Reddit will not ban 'distasteful' content, chief executive says

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19975375

by citricsquid • 14 years ago

26 161 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

jgrahamc7• 14 years ago

And so I finally deleted my reddit account. Goodbye "Six Year Club" Trophy!

Of course, reddit can happily decide to be a beacon for upholding free speech rights and can chose to allow distasteful subreddits. I am not going to argue with their right to do it.

But at the same time I don't wish to be associated in any way with that type of content.

EDIT: As there has been quite a strong reaction to me saying that I decided to delete my reddit account, I think it's worth me emphasizing what I said above about reddit being free to do as they please. I am NOT telling them how to run their site; I am merely stepping away from a community that has content that I dislike.

EDIT: I think the fundamental schism is that reddit sees itself as a collection of independent web sites (subreddits); the rest of the world is likely to see it as one place. A similar thing can be said about 4chan.org. If you ignore /b/ there's other interesting content, but in the public's imagination 4chan is /b/.

mnicole3• 14 years ago

Ditto. Time to fork and move on.

shin_lao2• 14 years ago

I think it comes down to "what is distasteful?".

tptacek37• 14 years ago

Compromising photos of teenagers published without their consent.

(I'd go further, but I feel like that's a bright line we should all be able to agree on).

bduerst9• 14 years ago

Were you posting in said distasteful subreddits?

jgrahamc7• 14 years ago

No.

cryptoz• 14 years ago

It looks like you're from the UK. Are you going to renounce your citizenship since your government has done such awful things as attacking countries like Iraq? By your logic, I should forever associate you with that decision and deride you for it.

jgrahamc7• 14 years ago

No, but in the UK I get to vote on what my government does. The closest thing to a 'vote' I have with reddit is whether I have an account or not.

potatolicious4• 14 years ago

I don't understand this reasoning.

For a moment, assume you're a Facebook user.

There's been a rash of reporting on cyber-bullying via Facebook lately - with some tragic cases of youngsters committing suicide from the despicable actions of their online torturers.

Do you intend to renounce your Facebook account also?

What reasonable person would associate you with this type of deplorable behavior because you are also a Facebook user?

If someone who is so ignorant that they would associate you with cyber-bullying simply because you're also a Facebook user, would you really care about the opinion of this person, and would their opinion actually matter?

There will always be a particularly ignorant portion of the population that will conflate membership in a group with the actions of a subgroup. This has been true for rock music, MySpace, Facebook, rap music, goths, homosexuality, and beyond. Why pander to these individuals and let their ignorance dictate your actions?

I can understand the angle of "I find this content disgusting, and I am disappointed that Reddit is not taking a hard stance against it" - if that's your position, I get you 100%. But the whole association thing I don't get.

tptacek37• 14 years ago

Facebook does not publicly tolerate the use of their service to harass minors. Does this memo from the Reddit CEO sound like something Zuckerberg would say? It doesn't to me.

jgrahamc7• 14 years ago

It would come down to whether Facebook had done anything about the problem or not. If Facebook had said "that's free speech and we're leaving it alone" then I would have been upset and wanted to take action (which might have meant deleting my Facebook account).

I do think a lot of the content that's been talked about is disgusting. I'm not disappointed that reddit is not taking a hard stance on the matter. They have decided to uphold a notion of free speech, but given that the site will be associated with this content in the mind of the general public I would rather not be part of it.

recapthrowaway2• 14 years ago

If someone were to compile a list of distasteful websites using Cloudflare would it help you quit working there to prevent you being associated with that content?

slig• 14 years ago

Isn't the most famous and distasteful image board using CF?

jgrahamc7• 14 years ago

I feel that CloudFlare is similar to a search engine, DNS provider, hosting company, domain registrar etc. in that we are providing a shared service and inevitably some users of that service will be things that I personally dislike.

As I mentioned above in an EDIT, the problem with reddit is that reddit sees itself as a group of subreddits which are different communities; everyone else sees reddit as a single entity. So, I don't want to be associated with the single entity that's supporting this content that I find distasteful.

stfu5• 14 years ago

I personally find these forms of witch hunts to censor free speech absolutely disgusting.

