
Reddit CEO admits to altering user comments that were critical of him - marcoperaza
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admins_are_suffering_from_low_energy_have/dad5sf1/
======
JorgeGT
And without an "edited" mark, which means that any comment of any user can be
covertly modified by an admin. Very concerning since Reddit comments have
provoked even Congress hearings: [http://thehill.com/policy/national-
security/296680-house-pan...](http://thehill.com/policy/national-
security/296680-house-panel-probes-web-rumor-on-clinton-emails)

~~~
dhruval
He changed a 'F U CEO' (upvoted by 1.6k users) comment to 'F U unpaid reddit
moderator', without any indication that the comment was edited.

Very juvenile and unprofessional way of dealing with the situation, really
erodes trust in the platform (simply deleting the comment would have been a
better response).

Would maybe expect this from the founder of a young fledgling startup, but the
33 year old CEO of a company like Reddit ought to know better.

~~~
ozgune
I met Steve several years back while going through YC. He's a much calmer and
nicer person than most founders I've met, myself included.

If I read this Reddit thread without knowing him, I would have deemed him
unprofessional and maybe even upvoted some of the comments.

When I read the thread knowing who he is, I'm thinking "I can't imagine how
stressful it must be to run Reddit. He made one mistake in a bad day,
apologized for it, and now everyone's talking about it. Steve's way nicer and
more professional than I am, so I would probably have messed up big time in
his shoes."

~~~
RyanZAG
Hang on a second here: many people comment that murderers seem like really
nice people when they met them briefly. You don't really know anything about
someone just because you met him for a bit a few years ago. He can be both
unprofessional and seem like a calm and nice person, while being neither if
you had gotten to know him better.

You comment that he's made just one mistake on a bad day. Perhaps this is just
his most visible mistake, and he's been making these kinds of bad mistakes for
the past month. It didn't take him 10 seconds to do this - he had to log in
with full access to the reddit database and run unprotected queries against
the live running copy. That's both shocking security, operations and basic
common practice. For a childish insult.

And finally, he did not actually apologize for any of this. "I fucked up" is
not the same as "I'm sorry".

~~~
Caprinicus
He was also joking about it a little bit later in the IRC.

------
ww520
This is pretty bad. That pretty much destroys the credibility of Reddit's
commenting system in a single act. No one can look at the integrity of the
comments written by others the same any more.

~~~
wfo
Does it? Really? An admin played a prank on a bunch of insane, out of control
conspiracy minded screaming blubbering trolls calling him a pedophile with a
dumb silly find/replace rule. God forbid, next forums will start replacing
words like 'shit' and 'fuck' with symbols to try and hide the truth of what we
/really/ mean from the world.

Who cares? Why is this a big deal? I am so unbelievably unimpressed with the
seriousness of this, I feel like there is such an enormous effort to pretend
this is "serious business" and "the integrity of reddit" (?) is somehow being
compromised. We all knew this could be done. On any forum. Reddit is a silly
place. Reddit is a place for people to shitpost memes and puns with throwaway
accounts. The Donald is a subreddit that revels in trolling and messing with
people, spewing toxic garbage nonstop. They riled up the main admin of reddit
so much he did something childish -- a pretty impressive trolling effort.
That's the end of this story as far as I can tell.

~~~
Accacin
Reddit comments and posts have been used in investigations. In the UK a
teenager was sentenced for writing some "racist" comment(I'm not saying this
is right or wrong, just that it happened).

Just think, the admins have the power to edit your comment as they see fit and
you'll have no proof as your comment isn't even marked as edited.

It's a scary thought.

~~~
joncalhoun
To clarify, are you suggesting that someone was indicted based purely on a
Reddit post?

If so, that in itself is scarier than anything else being discussed here.

To assume Reddit is a unedited source of truth is just insane. Why people felt
it was 100% tamper proof is beyond me. I wouldn't even trust public companies
like Twitter to not have potential flaws like this.

~~~
angry-hacker
Yes, yes he was. [0]

It's nothing new in UK, they are literally CCTV state now. Don't forget
American folks that in most of the countries over here we don't have free
speech ;)

And in the light of this news that Reddit CEO edited comments -- it's scary
stuff -- for fun or not.

[0] [http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/watch-
mom...](http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/watch-moment-web-
troll-who-11918656)

~~~
aktiur
Your source says he admitted writing the comments, which is much stronger
evidence before a court than the original comment could ever be.

~~~
tripzilch
Do they have plea bargains in the UK?

~~~
pjc50
No, nor elected prosecutors. There is however a system where if you plead not
guilty and are convicted you have to pay towards the court costs:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32078676](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32078676)

------
seanalltogether
The tension that The_Donald and many alt-right subreddits place on reddit in
general seems to be reaching a boiling point. I get the feeling the admins are
just waiting for a credible reason to present itself that lets them cleanly
wipe out all of them.

~~~
gottam
What is the tension about exactly? That they don't align with their own
personal political views?

~~~
bcherny
I think it's more about the way they express their opinions, rather than the
content of those opinions.

Posting in ALL CAPS, posting fake news or insults to other members of the
community, posting to incite anger, etc. does not make for good discussion,
and hurts the sense of community. That, and bringing that to other subreddits
via brigading, etc.

~~~
a_bonobo
Plus heaps of users browse /r/all and the the_donald community is so large,
and the upvotes come so quickly (some insist it's upvoting bots since it's so
fast) that the top of /r/all is often the_donald. Right now the nr. 1 post and
another one on all are from the_donald.

~~~
551199
During election they modified their algo to avoid the_donald posts getting to
front page.

