One of the most popular beer rating websites in the world went on another banning frenzy over the weekend. The moderators at BeerAdvocate.com, namely Jason and Todd Alstrom look to be the culprits.
Beer Street Journal was contacted by a few members that found their accounts suspended or banned. As it turns out, some of the banning has to do with with their involvement with a relatively new site, beertrading.org. BeerAdvocate has its own community of beer traders on their site as well. “The bros” as they are called, don’t seem to take to kindly to the potential competition.
Digging deeper, I contacted members of BeerTrading.org to find what their interpretations were on the situation. I didn’t find a lot (any) nice comments about the Alstroms. Accounts were banned for reasons like “Under Investigation” or “Dupe Account/Not Mature Enough.” Also, anyone found insulting or criticizing the Alstroms, their site, or their heavy handed banning, were banned as well. Especially when their user names and avatars were the same on the beertrading.org site.
The loss of years of Beer Advocate reviews seems to be the biggest complaint amongst those banned.
Let me tell you, it doesn’t take much to get banned from BA. I was banned last year for posting the backlash from Todd Alstrom tweeting about a family’s car being towed out of the Beer Advocate parking lot ahead of a hurricane hitting Boston.
Were you banned from Beer Advocate over the weekend? Were you given a reason? Drop a message below. You won’t get banned we promise.
Update 9/30, 2:30 pm. I received this from a member that was banned from BeerAdvocate.com over the weekend. Some information was redacted to maintain a certain privacy level.
Co-founder Jason Alstrom has sent out emails to individual employers, mentioning forum abuse, and passively threatening legal matters as you see in the screenshot below. This comes from a tipster that is 2nd in command at their company.
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- Not Mature Enough
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- Accounting Under Investigation
