[aw1621107]

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.

Edit: /u/andrewsmith1986's comment can be found at https://old.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/1477psa/all_3_ar...

[Zak]

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.

[roncesvalles]

I mean it's also worth noting that spez was CEO of Reddit and subreddits like that were allowed to exist for many, many more years.

[dionidium]

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.

[rchaud]

> 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.

[thatguy0900]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

If anyone would say it and mean it, it was probably this guy. He was quite the activist before he committed suicide.

[melagonster]

I read his message on thie old markdown web page. this is so sad.

[callalex]

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.

[roncesvalles]

Lascivious pictures of clothed children count as CSAM in many jurisdictions. Free speech is fine but did they not have lawyers until 2015?

[Ajedi32]

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).

[wpietri]

Ooh, that's good.

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.

[ChainOfFools]

When the use cases for a given signal have proven to be reliably overwhelmed by the abuse cases for that same signal, the signal is no longer making a net positive contribution to freedom, causing net harm rather than help. At this point I don't think such a signal should be protected as free speech.

[numpad0]

Except it won't work. Freedom of speech limited to well composed political speech is not what it sounds. Modern day China(PRC) guarantees in the constitution that kind of freedom of speech, just they label any speeches that isn't conformant to current Party statements to be terrorism conspiracy. Even Nazi Germany had that constitutional clauses.

It just starts from porn and ends in gas chambers. And in the middle is freedom limited to "meaningful" contents and activities. If you looked up and compared state of freedom of speech, CSAM/CP regulation, internet censorship, especially authority intervention, crime rate, and standpoint on democracy-totalitarian axis for various random nations, it should all line up well against each others.

[Worldblender]

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.

[ilyt]

Well, it's freedom of speech, not freedom of pics

[Ajedi32]

Freedom of the press does often get lumped in with speech in these sort of discussions, for good reason. That's another reason I prefer "ideas"; it's agnostic to the medium through which the ideas are conveyed (though again, in this specific case the images in question weren't intended to convey an "idea").

[FormerBandmate]

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

[Ajedi32]

That's another reason I prefer the term "free exchange of ideas"; by using different wording it helps avoid the confusion created by people conflating the general principal of such freedoms with any specific legal provisions that exist in the U.S. constitution. (Though I agree in this case my wording is in agreement with how the courts define "freedom of speech" in practice.)

[thakoppno]

> Fire in a crowded theater doesn't actually work as a legal defense

It may actually be a defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

[barry-cotter]

Interesting rhetorical move. What other kinds of communications are you in favour of censoring?

[Ajedi32]

Copyright/trademark violations, shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, direct personal threats of bodily harm, basically a lot of stuff which is already widely considered to not be protected speech legally, but which is "speech" (or perhaps "press") in the plain language sense of the term (and importantly, is not exactly an "idea" in the plain language sense of that term).

I think it helps strengthen the argument rhetorically, since people can't as easily use the existence of such "exceptions" as an argument for adding more, or bypass the principle entirely with slogans like "freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach". (Suppressing the "reach" of certain ideas obviously does inhibit their free exchange.)

This approach hasn't been "battle tested" yet though so we'll see how it goes in practice.

[arp242]

Wouldn't that potentially also exclude "obscene" things such as nudity? Or things like flag burning, or provocative art?

[WindyLakeReturn]

It doesn't seem to do anything other than play word games with what counts as an 'idea' instead of what counts as 'speech'. An attempt to reset the existing case law, philosophy, etc., without facing it head on. Perhaps we need to reconsider if images count as speech. What about algorithms? Is an algorithm an idea? Even if it is an algorithm that generates an image?

The issue I see developing is that any attempt to carve out what is not desired by some group is going to create standards that will let other groups carve out what wasn't intended in the first place. Look at how encryption is under attack and one common way it is attacked is by claims of how it promotes the spread of CSAM. So government asks for reasonable backdoors that will only ever be used to stop such material, yet tech circles realize that any such backdoor will allow for arbitrary power to block any material.

[Ajedi32]

I think flag burning and provocative art are unquestionably intended to convey "ideas". In fact, they fit into that category far more cleanly than they do into "speech" in my opinion.