~~~
ajacksified
(ex-reddit employee, employed during the changes) - we'd been designing
changes to the algorithm to not be just a few top subreddits, and to instead
show more variety well before r/the_donald even started; in fact, it was one
of the first things Steve took on when he came back. There's no
anti-r/the_donald conspiracy; there's much less discussion about them
internally than they'd like to believe.

~~~
vxNsr
I believe there were two edits from the time /r/the_donald became popular, the
first was a more general edit as you say, but the second if I recall correctly
was all about keeping the /r/the_donald from the top. Though it seemed to have
backfired because after the second edit I saw more of them on /r/all not less.

~~~
551199
Yes, the second edit backfired massively.

The reason pretty much all posts in the_donald are upvoted by users is due to
the fact Clintons Correct the record was downvoting the_donald posts in
hordes.

Again if Reddit would not have aligned themselves with one candidate named
Clinton they probably wouldn't have this problem now.

------
elevensies
The CEO of Reddit is officially a cursed position, on par with the Defense
Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts.

In other circumstances this might have gotten laughed off, but The Donald has
really developed a bunker mentality IMO after having mods doxxed, the
algorithm changed to end their front page dominance, lots of other subs being
anti-Trump, and the general tenor of the campaign against Trump.

I hope Spez can take a nice relaxing weekend holiday and let someone else deal
with this shit-hurricane.

~~~
aaron695
> The CEO of Reddit is officially a cursed position

Not sure it's a curse when you list all the things being done to the sub-
reddit?

They get attacked, so they fought back? To be expected, no?

~~~
elevensies
I'm saying its a curse because:

\- Yishan Wongs various missteps and eventual bizzare (looking) departure

\- Ellen Pao had haters on the site from day 1, Hitler memes etcetera. And
then when they fired u/Chooter all hell broke loose and some subs were shut
down by their own mods. The integrity of AMA was permanently ruined by this
IMO. Anyway, Pao was hated by the idiots immediately, but hated universally
after this.

\- Spez started strong but this is going to affect his credibility, and seems
to me to be part of the same downward spiral that happens to the CEOs when
they get caught up in some bullshit happening on the site.

~~~
mememachine
The real trouble is that its CEOs are all far far far too involved in the
going ons of the communities.

~~~
psyc
No kidding. They create a platform, and then continually panic like "Oh no!
People are using the platform! What do we do? How do we stop people using the
platform while making it seem like we want people to use the platform? People
are using the site! Something must be done!"

------
throwaway999998
I can't be the only one that finds this pretty funny, right? Forget about
whatever dumb imagined political angle of it. If you go on someone's website
and spam "fuck [admin's name]" and call them a pedophile based on ridiculous
accusations, it's probably only just because of misplaced mercy that you're
not banned for harassment right off the bat. These aren't paying users, and
they don't have personal data locked up in their accounts that they may lose
access to. Whatever forum they're posting to owes them nothing and they do
worse than spit on that. That a wordfilter gets applied to some posts of some
users that were basically asking for a ban is pretty funny.

I've helped run a popular forum before. We added silly global wordfilters at
times, and on a couple occasions when seriously-rule-breaking users repeatedly
evaded bans, we applied customized wordfilters to them to help drive them off.
(Dropping all of the vowels that weren't at the start or end of a word from
their posts to make it look like lazy teenager txtspeak was a favorite.) It
worked and people found it hilarious.

~~~
std_throwaway
Reddit used to be a place where intelligent users had a quality discussion. It
used to happen. At least in my imagination. What I see now is a machine which
produces memes (still going strong there) and propaganda (growing stronger)
but the discussion is on a much lower intellectual level.

~~~
samstave
Calling BS for the following reason:

I agree with what you posted that memes and propaganda are still going/growing
strong... there is still a TON TON TON of discourse that is important and
intellectual.

S:N ratio and all that....

Noise may be growing like mad (Shills/corps/whatever-other-noise-
producers/etc).... but Signal is growing as well.

The thing is that NvS ratio has to increase in order to keep status quo....

That doesnt mean that certain stories are not true but that perhaps they are
pushed aside with noise to keep certain things seemingly implausible...

------
kennysmoothx
Politics and the ethics of what spez did aside, /r/The_Donald seems to be one
the most nightmarish communities one can think of, and it's a huge.

Very toxic.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
I can put the politics aside. But the ethics? No. The_Donald might be awful,
in your opinion. But what spez did isn't just awful. It's _the canonical
example_ of bad behavior on the internet from a mod.

~~~
smrtinsert
thankfully its a free market. those angry at spez can tske their business
elsewhere.

~~~
ohashi
Would be nice if they all moved over there

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Just because we think what spez did is disgraceful doesn't mean we're a bunch
of alt-right Donald-worshipers. I'm not a fan of either, I just think editing
message text like this is disgusting.

------
Gargoyle
Wow. And he knew it was stupid when he did it. There's been a lot of talk
about having the right temperament for leadership lately, and this is an
excellent example of lacking it.

~~~
ghayes
And the thread was otherwise so civil:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admins_are_suffering_from_low_energy_have/)

~~~
mixedCase
This is like sarcastically mocking how "serious" /r/coaxedintoasnafu is.

/r/The_Donald's purpose is to be a "24/7 Trump rally". There are other Trump-
related subs for serious discussion with supporters.

~~~
jtrip
Can you point me to such subs? I have only been exposed to the 'joke'
subreddit.

~~~
MagnumOpus
/r/HillaryForPrison? (just kidding, there are none)

------
pavanky
While I strongly disagree with what he did, the level of fake news and
conspiracy theories hitting the front page has been toxic and out of control
this year.

