It's worth noting that a very old user (/u/andrewsmith1986 IIRC) responded that at that time it was possible to add arbitrary users as mods without needing interaction/feedback/etc. from the user in question. If that was the case, then any user being a mod on any particular sub at that time doesn't really mean much.
Obviously I can't reference the comment in question right now, but I'll try to remember to circle back and add a reference when(/if?) Reddit comes back up.
I remember the change to requiring people to accept an invite. Adding people as moderators of distasteful subreddits without their consent was a common form of abuse just prior.
And it would in turn be worth noting that the creators of reddit had a philosophical and political commitment to free speech that drove their light-touch approach to moderation. It's not like the existence of that subreddit is evidence of an endorsement on their part.
> a philosophical and political commitment to free speech
Surely this is a meme by now? Any CEO that has ever said this about a website they control is just pandering to the crowd. Musk's Twitter has complied with more government takedown requests than the previous regime had.
It is now, but it was very different at the time. The old guard of the internet supporting absolute freedom of speech didn’t used to be associated with Nazis. Some good examples that still exists today are the Electronic Frontier Foundation and to some extent the American Civil Liberties Union.
This is partly why I now prefer the term "free exchange of ideas" over "freedom of speech". I believe it more closely captures the essence of what makes free speech worth protecting, while also conveniently excluding stuff like this (among other things, like spam or antisocial behavior).
It also makes it clearer what's going on when people are waving the "free speech" banner over things like harassment and abuse. Allowing abuse not only doesn't increase the free exchange of ideas. It also often directly decreases it because it drives off people who get targeted by racism, sexism, et cetera, ad nauseam.
Thank you; I was wanting another term so as to not conflated "freedom of speech" with something considerably different. I want to make things unambiguous/clear as possible.
It does infuriate me when some people may use "freedom of speech" as their excuse for "You must let me have a place to speak", when that isn't even guaranteed in the first place.
Freedom of speech is a legal concept that clearly doesn't cover CSAM. Free speech is a principle but it also doesn't cover CSAM. Fire in a crowded theater doesn't actually work as a legal defense but obscenity does
> This is partly why I now prefer the term "free exchange of ideas" over "freedom of speech".
What do you need in order to have a free exchange of ideas? Oh that's right, free speech. Free exchange of ideas is one of the benefits of free speech. But it isn't free speech. Also what about speech to entertain? What about speech to criticize? What about speech to just mindlessly express yourself?
> like spam or antisocial behavior
What counts as antisocial behavior? Rap music? Heavy metal? Is protesting government antisocial behavior? What about criticizing politicians? And more importantly, who decides?
It's amazing how little people know about free speech. It should be mandatory to have a class on civics and of course free speech. People have such a childish and superficial understanding of free speech. And of course these people always tend to be for censorship.
At the time reddit was not some unknown back corner of the internet and had already begun working with law enforcement to enforce anti-CSAM laws due to material being treaded in private messages and private subreddits. That it took a media exposure take down the specific subreddit indicated that it was likely on the legal side of the line, through it was going close enough to the line to make others uncomfortable. If the material was actually illegal, wouldn't it have made reddit the largest clear-net site containing CSAM? In such a case, I find it hard to conceive that media exposure and not legal actions is why led to it shutting down, and with no admins being arrested it seems the most reasonable assumption left is that it was on the technically legal side.
This would likely be like the use of underage subjects in nudist art, painted, drawn, or photographed. Such art is generally not considered pornographic and are legally protected, and some even displayed in museums and the like, yet websites will still ban the material to not have any relationship to it and to not have users trying to push the boundary. I'm speaking to the extent that rules are enforced, many websites have issues with enforcing rules in general due to the amount of user generated content being much larger than the amount of moderation available, so there will be something slipping through moderation from time to time.
Most states in the US could use a photo of a teenager in a bikini as enough 'evidence' to bring charges of Possession of Pornography involving a Juvenile, depending on what the actual photo depicts. Whether the contents of the image could be found to substantiate a conviction for the charge would be a trial/appeals issue. Nudity is not required for an image to be considered CSAM in most US states (or at the federal level), there are also Federal precedents that make cartoon depictions of under-aged characters count as CSAM.
I thought part of the reason the US is so blessed with a thriving startup community is the light-touch the law has towards its startups. For example; didn't the billion dollar acquisition YouTube gain a lot of its initial growth through copyright infringement?
>And it would in turn be worth noting that the creators of reddit had a philosophical and political commitment to free speech that drove their light-touch approach to moderation
That's nonsense. The Sears debacle showed that reddits leadership team was fine with deleting posts if it was going to cost them money to not delete them.
That 'political commitment to free speech' sure disappeared quickly when r/jailbait and u/violetacrez hit the main stream media.
spez was fine with hosting a community of child predators because it was one of the most popular subs. It was the top recommended result when you searched for reddit on google.