In my opinion people who support something like this, are in the same category as those who take up the forks and march against Google because of "certain" videos, that they feel offended by.

It is evidence of an absolutely intolerant, self-centered world view, that has in my view no place in a democratic society.

lumberjack• 14 years ago

Why are you still online then? The same rational can easily be applied to the Internet in place of reddit. Why are you still using the Internet?

jmillikin3• 14 years ago

I also considered this, but concluded it would be counter-productive.

These creepy subreddits have been allowed to exist for so long because users who disagreed decided to remain silent. They're only coming to light now because some Reddit users have decided to break their silence and speak out.

If you want to help clean up Reddit, then a six-year account is a useful asset.

MrMember• 14 years ago

I'll be keeping my account, because there are several small subreddits I enjoy reading and participating in. That's the extent of my association with Reddit. I don't look at or comment on default subs, I don't make Reddit references in real life, I don't know who the current crop of Reddit 'celebrities' are.

There's a much better Reddit underneath all of the garbage that makes up 'default' Reddit. I don't really care what the public image of Reddit is, because nobody in real life knows or cares that I use it.

aes25621• 14 years ago

I've deleted my account for precisely the opposite reason.

Reddit sold out. Their latest statement on the /r/creepshots debacle is too little, too late. If they honestly believe in free speech, they should have weathered the /r/jailbait storm rather than giving into popular pressure.

Reddit is too big of a target to continue the free speech advocacy line. Back when it was a niche community that the press didn't care about, it might have worked, but not now.

fellInchoate• 14 years ago

I think you should be more embarrassed by this incredible overreaction than by any association with reddit, which has been responsible for huge fundraising events, record-breaking gift exchanges, AMAs from the POTUS, etc., etc.

If you're worried about your internet reputation, I feel like comments like this aren't helping.

jedberg2• 14 years ago

I'm glad to see them upholding the principles of free speech and expression that we fostered in the first few years.

I always told people, my job is to provide a platform, not be a tastemaker. It is up to the users to be the tastemakers.

buro92• 14 years ago

It's up to the users and lawmakers of the country to be the tastemakers.

jedberg2• 14 years ago

Yes, of course. Any illegal content was removed without hesitation. But we're talking about legal but distasteful content.

JoachimSchipper• 14 years ago

I'm curious - do you support the removal of /r/jailbait and /r/creepshots? If so, do you really think Reddit harbors no other horrible stuff? If not, do you really think that letting those subreddits exist is a reasonable price to pay for "free speech"?

stfu5• 14 years ago

Excellent - happy to see Reddit supporting free speech and not giving into this mainstream media bullying campaign.

I wish more platforms would abide to the rule of law and not to a hypocritical rule imposed by professionally "i am outraged, there is something on the internet, that i don't like, this has to stop!!!" commentators.

Kudos to Reddit!

tptacek37• 14 years ago

I do not like articles on the Internet that purport to explain that the world is 9,000 years old, or that suggest that the Bible demands that women be subservient to men. I don't like articles that suggest that the world is ruled by a secret cartel of Jewish international bankers. I don't like articles that militate against taxes for capital gains or inheritances.

I tolerate all of these things because they are ideas. Stupid ones, yes, but ideas.

A photo of a minor taken without their consent and posted to a public forum for people to comment on is something worse than a blog post that tries to convince me that the world is 9,000 years old.

stfu5• 14 years ago

In my opinion the issue is relatively simple. If the content is illegal, then remove it. If it is not, then it stays.

It can not be the task of a platform provider to conduct an in-depth investigation on who agreed or did not agree on a picture being taken. Otherwise you would need to include with every picture some form of a weaver were all persons displayed state their real age and consent to the picture.

tptacek37• 14 years ago

"Distasteful" subreddits that consist of compromising photos of teenagers taken without their knowledge are to be tolerated. That's "free speech", the highest ideal at Reddit.

Meanwhile, "doxxing" of the people who traffic in those photos is forbidden. That's not "free speech", it's something else.

