
Reddit’s CEO edited comments that criticized him - rmason
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments
======
vvdcect
A little bit of backstory from r/outoftheloop on this issue :

To explain what's happened to anyone not wanting to dig through the threads,
Spez, the CEO of Reddit, has admitted to editing some comments on The_Donald.
Specifically, he changed mentions of his name in insults to the usernames of
The_Donald moderators. According to his comment, he did this for about an hour
before stopping. His comment states that he was very stressed over dealing
with the removal of r/pizzagate and being called a pedophile for it, resulting
in him going out of line and making edits to comments. He also says that he
won't do it again, and that the community management team is angry with him.

The Reddit admins have had a strained relationship with the moderators and
users of The_Donald, for multiple reasons. For a lot of users there, this
validates some beliefs about the admin's treatment towards them, specifically
that they make an active effort to censor their content. Other users on the
site feel like this sets a dangerous precedent, as it demonstrates the admins
can and have edited comments without disclosure. Further users feel like,
while Spez made a mistake, he was unfairly treated and harassed by TheDonald
and his response was an understandable outburst.

Now, people around the site are wondering what the repercussions of this will
be. Some question if Spez will be removed from his position over this. Some
wonder if the admins will come forward and admit they've edited comments in
the past. Others wonder if a significant population from The_Donald will
migrate to Voat, a Reddit alternative.

~~~
joshontheweb
He out trolled the trolls then fixed it and fessed up. No big deal. Pretty
funny in fact.

~~~
neximo64
There's a bit of cognitive dissonance in this view, i don't think its funny
from the point of view of the commenter.

Imagine that happened if the political viewpoint of the commenter aligned with
something you were not against? Or what if there are edits that Spez isn't
mentioning that are more intrusive than what he's admitted to? A commenters
own text isn't his own.. It's a slippery slope.

~~~
DSMan195276
I understand your point, but at the same time I don't feel like anybody
thought they didn't have the capability to do such a thing. If you have
control of the site and control of the data, it's not a stretch to imagine
they can edit anything they want.

I'll be honest and say that if I was actually worried about such a thing
happening, I'd go somewhere else. The bottom line is that Reddit doesn't exist
to serve /r/the_donald - and that's not a shot at /r/the_donald, just that
clearly it's priorities and Reddit's priorities are fairly different. If I was
involved with something that I thought the admins weren't ok with, then I
would take it somewhere else because I'd be well aware it's the admin's site
to mess with in anyway they please. Even if they 'promise' not to do anything,
there's no guarantee. Other sites that align more with their views could give
them much better guarantees of that sort.

I'm in agreement with you though, to a point - I think it was a horrible move
on Spez's part and I don't really find it funny. But while I (along with
probably everybody else) didn't personally think something like this would
happen, I didn't ever hold the opinion that it _couldn 't_ happen, just that
the admins were smart enough not to do something like this, and that the
admins had no reason to bother with my posts (And none of my posts are really
that important anyway). If I had reason to suspect that the admins didn't like
my stuff being there and was concerned about it, I'd go somewhere else. It's
no different then why I wouldn't store sensitive information _only_ on Google
Drive - Google has full control over it and could take it off on a whim if
they really wanted.

------
Lazare
What an amazing multi-level clusterfuck.

You either need to ban /r/TheDonald, or just accept it for what it is, hold
your nose, and walk away. I believe that I'd choose the former, but if I had
the power to do so I might feel differently.

But this is the worst possible thing. It makes Spez look horrible, it
undermines trust in the site and the admins, it confirms all the nutty things
the alt-right believes about Reddit, etc. It makes actually dealing with any
of the underlying issues much harder; anything that the admins do which is or
might look anti-The_Donald can now be spun as "another example of their bias".
And since we've already got such a glaring example of that bias, the claim is
now plausible in a way it wasn't before.

Should have just quietly banned the sub and moved on. Or _not_ banned it and
ignored it. Anything but this.

~~~
Keepo
Can you please explain why you think /r/TheDonald should be banned? Should
they be banned just because they have different political view than you do? Or
is it because such opinions are not allowed on reddit as whole? This touches
something that is bothering me when sites like reddit look like they are
apolitical but clearly that is not the case. They picked side (which is
completely fine) and in very non transparent way are punishing anyone who
doesn't share their opinions (which is not). For the other side it then looks
like its all part of hidden conspiracy when in fact it is just people running
the site who cannot accept that not everybody shares their view on the world.

~~~
BoorishBears
I think they should be banned because last times subs were banned the message
was pretty clear: If your sub's influence starts to leak elsewhere on Reddit
(with its users acting collectively being the key), you'll be banned.

The "fat people hate" sub seemed to be banned, not even for its subject
matter, but because it's users were spreading their mess into other subreddits
as a group. From what I've seen, the same thing is happening with The_Donald

~~~
basch
/r/nfl should be banned because paytonface.jpg has leaked?

this ideas of "things we like can leak" but "speech that annoys us should be
quarantined" is dangerous.

