
Reddit Readies For ‘Inter-website War,’ Major Subreddits Ban Links to Gawker - iProject
http://betabeat.com/2012/10/reddit-readies-for-brewing-inter-website-war-bans-links-to-gawker-media/
======
mnicole
I was ready to be on board with this just because Gawker is such a mess, but
anyone that follows r/SubredditDrama knows of Violentacruz and r/creepshots
just shouldn't exist. I find it surprising that Reddit moderators are going so
far as to do this for the sake of someone that is putting hundreds, if not
thousands, of women at risk of being stalked or otherwise victimized by the
type of people that think there's nothing wrong with posting pictures them to
gawk at or make fun of. I really wanted a site like Reddit to work and be able
to function without too much politics or this kind of childish crap, but this
is really taking the cake and encouraging me to build out another alternative.

There was a great discussion on the implications a subreddit like r/creepshots
can have on r/TwoXChromosomes last week. I haven't visited the site yet today,
but I'd imagine they just alienated their entire female userbase (myself
included), as if the users of that site didn't do enough of that already.

Edit: Can I get explanations for the downvotes?

~~~
127
What is exactly wrong with taking pictures of clothed people on public places
without their knowledge? I thought this happens all the damn time. Before the
collective PC hysteria I saw /r/creepshots mostly as an oddity. Strange people
doing strange things.

If /r/creepshots gets banned it will be just another step towards suppression
of completely legal speech, because of emotional hyperventilation that has no
basis in reality.

~~~
mnicole
Because it is targeting people for the sole intention of harassing them at a
global level. The TwoX thread had a few stories of people finding out second-
hand that they were posted on there, how demeaning it was and how powerless
they felt to do anything about it. They then had to deal with the
repercussions of other friends/family/co-workers coming across it and all of
the sleezy or insulting things said in the comments about them. No one
deserves that.

Now think if the picture was taken at or around their workplace and what could
happen. I can only imagine that there are bottomfeeders out there who went out
of their way to try to locate where one of these women was.

While doxxing someone isn't the answer, something needs to be done so that
bullies/trolls get the help they need and we can prevent something terrible
from happening to one of the people posted.

~~~
127
All I see is suppression of free speech because it made somebody feel bad.
Nothing actually illegal.

I'm pretty sure I can't just relate to how this makes women feel. If somebody
took my pictures without me knowing about it and a thread about the picture
talking "nice ass" "what a handsome guy" it would just raise my self-esteem.

Of course I would think these women (or gay men) would be weird and a little
sad, but nothing more.

Freedom of speech is not meant to protect someones feelings. It is in fact
because of the opposite. It is meant to protect speech that can hurt someones
feelings. Sure, they can be judged by the content of that speech but they
should still be allowed to say it.

Only exceptions I can see to this are hate speech and child porn.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
So you're pro-doxxing, then, right? Addresses and phone numbers are public
record anyway, right? Why should I care if a submitter "feels bad" about his
personal info leaking onto the net?

~~~
127
I have two exceptions to free speech: child porn and hate speech. Doxxing is
dangerously close to hate speech. Its only purpose is to root out the guy or
girl who made a controversial statement and punish him or her for making it.
Without anonymity it is often difficult and dangerous to express reasonable,
but truly controversial ideas.

------
untog
I'm in two minds about this, mainly because I have an utter lack of sympathy
for both sides.

I'm a regular redditor, and in all honesty I wasn't aware of any of any of
this drama- I don't go to any of the creppy, weird subreddits mentioned, and
have long since removed /r/politics from my front page. So, "Reddit" isn't
readying for anything- just some overly militant subreddits.

~~~
potatolicious
Ditto, I've only heard very minor murmurs about this, having unsubscribed from
_all_ of the default subreddits save /r/gaming. /r/politics, /r/atheism, etc,
are just cesspools of ignorance as bad as the people they lampoon daily.

I'm also having a hard time drumming up sympathy for Gawker - they have
_consistently and repeatedly_ proven themselves to be complete
unprofessionals, have _zero_ journalistic integrity or credibility, and have
some of the worst, borderline libelous "reporting" I've seen on any major
blogs.

It's like Violentacres and Gawker are built for each other - morally I'd
consider them in the same ballpark.

~~~
thwest
I don't think it is useful to frame this as forums drama (which it certainly
is on the surface), but as community self-policing. Yes, /r/politics,
/r/atheism and Gawker are pretty similar, featuring shallow identity politics
in easily consumable outrage-of-the-day snack packages.

But /r/politics and /r/atheism aren't the targets. Did you see /r/jailbait,
/r/upskirt, /r/CreepShots, etc before they were taken down? Do you really put
child porn, upskirt photos, and trading strategies for creeping on
unsuspecting women in public in the same moral ballpark as shitty journalism?

/r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and
shame the participants. Sexual predators need to be confronted globally in any
forum they are present in, and community confrontation is exactly what most of
the offenders need. The presence of Gawker in the affair is a small price to
pay to help reduce sexual violence.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"/r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and
> shame the participants."_

I really, really heavily disagree here. /r/ShitRedditSays is very much the
opposite end of the spectrum from /r/creepshots (et al), and having the
pendulum swing completely in the other direction is, IMO, just as bad.

Look at the content of /r/ShitRedditSays. Like, really look at it as a whole
with a critical eye - you have a few truly egregious things getting called
out, then you have people getting into a populist rage-fest over inane
stupidity, and you also get a very large chunk of simply harassing people for
going against groupthink/being controversial.

