Related topics:
Bitcoin Cash and SegWit forks
That is not to say, however, that the subreddit moderators are the only ones to blame. There are a number of other key actors at play here, but who you point fingers at depends on what you want to believe. So here are some possible reasons the forks did play out the way they did.
Potential reasons for the split
So what has caused and aggravated the divide? Probably everything mentioned above to one extent or another. Some aspects of the forks were motivated by devs doing their honest best job to make Bitcoin better, some were probably motivated by the money to be made from either of the two solutions. The divide was then probably widened and further aggravated by people wanting to make money on it (perhaps buying up coins from people leaving one side of the fork before promoting that coin into new heights with a new wave of vocal supporters). Then seeing that neither side of the fork will clearly kill off the other, a tribalism equilibrium would be reached:
Two sides forever fighting and talking within their group about how much they hate the other group. Sounds familiar…
The rest
A lot of other things surrounding the /r/Bitcoin moderation have roots in the above story. SegWit2x discussion was similar to the other forks – mostly removed. You also see periodic waves of spam activities, as well a general increase of the baseline spam activity, all surrounding the promotion of BCH and /r/btc, complaining about the censorship, or trolling the non-Bitcoin-Cash Bitcoin as being a centralised scam or the like. There have been reports of a bot spam attack as well.
Then you sometimes find people that are just asking to be banned:
Conclusions
In the last year, the Bitcoin community has permanently split itself between BTC and BCH. This divide has grown into a very divisive rivalry between members of a number of communities, including /r/Bitcoin and /r/BTC . By now it’s clear the divide will never be fully healed.