personally I find t_d somewhat useful to peak inside and see what the
community is thinking on a given day. i can go read the liberal media for a
while, see how Sessions is a racist, then peak into t_d and see the rebuttal.
maybe if /r/politics was neutral /r/t_d wouldnt be necessary, but personally I
like being able to see what each thought group is up to.

~~~
basch
furthermore, you have admin sanctioned sections, like /r/srs, which are
designed to mock opposite views.

the admins have tried again and again to suppress a pro-inscere type of
speaker who speak in mocking hyperbole and not-literally. now they have
grouped into one place, with an ideology (of anti pc speak) that took over a
country.

you could argue the liberal pc "polite discourse" tolerance (of everything non
white) was winning on reddit. but it didnt last.

t_d is now the anti-liberalism counterculture. the majority suppressing a
counterculture they dont like never goes well. the ideas spread and last, and
breaking up the places they congregate can make them more sympathetic victims.
admins are treading on dangerous ground, and have been for a while.

------
edblarney
If he did this without indicating that he did so, then I'd argue that this is
a very deep breach of trust, irrespective of the nature of the comments. He
could have deleted them, or flagged some 'bad words' and indicated so.

This is an issue of integrity, so it's one of those 'fireable offences' type
things.

I have no idea who this guy is, and certainly, many 'big corp' CEO's get away
with much worse ... but it's definitely a problem.

Anyhow. Not good.

~~~
naner
Pretty dumb move, he may end up resigning over this. Also there's no reason a
CEO should have this level of access.

~~~
raverbashing
He's the admin, if someone should have the right to edit comments it's him.

Because the buck stops with someone and there are several reasons (security
vulnerabilities, legal, copyright) to have text removed

~~~
edblarney
'securities, vulnerabilities, copyright' \- yes, he can remove comments, or
edit them, so long as he is indicating he is editing them.

But editing them without notice, putting words in other people's mouths is a
serious breach.

~~~
jrnichols
some of the arguments i've seen about it make sense - how do users know that
this hasn't happened before? reddit comments have made it into court
apparently, and now that it's public knowledge that reddit's higher ups can
silently edit comments, that's a huge deal.

in my opinion, it's made me lose a lot of trust (not that I had a ton anyway)
for the entire site.

------
mhomde
Aww, that sucks :( Huffman always seemed like a measured and fair individual.
I appreciated the way he communicated with the community when he took back the
reins.

The act itself seems petty, the larger issue is the breach of perceived trust
... The_Donald finally made the frog boil over. Don't wrestle with pigs, they
like it and you get dirty.

I do however have a hard time seeing a better replacement for spez so I hope
him and reddit learned a lesson and put some measures in place to ensure this
doesn't happen again. Everyone is allowed one major fuck up in my book as long
as it isn't systemic, they admit it, and don't repeat it.

This seems to be another sign of reddit isn't quite mature enough both when it
comes to leadership and technology to handle the scale of popularity they've
grown to. They have all my respect but the league they're operating in
provides a new set of unique challenges.

From a technical standpoint, it would be interesting if posts and comments
could be signed so tampering wasn't possible and prevent even the temptation
of doing so. Hard nut to crack in a user-friendly way though when everything
is server-side.

~~~
SticksAndBreaks
Introducing- the Insult Blockchain- so in 10.000 Generations your ancestors
know you called that guy a maggot

------
allemagne
Reddit has long enjoyed a level of perceived subversiveness that helped it
seem cool. It almost paradoxically seems that reddit has become too edgy for
the mainstream by housing /r/The_Donald, and now way more Big Brother than
subversive after this. If it has to embrace one philosophy going forward, it's
going to get a lot more sanitized and will lose a lot of its original allure.

From the fact that those slack logs were leaked, and from reading their
contents, there's some significant internal turmoil among Reddit admins that
this has only enflamed further. They REALLY want to ban /r/The_Donald. They
are extremely frustrated with spez.

Then if /u/spez resigns, the biggest advocate (ironically enough) for not
banning /r/The_Donald will not be in the way anymore. Recognizing this, it's
possible that spez stays on for the wild ride of banning T_D and then leaves
it to the next CEO to run the new reddit husk.

I'm not sure how reddit ever worked, however. Maybe it'll survive this just
fine.

~~~
rtpg
Most decent content on Reddit isn't from stuff like T_D, it's from local
subreddits, community subreddits, fan subreddits and the like.

Just because these people are heavy users doesn't mean they're high value
users. Clearly the opposite.

------
SwellJoe
That's hilarious. I've always found spez to be a genuinely good guy, on every
front. I don't find this "disturbing" or whatever other thing people want this
to be. People were being dicks to someone who's never done anything but try to
make reddit a nice place for as many people as possible; he lost his cool for
a minute and made a funny hack (a very specific hack, that required someone to
have said "fuck /u/spez" to be changed, and the only effect was to change the
target of the pointless insult). He rolled it back and fessed up an hour
later. Big deal.

The reddit I want to see is the reddit Steve wants to build. It's doubly
hilarious that the people getting so riled up are the same people who rant
about "PC culture" and people being too sensitive. If ya get your knickers in
a bunch about this, I think you have revoked your right to call anyone "too
sensitive" ever again.