You can support free speech without actively providing a community for predators
reddit used to be owned by Conde Nast. Sears got upset about a post and complained to Conde Nast, who then told spez to take it down. If you have a political commitment to 'free speech' that folds if you might have to face some consequences for defending it, you don't have that strong of a commitment in my opinion. Certainly not strong enough to justify hosting a community of child predators
Sears had an XSS injection issue, where you could change their breadcrumbs by manipulating the URLs. Some redditors changed and shared a link to a grill as a "Body part roaster" and had fun. Sears found out and got mad
Hi! I've done a bunch of trust and safety work and I see this trope a fair bit. Please help me understand what the difference is between, say, platforming racist harassment because of a "political commitment to free speech" and platforming racist harassment because you just kinda like racist harassment?
I get that it might be different in the heads of the people who have worked very hard to create those platforms. I'm just not seeing any different in its effects on the world or on the targets of the racial harassment.
> Please help me understand what the difference is between, say, platforming racist harassment because of a "political commitment to free speech" and platforming racist harassment because you just kinda like racist harassment?
The difference is intent. Intent matters. Intent is the difference between murder and manslaughter, or between a conspiracy and mere speech.
Intent matters sometimes. To some people. But here, in either case the intent is to enable terrible people to, e.g., shout the n-word at people. So I don't see much of a difference in those terms.
There is probably a line. But you don't know where it is and neither do I. You and I might agree that X is to one side of that line, but if we ban that behavior, then we have initiated a process that we might call line-discovery -- the search for the line that X was to one side of -- and line-discovery is highly prone to outcomes that result in bans on content from the other side of that line. So we don't want to engage in line-discovery, even though there are obvious examples of things to one or the other side of the line.
You may think you can ban the obvious things without ultimately engaging in line-discovery, but, the argument goes, you are mistaken. You will ultimately find yourself doing line-discovery.
You start out with obvious-sounding prohibitions on racism and hate speech, but eventually you're arguing about, say, whether it's racist to report on polling showing that violent protests are unpopular. [0]
And that's because banning any speech always leads to line-discovery.
So it comes down to a question of which scenario is worse:
A. You ban obviously bad stuff while accepting some risk of banning things that aren't actually over the line.
B. You privilege all content to avoid that outcome.
Some people are outraged by this framing and think it's obvious that you would want to risk banning some behavior to the right side of the line if it means eliminating the most obnoxious speech. But, basically, that is not obvious to everyone, no matter how many times they are reminded that there is some really bad stuff out there. [1]
[1] Interestingly, this is really not so different from the argument about evidentiary standards for punishing criminal behavior, except in that case the politics are flipped. There conservatives would rather risk punishing some innocent people if it means the absolute worst actors are guaranteed harsh punishment, but liberals think it's worth risking some amount of literal rape and murder in order to prevent punishing the innocent. So I think, actually, both sides are entirely capable of seeing this from the other side; they just don't want to.
Many people have said this better than me, but there are plenty of people who have thought they can do better than the current status-quo regarding user-generated content on the internet.
They end up conforming or losing money. There’s no one reason for this. You try to run a website visible to the world, you’re gonna be subject to a world full of reasons.
> the creators of reddit had a philosophical and political commitment to free speech that drove their light-touch approach to moderation
The notion that reddit ever was a bastion of free speech is absurd. They didn't "light touch" on upskirt, revenge, and kiddy porn because of "philosophical and political commitment to free speech", they did it because they didn't want to accept any more responsibility for content than they absolutely had to, and that's because it is not financially viable to moderate large communities using paid labor. That is why you see so many social media companies pushing against rules for online content; not because they're champions of free speech.
If it were about "a commitment to free speech", they wouldn't allow completely unaccountable and anonymous members to delete content, silently mute users, and ban users....including employing automatic tools that would ban people preemptively based on subreddits they posted in, or automated tools for powermods to ban someone across all the subreddits they moderated.
If you pissed off a powermod, your account could end up getting banned from nearly all the major, common subreddits - not just from theirs, but they'd communicate in private channels to other powermods that they wanted someone to be banned elsewhere.
Oh, and they were happy to moderate, severely, anyone who revealed any personal details about a reddit user. Which conveniently helps protect people doing stuff like upskirting and posting revenge porn.
"philosophical and political commitment to free speech", my ass.
>It's not like the existence of that subreddit is evidence of an endorsement on their part.
