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Hey, wanted to let you know how this went down. In short: it was a combination of things.

When enough GM members report a tack, we automatically take down the offending tack. When we reviewed the tack, we quickly saw a few things that (usually) validates a "takedown":

1) It was political.

2) The title was outlandish (nothing wrong with this, just at a glance it "fit" with typical spammy/inappropriate posting.)

3) The image was a meme, and a political meme.

Political posts (and religion) will forever be the bane of Brian and I's email existence. Somebody gets upset, calls someone something terrible, and we have to spend hours playing principal instead of working on the site or even spending time with friends and family. So when we glanced and saw the above factors, it was enough for us to say "makes sense".

Now, I want to add that the discourse you gents are having is *fantastic*, and one that we should be having. Well done.

The way we moderate things currently is difficult, and not ideal. Also, we have no posting guidelines, so that's on us too. We're working on fixing this, as well as the ability to track these excellent conversations.

I guarantee that it was nothing personal, or has anything to do with our political opinions, etc. It was simply a reaction to a flagged political post. We're going to be writing something on the blog about ethical discourse on GM soon. 'Tis the season, after all :)

Thanks again for being civil...it's a big breath of fresh air. Feel free to email us any questions via the feedback form or howdy@gentlemint.com.

Cheers!

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