Everyone has been accusing of Facebook and twitter for spreading fake news
while reddit has also been absolute shit at it.

~~~
dglass
Exactly who gets to decide if news if fake?

There's a lot of theories going around because there's quite a lot of
circumstantial evidence. Just because there's no proof does not automatically
make it a conspiracy theory.

~~~
tptacek
So what you're saying is maybe Hillary Clinton did have an FBI agent murdered,
and maybe Putin and the Dalai Lama really did meet up to talk about how
Clinton and Obama started ISIS, a few days after the Pope endorsed Trump.

~~~
dglass
I'm not saying any of those things. I'm also not rushing to dismiss them as
fake either though.

~~~
tptacek
I would like to explore the frontiers of what you're willing not to dismiss
out of hand. Can I interest you in a story about a secret blood cult John
Podesta runs? How about the Lizard People?

~~~
dglass
All I know is that John Podesta and his brother were invited to a spirit
cooking dinner [1]. I haven't seen any evidence they attended but it was an
interesting email that was uncovered.

I don't believe lizard people are real.

[1] [https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/15893](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/15893)

~~~
bb611
See, this is the kind of dumb crap that isn't news.

In less than 2 minutes of googling and reading you can find a comprehensive
answer to all your questions, but instead you put forward a leading statement
like "it was an interesting email that was uncovered."

It genuinely was not. It's not interesting, it's mundane.

------
soup10
Reddit has large radical left and radical right communities that are
constantly fighting and overwhelm the site with political drama and
propaganda. If they don't do something about it they are going to lose the
users that come there to look at cats.

~~~
ng12
That's the problem -- there should be no "Reddit". The only interesting part
of Reddit are the communities and there's no reason why the_donald and SRS
can't exist under the same reddit.com domain. I really wish /u/spez et al.
would take a hands-off approach except for cases where users are breaking the
law.

~~~
skybrian
Yep, that's the libertarian dream. It makes me nostalgic for the 90's when the
web was new.

Now we know that spam and abuse make any large Internet forum suck. Your
choice: moderation or cesspool.

Also, getting rid of the really extreme filth on the Internet is no fun and
people generally have to be paid to do it, which is one of the things that
keeps larger social networks in business.

~~~
ng12
I'm not convinced. Maybe a lot of people think of 4chan as a "cesspool" but I
think it's actually quite functional with minimal moderation. They have a
small volunteer staff to delete the absolute worst of the worst and let the
rest roam free. The most radical thing they've ever done is made containment
boards to keep the noise down.

I think the real problem is that sites like 4chan makes a tiny fraction of
what Reddit does.

~~~
skybrian
It works for 4chan's users or they wouldn't hang out there. But the level of
moderation is a competitive feature. Users decide where to hang out based on
the quality of discussion, and moderation has a direct effect on that (in both
directions - too heavy-handed or too hands-off).

Also, in the end, the people who host a forum get to choose whether they
really want to host a cesspool or not. If it's not working for them, they can
shut it down, or maybe outsource moderation to Facebook or Disqus.

------
city41
What would it take to show the current internet generation that what they
really want is usenet? It's impossible to alter a usenet post after it's been
sent out. It's decentralized, uncensored, has no economic interests of a
company to consider, and no worry of going away when the company calls it
quits. It's everything your average redditor wants.

~~~
wilde
Because spam-filtering and moderation are useful forms of censorship that keep
communities alive. In the US, I need to at least be able to remove child
pornography (and other illegal content) so that the FBI doesn't come after me.

------
tw04
I will once again point out the irony of r/The_Donald members constantly
complaining about SJWs being up in arms over their racist, sexist, homophobic
rants. Yet the second something like this drops, it's the end of the world.
Reddit as a whole is going to crumble because the CEO got sick of their
childish antics.

~~~
gamechangr
That's two totally different concepts.

It's one thing to "complaining about",,, generalizations. It's entirely
different for a CEO to abuse his power and censor those he disagrees with on a
social media site.

He should be let go for this! He is literally putting words in peoples
mouths!!

It calls into question the credibility of the whole site.

~~~
giarc
And yet Donald Trump is blocking his press core [0], calling for an end to SNL
because they made fun of him [1], telling CNN execs that they are all liars
[2], revoking credentials of the Washington Post [3] among many others [4].
Sure, the reddit CEO doing it is bad... the president elect though...

0\. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
election...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
elections/journalists-president-elect-donald-trump-press-freedom-blocked-
media-a7410806.html)

1\.
[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/78761255265415577...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/787612552654155776)

2\. [http://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2016/11/22/13714052/d...](http://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2016/11/22/13714052/donald-trump-nyt-media-fight-network)

3\. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-
revokes...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-revokes-post-
press-credentials-calling-the-paper-dishonest-and-
phony/2016/06/13/f9a61a72-31aa-11e6-95c0-2a6873031302_story.html)

4\. [http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/14/media/donald-trump-media-
bla...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/14/media/donald-trump-media-blacklist/)

~~~
gamechangr
Yeah - but imagine that Paul Graham w HN for example disagreed with your
position.

Let's say that instead of allowing you to express this last comment - he used
his admin privileges and made your comment PRO trump.

Do you see the difference? Having a strong opposing - even annoying -
demanding - opinion is not the same as impersonating others and censoring
their words.

HUGE HUGE DIFFERENCE

Does that make sense?

~~~
vehementi
No, let's instead say that you and all your pals were spamming "fuck pg" in a
"pg is a pedo" thread you made, and he changed your comments to instead say
"fuck gamechangr". That would be pretty funny. And also a HUGE HUGE DIFFERENCE
from "changing your political messaging to be for what it was supposed to be
against".