~~~
philh
> It's doubly hilarious that the people getting so riled up are the same
> people who rant about "PC culture" and people being too sensitive.

What are you basing this on? This happened on /r/The_Donald, and that sub
tends to have people who dislike PC culture. So it's likely true that the
groups you're talking about have a lot of overlap, as an accident of
population samples.

I do not rant about PC culture or people being too sensitive, and I think spez
massively fucked up here. A lot of the commenters on this thread think the
same, more strongly than me. Do you just casually assume that those commenters
rant about PC culture and people being too sensitive?

I also think that _getting annoyed when you can 't say what you want to say_
is a large factor in disliking PC culture; and _getting annoyed when admins
edit other people 's comments_ seems entirely consistent with this. They want
to be able to express themselves in a certain way, and stealth-editing their
comments is the exact opposite of that.

~~~
SwellJoe
_" What are you basing this on? This happened on /r/The_Donald, and that sub
tends to have people who dislike PC culture. So it's likely true that the
groups you're talking about have a lot of overlap, as an accident of
population samples."_

Sometimes, I generalize as a tool for understanding large groups of people.
Generalization is a useful tool; it isn't always right, but the preponderance
of folks on The_Donald have, as a big part of their identity, being "anti-PC".
And, the preponderance of folks getting really riled up about this are people
who are participants on The_Donald subreddit.

So, sure, I probably swept up some innocent folks in my generalization. It
happens sometimes. Luckily, I hold no political power, no power to censor
anyone, and no power to cause anyone harm with my generalizations. All I can
do is make fun of people on the Internet.

 _" I also think that getting annoyed when you can't say what you want to say
is a large factor in disliking PC culture"_

More accurately, it would be "getting annoyed when you can say what you want
to say, but other people are allowed to say you're an asshole for saying it",
because no argument about being politically correct ever involved police
knocking down your door for being an asshole on the Internet (unless "being an
asshole" also includes "making actionable threats to someone's health", which
_might_ bring a police response). Free speech is a thing, and it applies to
people making racist/sexist/homophobic comments, and the people who reply
angrily to those racist/sexist/homophobic comments.

~~~
philh
If your generalization is an accident of population samples, and doesn't apply
when you control for that, I'm not sure how you think it's useful.

If you think that anti-PC people are simply scared of being called assholes,
you missed the time when someone got fired making a joke about dongles. And
the time when someone else got fired for saying that Donald Sterling shouldn't
have been fired for things that he said in his own home. And the time when
Bahar Mustafa was arrested, although I acknowledge that a subset of anti-PC
people seemed to celebrate that. And the time when a cake chain got
successfully sued for not wanting to bake a cake they disagreed with. Just off
the top of my head.

------
Jerry2
One of the reddit employees/admins leaked Slack conversations... it's all over
Twitter now.

[https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/801680245631766528](https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/801680245631766528)

~~~
johansch
It looks more like a chat with what I assume are external/non-paid sub-reddit
moderators.

~~~
judahmeek
Yeah, almost all of those accounts look to be the volunteer moderators for the
default subreddits.

------
TorKlingberg
I think it has become impossible to run a social site without any central
moderation today. You will attract a certain group of people, and they will
act more and more horribly and brazenly (generally harassing third parties)
until you just have to delete something. Then they will accuse you of
censorship, and the rest of the community will side with them, not you. The
harassment will turn on you. Eventually you will snap, and then you are in a
world of trouble. It doesn't matter how much free speech cred you have built
up over the years. It happened to the founders of Reddit, Twitter and even
4chan.

Of course I am painting site admins as too innocent here. Ultimately they
brought it on themselves by letting the community norms fall off a cliff. Back
in 2000-2010 being the rough underbelly of the internet was fun, but that
period is definitely over.

~~~
sagansucker
All that's needed is to ban "meta mob" type content. Shit like SRS,
kotakuinaction, subredditdrama, hell even /r/cringe, etc. That shit is toxic
and frankly destroyed reddit.

~~~
theWatcher37
Except those subs exist for a very real and tangible reason.

When the Orlando shootings happened /r/news censored it for almost that entire
day deleting threads and banning people.

These alt subs only caught traction when the mains started pulling shady stuff

------
greenyoda
Here's the original discussion (currently 477 points, 444 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027031)

~~~
vowelless
Flagged off the front page. ..

~~~
Figs
Actually, it was the anti-flamewar filter that pushed it off, as dang
explained later in the thread.

~~~
johansch
"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."

"Edit: ok, we've reduced the penalty"

Apparently not enough to get it visible to the front page again, though.

~~~
dang
Of course it was. The story was on the front page for over 5 hours, including
4 hours after we reduced the penalty. No moderator has touched it since.