However, journalism that happens to disclose identities of Reddit trolls... that's not necessarily "doxxing". It's a fine line.

There is no intellectual clarity to these lines at all; they're simply gerrymandered around the proclivities of the most active Reddit users. I guess that's fine, but it's hard to pretend that there's any important ideal being defended by their management.

betterth• 14 years ago

Please refrain from commenting on subjects that you're ignorant about.

"Distasteful" subreddits that consist of compromising photos of teenagers taken without their knowledge are to be tolerated."

As per http://as.reddit.com/rules/

"No child pornography or sexually suggestive content featuring minors."

These kinds of things are not tolerated on Reddit.

tptacek37• 14 years ago

I think if you read my comment carefully you'll discover that I didn't say "child pornography" or "sexually suggestive content featuring minors".

Are you suggesting that "child pornography" and "sexually suggestive content featuring minors" is the bright line, and that anything on the privacy spectrum that doesn't cross that line should be defended? That's the implication I get from your comment, but I'm happy to be corrected.

milesskorpen• 14 years ago

Alright, then, let's rephrase that a bit: "Distasteful" subreddits that consist of compromising photos of PEOPLE taken without their knowledge are to be tolerated." I'm not sure why a rule against minors suddenly makes this okay.

mnicole3• 14 years ago

A link to the rules isn't going to stop things from slipping through the cracks.

Goronmon4• 14 years ago

I find the rules to be fairly clear.

1) You can't ban content just because it offends someone, there wouldn't be much content left, if any. Is religion distasteful? Violent images of war? Gay marriage?

And it's not like a user is forced into subreddits to view content they don't like. The whole point of the site is for individual users to make decisions on the type of content they are viewing and participating in.

2) "doxxing" isn't some random rule they came up with to protect people who post 'distasteful' photos. AFAIK it's been a long-standing issue to prevent users from rallying users to harass other users outside of the site, whether it's justified or not. Instances in the past have seen people twist facts about a story to make someone out to be a bad buy, post that person's personal information and then that person is harassed via phone calls, emails, letters about some non-existent offense they are accused to have perpetrated.

I'm not sure the specifics on the Gawker ban issue though, so I can't speak to that.

tptacek37• 14 years ago

You'd think maybe posting photos of minors without their consent might also have been a rule to prevent long-standing issues. But, no?

jmillikin3• 14 years ago

  > You can't ban content just because it offends someone,
  > there wouldn't be much content left, if any. Is religion
  > distasteful? Violent images of war? Gay marriage?

That's a slippery-slope argument, and it's ridiculous in this case. Reddit isn't being pressured to ban any and all offensive content; they're being pressured specifically about sexually-suggestive photographs of underage girls, created without consent.

In fact, Reddit already has rules against this sort of content. From their user agreement: "You further agree not to use any sexually suggestive language or to provide to or post on or through the Website any graphics, text, photographs, images, video, audio or other material that is sexually suggestive or appeals to a prurient interest."

So what the pressure is really about is Reddit ignoring their own rules to benefit one of their personal friends, and a small horde of terrible people defending this decision by pretending that teenage upskirts are free speech.

s_baby• 14 years ago

>There is no intellectual clarity to these lines at all; they're simply gerrymandered around the proclivities of the most active Reddit users. I guess that's fine, but it's hard to pretend that there's any important ideal being defended by their management.

If that was true subreddits like r/shitredditsays would be banned for "doxxing" and harboring hostility towards reddit as a whole. All this noise is generating from that single subreddit and it would be so easy for reddit to make it disappear. But they don't.

spindritf4• 14 years ago

Publishing private information of other people, not just those who "traffic in those photos", is forbidden because it the past it has led to real-life harassment. It's a pretty old and established rule.

tptacek37• 14 years ago

You understand that bystanders like me puzzling their way through what's happening with Reddit and this "stand" that they're taking see surreptitiously taken photos of minors posted for the amusement of a creepy Reddit thread to also be private information about other people, right?

