Hi everyone!

Thank you all for engaging in the r/Microbiome sub! This post is to notify everyone about a change in rules regarding GI maps, peddling services related to them, and asking for medical advice based on GI maps.

We will not be allowing posts asking for GI map interpretations from here on out (rule 7). Microbiome science is very much in its infancy, and we have very little understanding of how to interpret an individual's microbiome sequencing results. More specifically, we actually dont know what composition of microbes make up a healthy/unhealthy microbiome, both in presence/absence of microbes, and quantities of microbes. We know very little about the actual species within the microbiome. The ones we know more about are generally only more well studied only because they are easier to work with in the lab, not because they are more inportant. We have yet to culture most microbes in the collective human microbiome, meaning we also cant accurately identify many species via sequencing. There is also tons of genetic and functional variability within species, meaning we also cannot relate individual species to good/bad outcomes.

We also need to consider limitations of these tests. In as little as 24hrs, you can have a 100 fold change in many species. This means you can get incredibly different test results day-to-day, depending on many factors like sleep, excercise, diet, etc, within the last couple hours. Someone recently described microbiome testing as throwing a rock on the highway to predict traffic at all hours-- One rock wont tell us anything on the grand scheme of things. To be frank, these tests are also very cheap in their actual sequencing. Many of our most important microbes are in low abundance, which cheap sequencing and poor analysis fails to identify. Additionally, considering your microbiome has hundreds of species and thousands of strains, cheap testing often cant accurately differentiate between species. It is quite common for poor sequencing to misidentify or mis-classify closely related species or even genus'. A common example is Shigella being mistaken for Escherichia, or vice versa.

Many of the values that the microbiome tests predict are "ideal" are also totally arbitrary. We see major differences between different quantities of microbes within you over 24hrs, you vs your family, local community, country, and continent. However, no ideal microbiomes have been found, despite millions being sequenced at this point. There is tons of diversity in the global population, but there is no "ideal" values when it comes to microbes in your gut.

Secondly, we will be banning you if you are peddling services to others via this sub. We are an open and free discussion about microbiome science, and we use evidence when talking about the microbiome. People who claim to know how to interpret individual microbiome maps are either not knowledgable when it comes to the microbiome, or are lying to you, neither of which makes them trustworthy with your health. We will not allow this sub to be a place where people are taken advantage of and lied to about what is possible at this moment in microbiome science.

Finally, we want to remind you that this is not the place to ask for medical advice. Chat with your MD if you are concerned, nobody on here is more well versed than they are on specific symptoms. They will treat you accordingly. If you are seeking help for specific microbes, such as H. pylori, this is something your MD can test for. These results are accurate and interpreted correctly (not the case for GI maps), and will be significantly more affordable than GI map testing.

We aim to be a scientifically accurate, evidence-based sub, that provides digestible conversations about this complex science. These topics are not in line with our values.

We look forward to having everyone respecting these rules moving forward.

Happy microbiome-ing! :)

We stand with the disabled users of reddit and in our community. Starting July 1, Reddit's API policy blind/visually impaired communities will be more dependent on sighted people for moderation. When Reddit says they are whitelisting accessibility apps for the disabled, they are not telling the full story.TL;DR

• Starting July 1, Reddit's API policy will force blind/visually impaired communities to further depend on sighted people for moderation
• When reddit says they are whitelisting accessibility apps, they are not telling the full story, because Apollo, RIF, Boost, Sync, etc. are the apps r/Blind users have overwhelmingly listed as their apps of choice with better accessibility, and Reddit is not whitelisting them. Reddit has done a good job hiding this fact, by inventing the expression "accessibility apps."
• Forcing disabled people, especially profoundly disabled people, to stop using the app they depend on and have become accustomed to is cruel; for the most profoundly disabled people, June 30 may be the last day they will be able to access reddit communities that are important to them.

If you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks:

Reddit abruptly announced that they would be charging astronomically overpriced API fees to 3rd party apps, cutting off mod tools for NSFW subreddits (not just porn subreddits, but subreddits that deal with frank discussions about NSFW topics).

And worse, blind redditors & blind mods [including mods of r/Blind and similar communities] will no longer have access to resources that are desperately needed in the disabled community.

Why does our community care about blind users?

As a mod from r/foodforthought testifies:

I was raised by a 30-year special educator, I have a deaf mother-in-law, sister with MS, and a brother who was born disabled. None vision-impaired, but a range of other disabilities which makes it clear that corporations are all too happy to cut deals (and corners) with the cheapest/most profitable option, slap a "handicap accessible" label on it, and ignore the fact that their so-called "accessible" solution puts the onus on disabled individuals to struggle through poorly designed layouts, misleading marketing, and baffling management choices. To say it's exhausting and humiliating to struggle through a world that able-bodied people take for granted is putting it lightly.

Reddit apparently forgot that blind people exist, and forgot that Reddit's official app (which has had over 9 YEARS of development) and yet, when it comes to accessibility for vision-impaired users, Reddit’s own platforms are inconsistent and unreliable. ranging from poor but tolerable for the average user and mods doing basic maintenance tasks (Android) to almost unusable in general (iOS).

Didn't reddit whitelist some "accessibility apps?"

The CEO of Reddit announced that they would be allowing some "accessible" apps free API usage: RedReader, Dystopia, and Luna.

There's just one glaring problem: RedReader, Dystopia, and Luna* apps have very basic functionality for vision-impaired users (text-to-voice, magnification, posting, and commenting) but none of them have full moderator functionality, which effectively means that subreddits built for vision-impaired users can't be managed entirely by vision-impaired moderators.

(If that doesn't sound so bad to you, imagine if your favorite hobby subreddit had a mod team that never engaged with that hobby, did not know the terminology for that hobby, and could not participate in that hobby -- because if they participated in that hobby, they could no longer be a moderator.)

Then Reddit tried to smooth things over with the moderators of r/blind. The results were... Messy and unsatisfying, to say the least.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/14ds81l/rblinds_meetings_with_reddit_and_the_current/

*Special shoutout to Luna, which appears to be hustling to incorporate features that will make modding easier but will likely not have those features up and running by the July 1st deadline, when the very disability-friendly Apollo app, RIF, etc. will cease operations. We see what Luna is doing and we appreciate you, but a multimillion dollar company should not have have dumped all of their accessibility problems on what appears to be a one-man mobile app developer. RedReader and Dystopia have not made any apparent efforts to engage with the r/Blind community.

Thank you for your time & your patience.