HN's software causes stories to fall off the front page after a while. If you
didn't happen to see a story while it was there, that doesn't make it
"apparently" suppressed.

~~~
johansch
Why "of course"? Did you set it specifically so that it would be on the FP? It
certainly wasn't within an hour of you writing that comment.

(I'm in Europe, so I was checking the frontpage many times while you guys were
asleep.)

Eventually it did make it, that was quite a lot of hours later, and it only
lasted for a handful of hours.

Edit: it strikes me now that there is a need for an hourly HN frontpage
archive. Does this exist?

~~~
dang
> _Why "of course"? Did you set it specifically so that it would be on the FP?
> It certainly wasn't within an hour of you writing that comment._

Yes, we set it specifically so that it would be on the front page. That was
the point. And it was on the front page for hours after we did that.

~~~
johansch
Yes, it was there for at least two hours, I think I can attest to that. In a
full day. You guys really made a brilliant job of showing the moderation here
isn't partisan.

Edit:

I found an hourly mirror of the HN front page.

The story is present in these snapshots.

[http://hhn.domador.net/2016/11/24/03/](http://hhn.domador.net/2016/11/24/03/)

[http://hhn.domador.net/2016/11/24/04/](http://hhn.domador.net/2016/11/24/04/)

[http://hhn.domador.net/2016/11/24/05/](http://hhn.domador.net/2016/11/24/05/)

[http://hhn.domador.net/2016/11/24/06/](http://hhn.domador.net/2016/11/24/06/)

But not after that. (Timestamps are bit ambiguous, but it seems like
California time. Or failing that, Texas time, one hour apart.)

This matches the "including 4 hours after we reduced the penalty" statement.

My conclusion is that you set it to be enabled on the front page for four
hours in the middle of the night, California time. So was it also not
immediately set when you updated that comment - presumably?

~~~
dang
Here's a log of the HN front page for 2016-11-24 (so far) in 10-second
intervals. The first field is UTC seconds and the subsequent 30 fields are
story ids:
[https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/7a1e8916930cfdd...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/7a1e8916930cfdd964ab9eacfa37edc4/raw/948645c557512ed88c031acc453daa4ee5a5ebeb/gistfile1.txt)

Because it uses UTC, this file contains the entire lifecycle (so far) of the
story we're talking about.

    
    
      cut -d' ' -f1-31 gistfile1.txt | grep 13027031 | wc -l
          3866
    

3866 10-second intervals means the story spent almost 11 hours on the front
page. I posted that we'd reduced the penalty on the story at 1479955509. So by
my calculation, it spent over 9 hours on the front page after we reduced the
penalty. But perhaps I've made an error and you'll find it. Also, we don't
"set" things to be on the front page for a given number of hours. If I say we
reduced a penalty, that's what I mean: we reduced the penalty, and the usual
software mechanisms (time decay, votes and flags) resumed their usual course.

Now I need to ask you for something in return. You frequently post comments
making false insinuations about the moderation here. I'm fine with answering
questions and dispelling doubts, but only for people who are asking in good
faith. I'm losing that feeling in your case, because these comments of yours
are both common and nasty. Would you please stop doing this? Apart from it
being a bummer at our end, it undermines the integrity of the community. Good-
faith users have a right to know that we don't do the things you routinely
accuse us of, but the cost of replying to such accusations is orders of
magnitude greater than that of slinging them in the first place, so there's a
huge asymmetry here.

~~~
johansch
Thank you. This reassures my faith in you in this area.

Regarding the favor in return:

I think like 80% of our encounters have not been regarding "false insinuations
about the moderation here" but rather, relatively speaking, more straight-
forwarded cases of me edging my contributions towards the types of content
that you don't desire to have on your site. Which I suppose is your
prerogative, but not something I necessarily agree with.

Beyond that: I could and should try to limit these kinds of (moderation)
queries to when I think it really matters, and only then. This would have been
one of those cases that really mattered, so I am glad that you did clarify
this.

I think at least in the beginning I was kinda surprised that there was someone
who was actually bothering to respond to my often flippant remarks - I was
used to Reddit.

~~~
dang
I'm glad to read this and super glad it worked in this case.

It would be great if you would do those things. Even just not being flippant
would help a lot. In return, we're more than happy to answer questions (edit:
and also to fix mistakes and reverse bad calls when we make them). We don't
see all the comments, though, so to make sure we see a question it's best to
email hn@ycombinator.com.

------
650REDHAIR
The_Donald sub has ruined Reddit for me. I can't go into any remotely-
political post without a bunch of weird alt-Right commentary that's been
upvoted through the roof with poster's comment history filled with
r/The_Donald shit.

Who cares if these people go to Voat or back to 4chan...

~~~
diyorgasms
Fight back against the white supremacists and neo-Nazis and racists and write
nationalists, both in real life and online. You think they're ruining a
website? They took control of the USA. The might take control of France. I
can't imagine how tired you'll be of them after they've run the world into the
ground.

------
andybak
The fact that this was part of a particularly crazy episode on /r/The_Donald/
should surely at least be taking into account before sentencing is determined.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not
become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will
gaze back into you" \- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

------
zyb09
So this was about the banning of PizzaGate subreddit, and its understandable
that a Reddit-Mob can be a scary thing, and needs to be dealt with somehow.
But it feels Reddits moderation practices have become increasingly shady over
the last couple years, and spez editing comments directly just shows how
seemingly lax they are with their powers. You don't really have to be a
conspiracy nut to see that places like /r/politics during the election had
some very questionable moderation.