~~~
jpgvm
This is what I think is being lost on people.

People are getting too tied up in what this "potential power" and "loss of
integrity" means.

In reality is it means nothing. There never has been and never should be a
guarantee or even an assumption of integrity of comments posted on the
internet unless they are cryptographically signed.

He trolled some trolls for the lulz. It was a bad idea, hopefully he just
drops the banhammer on all of them next time. Hell, ban the entire subreddit
while you are at it for excessive harassment and be done with it.

------
arkadiyt
This post is decaying off of the front page of HN very quickly (every few
refreshes it drops a position or more), despite have more upvotes and being
posted more recently. Reddit is a YC company as well. Is this post being
artificially pushed down?

~~~
dang
Nope. Literally the first rule of HN moderation is that we don't do that—i.e.,
we moderate stories less, not more, when they're negative about YC or a YC
startup. Also, we were slacking this afternoon (where by slacking I mean
hacking on an arc compiler) and had no clue this thread existed.

It set off the overheated discussion detector (a.k.a. flamewar detector),
which lowers the rank of a thread. We do turn that penalty off for
particularly substantive discussions—which, though this may surprise you, I'm
not sure this one is. Not every Reddit drama shitshow is uniform in its
excellence. Can I say that without evil catnip effects?

Edit: ok, we've reduced the penalty and changed the title to something the
post actually says. (The submitted title, "Reddit CEO admits to altering user
comments that were critical of him", breaks the HN guideline about not
changing titles unless they are misleading or linkbait. Please don't do that
when submitting here.)

~~~
rkcr
What about people who just click on links and don't view comments? Won't they
be missing out just because the discussion in the comments isn't great?

~~~
dang
Story quality and comment quality have mystical connections.

------
ivix
This is genius really.

This act will cause /r/The_Donald to leave reddit, saying they don't trust
them anymore.

Those opposed to their antics will forgive /u/spez and stay.

The result is that reddit expels it's undesirable members without anything so
controversial as banning them.

~~~
gamechangr
"Those opposed to their antics WILL FORGIVE /u/spez"

That's wishful thinking if you ask me.

I'm "opposed to their antics" but I'm 10X more opposed to CEO's censoring
people and literally putting words in their mouth!

I feel sorry for those that would forgive that, if in fact many people on a
social media site would think that's "no biggy"

------
koolba
How did he make the changes to the comments? Is it via an audited admin
function available to Reddit staff or by directly modifying the backend data
store?

I ask because I want to figure out if anyone else that works at Reddit was
aware of this. It's one thing to have the top of the house do something this
betrayingly asinine, but I'd consider it _much_ worse if other staff at Reddit
were aware of this.

------
zone411
What made this situation more interesting is that Washington Post cited
comments from that edited thread in their article:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/11...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/11/23/fearing-yet-another-witch-hunt-reddit-bans-
pizzagate/). That's not a good look for Conde Nast - should the proper media
cites now have a disclaimer that the user "apparently" wrote such and such
post?

I would guess that this exposure is also the reason he edited this thread in
particular.

------
tsneed290
Could this hurt Reddit's credibility? Seems like it's kind of a big deal.

~~~
geuis
It might to some people. It doesn't for me though.

I personally want to see more corporate leadership taking responsibility and
leadership for backing up their personal views and those of their employees. A
good example is how Grubhub's CEO Matt Maloney sent a company-wide email about
the culture of the company that I respect quite a lot.
[http://media.grubhub.com/media/press-releases/press-
release-...](http://media.grubhub.com/media/press-releases/press-release-
details/2016/Inclusion-and-Tolerance-in-the-Workplace/default.aspx)

Now do I agree with exactly what /u/spez did? Personally, the vindictive part
of me likes the idea of fucking around with the morons in that subreddit. But
as the ceo of the company, no. If it was any employee that had done it, they
would likely have been terminated or at least had a severe write-up, no matter
how much the leadership agreed with it. But when its the ceo, I'm not sure
what the outcome will/should be.

To be completely honest, we have to remember that reddit is a company and not
the public airwaves. There is no requirement that it be a bastion of free
speech for all users. If I were running reddit, I would have banned that
subreddit months ago. Any users found to be making racist, homophobic,
hateful, or any other kind of similar commentary would have been permabanned a
long time ago. The internet is a big place and its already too full of
negativity. There are no socially positive reasons to provide places for it to
fester.

~~~
vogt
Maloney's email was terrible. I would never want to work for someone like
that, and never will if I can avoid it. It was a kind and wonderful thing to
send a company-wide email saying something to the tune of "If you ever feel
marginalized in any way, come to me personally, immediately." He then promptly
shat all over the goodwill by indirectly calling for Trump voters to quit.
Screw that. I would have loved to have seen a brazen employee call him on
that.

~~~
geuis
That's fair and I respect your point of view. But I have a different
perspective. I'll grant that emotions are still heightened from the election,
but if anything it has brought some long-term underlying issues to the
surface. I'm no longer comfortable working for/with people that take positions
that disenfranchise and discriminate against other people.

~~~
vogt
I actually think we agree more than it may seem, even if not entirely. I too
am no longer comfortable working for or with those people. I just think it's
egregiously bad form for a CEO to send a mass email calling for X group to
quit if Y. Whether that's that you voted for a political candidate, or
whatever. It's a pitchfork-y mentality that I think only serves to embolden
whoever the perceived opposition is, even if it's in the medium or long term
rather than the immediate. In this case, it's the racists/alt-right/etc. And
to me, actions like Maloney's only strengthen communities like /r/The_Donald.
Just my 2c.

~~~
geuis
Yeah I agree. Actually I'm not traveling for Thanksgiving. If you're in SF and
want to get lunch tomorrow send me a message at charles@geuis.com. Be happy to
chat for a bit.

------
jelder
Gas lighting is some pretty advanced abuse. I wonder how often this has
occurred before now.

------
Mao_Zedang
Reddit has been on the road to becoming digg for some time now, the only thing
propping them up is the lack of a decent alternative.

