Unmasking The Biggest Troll on Reddit

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/10/man-behind-troll-who-got-gawker-banned-reddit/57916/

by ck2 • 14 years ago

28 26 14 years ago

ck24• 14 years ago

You cannot say both of these things together and be a decent human being:

I asked if he regretted anything he had posted, now that he'd be found out. No, he said. "I would stand by exactly what I've done."

"My wife is disabled. I got a home and a mortgage, and if this hits the fan, I believe this will affect negatively on my employment," he said. "I do my job, go home watch TV, and go on the internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time."

So the real answer is yes, he does regret it, will probably have real percussions that affect him and his family and saying things online should be filtered with the same level as if you were talking to someone in person.

Free speech does not mean speech without responsibility.

kennywinker2• 14 years ago

Not that I'm defending violentacrez, but to say that he fears reprisal does not mean he did anything wrong.

It's really hard to get a clear picture, because I'm not familiar with violentacrez's ouvre, but being painted as a child pornographer would probably hurt most people's career.

I've seen r/jailbait. It was creepy, but as another commenter points out, not more creepy than most child/teen beauty pageants. I think because it's on a strange + ungoverned corner of the internet, it was easily painted as illegal when it was only very creepy.

jerrya• 14 years ago

Outside the context of what violentacrez is accused of posting, those two statements themselves seem fine and why at other times we have a First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression.

I can imagine a patriot saying, I don't regret fighting against the British, but it still got me shot.

Free speech does not mean speech without responsibility.

But this cannot be an absolute either.

If every time you open your mouth, someone punches you in the face, then you really don't have free speech.

decavolt• 14 years ago

Free speech does not mean speech without responsibility.

Freedom of speech refers to the right to speak without fear of government reprisal or punishment. It has nothing at all to do with how private entities conduct themselves in regards to the speech of other private entities. People replying to your comment don't understand this, and seem to think freedom of expression equally applies to speech on a privately owned website. It doesn't.

basehead• 14 years ago

What galls me the most about this is the celebration coming out of the centrist camps. Sure, we punished some sad nerds for gawping at women they'll never have.

Along the way, we made sure that "creeps" became a moral term-of-art and thereby conflated the yuck factor with legitimate qualms of ethics, used moral outrage and "think of the children" to make strong arguments against free expression, and not-so-tacitly affirmed that if there are pictures of you online (and you are a woman— "r/ladyboners" and Tubecrush don't attract similar sentiment) you will be probably be assaulted, and only through the actions of an unaccountable, anonymous, mostly male vigilante pseudo-police force can you be protected.

gilgoomesh3• 14 years ago

This action against violentacrez seems nasty and vitriolic.

His only "crime" in the article is moderating/posting non-nude pictures of teenage girls -- while removing actual nude pictures of the same.

This is not an actual crime and while society discourages non-nude pictures of teenage girls -- as it forms part of an unofficial no-go zone between adult pornography and pedophilia -- there are whole industries (modelling, beauty pageants, pop singers) that thrive doing exactly this to 16 year old girls.

So Adrian Chen is creeped out by a legal behavior and decides to defame someone who is -- on all other apparent metrics -- a positive, diligent member of a number of communities. Additionally, Chen has heaped shame and entirely fictional guilt (since there's no crime) on this person to the point where he feels he needs to withdraw.

Chen seems like the troll here.

streptomycin• 14 years ago

It would be easier to prove his troll-ness if he didn't delete his account, but he was definitely a troll as well as a free speech advocate. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's not a crime.

shinratdr2• 14 years ago

> It would be easier to prove his troll-ness if he didn't delete his account

Anyone familiar with reddit personalities heard of VA and knows he's exactly that: A troll who rolls with the punches and does the opposite of what people expect to rile them up. 99% of the subreddits he moderated were created by others and then abandoned or handed off to him against his will.

He didn't create /r/PicsOfDeadKids or any of those weird one-offs. He did continue to post to them because reposting images from 4chan once and a while was easy and apparently the concept of someone actively moderating a subreddit like that amused him.

He never deserved this witch hunt, and he's not a cruel or unfriendly person. The only bad interactions I've seen him have with people were those that try and provoke him.

ck24• 14 years ago

(while I was writing this you edited out your disagreement with the word "troll" but I'll leave this)

The definition of "troll" includes someone who posts inflammatory material (text, images or otherwise).

Doesn't have to be illegal, just inflammatory.