Do you just disagree that they're the same kind of information? Is that where the controversy is here?

bishnu• 14 years ago

Publishing covert photos of teenage girls on the internet has also led to real-life harassment. What's your point?

naner• 14 years ago

The problem seems to be that Reddit sees itself as a platform to host numerous small communities while everyone else sees it as a single community.

Generally it seems like a bad idea for a platform to be too restrictive about what can be discussed (though I'd argue banning some types of content wouldn't be too controverisal) while allowing a community to run completely unrestricted seems quite irresponsible.

"doxxing" of the people who traffic in those photos is forbidden. That's not "free speech", it's something else.

Reddit has long had a problem with people posting identifying information of reddit users or people involved in videos/pictures/articles shared on the site. This has almost always devolved into harrassment. So, strangely, reddit has a kind of reverse Nymwars situation where you are not allowed to personally identify anyone but yourself.

aes25621• 14 years ago

This is Internet Culture 101.

The Internet is a bastion of free speech. Under the guise of pseudo-anonymity, people are free to post whatever content they see fit, and people on the receiving end generally understand that it's just the Internet; it's not serious business.

It is an escape from real life, where you don't have to kowtow to political correctness, fear the tyranny of the majority, and ultimately, and hide your true identity.

'Doxxing' is thus a direct attack on Internet culture.

tptacek37• 14 years ago

Under the guise of pseudo-anonymity, people are free to post compromising photos of children for the amusement of their pseudo-anonymous peers?

This just doesn't make sense. Why is the poster (who has deliberately decided to participate in an online forum) entitled to privacy, but the subjects of these photos aren't?

danielweber11• 14 years ago

Reddit didn't sit down and have a long debate and discussion about what is good and what is bad.

Instead, Reddit has only banned things when they have been dragged kicking and screaming to that point, and then they ban the things in a pretty narrow way.

Doxxing has a pretty bad history on reddit; I forget the exact time when it became against the rules, but a bunch of shitstorms had started up by people forming internet mobs to chase after people they thought did something wrong.

So they banned doxxing.

Similarly, Jailbait was only banned after Anderson Cooper started talking about it on the news. There didn't seem to be a long discussion of what was and wasn't allowed and what makes consistent policy; instead it seemed (as an outsider) to be "what rule can we make that blocks jailbait and its clones and as little else as possible?"

When you see the historical reason, it's clear why the stopped doxxing while tolerated creepshots: they hadn't made a rule about the latter.

The people that hated creepshots saw all this and decided on the obvious strategy: make creepshots as unpleasant as possible for everyone involved. I think it's a pretty bad way to set policy, but it's the only path that reddit had laid out, so they took it.

In the end, reddit probably should have a policy board that decides what is and isn't allowed and have long debates and discussions (partially in public) about how to set up a sane policy.

hermannj314• 14 years ago

They might as well put up a sign that says "Management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone."

Or the more Orwellian, "All speech is free on Reddit. Some speech is just freer than others."

At least they'd be honest that they are just making the rules up as they go and your speech is as free as the next Anderson Cooper exposé or changing of the tides.

potatolicious4• 14 years ago

But they just did...

Personally I don't feel strongly one way or another about the shutdown of creepshots and jailbait, but come on.

"We're not going to shut down distasteful subreddits, except the ones we already did! But no more! Honest!"

I guess I'll believe it when I see it. Reddit has no shortage of content that is just one viral blog post away from a PR shitstorm. This newfound (and if I may say, a bit late) respect for expression will be challenged sooner rather than later.

tptacek37• 14 years ago

Since you're obviously a pretty thoughtful guy, I'm curious why you don't have a strong opinion about creepshots and jailbait. I've read the rest of what you said and inferred a sort of "pox on all their houses" message from it. Jailbait and creepshots seems like the kind of thing you'd normally have a problem with. Why don't you?

(I'm asking seriously, expecting to learn something about the situation from your response, not to make a point.)

cdrxndr• 14 years ago

I'm OK with it because I see it as a necessary evil - always considering the worst implementations of any new rules.

Right now we all have the same expectation of privacy - that is we have none if in public, and none if its a digitally distributed photo. That expectation does not shift based on one's age.

