Reddit CEO Admits to Editing User Comments

[Lur-King]

Back when GamerGate just started being a thing, I remember the day that all the gaming outlets reported negatively on their communities. Within the week after, The Escapist had purged those people from their staff, had formally apologized, and promised to rectify/report unbias content. I'm really glad The Escapist did the right thing, because when you look at Reddit, the New York Times, all these "respected" outlets, you see that they really aren't respectable. They aren't upstanding cornerstones of journalism or community standard. They're agenda pushing, corrupted, and colluding piles of garbage.

Escapist Staff, thanks for not taking the easy road and being like Twitter or Facebook's CEOs and censoring content. Thanks for being genuinely awesome to the community.

To me, there is something cynical about kicking out the boat rocking staff, especially if the aim is to protect the readership from any criticism. That says to me that a publisher is willing to compromise on social commentary and its moral standpoint for the sake of keeping up the view count.

Also, The escapist has its own biases and over the last nine years I've seen it strike out in a very specific direction. It's been very clear on its position, and I'm surprised you haven't seen it when you are so quick to call out other media outlets.

If you're a news outlet, you are not supposed to have a moral alignment or opinion on what is happening. It's called being objective. If you want opinion pieces, check out the New York Times or Huffington Post with their professional bloggers they call journalists.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

A lot of people are trying to portraying this as censorship. It's really not. I'm definitely not saying that it was at all professional for him to do as the CEO, but it was an attempt at a joke. People on a subreddit were calling him a pedophile, so he redirected it to the subreddit's mod staff. Obviously people would realize what had happened pretty quickly, and this wasn't going to actually suppress anyone's freedom of speech to make baseless accusations and insults.

It's not a good precedent to make, but I'll admit that it's kind of funny.

 

[maninahat]

Back when GamerGate just started being a thing, I remember the day that all the gaming outlets reported negatively on their communities. Within the week after, The Escapist had purged those people from their staff, had formally apologized, and promised to rectify/report unbias content. I'm really glad The Escapist did the right thing, because when you look at Reddit, the New York Times, all these "respected" outlets, you see that they really aren't respectable. They aren't upstanding cornerstones of journalism or community standard. They're agenda pushing, corrupted, and colluding piles of garbage.

Escapist Staff, thanks for not taking the easy road and being like Twitter or Facebook's CEOs and censoring content. Thanks for being genuinely awesome to the community.

To me, there is something cynical about kicking out the boat rocking staff, especially if the aim is to protect the readership from any criticism. That says to me that a publisher is willing to compromise on social commentary and its moral standpoint for the sake of keeping up the view count.

Also, The escapist has its own biases and over the last nine years I've seen it strike out in a very specific direction. It's been very clear on its position, and I'm surprised you haven't seen it when you are so quick to call out other media outlets.

If you're a news outlet, you are not supposed to have a moral alignment or opinion on what is happening. It's called being objective. If you want opinion pieces, check out the New York Times or Huffington Post with their professional bloggers they call journalists.

Pffffffffff Have you ever seen a newspaper stand? Most outlets pride themselves on having an explicit alignment with their news stories, its how they secure an audience. Very few actually try to present the news in a neutral way, and even those (such as the BBC) are regularly criticised for being secretly partisan.

Yes, there is something admirable about an organisation trying to present the news in an objective, neutral way, but there isn't anything wrong with one having a perspective on it either.

 

[Lur-King]

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Pffffffffff Have you ever seen a newspaper stand? Most outlets pride themselves on having an explicit alignment with their news stories, its how they secure an audience. Very few actually try to present the news in a neutral way, and even those (such as the BBC) are regularly criticised for being secretly partisan.

Yes, there is something admirable about an organisation trying to present the news in an objective, neutral way, but there isn't anything wrong with one having a perspective on it either.

Tabloids. Those are called tabloids. The fact you say most outlets pride themselves on having alignment shows why Gamergate happened, and shows why only 6% of the American public trusts the media. If you are the news, you are not to have an alignment. Just because so many do does not mean it's ok. Especially for ones like the BBC that are funded by citizens through mandatory taxes. Yes, there is an admiration for neutral organisations. That's why there is no respect for the current mainstream media.

It is not ok just because they all happen to do it.

 

[maninahat]

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-snip-

Pffffffffff Have you ever seen a newspaper stand? Most outlets pride themselves on having an explicit alignment with their news stories, its how they secure an audience. Very few actually try to present the news in a neutral way, and even those (such as the BBC) are regularly criticised for being secretly partisan.

Yes, there is something admirable about an organisation trying to present the news in an objective, neutral way, but there isn't anything wrong with one having a perspective on it either.