~~~
ManlyBread
/r/worldnews is even worse, they outright censor everything that is not in
line with the political affiliations of the moderators.

------
olh
Washington Post linked to a reddit thread with comments bashing the CEO. The
CEO did not like the world seeing him bashed by his own community and decided
to impersonate the users to make them seem attacking the moderators of
/r/The_Donald.

Reddit's TOS:

    
    
       > You are solely responsible for the information associated with Your Account and anything that happens related to Your Account.
    

The CEO crossed the line because he thought he could get away from any
liability for doing it.

------
EJTH
Eh. Not exactly the personality fit for running a comminity site such as
reddit:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSVqoW1rz6w&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSVqoW1rz6w&feature=youtu.be&t=835)

Pretty obnoxious person to be honest.

~~~
rounce
Right at home then, eh?

------
tezza
The head guy with God Mode needed a much thicker skin.

Running around like a headless chicken is the opposite of what was required.

Future people with God Mode should avoid repeating the same mistakes.

But that depends on what the God mode wielders perceive the mistakes were,
either:

1) Losing composure and making secret edits

2) Getting caught doing it

Can trust be restored ? Open question.

------
chaostheory
I'm not on any side. I'm just a bystander. See this and other incidents
reminds of the time users got fed up with Digg and left for reddit. We'll see
what happens with Voat in the coming months.

~~~
650REDHAIR
Voat is an awful place where fatpeoplehate, 4chan, and the racist-Right have
set up camp.

No thanks.

~~~
theWatcher37
Only because they were the first to get purged.

Any substantial migration from Reddit would drown out those voices pretty
quick. Just look at their vote counts compared to practically any medium sized
subreddit

------
ben_jones
Is the CEO of Reddit technical or non-technical? I'd be most shocked if this
meant Reddit had user-content-editing tools for its employees, rather then one
rogue employee going into the database(s) and changing data there.

I strongly get the feeling that tools were created at Reddit to allow them to
do this, suggesting that sometime ago employees at Reddit thought "wouldn't it
be great if we could change what users actually said"...

Don't get me wrong I feel no protectionism for a lot of the scumbags on boards
like Reddit, but I would find an extreme amount of hypocrisy in "the front
page of the internet" actively manipulating its content in such a way.

~~~
_1
He's the founder of the site .. highly technical. He had to modify the
database directly and tinkered with the "edited" flag or "modified" timestamp
so the comment would not show it had been edited.

~~~
theWatcher37
This is a huge part of this I don't see most here discussing.

The CEO didn't just edit the comments, he did so in a way that did not reveal
the comment had ever been edited.

~~~
johansch
Options:

1\. He directly manipulated the production db (seems like they use Cassandra).
Definitely doable for someone with a deep technical background, even if they
spent 99% of the the past couple of years working "via other people", rather
than writing the code themselves. I could easily imagine him getting database
access privileges as a part of the "catching up what's happened since I left"
process.

2\. Reddit has built easy-to-use, e.g. web based in-house tools for editing
comments - without leaving any trace of the fact that they were edited.

I guess there also a third option; that he fudged the truth (err, lied) when
confessing: that he asked some developer to do the work for him: presumably
while laughing and thinking they were hilarious, and then took the blame for
when it was time to confess.)

I think he needs to resign. Such a dumb, irresponsible action. I don't think
someone that impulsive and immature should be the the CEO of Reddit. And since
he's 33 rather than 23, it's not very likely he'll much more mature within a
few years.

~~~
whataboutpizza
> deep technical background

I'd imagine comments are stored in plaintext in a table and could be edited by
anyone with a modicum of tech experience

~~~
johansch
Well, yes. "Deep technical experience" is a superset of "A modicum of tech
experience". :)

------
andybak
I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that reality is actually a simulation but
unfortunately one that has been hacked by /b/

------
dbg31415
[https://mobile.twitter.com/Cernovich/status/8016802456317665...](https://mobile.twitter.com/Cernovich/status/801680245631766528)
\- deplorable how all these people at Reddit are calling for censorship.

If you ignore The Donald people, they implode. Don't respond to them and
that's the ball gane. All Spez it is doing is pouring gasoline on the fire.
Immature tone at the top doesn't help things right now. Spez needs to go.

------
Shivetya
So basically Reddit has now been proven to have comments that may or may not
be what the user intended. That alone should hopefully lead Reddit code
changes that prevent anyone but the author of a post from modifying a post
without very obvious indicators if permitted at all.

As it stands now, reddit is pretty much imparts no trust and nothing read
there would have any trust associated with it.

depending on context I wonder what the legal exposure could be. could they
trace a modified post that suggested something illegal?