What if the non-consenting minor is Miley Cyrus? What if a compromising photo of police brutality has a kid in the background - can they force a take-down of my photo? Off the deep end, but I'm just pointing out that we are on a level playing field, and it's likely for the better.

We obviously make many concessions to our rights to protect children, but this is not one of them. E.g., as an adult male, I can't eat my sandwich in some NY parks unless I'm accompanied by a child. I just hope the children are grateful for my sacrifice ...

potatolicious4• 14 years ago

I have a lot of thoughts about this, but for the sake of coherence I'm going to be simplifying a few things, hopefully this remains readable.

I do have substantial problems with the content of creepshots and jailbait, but I cannot divine a scheme to separate such content that wouldn't trample over other content I think is legitimate. In all the scenarios I've run in my head, the cure is always worse than the disease.

I can identify legitimate content that is not at all clearly separable from the contents of creepshots (less so jailbait), and this leads me to believe that not only would attempts to eradicate this sort of content lead to suppression of existing, legitimate expression, but also prevent the emergence of new, as of yet non-existent forms of legitimate expression.

That's all very vague and hand-wavy, so what follows will be some specifics. For the sake of clarity I'm going to assume you know nothing about photography as an art form - if you do, well, we'll be covering some familiar ground. I apologize if this is overly verbose or stream-of-consciousness, there's a lot of ground to cover:

----

My other main thing outside of creating software is photography - particularly street photography, a genre with a long and colorful history, featuring some of the most well-known photographers of all time (Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Elliot Erwitt, Daido Moriyama, etc).

In a nutshell (and with some simplification), street photography is the candid capture of life as it happens. Feel free to Google any of the above names for an example of what I'm talking about.

It is wide celebrated, and may be the next-oldest form of photography after landscapes. Well known examples of street photography hang in the MoMA, Met, Louvre, and beyond. Most "mainstream" street photography is rather mild and inoffensive, but some of it is controversial in its content and the means by which it's obtained.

See for example Bruce Gilden, one of the most prolific contemporary street photographers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc1RrQXidlY

Many photographers despise his methodology, but the results are widely acknowledged to be very good. There is a never-ending ethical battle in the photographic community about the acceptability of it, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that this is legitimate expression.

There are some uncomfortable parallels between creepshots and street photography:

- The subject is frequently unaware. Candidness, after all.

- It is intentionally a (hopefully mild) breach of the subject's privacy. Someone's relaxing in a hammock, someone reading a book, two people conversing in a bar. Nothing that would constitute a legal breach of privacy, but perhaps a colloquial expectation of being unwatched while in public.

- Is is distributed widely mostly without the subject's consent or control. There are celebrated works hanging in the MoMA where the subjects are still unaware they've been photographed.

So, we can't use these criteria to filter creepshots-like content, or we wipe out 100 years of street photography (or be hypocrites), and even a large portion of paintings.

So what are the differences between street photography and creepshots-like content?

Deliberate sexualization of the subjects? Some street photography does this, particularly contemporary street that explores some of the more uncommon themes not seen in classical (pre-60s) street photography.

It's exploitative? Much of photography is also exploitative. See for example the famous Migrant Mother picture, an iconic image of the Great Depression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Owens_Thompson

The children in the image later were extremely offended at perceived exploitation of their image. They were after all, incapable of consenting to the picture - and even if they did they certainly had no say in how it has been displayed and distributed. So sexualization or not, exploitation is both subjective and a poor place to draw the line.

So we've sort of exhausted ourselves here: unaware subjects, breach of social mores re: privacy in public spaces, consent, sexualization of subject, and potential/existing exploitation - all of which are inappropriate places to draw the line as they will all ban substantial existing legitimate content. Not to mention as of yet non-existent content along these lines.

So at the core of it, there does not appear to be an objective measure by which we can identify and eliminate content of creepshots' nature, not without hugely overstepping and eliminating work that both art aficionados and lay appreciators have agreed to be hugely worthwhile and relevant.