~~~
arca_vorago
I seriously considered trying to use elixir to start a new site with similar
intentions to hn/slashdot/reddit, but then I did a precursory search of all
the legal implications and it seems nightmarish to run a high-volume user
commenting site these days.

I've settled on a side project of just editorials that dissect the rhetoric
and logical strengths of current stories in aggregate.

I think the next version of reddit is going to have to be on a blockchain or
something decentralized and verifiable.

That being said, I really have to give props to the HN team for how well they
do their job technically and politically compared to most internet forum
sites.

~~~
jquip
Hi, I'd be very interested to be a part of that... PM if you need more hands

------
thekevan
In a slightly twisted way, his mistake is a good thing for the rest of us.
With this happening right along side as the "fake news on Facebook" stories
that are happening, it shows how so much of what we read on the internet could
have been altered or plain old fabricated and should be taken with a grain of
salt.

------
yarrel
Plugin to add crypto signatures to comments and validate them? :-)

~~~
brynjolf
In the past reddit mods and administration threatened to do someone who had a
system like that running, especially for direct messages

~~~
marcoperaza
Could you elaborate on this?

------
orthoganol
I don't understand HN rank algorithms. With 300+ points in 3 hours I would
expect this to be at the very top, not sliding off the front page.

~~~
grzm
See this thread for some details:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027367)

Short (incomplete) answer: it tripped the flame war detector and has likely
been flagged by a number of users.

------
rednerrus
This is the perfect ploy to get conspiracy nuts to leave Reddit. I'm sure spez
is tired of dealing with the pizzagate cats and he thought this was the best
way to drive them off without creating a bigger shitstorm by telling them all
to get fucked.

------
gormo2
Made this comment in the other (flagged) thread. Here goes:

I agree it was not nefarious, but it was a decision that shows unbelievably
poor judgement, especially for a CEO. I'd be surprised if he keeps his
position. He's undermined his fundamental role as the leader of one of the
biggest social media sites by violating the trust that users put into the
site's administration.

The context as I understand it involves some ravenous hordes of conspiracy-
theory redditors promulgating fake news stories and doxxing innocent people.
However, by changing the text of these users comments, whatever their actions,
and by admitting to it, Steve has opened the floodgates. Now there is no
question -- in the minds of these users -- that the site is truly "against
them" and willing to not only censor them but to rewrite history as they see
it. They can no longer trust anything they read on the site.

But what is worse is the effect and message this sends to normal users. How
can, for instance, any person safely participate in an AMA now? When the real
possibility exists to have their words changed out from under them, and no way
to prove they aren't in fact the author? And from that, why would anyone post
anything potentially personally identifiable, if (in their mind) some
disgruntled admin could modify what they said to include false yet humiliating
or criminal things (e.g., throw in racial epithets, link to porn, admit
adultery / drug use) that might eventually link back to them. And how far does
this go? Can admins send PMs under the name of other users? What else? To me
at least, the scary thing is that Reddit posts that _only obliquely_ reference
personal information have already been used as the basis for surveillance and
legal action [1]...

And taking one final step back, from a business side this drama goes beyond
just being unprofessional. Reddit posts are now often linked to from news
articles. How can the media trust the source they link to? If the content of
posts are 'up for grabs' to be edited by admins in the minds of users and the
media (even if they aren't in reality), then one of Reddit's functions that is
growing in importance -- that is, news-making -- may be stymied.

Harming trust is extremely dangerous for social platforms. And when it is the
CEO themselves doing the harm, it could very well border on being suicidal for
the site.

[1]
[https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/58hae4/what_is_a_...](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/58hae4/what_is_a_piece_of_reddit_history_every_redditor/d90lago/)

------
CalChris
This reminds me of Jimmy Wales editing his bio:

[https://www.wired.com/2005/12/wikipedia-founder-edits-own-
bi...](https://www.wired.com/2005/12/wikipedia-founder-edits-own-bio/)

------
draw_down
I get why this is bad but the lack of perspective is kind of astonishing. I
mean these insane idiots will not give up this stupid idea of some pedophile
conspiracy they think they've uncovered. And they don't care whose name they
shit on. But edit their internet posts and they scream bloody murder. They can
lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and _this_ is what will
get talked about.

I'm very pessimistic about the future.

------
sweetsweetpie
People seem to be treating their comments with some kind of sanctity. These
changes are most copy-and-replace for humorous effect (message boards in the
past have done it). Surely it is obvious that the Reddit staff has the ability
to edit or delete comments.

Users might think this is a breach of trust, but I really cant make that jump.

The important thing is that the_donald followers need a controversy to latch
onto and will do so.

~~~
vnchr
Surely if Jack Dorsey edited someone's tweet or Eric Schmidt edited a Gmail
user's email, that would be cause for great concern. Which user or users it
happened to is irrelevant to the breach of trust it represents to all users of
the platform.

~~~
rspeer
On the other hand, didn't moot auto-edit people's 4chan comments all the time?
I'm told this is where the current meaning of "weeaboo" came from, because
moot was sick of the word "wapanese".