------
marcoperaza
Lots of people are complaining about r/The_Donald in this thread, wishing that
it would be banned. The casual attitude with which people are advocating
censorship of Trump supporters is troubling.

They claim that it's polluting the rest of the site. It's not a default
subscription, so it's not on the front page. It's at most a handful of the
posts on any page of r/all, which by the way, almost no one browses according
to Reddit admins themselves. Yes, the moderators of The_Donald ban opposing
viewpoints, just like moderators in other partisan subreddits do. It is
advertised as a 24/7 Trump rally, and that's what it is.

They claim that the subreddit is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. If you took
a moment to even read it, you'd find post after post expressing the OPPOSITE
sentiment, advocating for equality for all regardless of race, sex, and
orientation. The problem is that the definition that the left is using of
"racism" has been broadened to include basically anything they don't agree
with.

------
Yhippa
I see a lot of handwringing about this but what are people really going to do
about this? Go to Voat or 4chan? Even if people claim they feel they can no
longer trust reddit they aren't going to leave. If anything this just gave
reddit a huge amount of free publicity.

------
nstart
Sigh. Why did spez do this? His entire credibility lost to a bunch of people
who made my head hurt when I read their material. I popped over to voat and
caught up. I was genuinely thinking there'd be some kind of vague link of
emails and a few jumps in assumptions, but it's full on "here's a picture.
Here's another picture. Look. They have the same shape in them. They are
connected. Also, here's the person in this picture. That means they are
connected to the earlier connection" type conspiracy stuff. And then there's
full on accusations firing away about who's an FBI agent attempting to silence
them.

The fact that u/spez did not just laugh at the ridiculousness of it all and
instead chose to take it on this way, I'm trying to imagine what kind of abuse
he's had to deal with today. :( .

------
imode
there are many sides to this.

for one, the CEO should be thinking "oh shit what did I do", because he's now
responsible for every event on reddit. good job, I can't wait to see what
happens, if anything.

for two, it really shows how violent people are towards those with differing
political opinions.

note, I'm not referring to /r/The_Donald, I'm referring to everybody who
thinks that /r/The_Donald should be shown the door with no other reason than
"I don't agree with their views".

you're shouting at someone to shut up because you don't like what they're
saying instead of arguing.

note, I don't like the folks there either very much, but they are people, with
opinions, and they founded a place to share them, and it just so happens that
they're pretty loud and easily spotted.

have some decency. stop calling for a total ban or witch hunts on the people
you don't like, because you look _exactly like them_ to the outsider. and
outsiders are all over.

develop some common decency. your fellow man isn't as terrible as you think he
is. polarization will only cause more problems.

spez, the CEO of reddit, can't make this conclusion, which is kind of funny.
if you can't do this, then can your users? can the users who're friends of the
users? do you understand how this represents your community? clearly not.

I'll be sitting back and watching the outcome. at the most, it's social
commentary. at the least, it's cheap entertainment.

------
debt
Reddit has been on my shitlist since the Ellen pao situation.

How anyone uses that site after how the Reddit community treated her is beyond
me.

~~~
Axsuul
The politics of Reddit don't really touch most subreddits. Most people are
there to talk about their interests and passions.

~~~
vesche
(read: porn)

------
typon
Reddit should have banned that sub a long time ago. Its nothing but a bunch of
toxic neo Nazis being given a huge platform for free

~~~
clydethefrog
But look at all that growth in user activity! Investors love it.

------
Theizestooke
If this means the alt-right leaves, great.

------
CmdrSprinkles
Somewhat off topic and not condoning the editing of comments (I probably will
condone the closing of boards once I know more) but:

What the hell is a pizzagate? I saw it mentioned a few times while reading the
mess that is the reddit detectiving for Assange but never saw a clear
description. And now it is apparently a pro-Trump thing too?

What was the logic behind calling him a pedophile for that?

~~~
Lazare
This is going to sound hard to believe, but...

...based on zero evidence, a bunch of alt-right types decided that a pizza
shop in Washington was somehow the center of some sort of bizarre satanic
pedophilia cult/ring/thing, and that further that Clinton was somehow
involved.

It evolved into some sort of weird meme/circlejerk/echo
chamber/witchhunt/circus, centered around /r/pizzagate, complete with doxxing,
stalking, physical protesters outside the shop, trending twitter hashtags, all
sorts of madness

Unsurprisingly, the sub was banned. And if you choose to ban a sub focused
around uncovering (I can't believe I'm writing this) Clinton's pedophile sex
ring, then obviously this is because _you yourself are a pedophile_ (and
probably a Clinton supporter, which is probably worse). Why else would you
help coverup Clinton's satanic pedophile sex cult?