It is though. 230 be damned. These were not small or hidden communities. They were frequently on the front page. Generally, and especially in this case silence is violence. The optics of that sub and the frequenters thereof are terrible. Do you want to try and justify their inaction further or concede this point? It should have never been allowed in the first place. Spez/Reddit at al should continue to be shamed for their long-standing tacit approval of these communities. Earning respectability requires public contrition for bad decisions that affect the public and non participants. As is typical, the communities were only shuttered when the victims cries grew loud enough to affect their brand image. Cf fph, wpd, fappening, t_d, Boston bomber fiasco, all the racist subs, and countless other controversies that spez/Reddit fumbled. Reddit deserves to close. The management team is evidently not competent or mature enough for the task and has repeatedly proven that their inability to learn from their mistakes and failure to become the proactive stewards needed will result in preventable harm to people who do not even use the platform.
I mean, define "endorsement". Permitting something to exist when you have the power to do otherwise is a mild form of endorsement. A commitment to free speech is, to an extent, an endorsement of all the speech that results.
> A commitment to free speech is, to an extent, an endorsement of all the speech that results.
Absolutely not. I'd argue that anyone should be free to talk with others about their opinion, but that doesn't mean I agree with that opinion. And letting then speak without shutting them down doesn't mean I agree either, just means I agree that they should be able to speak freely.
What kind of dystopian viewpoint is that? You go around stopping everyone from saying stuff you disagree with?
> I'd argue that anyone should be free to talk with others about their opinion,
I _think_ I agree with that. Don't hold me to it, but it feels right.
> but that doesn't mean I agree with that opinion.
Yup, sure, agreed.
> And letting then speak without shutting them down doesn't mean I agree either, just means I agree that they should be able to speak freely.
There is a world of difference between "not actively preventing someone from speaking" and "setting up a system whereby someone's speech is enabled and broadcast". Casting this to the real-world - if someone's yelling their opinions on a street corner, and I simply walk by without stopping them, then no, that's not an endorsement. But if I notice them yelling, and walk up and hand them a microphone - or (more closely mirroring social media setups) I install a public-access microphone, and stand there observing who uses it without trying to control it - then yes, through inaction I have endorsed what they choose to do with it.
> What kind of dystopian viewpoint is that? You go around stopping everyone from saying stuff you disagree with?
In areas I control and am responsible for, yes. If a guest in my home started spewing (what I consider to be) unacceptable speech, then (depending on my history with and pre-existing respect for them), I'd either take them aside and ask them to reconsider their choices, or jump straight to asking them to leave.
Enabling and endorsement are two different things, no need to conflate the two. If I'm a dentist and tell my patient that they could use any toothpaste they want but that I don't recommend the specific brand that they use, how is that an endorsement in any way? I'm allowing them the choice without endorsing in this case.
In your analogy, the dentist is selling the bad toothpaste and saying "Go pick any from the shelf over there but not that one". Why is he selling it then? The dentist can't say "well it's a free market" as if that somehow absolves him. He sells the bad toothpaste, that's a tacit endorsement.
You can be a proponent of free speech and not allow people to stand on your porch yelling heinous things, but that's not what Reddit was doing. They knowingly profited from that speech.
The context is discussion of social media platforms where the platform already owns all the content and has the tools to decide what gets published and what doesn't.
It's not just that he allowed them to exist, he created a special one-of-a-kind "Pimp Daddy" trophy to award to the moderator of r/jailbait and r/creepshots.
There is some whitewash in the comments there: "[violentacrez] received the trophy because all the work he did to moderate the site..." as if he got the award for keeping things clean, but consider that he contributed the vast majority of those subreddits' content himself by cruising social media for salacious pictures of minors to share while he was in his 40's, and the award is named "Pimp Daddy."
IIRC Violentacerz modded like 50 different porn subreddits, and he did a goob job by moderation standards so he was appreciated by the admins for being the overseer of the porny side of reddit.
Sure, and one can absolutely criticize him for that, but I think if one wants to criticize how /r/jailbait and similar subs were handled it's better to do that directly rather than making a more nebulous insinuation that stands on weaker ground.
Anyone trying to lose weight and skip a meal today? Open a reddit client and do a subreddit search with "teen" as a prefix. Or don't, you know. Silly me for assuming that this had been solved after any of the various sketchy-porn related subreddit purges.
I'm not naive, user content is hard to moderate. But is it hard to say "any subreddits with these keywords go on a list for review"?
I added that invitation flow in response to widespread abuse of the 1-way add moderator button. As an aside, the invitation message felt too bland and clinical during dev, so I added "gadzooks!" to the beginning, which became a meme for a while.
It seems like a funny distinction to make in the first place. Was he an admin of the site when it was hosting that sort of stuff? Anyone who was an admin at the time is responsible for the policies that allowed it to exist on the site…
He was also part of the team that gave the owner of the sub awards. It's not really credible to claim that spez wasn't somehow very enthusiastic about it.
More seriously, you really start to feel "ancient" when your body goes from "new year, pretty much the same as old year" ... to ... "new year, who removed vital organs and bodily fluids while I slept last night?! The bastards!!!"