Although this is an odd thread to use Urban Dictionary as an authoritative
source, that's what I've got: [1]

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Weeaboo&defid...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Weeaboo&defid=1427331)

------
randomname2
Leaks from the reddit admin slack channel show the motivations behind this:

[http://archive.is/ZmULb](http://archive.is/ZmULb)

Apparently a long history of harrassment from the subreddit in question
finally made /u/spez retaliate. The leaks further show the admin team is
planning to deal with the subreddit in a more definitive way.

------
dbg31415
Ok, so Reddit has been filled with some pretty "deplorable" characters as of
late... and to censor them and edit comments... holy fuck, these are not the
people you want to do that to. Especially given that they will self-destruct
if you just leave them alone. Fueling the fire like this... honestly that's
some horrific judgement on the part of u/Spez. Probably time for a new CEO.

But... then again... Reddit's best days are behind it. Doesn't really matter
who is at the helm.

* Reddit is still in turmoil | Hacker News || [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12140603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12140603)

------
koliber
How do we know his apology is real?

Maybe he posted "I did not do this. Get off my back people. I don't know what
is going on here."

Later, another admin may have gone in and changed Spez's comment to read "Yep.
I messed with the ...".

(I'm being facetious)

------
philfrasty
„...getting called a pedophile constantly...“ Why?

~~~
ww520
From what I have seen. It seems Reddit has shut down a subreddit whose people
are in the midst of investigating pedophile rings.

~~~
arama471
So /r/pizzagate was a subreddit convinced they'd found evidence of a pedophile
ring in the government and more specifically implicating Hilary Clinton. They
were recently shut down because they kept publishing people's information
(which is against reddit ToS _even if said info is publicly available_). This
prompted them to assume reddit admins were part of said ring. I assume /u/spez
has been receiving accusations since.

~~~
threeseed
Based on zero evidence they believed that Podesta and Clinton were molesting
children in the bathrooms of a NY Pizzeria.

They then proceeding to post the owners information and make death threats
against him and his staff.

Absolutely despicable behaviour. And completely criminal.

~~~
ibejoeb
It is a DC pizzeria

~~~
cies
And there was some evidence. Like people hanging out with convicted pedos,
quickly removing symbolics from their sites, emails in Podesta's inbox, and
more.

~~~
ibejoeb
You're getting downvoted because people don't like it, but you're right.
People who don't like it don't read about it, and that gives rise to denial
and lack of knowledge, like "in the bathrooms of a NY Pizzeria."

If you think it's entirely implausible that there could be organized
pedophilia operating out of DC, you're not being honest with yourself. Look at
what happened in Norway 4 days ago.

I'm not interested in discussing politics on HN--and I'm not referring solely
to this theory--but I am concerned when people are not intellectually curious
enough to consider even _hear_ an argument.

------
notaplumber
/r/The_Donald is such an Internet cesspool.

~~~
georgemcbay
The Internet is such an Internet cesspool these days. You won't believe what
happens next!

------
makecheck
This type of breach of trust could be used to help educate people on what
digital security really means, and to demand real security in all parts of
their digital lives. It is also good to demand _multiple layers_ of security.

Reddit is "https", and did that help here? No, in the sense that it only
ensured the unaltered delivery of _what Reddit was sending_. It did nothing to
preserve the integrity of comments that were originally written. This was not
a “secure” web site for this case, yet many people would _assume so_ due to
the one layer of security that was present and prominently displayed in the
browser! Now extend this to any given web site, and data that is far more
important than a stupid comment. Real security is not trivial, and figuring
out a good way to manage trusted parties is especially hard.

------
sergiotapia
Reddit can no longer be sourced by any media outlet because of this. How can
any comment be valid on Reddit anymore?

Reddit's credibility is gone __forever __. No going back.

~~~
rawrmaan
Don't worry, media outlets generally don't care about vailidity.

------
Fej
Am I the only one who isn't really concerned with this?

spez was engaging in a bit of the Internet pastime... trolling. It wasn't some
conspiracy to control information on reddit, he was just having fun. Dastardly
fun, yes, but fairly innocent, all things considered.

------
heisenbit
As one who moderated a smaller forum for a while in the past:

1) Direct access to the database at times is needed particularly for bulk
edits. In our forum we had certain bans and not all were immediately enforced
by the posting software. Some were done in bulk operations down at the
database level.

2) Manual semi bulk edits at time were done in places where scripts simple
were too much work to get right.

3) Manual direct individual edits also at times happened but they are
incredibly dangerous as they can erode the confidence in the site. From what I
saw at multiple forum the temptation is very high at the top to rationalize
such edits and it tends to work against them badly.

4) Edits at database level often leave little to no trace. That is one reason
that makes them so dangerous. At production level _very_ few should have
access to the DB for accountability reasons.

5) Nobody really likes DB level edits but they are needed and done. The forum
software and support scripts do not cover all situations. Getting 100% rid of
them is unrealistic. For audit reasons logging original posts in a tamper
proof place may be wise but is rarely done.

6) Clearly someone has abused privileges here, I'm fairly sure such edits are
not condoned by any internal guidelines. There must be consequences.

7) Personal consequences. This is about ethics, behavior and trust. These
things are not all b&w. Was he hiding the behavior? Is there insight? Are
there mitigating circumstances? Also is he the right guy for the job
considering the job description requires flame retardant skin? The board needs
to look into this carefully and quickly.

8) Organizational consequences. How can they make sure this does not happen
again? Do they have all the right controls in place? Are they are properly
separating the roles. Should they get audited? The threat for an organization
to suffer from catastrophic cyber events increased incredibly. It used be be
groups of people revolting on boards. These days certain sites reach out to
sizable fractions of the US electorate and whip up attacks (recent: Kelly's
book on Amazon or CNN's app in the app store). Very solid organizational and
technical controls are needed for a place that so easily gets into the cross-
hairs of a mob.

