
Reddit transparency report, 2014 - soundsop
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2014
======
ipsum2
"As of January 29, 2015, reddit has never received a National Security Letter,
an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other
classified request for user information. If we ever receive such a request, we
would seek to let the public know it existed."

Is this the warrant canary? Has this been around before?

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danielweber
[https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/...](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/34#issuecomment-49910725)

Moxie saying "Every lawyer we've spoken to has confirmed that [having a
warrant canary] would not work." Which isn't surprising. When the government
tells you not to communicate something, you aren't allowed to communicate it.
Not not not not communicating it isn't some clever loophole.

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duaneb
Wouldn't this essentially translate to the government forcing the company to
mislead the public? This is different from forcing the company to be
silent—that is perhaps understandable. But I would love to understand the
rationale behind the government forcing a company to post a false notice with
no benefit to anyone but the government itself.

~~~
danielweber
Saying "the government is forcing me to lie!" is ignoring your agency is
establishing the canary.

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baseten
There is little need for government takedown requests when the moderators of
many subreddits are paid shills of various stripes. There are a few subs like
r/undelete and r/undeleteshadow and r/longtail dedicated to snapshotting this
sort of thing. Among the duplicate submissions that are legitimately deleted
you can find some real gems.

~~~
motbob
When one views reddit moderation decisions through an anti-
corporate/governmental lens, circumstantial evidence of mods being paid off
seems to be everywhere. But there is not a single piece of direct evidence to
suggest that mods are being paid by large organizations (corporate or
otherwise) to manipulate reddit content.

~~~
colordrops
Reddit has both explicit ads, such as paid placement at the top, and side bar
ads, as well as Reddit Gold, but these are not extensive enough to support
costs and make a decent profit. Reddit has nearly 200 million users and has
taken almost 50 million in investment, and there is a lot of pressure to
utilize the user base for marketing purposes.

Along with traditional explicit advertising models, internet marketing usually
involves more subtle techniques such as seamless paid content interleaved with
user content, as you see on Facebook and elsewhere. Subtle and invisible
marketing is especially important on Reddit, as forum users are not tolerant
of paid content, as evidenced by the collapse of Digg, so the operators of
Reddit have to keep up the impression of Reddit being pristine and untouched
by marketers.

But Reddit has to make revenue, as they are a business and not a charity.
Reddit employees are mods of many of the default subreddits, and often post
content to those boards that bubbles to the top of the front page. The
evidence trail is direct, as you can directly view an employee's posts on
their profile page. It would be absurd for Reddit to not use modern internet
marketing techniques to generate revenue.

Not only does Reddit support marketing through posts, but they also control
the narrative of Reddit. Just live television before it, advertisers are very
sensitive to the content carried on the medium that their advertisements are
part of, and use their dollars to influence what can and can't be said in that
channel. The same goes for Reddit.

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benihana
This is interesting to think about but your post does not contain a shred of
evidence

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mahranch
They never do. They're baseless. I'm a default mod on reddit, have been for
quite a while. I've never been approached by anyone looking to do shady things
_ever_. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, SEO people would love an "in", but
I've personally never experienced it. And certainly not from the reddit admins
themselves. There are over a thousand default mods now. If reddit's admins
were trying to control those mods, surely a few would decline their offer then
"spill the beans". There _would_ be whistle blowers. And those whistle blowers
have never come forwards because it hasn't happened. The accusation is steeped
in an ignorance of how reddit actually works.

~~~
nitrogen
The top level comment, by _baseten_ , made a claim that is completely
different from what has been ostensibly refuted in this thread. The OP never
said anything about _Reddit_ controlling moderation.

Can you address the specific claim made by _baseten_ , namely that there are
subreddits (whether default or non-default) that are managed for pay by
_other_ organizations?

I'll note that I don't visit Reddit unless linked to a specific conversation,
so I don't have a proverbial horse in the race. I just have my curiosity
piqued when a chain of rebuttals gets so far off base from the original claim.

~~~
mahranch
> _is completely different from what has been ostensibly refuted in this
> thread. The OP never said anything about Reddit controlling moderation._

As I explained in other comments below, I have extensive experience moderating
large subreddits and in my time, have not seen a single shred of evidence
which shows anyone is "paying to play". If something like that was occurring,
it would inevitably be discovered and become viral news everywhere, just like
how it was on Digg. I'm sure the administrators of the site keep an eye on the
actions, messages and PMs of the top mods so there are more checks and
balances on that kind of behavior. More than most people realize.

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patrickfl
awesome, would love to know what sub-reddits received the illegitimate
takedown requests. Can anyone take a stab at which ones?

~~~
m3rc
The celebrity leaked nude stuff had a lot of DMCA flying around, pretty sure
they even nuked a couple subreddits to comply with some of it

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Raphmedia
Yes, but those were subreddits that popped up and were dedicated to sharing
those pictures. I doubt any genuine community was affected.

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m3rc
Oh I don't know any real details about it, or what "community" was affected,
that's just what came to mind when they mentioned DMCA take-downs in the post.
I don't think there was a ton of other content that got enough attention to
warrant takedown notices

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thissideup
This is worthless as social sites, like Reddit, are one of the most heavily
propagandized and manipulated places on the internet.

It's a tool for disseminating information and talking points.

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secfirstmd
Glad to see they put up a fight as much as possible (or say they do atleast).

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hackuser
Does Reddit allow anonymous users (e.g., via Tor)?