Nudity... depends on the purpose but probably not. I agree that's unfortunate if your stance is that there should be no restrictions on porn, but I'm not sure the arguments for why freedom of speech is a good idea really apply to porn in the first place. I think it'd be better to make that argument on its own merits rather than try to conflate the two.

[oilchange]

> 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.

[Ajedi32]

To be clear, I'm not saying freedom of speech is a bad thing. On the contrary, I agree protecting speech is a great way to ensure the free exchange of ideas. (As you noted, if you can't speak your ideas then you can't freely exchange them.)

But there's a lot of "speech" that should be and is already prohibited, both legally (CP being an obvious example), or through social standards of conduct (screaming expletives at random passers by is liable to get you kicked out of just about any venue).

In my view, focusing on the goal of freedom of speech (which is to say, the free exchange of ideas) rather than on speech itself communicates much more clearly on why the principle is important and where the line is. It makes it obvious why CP is not legally protected but Nazism is. Both are despicable, but one needs to be protected in order to preserve the free exchange of ideas while the other doesn't.

And again, I'm not saying other forms of expression that don't convey ideas shouldn't be allowed; just that the reasons why they should or shouldn't be allowed are separate from the reasons why the free exchange of ideas is important.

Yes, this wording does narrow my argument somewhat. But I think it largely narrows it in ways that make it easier to defend rhetorically, especially when trying to apply the principle to non-government entities such as the large social media conglomerates that own our modern town square.

[WindyLakeReturn]

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.

[pr0zac]

I mean yeah all that, but on the other hand, the subreddit was literally called r/jailbait.

[Zak]

They didn't have image or video hosting at the time, just links and comments. Their legal exposure was pretty limited.

[tredre3]

Can you give us one example of a jurisdiction where a photo of a teenager in bikini would count as CSAM?

[throwaway17_17]

* Note: This IS NOT Legal Advice *

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.

[Quarrelsome]

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?

[cmh89]

>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

[nicolas_t]

What was the Sears debacle?

[cmh89]

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9clji/where_did_...

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

[paradox460]

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

https://www.techdirt.com/2009/08/21/reddit-sears-grills-that...

[wpietri]

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.

[jnky]

> 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.

[wpietri]

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.

[jnky]

Well it obviously mattered enough for the Founding Fathers of the US to enshrine freedom of speech in the Bill of Rights, and in the last 200-ish years it also mattered enough for US courts not to overturn or politicians of various parties to change it.

Now where I'm from (Germany), not just "hate speech" is against the law, but it's also unlawful to insult another person. It's complicated, but for the latter it's mostly sufficient that they feel insulted by what you said to them personally.

Now while I don't go around insulting people in person or on the Internet, I personally think - for instance - that it should be allowed to call a person an asshole, if they behave like an asshole. Yet, if I did that here, or even online to another German person, they could go to the police and press charges. If the public prosecutor is sufficiently bored, this very low barrier could also be used to dox me in an otherwise reasonably anonymous setting, since the resulting lawsuit could result in my data getting subpoenaed from, say, Twitter and my ISP. This has happened to other people here in the past.

Now while I'm neither in favor of either hate speech nor randomly and viciously insulting people online, I consider the law in Germany as outlined unreasonable in an online setting. I think freedom of speech is more important fundamentally than another person's right to not feel hurt, or for some powers that be to silence or punish me because I said something inconvenient that they merely claim to meet some of the criteria for speech that is restricted here.

Mind you, this is the case all the while freedom of speech is enshrined in the German constitution as well. But I think it is a pretty good example of why I think freedom of speech should not be curtailed just in the name of another person's feelings about said speech. Even if a person, as you do, doesn't see a direct and tangible benefit in allowing that kind of speech, I would argue that a larger fraction of people are against disallowing it, because of the indirect consequences and where that line of lawmaking leads.

Another thing to consider is this: Say you're modestly happy with the current government wherever you live, and you'd be happy for them to have an "easy" way to curtail freedom of speech. Would you also be happy for the opposing political side to do the same thing? What if some extremists came to power?