Of course, it is a classic trope nevertheless ... and I did start to feel ancient even 15+ years ago ... but once you start noticing real changes, then you REALLY get that feel (and you know more is coming, lol): https://youtu.be/MqBNSMbEzI0
>Back in the day, you used to be able to add anyone as a moderator and it auto accepted.
>People would make shitty subs and add people, take a screenshot, shut down the sun or make private, then use that screenshot to start a witch hunt. Violentacrez could have added you as a mod of the sub and you'd be in the same situation.
>TL:DR I used to mod a sub with Barack Obama and Snoop Dogg.
Consider: spez was the voluntary "mod" of the entire platform as CEO, and he maintained that subreddit.
Excusing him for the unsolicited mod invite is just optics management. It would be like saying lowtax had no responsibility as co-signer for the existence of subforums that his paid or unpaid staff maintained.
Back when Obama hosted an AMA on Reddit, a bunch of users added his account as a moderator to a bunch of subreddits, including some pretty objectionable ones. This prompted a change that moderators would be invited instead.
Doesn't seem that unbelievable when you look into some of the other stuff he's done. For example he secretly used his admin powers to edit user comments from users he didn't like or who criticized him.
I believe the issue the commenter above was taking was that just because someone commits, for lack of a better term, comment fraud, we shouldn't jump to suggesting he's also a paedophile.
Oh, i took that comment to suggest that the downtime could (mostly jokingly, i assume) have something to do with Spez dealing with a post he didn't like.
This is something I’ve seen repeated on Reddit often. Virtually any meta thread on Reddit about Reddit will have several comments containing these allegations. I can’t imagine how much time someone might need to spend to dig through all the noise to get to the truth, but it rings of something that might have a kernel of truth, given the prevalence and uniformity of such accusations.
In either case, it’s easily as speculative as the parent comment above, maybe slightly more so, since the parent came from Twitter.
>“Yep. I messed with the “fuck u/spez” comments, replacing “spez” with r/the_donald mods for about an hour,” Huffman, who co-founded Reddit with Alexis Ohanian in 2005, wrote.
He did not admit to it until evidence was compiled and hit the front page, and let it appear for part of the week to participants and onlookers as if there was massive internal strife.
It is really really wild for other comments to try to pretend the comment above is about something other than the admin (spez) using his powers to edit reddit comments of people he didn't like or political opponents.
This isn't that surprising, you used to be able to add anyone on the entire site as a moderator and it'd autoaccept. It's doubtful he actually moderated it in any capacity. He's still moderator of some random subreddits.
What's funny about this to me is that the actual moderators of r/jailbait thought "I know how I can insult u/spez, I'll make him a moderator of my sub, so he'll look like a scumbag, like I am"
I'm not sure if this is true, but if I were a creator and admin of a site, I'd assume I'm automatically a mod of every subreddit or subforum. It doesn't necessarily mean spez was specifically moderating that sub.
Part of spez's job is to be the lightning rod for controversial decisions. The board I'm sure is pushing for the same things (increases in pricing, driving users to the official app) in order to boost metrics before the IPO. Aside from the somewhat pointless AMA where his frustrations came out a bit too much, if you assume that the effective removal of API access had to happen, what do you think he's done wrong during this?
Many take exception to his handling of Reddit’s relationship with Apollo and Christian Selig specifically.
Steve Huffman has reportedly told employees that Selig threatened Reddit. Selig posted a (perfectly legally recorded and disclosed) call recording showing the alleged “threat” was a misunderstanding over which the Reddit employee on the call apologized immediately.
Huffman serves in an official capacity at the Anti-Defamation League. People are (rightly, I think) critical of his handling partly in light of that.
Maybe he knows where all the skeletons are buried, so the board removing him would be to difficult (or they're not ready to pay his golden parachute/buy his silence)
Back in the day you could create a subreddit and invite anyone to mod it. The invite would be automatically approved. I suspect this is what happened here.
Nobody likes spez and reddit is the worst of the worst in terms of what the Internet could be and what it is. Reddit is where know nothings pontificate as if they were experts on anything and everything while congratulating each other. It used to be a great site, now I'm ashamed I ever used it and I'm embarrassed for people who mention they use it.
That said, that meme is propaganda and defamation. Anyone could add anyone as a mod anywhere for a time, and violentacrez added spez "for the lulz" or however people like that think. I'd be beside myself it there's evidence that he was an active moderator working on that sub. Although, given the prevailing winds of the modern left, in a few years he'll probably be trying to claim that he was.
Obviously I can't reference the comment in question right now, but I'll try to remember to circle back and add a reference when(/if?) Reddit comes back up.
Edit: /u/andrewsmith1986's comment can be found at https://old.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/1477psa/all_3_ar...