The only workable scheme appears to be "we will know bad content when we see it", which I suppose has been Reddit's MO thus far: allow it until enough of a stink is raised, but in general I highly dislike moral stances based around "well, we'll just know". Soft descriptors like "pervy", "creepy", etc, are also unreliable - especially when amateur attempts at street photography frequently (and unintentionally) come across as such.

So yeah, that's why I don't advocate for the banning of this sort of content on Reddit, even though I strongly dislike it. If anything, I may dislike this content more than most, since it makes my future work as a street photographer harder - this is every attractive woman's suspicious nightmare come to life, and content like this means I will face an uphill battle in the future doing my thing.

Hopefully this rambling mess makes some kind of sense.

[edit] Also I have no other aliases on HN ;)

ebassi• 14 years ago

the issue is not (only) having distasteful content; the real issue is censoring links to content that embarrasses redditors, like the Gawker outing of the reddit creep, in a shockingly hypocritical display of a double standard.

you cannot "uphold the principles of free speech" by keeping creepy content under the "it's not illegal" moniker, and at the same time censor the outing of one of the moderators of said content - another perfectly legal action.

danso• 14 years ago

The "distasteful" content always bothered me but was something that was so disconnected from my normal use since I stay mostly in the programming and nyc subreddits...I see things like r/creepshots as being one of the downsides to the many upsides of how reddit is run, and one with no perfect solution.

However, this dampened my interest in Reddit quite a bit:

> Mr Wong described the decision as a mistake that was "not making Reddit look so good". The ban has now been lifted.

"As admins, we chose to recognise that opponents have the right to criticise us, to expose us, to tell a story about us - even if we don't like that story or we feel it's wrong."

However, individual subreddits can choose their own rules regarding what sites are blocked. One popular area, Politics, is continuing to block Gawker links.

It is sickening how quickly a site that is devoted to the extremes of free speech would turn into that they despise after an investigative piece...and all of this for someone who, besides administering the "distasteful" content in question, turned tail and deleted his account after being outed.

recapthrowaway2• 14 years ago

A pretty comprehensive recap of what's been going on if anyone is interested, it's in three parts:

http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/11bypn/recap...

http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/11byvp/recap...

http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/11gg8v/recap...

jshu• 14 years ago

Thanks, that was really interesting insight into what's going on behind the scenes.

So it looks like most of this is being orchestrated by the group running SRS (ex-somethingawful?), trying to shake the foundations of reddit just to "see what happens"? I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

Millennium• 14 years ago

Good for them, I suppose, but what is their position on enabling criminal invasion of privacy?

bduerst9• 14 years ago

I think what is being missed here is that this ban is party to a small subreddit called "ShitRedditSays".

They ran a campaign to get jailbait banned, and recently to get creepshots banned, by bringing the media's attention to these subreddits.

bryanlarsen2• 14 years ago

It seems to me that Reddit did the right thing here. How they got there is questionable, but I think they've got it right.

1) "No child pornography or sexually suggestive content featuring minors"

2) No doxxing internally, external links allowed

To stay viable, Reddit has to ban internal doxxing. There have been several instances in the past of false accusations combined with doxxing which have resulted in witch hunts.

But doxxing is pretty much the only defence the Internet has against legal yet hateful and harmful pseudonymous speech. So by drawing the line where they did, they've made witch hunts more difficult to pull off, but still possible.

They're also just bowing to the inevitable: they can't censor the Internet, so any attempt to do so will fail.

So did they do the right thing because it was the right thing, or just because it was inevitable? They really give the impression that it was the latter, so they don't come out of this affair smelling very good.

SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

I think the whole creepshots thing shows how hypocritical reddit is about free speech. I thought the Gawker article did a good job describing the hive mind attitude there of "my speech is OK, but you must burn for yours". And, naturally, they responded exactly as I would expect: banning that speech.

I don't envy reddit's admins regarding this topic. Their user base is extremely worked up over the notion of free speech, so any appearance of interfering will be seen in a horrible light. But things like creepshots and jailbait do horrible things for their reputation, which could leave it with a situation where it becomes another 4chan, which I don't think they want.

