more karma by “gaming” reddit’s algorithm and thus make his posts more visible to other redditors.