(If you're curious, the original spark behind all this is Wikileak's release
of John Podesta's emails. In them he mentioned eating pizza there. Which is
clearly code for child abuse, and Podesta is sort of close to Clinton, so
Podesta eating pizza is literally Clinton abusing children. No, I'm not making
this up, and yes, that's the sum total of the evidence behind this. Literally,
the whole thing is based on the supposition that it's so unlikely that Podesta
likes pizza that it _must_ be a codeword for child abuse, because obviously
child abuse is much more understandable than liking pizza, or something.)

~~~
shawabawa3
I think it's sort of based on the fact that "cheese pizza" is 4chan slang for
child porn, and there was a picture sent by podesta of an immigrant child (and
her family) eating pizza with a title like "feels good" (that they helped this
family, interpreted by conspiracy theorists as they molested this girl)

~~~
ss248
>"cheese pizza" is 4chan slang

This is not true actually.

FBI and some forensic science experts used it internally way back before 4chan
was even created.

~~~
tptacek
I think I speak for a great many of us when I say that I'd like a citation for
the idea that even _4chan_ considered "cheese pizza" a code for child
pornography.

Intellectually, it appears we're cruising along at approximately the
"asphinctersayswhat" level of complexity.

~~~
tothepixel
The usage of code words and symbols by Comet Pizza and Besta Pizza are mapped
to an FBI document that was uncovered. There's also been strange phrases
uncovered in the Podesta emails that seem to indicate that code words are in
use. Additionally, people have found hidden data in JPGs sent around, which
appear to be hashes that were placed after the closing JPG headers. Not sure I
believe any of it, but it's definitely interesting.

~~~
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
Could you link that FBI document explaining pedo-slang that Podesta was
allegedly using?

~~~
BickNowstrom
AFAIK there is no such document. The only sourcing for the slang terms was an
anonymous 4chan post.

    
    
        “hotdog” = boy
    
        “pizza” = girl
    
        “cheese” = little girl
    
        “pasta” = little boy
    
        “ice cream” = male prostitute
    
        “walnut” = person of colour
    
        “map” = semen
    
        “sauce” = orgy
    

[https://twitter.com/JaredWyand/status/794284672675147776](https://twitter.com/JaredWyand/status/794284672675147776)

The FBI document detailing the symbols can be found here:
[https://wikileaks.org/wiki/FBI_pedophile_symbols](https://wikileaks.org/wiki/FBI_pedophile_symbols)

The similarities _were_ rather striking. One pizza place even changed their
logo shortly after the comparisons were drawn. This only added more fuel to
the fire. [http://i.imgur.com/GIRxh8r.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/GIRxh8r.jpg)

Myself being a huge fan of conspiracy theory I've seen this before: the minds
become focussed on finding evidence, discarding Occam's razor, and mining for
all the nuggets. What remains are coincidences that appear too good to be
random. Compare with the "backwards playing record hidden messages" hype. Once
someone points it out to you, your mind starts hearing it too.

P.S.: The "hashes" found in the .jpg images were a dead end / the result of
pareidolia.

~~~
DanBC
[https://file.wikileaks.org/file/FBI-pedophile-
symbols.pdf](https://file.wikileaks.org/file/FBI-pedophile-symbols.pdf)

This document says a heart within a heart is symbol for GirlLover - symbolizes
a relationship between an adult and a minor girl.

Wait 'til the conspiracy theorists see the logo for a multinational ice-cream
company:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=walls+ice+cream+logo&ia=images](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=walls+ice+cream+logo&ia=images)

[https://imgur.com/a/8Yo0M](https://imgur.com/a/8Yo0M)

~~~
BickNowstrom
They actually did, and then they tried to find connections between the two.
Turning up stuff like:

[https://twitter.com/ClintonGlobal/status/651606553884258304](https://twitter.com/ClintonGlobal/status/651606553884258304)

(A Unilever and Clinton Foundation cooperation found in
[https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/1596](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1596))

and some older abuse charges brought up against people connected with
Unilever.

See also:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:AfaAe2...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:AfaAe2oa8aYJ:https://www.reddit.com/r/pizzagate/comments/5e2lao/)

Also consider the possibility that the pedo symbology was inspired by the ice
cream logo (and not the other way around).

But most likely just a (meaningful) coincidence. Hearts and spirals are common
design elements after all.

~~~
tptacek
So basically this is troll numerology.

~~~
BickNowstrom
Yes, in part. But don't underestimate the deliberate black, grey, and white
propaganda elements of all this (see also: "meme magick").

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda)

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/meme-magic](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/meme-
magic)

------
gamechangr
Flag - duplicate - you may want to delete this.

There are about 10 threads on this in the last two hours. Some have 300
comments.

Take a look - one #28 is still on the front page now with almost 500 comments.

~~~
iaw
There's a vocal contingent of alt-right Donald Trump supporters that think
this is a big deal.

~~~
gamechangr
I think it's a big deal and I wouldn't be in the "alt-right" for sure.

Having a CEO of a social media site impersonate users and censor comments
calls into question the credibility of the their whole brand.

That's not a partisan perspective???

How would you feel if Paul Graham of HN changed your comment to "I am strong
supporter of the alt-right?" ...you wouldn't like that. Opposing opinions are
fine - using admin priledges to put words to literally put words in users
mouths is madness?

