Did Ethan Klein instruct H3 moderators to take down Ramadan-related posts?
Background
In March 2024, a post was made on the /r/H3Snark subreddit proclaiming that "The mods of the H3 subreddit are deleting posts about Ramadan!" with a screenshot of their supposed removed post.[1]
Following that Reddit post, a post also went viral on Twitter reiterating the accusations.[2]
After those two posts, several users attempted to post about Ramadan on the H3 subreddit in order to test the validity of the claims. Several of those posts were caught by Reddit's filters and automatically removed, further adding to the confusion.[3]
Claim
Ethan instructed his moderators to remove all posts about Ramadan, proving his islamophobia.
Truth
The initial /r/H3Snark post that started the entire narrative that H3 moderators were deleting posts about Ramadan was based around doctored screenshot. A user on the H3 subreddit exposed the hoax by revealing that the snarker had edited the HTML text of an unrelated post that was removed by H3 moderators earlier that week.[4]
The fake post was made from a throwaway account under the guise of "not wanting to get banned" from the H3 subreddit.[5] Their only other activity was a bizarre post on /r/askgaybros in which they claimed they had hooked up with AB, an employee of the H3 Podcast, essentially accusing him of being secretly gay and of cheating on his wife.[6]
On the same day the /r/H3Snark post was made, the H3 Podcast went live with Ethan wishing a happy Ramadan to those who celebrate it and discussing it with his Muslim employees.[7]
2 days after the post, Ethan explained that it was fake and that there was no record of it ever existing in the moderator logs.[8]
In February 2025, Ethan revealed that he has an informant inside the H3Snark moderator team who revealed to him that the person who faked the Ramadan post was an H3Snark moderator,[9] a month later Ethan would name the moderator as reddit user /u/im_a_sturgeon.[10]
This is corroborated by the fact that after the H3Snark moderators removed all the replies on the fake post, /u/im_a_sturgeon's comments were the only ones marked as "deleted" (indicating the user deleted their own comments) instead of "removed" (indicating a moderator deleted them).[11]
Conclusion
A fake post was made on /r/H3Snark in order to accuse Ethan of being Islamophobic by alleging he instructed moderators to delete Ramadan-related content.
The poster was identified as an H3Snark moderator who created the doctored screenshot using a throwaway account to manufacture the controversy.