Tabloids. Those are called tabloids. The fact you say most outlets pride themselves on having alignment shows why Gamergate happened, and shows why only 6% of the American public trusts the media. If you are the news, you are not to have an alignment. Just because so many do does not mean it's ok. Especially for ones like the BBC that are funded by citizens through mandatory taxes. Yes, there is an admiration for neutral organisations. That's why there is no respect for the current mainstream media.

It is not ok just because they all happen to do it.

Broadsheets, tv news and websites do it as well as tabloids. Some more subtly than others - there are ethical guidelines as to being objective and fair, but apparently they aren't all that important. On a conceptual level, true impartiality is impossible because a publication always has to decide what counts as newsworthy (and that decision is inevitably political), but I think that the least a publication can be is fair - and some clearly aren't.

But gamergate isn't a criticism of mainstream news, it is (allegedly) a protest against game journalism, which is hobby media that is largely ignored by the American public. Also, as your previous praise for the escapist demonstrates, people can be somewhat selective as to what counts as partisan or biased.

 

[Areloch]

As @HomuraDidNothinWrong and @ToastyMozart point out, the REAL thing of it here, is that because it happened and was confirmed, that opens reddit up to a whole lot of potential legal pain.

In the reddit threads about this, for example, there was apparently at least one case of somebody in the EU being arreseted for comments posted to reddit. This now opens up an angle of defense of 'See? The CEO edits posts! I didn't type that!' which goes from "Here's the post you typed, as evidence" to a much more long-drawn out process of vetting data integrity of the post to editing and the like. It'd be made even more complicated if there were any stupid 'ghost edit' modes that allow mods/admins to edit posts without logging the change. One would hope nothing like that is implemented, but reddit's always had some curious systems choices.

The other thing is, once you start editing comments outside of rule-based moderation, it, as Homura said, opens you up to losing fair harbor protections, meaning anything posted could be considered 'vetted' by staff and therefor their speech. Which, if you recall the sorta stuff gets posted on reddit all the time, could open them up to an obscene swath of lawsuits, from leaked nudes, libel and so on.

Are the original posters a bunch of dickbags? Sure. But a non-idiot would have just deleted the posts and/or shadowbanned the offenders and moved on with their day. Instead, the CEO pulled a profoundly, obscenely stupid move and has opened the possibility of a legal buttblasting.

Which probably wasn't worth the 10 seconds of 'haha gotcha' the edits yielded.

 

[Weaver]

I deleted my Reddit account when their warrant canary died and I've been a much happier person for it.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I enjoyed his TIFU apology (if you could call it that). And he brought with it the ability to filter subs. Thank fuck. I don't need your crazy country's political catastrophes filling my /all anymore.

 

[4Aces]

Well if I was being called a pedophile by hundreds of people for getting rid of something that was spewing hatred on rather flimsy "evidence", I'd probably have done the same thing.

So you would have redirected the attack against an "innocent" party? That is the very definition of harassment.

I am surprised Ducky is not suing Reddit. The good news for anyone with a shadowban is that it cannot be inforced. This is the most aggregious form of "gaming the system" possible, and since the CEO was not shadowbanned they can not do so to anyone else. Any law/rule that is not routinely and uniformly inforced cannot be by federal law, as part of most constitutions. To attempt to do so is prejudicial and can lead to a counter-suit. Reddit could literally be sued into insolvency if the Admins do their job. This is why most CEOs are not allowed near social media without a team of PR & legal approving their text before they hit "Post".

 

[RedDeadFred]

Well if I was being called a pedophile by hundreds of people for getting rid of something that was spewing hatred on rather flimsy "evidence", I'd probably have done the same thing.

So you would have redirected the attack against an "innocent" party? That is the very definition of harassment.

I am surprised Ducky is not suing Reddit. The good news for anyone with a shadowban is that it cannot be inforced. This is the most aggregious form of "gaming the system" possible, and since the CEO was not shadowbanned they can not do so to anyone else. Any law/rule that is not routinely and uniformly inforced cannot be by federal law, as part of most constitutions. To attempt to do so is prejudicial and can lead to a counter-suit. Reddit could literally be sued into insolvency if the Admins do their job. This is why most CEOs are not allowed near social media without a team of PR & legal approving their text before they hit "Post".

Hardly an innocent party. They allowed the harassment directed at the CEO of the website they have the privilege of using. They let that harassment stay up. It was very obvious and with a sub as large as The_Donald, it should have been taken down quickly. The mods did not do that which means they either don't give a shit about the rules, or they actually agreed with the harassment. Spez simply directed it back at them.

Regardless. I don't condone what he did. It's just not that hard to see how he broke down and did it.