“Most of these mods are being uploaded by cowards with sock puppet accounts deliberately to try and cause a stir,” the site’s admins say. So if people can’t behave, they’ll allow no US politics on the Nexus until the presidential election is well and truly settled. “Recently we have seen a spate of provocative and troll mods being uploaded based around current sociopolitical issues in the United States,” Nexus owner “Dark0ne” explained in Thursday’s announcement. They say they expect this to increase in the run-up to November’s election, because it happened four years ago too, and they don’t want to deal with it. “Considering the low quality of the mods being uploaded, the polarising views they express and the fact that a small but vocal contingent of our users are seemingly not intelligent or grown up enough to be able to debate the issues without resorting to name calling and baseless accusations without proof (indicative of the wider issues plaguing our world at this time) we’ve decided to wipe our hands clean of this mess and invoke an outright ban on mods relating to sociopolitical issues in the United States. We have neither the time, the care or the wish to moderate such things.” Nexus plan to review this policy at some point after the inauguration, which is scheduled for 20th of January, 2021. They also deleted the previous few days of infringing mods, going back from October 1st to September 28th. I’ve had a look at a few that are still saved in Google’s cache and yup, lots of the mods were petty, the memes some used as thumbnails were stupid, and yeah, I saw photographs of corpses and one of the Kenosha shooting victims. Older provocative political mods have not been removed, mind - this seems borne of pressing moderation concerns, not a dislike of political mods in general. And yes, I know there’s also irony of politics getting banned in connection to a game like Fallout. What is and isn’t socio-political will doubtless be up for debate, but I sympathise with the admins not wanting to spend ages trying to keep their site a decent place. “To be blunt, we do not care how this looks nor do we care if you think the mods we do or don’t moderate reflect on us, our political beliefs or what we do and don’t want on our site. Say and do what you want on other sites or services, we care nothing for it here.” If you see garbage on the Nexus, they encourage you to simply report it and move on. “Your engagement will only fuel the idiots further. Smile and be happy in the knowledge the time it took them to make an account on the site and upload their mod is a lot longer than it takes for us to ban the account and delete the mod.”