Certainly you agree he is inflammatory, you just think he has the right to be?

I don't think the "everyone else does it" argument flies either.

I don't think doxxing people is right but that doesn't make what he did right either.

gilgoomesh3• 14 years ago

Yeah, sorry about that. I contradicted my own first sentence, so I removed it. The article did clarify how "troll" applied in this case.

angrycoder• 14 years ago

The full story is over on Gawker, the Atlantic article is just a summary that assumes you already know who this dude is.

http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the...

ck24• 14 years ago

The problem was you cannot link to gawker from HN submissions, it's banned here too.

And apparently there is a new moderation mode that removes/prevents articles from being on the front page, because that just happened too.

klodolph• 14 years ago

> So Adrian Chen is creeped out by a legal behavior

This is a conflation of "illegal behavior" with "creepy behavior", but they are distinct categories.

> there are whole industries [...] that thrive doing exactly this to 16 year old girls.

It is not relevant that other people engage in similar behavior.

> So Adrian Chen is creeped out by a legal behavior and decides to defame someone

Defamation need not be false. (If it were false you could call it "slander" or "libel".) Again, this is conflation of illegal behavior with creepy behavior; there are lots of legal creepy things and lots of illegal things that aren't creepy.

> entirely fictional guilt (since there's no crime)

Conflation of meanings of the word guilt, which has a legal definition as well as a common definition. I could be "guilty" of standing a girl up on a date even though it's perfectly legal to do so.

gilgoomesh3• 14 years ago

I accept your criticism that I've conflated legality with Chen's personal morality.

However, I think Chen has taken this action because he thinks violentacrez was objectively and unambiguous immoral -- which I think is not a univerally agreed point. I think alternative moral perspectives are indicated by the legal boundaries and the behaviors of other exploititative industries. I think this indicates that different moral standards on this issue are tolerated, even if they're still actively campaigned against.

I do now feel weird for defending ephebophiles.

tzs2• 14 years ago

What about the invasion of privacy of the young teens and pre-teens whose photos were posted? There were often very candid photos that would greatly embarrass their subjects if spread widely. He worked tirelessly to violate the privacy of others--and now his privacy has been stripped away. That's called karma.

Also, in many jurisdictions, including Texas where he lives, it in fact might be a crime to post the photos he posted. See the end of this: http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/docs/pe/htm/pe.21.htm

bootload• 14 years ago

Chen alleges "... Violentacrez and his fellow moderators worked hard to make sure every girl on jailbait was underage, diligently deleting any photos of whose subjects seemed older than 16 or 17 ..."

then Chen alleges at Gawker, "... His speciality is distributing images of scantily-clad underage girls, but as Violentacrez he also issued an unending fountain of racism, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and exotic abominations yet unnamed, all on the sprawling online community Reddit. ..." ~ http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the...

I would say Chen is writing this as a public interest piece. I would also guess these allegations would be across the desk of members of law enforcement as a possible or potential paedophilia ring.

sauteedbiscuits• 14 years ago

For those saying hes a normal guy who just likes trolling, the article mentions "Michael Brutsch had sex with his step daughter"

He was also the creator of subreddits that dealt with glorifying beating women and children. He has 100% of the right to live on the line and be a griefer and/or troll. He also has 100% of the right to feel the wrath of people he pisses off.

As a internet free speech advocate, I am sad that things are in this situation. As a parent and decent human being, I am not. He is surely on many FBI lists now.

shinratdr2• 14 years ago

> For those saying hes a normal guy who just likes trolling, the article mentions "Michael Brutsch had sex with his step daughter"

According to him, while trolling. Yeah, real solid source. Definitely grounds to ruin someone's life.

Also, since when is that a crime? Or even immoral? It could be a massive breach of trust and immoral, depending on the situation. However depending on the relationship between wife, daughter and the guy, it could be just regular cheating. Or not even that.

He didn't rape his stepdaughter, or coerce his daughter, or have consensual sex with his underage stepdaughter. What he did was have consensual sex with a grown woman he has no blood relation to and for all you know has no parental relationship with either.

Hardly the "case closed" indictment you want it to be, even if it allows you to string together the words "sex" and "daughter" in the same sentence to elicit a knee-jerk negative response.

kennywinker2• 14 years ago

Woody Allen did the same. He took a lot of flack for it, but people still watch his movies.

Unmasking The Biggest Troll on Reddit

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