This kind of reasoning is why free speech absolutists are so staunchly defending freedom of speech, even if it may be inconvenient or insulting to themselves or others.

[redeeman]

how about this example: twitter would silence and deplatform some guy using the oh so terrible "n-word" ("because sticks and stones may..." is not a thing anymore). Now because this person is deplatformed, I cannot find his "hatespeech" when doing a quick background check, so I hire him in my company as responsible for recruiting. Now he makes sure no "n-words" get employed.

big win? whomever votes to silence the guy gets to judge.

[dionidium]

The argument goes like this:

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]

[0] https://reason.com/2020/08/27/protests-violence-david-shor-k...

[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.

[wpietri]

Do you feel this is somehow responsive to my point? Because I'm not seeing it.

[dionidium]

Yes. I am addressing the second-order effects of each motivation.

Let's grant that the harms of the kind of speech you're worried about are exactly the same in either case. [0] Platforming "racist harassment" because of a political commitment to free speech implies that other forms of controversial speech will get the same treatment, preventing the kind of line-discovery I described in my previous comment.

"Platforming racist harassment because you just kinda like racist harassment" leads to who knows what. All we know about that person is that they like racist harassment. Maybe other stuff gets banned. Maybe not. Either way, it's unlikely to be in service of avoiding harmful second-order effects.

So that's an enormous difference between the two motivations. In the first case the position is in defense of an ethic of open dialogue and an attempt to prevent second-order effects that are harmful to that dialogue.

In the second case -- who knows.

It seems to me that the first motivation is much more likely to prevent the kinds of second-order effects I'm worried about and that distinguishes it from the second one.

[moomin]

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.

[KennyBlanken]

> 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.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

>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.

[freejazz]

> light-touch approach to moderation

Heh. So what did they moderate? things besides jailbait? How free!

[wahnfrieden]

dionidium, dedicated defender of promoted jailbait access and hosting

[scubbo]

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.

[capableweb]

> 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?

[foogazi]

> 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.

Sure, when “talking” is done via sound waves or someone else’s medium it’s different

But if you have free-speech parties at your place and people spray paint messages on your house then you are now “hosting”

You decide which words you leave or paint over

[welshwelsh]

Platforms like reddit are in no way similar to personal property like a house that you live in.

A better analogy would be, imagine you rent your house to someone else. You make a rule that tenants may display political messages in their windows, but only for one political party.

That would be illegal. You can prohibit all signs if you want, but specifically choosing what signs someone gets to display violates their first amendment rights and could trigger a fair housing lawsuit. It doesn't matter that you aren't the government and that you own the property.

[scubbo]

> 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.

[dangond]

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.

[henryfjordan]

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.

[wwtrv]

> Permitting something to exist when you have the power to do otherwise

That's an exceptionally broad definition and would sound pretty scary with no context.

[manicdee]

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.

[wwtrv]

> Permitting something to exist when you have the power to do otherwise

That's an excewptionally broad definition and would sound pretty scary with no context.

[oxygen_crisis]

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.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TrophyWiki/comments/mohrlg/reddit_t...

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."

[livejamie]

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.

[aw1621107]

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.

[predictabl3]

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"?

[veave]

It's easy to prove, this is the code change that added the moderator invitation system: https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/commit/db7b531a7180...

[chromakode]

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.

[bee_rider]

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…

[the_gipsy]

Other users apart from u/andrewsmith1986 also confirmed this, in that thread. Sounds plausible.

[rodgerd]

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.

[JoyfulTurkey]

Damn, just looked at this account signup date and mine is older than it. Feeling ancient on a Monday morning :)

[tiffanyg]

Hahaha, please, son ...

Remember when Phrack was added to the LOC ... and was over 7 years old already (http://phrack.org/issues/42/1.html)?

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

[adhvaryu]

https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/1477psa/all_3_ar...

>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.

[kaiken1987]

Oh man that's a username I have seen in a log time. Wasn't there a theory that they were multiple people using a single account?

[wahnfrieden]

This counter-narrative is also misleading

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.