/r/ShitRedditSays is _exactly_ the sort of censorship we don't want - i.e., an
organized cabal of users who enforce their ideology on everyone else by means
of harassment, ad hominem attacks, labeling, and drumming up massive populist
outrage. Go up against /r/srs? Congrats, you are now a misogynistic racist
gay-bashing bigot, regardless of what you _actually_ said. Once /r/srs readers
hook onto a thread all semblance of discussion stops. Silent downvotes plunge
posts into oblivion with nary an explanation, combined with a litany of
outraged replies, name-calling, and ad hominem attacks.

They're not the objective observers they think they are - like every other
subreddit they have evolved their own groupthink and notion of what is
acceptable and not, and it happens that they've settled into a fairly narrow
definition of acceptable content (whereas /r/creepshots have a _very very_
wide definition of acceptable content).

No, just no. /r/ShitRedditSays is _not_ the solution to /r/creepshots and the
like. You go from an open community with a fringe, disturbing element... to a
closed community that toes the party line, or else.

------
omgsean
Violentacrez is a scumbag and the fact that redditors are willing to stand
behind him as some sort of show of reddit brotherhood is a large part of the
reason why I don't go there much anymore.

~~~
danielweber
0\. Violentacrez sure seems to be disgusting, based on his online persona.

1\. If you stand for free speech, you are going to be defending assholes and
thugs and people who say disgusting things. We don't need free speech for
people who emit rainbows. The ACLU defended the KKK's right to march, not
because they thought the KKK was a bunch of nice guys or that the KKK would
ever return the favor if the ACLU were in trouble.

2\. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing that
isn't allowed on reddit. Either they have the policy that doxxing is horrible
or they don't.

~~~
girlvinyl
Re: Freespeech. No one is asking the government to censor reddit. Users are
taking things into their own hands because the private company that owns
reddit refuses to moderate completely inappropriate material. The system is
working just as it should.

~~~
potatolicious
This is a fairly typical position - i.e. private corporations are under no
obligation to protect free speech, therefore censorship in a private context
is okay.

Which is an argument that flies _legally_ , but not morally depending on what
you believe.

If you believe in free speech, then using the fact that your website is
private to censor others is not a violation of the law, but it certainly seems
like a violation of your own declared ideology. Which is to say, you would
support free speech until it got inconvenient.

Reddit as a community seems to place a high value on free speech, so while
they're under no _legal_ obligation to keep things open, it would be a
violation of its own declared ideology if they started censoring.

Note that I don't miss the creepy subreddits at all, but if you're one of the
people on /r/politics, /r/atheism, or whatever who are quoting Voltaire all
the time, it seems hypocritical to call for censorship.

~~~
girlvinyl
The speech of these users is still free, but there are consequences to what
they say. For example, the consequence here is that their creepshots results
in others naming them and exercising their own right to speech as well. I'm
also not at all calling for censorship. As I said, the creeps want their free
speech and are getting it, as well as others exercising their rights too. I do
think it is quite unfair that the tumblr with names was deleted, but again,
Tumblr has a right to police their site as they see fit.

Ultimately, I think it is exploitative of the reddit corporation and their
masters to allow completely disgusting and clearly immoral content. This is
2012. The internet isn't the wild west anymore.

~~~
Tipzntrix
It's Reddit mods (volunteers) who started the banning only on their
SubReddits. The admin and real staff haven't done anything (except ban
/r/jailbait I suppose).

------
HyprMusic
What always worries me is how accurate these dox are? What happens if they
wrongly accuse someone? The internet is very unforgiving and it could
literally ruin someone's life. They shouldn't be taking vigilante actions like
this, especially endorsed by a company like Gawker. Although I disagree with
the concept of these subreddits, this should be reported to the police - or
worst case confront the users first. There seems to be little indication of
this.

Take a look here, someone has already apparently been attacked because of
these:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/CreepSquad/comments/11b39y/modpost_l...](http://www.reddit.com/r/CreepSquad/comments/11b39y/modpost_last_night_following_the_publishing_of_a/)

Gawker has proved time & time again that it is a vile, ruthless company, I
really wish this is an internet-wide ban.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
> What always worries me

Concern troll red flag.

These people run multiple subreddits dedicated to ruining lives for sexual
gratification and celebrity. I couldn't give less of a crap about what happens
to them.

~~~
HyprMusic
Read my post. My concerns are with the wrong people being doxed. As far as I'm
aware, Doxing is not a precise art - there's a huge degree of guess work.
Guess work tends not to be right 100% of the time.

------
peto123
I am also a redditor and some of the subreddits are a really high-quality
communities. What I don't understand is, why the reddit owners allow even the
most disgusting and inhumane stuff to be posted, as long as it isn't illegal.

I am not sure if it is just because of the personal preference of the owners,
or they do not want to waste time with enforcing at least basic civility, or
is it some inherent part of the reddit's success that anything not illegal is
allowed to be posted there?

It is actually an interesting moral question: Is someone allowed to publicly
deanonymize someone else?

------
engtech
I was confused because I thought violentacrez was some how related to the now-
defunct mommy-blogger-hating blog <http://www.violentacres.com/>

Just a coincidence, I guess.

And that just goes to show you the danger of writing anonymously on the
Internet, the next person to use the same nickname as you might be a drama-
causing pedo.

Does anyone know if there's some source for "violent acres / violet acres"
that they're both riffing off of?

~~~
danielweber
That was the start. One really weird thing at the beginning was that reddit
loved the story (probably made up) of violentacres purposefully causing a car
crash, but in other threads with different contexts, they would consider
people purposefully causing a car crash as completely bad, no other
information required.