------
ENOTTY
This is quite concerning. I do wonder if blockchain could fix the problem of
stealth edits by privileged users.

~~~
rspeer
It would fix the problem by making commenting require insane amounts of
computation, thus making it require transaction fees, thus making nobody
comment, thus making there be no comments to edit, right?

------
Yhippa
I still have no idea what /r/pizzagate is all about.

~~~
MicroBerto
The more you research, the more horrifying it is. I'd not recommend looking
into it if you don't want to go down a rabbit hole, be thoroughly creeped out,
and have your day completely ruined.

------
std_throwaway
In my eyes reddit quality, especially the frontpage, is declining year over
year and it's not really getting better. It might be my age but I'm less and
less interested in the content which gets all the upvotes. Also, the bigger
subreddits seem to show this decline where quality discussion doesn't happen
anymore.

Is there actually a long-term analysis about how reddit content and discussion
changed over the years?

------
brilliantcode
I'm seeing reddit's user base as less and less valuable. There is so much
active disinformation with purchased reddit accounts (because aged accounts
attract less suspicions) that's ripe with vote manipulation.

By actively triggering reddit's vote manipulation trigger on somebody's
comment, you effectively have a way to censor and control information and how
it's portrayed.

Reddit CEO directly altering user's comments that criticize him seems to
signal that the platform is incapable or unwilling to address the poor value
proposition of a purely anonymous based social networks that serves as stage
for anyone with the monetary and networking resource to manipulating the
casually browsing redditor and their opinion .

------
necessity
Not surprising at all.

~~~
grzm
Why? Would you add some context to your comment?

~~~
necessity
Reddit is known for censoring subreddits the admins do not like or when
they're involved in some drama, they have a specific algorithm to filter out
Trump's subreddit from /r/all[1][2], the default subs are strictly aligned
with the admins' political views, and recently the CEO mocked Facebook's
knowledge of their users data saying that at Reddit they know not only what
one publicly speaks (such as in Facebook), but also their users "darkest
secrets" (in an interview about advertising on Reddit).

[1]
[https://voat.co/v/MeanwhileOnReddit/1373659](https://voat.co/v/MeanwhileOnReddit/1373659)
[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/shittychangelog/comments/59s3ao/red...](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittychangelog/comments/59s3ao/reddit_change_rall_algorithm_changes/)

~~~
lllorddino
> Reddit is known for censoring subreddits the admins do not like

r/The_Donald mods were censoring all comments against Donald Trump (hence why
they didn't reach r/all)

> the CEO mocked Facebook's knowledge of their users data saying that at
> Reddit they know not only what one publicly speaks (such as in Facebook),
> but also their users "darkest secrets" (in an interview about advertising on
> Reddit).

It was clearly a joke taken out of context from conspiracy theorist.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
Moderators can run their subreddits however they see fit. They're the ones who
create the rules and they're the ones that enforce the rules, as long as they
don't break the rules of reddit itself. Admins, on the other hand, should not
favor one subreddit over the other.

~~~
mxvzr
Why do you make that distinction? AFAIK reddit is not a free speech platform.

~~~
cargo8
Because mods aren't paid and are generally put in power by their specific
community to uphold the communally agreed upon standards and rules.

Admins are paid employees of a company (reddit) that provides a platform for
communities and discussion. If the platform itself is biased, then it is not
really a platform but rather a specific media / viewpoint forum.

The distinction matters.

------
xupybd
Wow people are freaking out. In a couple of months everyone will forget.

He got stressed and did something unprofessional. But at the end of the day
it's just reddit. The world will not end.

Anyone know if there is a way to shout him a beer. Sounds like that man needs
a cold one and some quiet time.

------
zedadex
> the only thing he secretly altered was the target of the insults

Basically irrelevant. One hell of a veil to pierce.

This isn't even the first time reddit's indicated they're kind of... flexible,
let's say, with how they handle certain kinds of data; but it always seemed
like they stopped just short of crossing lines.

Unmarked edits to user comments was absolutely not something I'd've expected
to come of that, so I can't say I'm not surprised; still, this seems like it's
just the next stage of something that's always seemed to exist (or not exist,
I suppose) for them.

------
idbehold
Why didn't he simply delete them? Editing their comments seems so odd.

~~~
noobermin
Clearly to troll them.

------
return0
was he drunk or in urgent need of a break? OTOH , good of him to take the
responsibility immediately. OTOH, maybe he even wanted to send a message to
those who rely too much in reddit's freedom.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
No, he was tired and emotional.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=z49LjJj3VTI](https://youtube.com/watch?v=z49LjJj3VTI)

~~~
sundvor
Brilliant. I had no idea, got to love the British culture.

~~~
noir_lord
Parts of it at least and I say that as a Brit, if you like our comedy check
out Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.

~~~
sundvor
I grew up on those shows. :) Might be worth a rewatch.

------
healthnutter
FWIW, I have had a number of incidents with sketchy "content" on reddit over
the years. This incident with content modification is in alignment with my
experiences.

------
z3t4
There are a lot of politics going on on communities like these. And there are
a lot of trolling, people attempting and sometimes successfully summon mobs,
sometimes for amusement, sometimes with an agenda. Do not underestimate stupid
people in large groups!

------
imode
awesome work spez, you're now liable for everything your users do on your site
due to your actions.

have fun dealing with the outcome of this. I don't envy you, but this was your
decision.

------
kfo1187
This election (seen from outside as a storm in a glass of water) undermined
America's best appeal as the only place with the first amendment. Please
remain free.

------
LordFrith
I would be pretty annoyed if a good chunk of the paranoid pizzagate believing
Internet spent all day calling me a pedophile.

------
sidcool
I am /r/outoftheloop. What happened?

------
rfrank
Why was the title changed from "Reddit CEO" to "I"? Seems very asinine.