In the end, I agree with potatolicious: this commitment to free speech will last only until the next shit storm occurs.

danielweber11• 14 years ago

Reddit was following an internally consistent rule pattern when banning links to Gawker.

(You can argue that following the rule pattern is stupid, like something that comes out of a large bureaucracy instead of a <10 person startup. I'd agree.)

this commitment to free speech will last only until the next shit storm occurs

Since reddit has shown the only times they ban anything is in response to shit storms, they have unwittingly set themselves up for more shit storms. AFAIK the people who hated creepshots got ignored when raising the question to the admins, so the only other option was to create a new shit storm.

Reddit probably thinks they are sticking to their guns, but by not having any kind of release valve beyond a shit storm, they're bringing them on.

SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

I suppose my original comment was not clear. I meant the reddit community, not Reddit, the company. I think the Reddit admins are being reasonably consistent (or at least trying to be).

Banning the article that doxxes the guy is following their rule. Banning all of Gawker is something very different. It's a way for reddit's moderators to punish Gawker for "contempt of reddit".

by not having any kind of release valve beyond a shit storm, they're bringing them on

Very concise, insightful way of putting it!

nohat• 14 years ago

"There sure has been a lot of trouble lately for Reddit, and I'd like to talk about about that before I nip off for a spot of tea"

Other issues aside, this sentence uses several British expressions. Wong does not seem to be British. Is Wong acting British because he is talking to the BBC? Is the BBC paraphrasing? That quote just seems odd and contrived.

mithaler2• 14 years ago

As an aside, I'm starting to doubt the inherent value of Internet anonymity in the first place.

There are obvious good uses for it: Wikileaks in its heyday comes to mind (that is, the time when they were actually a wiki, releasing leaks while keeping their sources safe, not going out of their way to create PR nightmares for the US government). But the vast majority of other widely-defended use cases for it seem to be people using it as a license to do nasty things like jailbait/creepshots. Even VA recognized that a compromise of his identity would mean professional ruination, even as he exposed himself and his family to that risk by revealing himself to people he thought he could trust.

While Reddit definitely shouldn't start trying to "solve" the problem, clearly the use of vigilante "doxxing" as a weapon against people they don't like isn't a real solution either. Is there even a good middle ground? "Do distasteful things on peril of Gawker running a story about you"?

aes25621• 14 years ago

The value of Internet (pseudo-)anonymity is not limited to the big, headline-grabbing incidents.

It underlies almost all the original content posted on the Internet. Simply put, if you had to attach your real life identity to everything you posted online, original content would dry up overnight.

People would no longer express their sincere opinions, they would no longer debate controversial issues. They would no longer seek help and advice for medical conditions, seek emotional support for their troubles, so on and so forth.

I wouldn't be posting in this thread right now.

mithaler2• 14 years ago

What is it about this comment that you worry is so "controversial" or "dangerous" that you wouldn't consider posting it under your real name? (I'm not saying you should, I'm just curious.)

MartinCron3• 14 years ago

Simply put, if you had to attach your real life identity to everything you posted online, original content would dry up overnight.

Would it? People created original content long before they could post it online with an expectation of anonymity. There are a lot of people who use their real life identities online. Just as I am, right now.

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Reddit is a private business corporate entity, and not a legislative body of the government, but this back-and-forth about what is allowed on Reddit and what is not illustrates a famous saying about how laws are made: "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (1881), p. 1.

On my part, I decided not to get a second username on Reddit after being a very early adopted on Reddit, when there was a foul-up of the user database such that my user account data was lost. I figured a service that could foul up something like that (MSN did the same, years ago) was not ready for prime time, so I have never re-upped. I've never liked the immature, overly long rewritten titles on submissions, or most of the other juvenile behavior seen on Reddit. Yeah, I know, everyone would simply tell me to go look for a good subreddit. I tried that a few times, but decided that the subreddits also have their culture dragged down, even when they are about interesting topics and include thoughtful participants, by the general culture on Reddit. Rather than look for a subreddit, I try to invest in making Hacker News a better community. That works for me.

Reddit will not ban 'distasteful' content, chief executive says

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