I already made a comment elsewhere - but I'm surprised they haven't let him
go. If reddit were a real company, they wouldn't tolerate that. I wonder what
would happen if a middle manager started tampering with user comments - he
would be gone.

~~~
celticninja
Seriously? You think he should be let go over this? You think that other CEOs
would have been? If so you have not been following the news much.

~~~
citruspi
> You think he should be let go over this?

Absolutely.

> You think that other CEOs would have been?

Even if other CEOs who have done similar things have not been let go, that
doesn't mean they shouldn't have been let go. This was a major breach of
trust.

> If so you have not been following the news much.

Apparently I haven't been following the news much because I haven't heard of
any CEOs doing something like this recently. The most "scandalous" (for lack
of better word) thing that I've heard of recently concerning CEOs and
political stuff was the controversy with GrubHub and Pepsi. If you're
referring to events like those, I don't think they're comparable. I don't
agree with the actions of those CEOs either, but there's a difference between
the CEO of a company taking a stance against a political candidate and the CEO
of a social media network putting words in his users' mouths by editing their
comments. If you're not referring to stuff like the GrubHub and Pepsi and
there have in fact been other CEOs who put words in their users' mouths by
editing their comments or posts, I'd love some links. Either way, I still
think they should be let go.

------
raverbashing
Look up "analogy" in the dictionary

Oh I see you're just trolling

~~~
rfrank
Does reddit require an invitation to participate? No? Oh look, your analogy is
trash.

~~~
dang
You've been breaking the civility rules here atrociously. I realize you feel
very strongly about this story, but if you continue to break HN's rules, we're
going to have to ban your account. In the meantime, I've rate-limited your
comments in the hope that you will cool down a little.

------
ianamartin
Huh. Color me surprised. A social media website with a shit-for-brains
business model has a CEO who, well, isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Look reddit was never a source of real truth. It likes to think it is because
every teenager and lonely 50-something wants to feel important.

Fine. Whatever. There isn't a big story here. The Lord of the Flies wanked off
on Piggy's dead body.

Anyone who expected otherwise is probably daft enough to reheat pizza in the
oven instead of in a skillet with no oil because that's what makes the bottom
so crispy and the top so melty.

In other words, you're all mostly heathens and idiots about this.

If you want control of your content, host it yourself. Not on someone else's
dime. Especially not an idiotic dime like reddit's that calls dimes gold.

Do I think this is a huge and massive breach of trust for reddit users? Yes.
Yes I do.

Do I think it matters and that the people who are surprised by this basically
have shit for brains?

Yes. Yes I do.

Does this actually matter?

No. It's just one more social media thing that will go away because the
leadership fucked it up. That's all.

Our work is done here. We don't need to do this anymore.

------
beedogs
They should've nuked The_Donald six months ago. They should still nuke it now.

------
maverick_iceman
I wonder how many of the hateful comments posted in that subreddit were
actually written by the admins.

~~~
andybak
I think I can answer that one for you - very very few.

------
sergiotapia
High-level moderators openly discussing being paid by CTR (Correct The Record
- a Hillary Clinton organization):
[https://i.sli.mg/eZXD0R.png](https://i.sli.mg/eZXD0R.png)

This is really funny, the undoing of Reddit - and for what?

~~~
sanswork
You do realise that comment is making fun of people like yourself right? When
people call you a shill all day your humour tend to include jokes about being
a shill to mess with the idiots calling everyone that disagrees with them a
shill.

------
dragontamer
As a moderator to one forum, I commonly edit the poster's posts if they are
especially rowdy or otherwise rude to everybody else.

But its not a "prank", like what the Reddit CEO did. I make sure everybody
knows that I made the edit (signing my name on the edit, using the poster's
privileges), just as a warning that yes... as moderator I do have complete
control over the conversation.

Its a threat that I make to keep rowdy members in check. But it only works
because everyone trusts me (ie: I never "impersonate" the poster, no one ever
"impersonates" my edits either). I know that if I "cross the line", then
people will no longer trust me as the moderator of discussion. The position of
moderator is to serve the forum, not to dictate the direction of every
conversation.

The issue here is that Reddit's CEO is in charge of a community, and that
community is losing faith in the leader because of his abuse of his power.

\------------

From one perspective, I understand that moderators have surprisingly few
options. Mods can delete posts, and maybe edit them (if they're careful and
only edit in extreme circumstances). But... that's about it. Otherwise,
there's not really much power mods have.

Banning doesn't really work. Everybody knows how to proxy up and reregister
accounts to rejoin a forum. Warnings don't really count, a lot of posters
don't care about them.

The threat of an edit war however? Well... that's basically the moderator's
best tool. But it needs to be more carefully used than what the Reddit CEO did
here.

~~~
wheelerwj
No, there are a dozen issues with this but losing Faith in reddit's leadership
isn't one of them.

That happened a long time ago.

~~~
dragontamer
If you already don't trust Reddit, then there's nothing lost by this event.