~~~
dang
When a story is written in the first person it's common for the title to say
"I". Sometimes we put those in quotation marks but then we'd have nested
quotes in this one.

As for why changed, see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027515)
and the replies.

~~~
CarpetBench
I think you're doing a great job. Moderating threads and submissions that are
basically guaranteed to be shitshows (like this one) is an incredibly
thankless job.

Thanks for keeping it together, and thanks for keeping this from going off the
rails.

------
winteriscoming
Am on mobile and that link keeps giving a "something went wrong page" on
reddit

------
ktamiola
Haha! Long live "freedom" of speech!

------
adamconroy
shouldn't he be saying i fucked up?

------
wruza
I didn't get all the drama even after reading top HN comments. Am I completely
lost?

------
Lily52Lily
If you don't trust auditd

~~~
Lily52Lily
No

------
jabgrabdthrow
How pathetic

------
qwertyuiop924
I was surprised. This was wrong of me.

Reddit (the company) is a wretched hive of scum an villany, where this sort of
stuff seems almost regular. Perhaps it wasn't always so: I don't know.

But I can't think of any other forum that would put up with this. If an owner
or mod did this on the *chans, the chan in question would be abandoned within
the week.

As for HN, dang does as he sees fit, as do the admins: they'll split your
thread, redact your post (and if they doesn't, the software will if it gets
flagged enough, IIRC), and (or so I heard) even shadowban you of you're bad
enough. However, they're mostly right, and not corrupt. And they wouldn't pull
crap like this. Blocking a comment that talks about how HN is just a massive
circlejerk is one thing: actually altering it to say something else is quite
another.

I suppose it might be common on forums run by egotistical gits, but come on,
you're heading a company running a large forum/news aggregator. You can do
better than an egomaniac with a website.

~~~
VintageCool
The rest of reddit will accept this because everyone hates /r/the_donald
anyway. That subreddit is an abuse of the system already.

~~~
noobermin
This brings up memories of when moot messed with /pol/. He turned off the spam
prevention scripts and captcha, made every post look like a doubles post, and
let an audio recording of cuck porn play on the board page. That was sort of
expected from moot though and it was 4chan after all.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Well, yes.

 _but he didn 't mess with any of the content of any messages._

If he did, the entire chan would have gone up in flames.

~~~
tcryvt
The content was subject to a large amount of wordfilters at the time, which
would alter half the posts.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
...but those were public. It's one thing to have a computer run search and
replace on every post in the board. It's quite another to have a mod
specifically edit _your_ post, making it look like you said something you
didn't.

------
geuis
Please stop using this "alt-right" terminology. All its doing is trying to put
a neutral label on a group of vile people. People that are blatantly racist,
misogynist, and just anti-American. These are the same kinds of monsters that
started the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" in the 1930's. They
used the same rhetoric and played on desperate people's fears and prejudices.

My grandparents didn't fight on two fronts to see this bullshit taking over
the United States.

~~~
siddboots
I think the "alt-right" term has its use. After all, not all of the people we
are talking about here are sadistic monsters. Even among those engaging in the
juvenile, antagonistic bigotism and bullying that is pervasive on
/r/the_donald are a large group of otherwise reasonable people who feel
alienated by the progressive left, and have simply bought into the all of the
recent rhetoric against political correctness.

Those people have been mislead, to be sure, but it isn't accurate or useful to
assume they are malicious.

~~~
yolesaber
Impact matters more than intent.

------
maverick_iceman
Stalin would be proud of this guy. (They practice the same brand of politics
after all.)

------
maverick_iceman
Combine it with Milo's getting banned by Twitter, Doordash's CEO asking for
Trump supporters to resign - a not very pretty picture of Silicon Valley
emerges.

~~~
vowelless
Grub hub not door dash. And it was not trump supporters, but people who
supported his racist views.

~~~
tomp
Can you explain how Trump's views are "racist"? AFAIK, he criticised _criminal
illegal_ Mexican immigrants, not even a whole nationality, let alone a whole
race!

------
perseusprime11
Shit some people do to stay relevant. That's all I have to say.

------
moron4hire
There is a reason I'm on HN and not on Reddit. Please don't spill your petty
in-fighting over to other sites.

------
intopieces
Usernames on Reddit do not require even an email address. For that reason, I
find it hard to muster up even a modicum of concern for the sanctity of
'authorship' and 'attribution' for individual users. For all I know, every
comment on Reddit but my own are generated by a very clever computer.

That congress sees fit to investigate Reddit comments and news websites find
credibility in re-posting them are separate issues that absolutely deserve
discussion. But the editing of "Fuck [username]" posts...

~~~
marcoperaza
Many people post on Reddit under their real identity. Now it is madness to do
so, as a malicious Reddit employee can frame you as having said anything.

~~~
intopieces
This has always been the case. It has always been madness to post on user
forums under your real identity. In the 'viral era' \-- the age of mobile
broadband, the age where any post you make or photo you send can get the
attention of millions and ruin your career before your plane lands [0] -- it's
pure madness to expose yourself like this.

[0][http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-
tw...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-
justine-saccos-life.html)

~~~
sundvor
Reading that is both sad and scary at the same time. White Christmas (of Black
Mirror) certainly doesn't look so science fiction anymore.

