Reddit CEO Actively Altered/Censored User Comments

[TidaLWaveZ]

Thursday in an apology to users, CEO of Reddit Steve Huffman openly admitted to altering comments that were critical of him.

 

He made the admission, where he posts under the username Spez.

 

 

 

 

The "r/pizzagate stuff" Huffman referenced concerns a conspiracy theory about a secret pedophile group, a pizza parlor in the nation's capital, and Hillary Clinton's campaign chief, John Podesta. Reddit banned the "Pizzagate" conspiracy board from the site because of a Reddit policy about posting personal information of others. The move ushered in a wave of criticism against Huffman on Wednesday, and he responded by editing the comments.

 

-ARS TECHNICA

 

Regardless of whether you're on the left, right, or somewhere between, this is not something that I would quickly dismiss.  I'm glad that he admitted to wrongdoing but is this kind of action immediately forgivable?  If an incident like this can just occur with limited scrutiny, how many other incidents like this go unnoticed and if not unnoticed unpunished?

 

I'm not an avid user of Reddit but for a site that seems to be a champion for freedom of speech, this kind of incident sure does seem bring down the sites integrity.

 

What do you think?

 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/11/reddit-chief-admits-to-editing-comments-that-were-critical-of-him/

https://www.cnet.com/news/reddit-ceo-admits-to-editing-user-comments-amid-pizzagate-malarkey/

http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/23/reddit-ceo-apologizes-for-editing-comments-critical-of-him-following-pizzagate-ban/

http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-modifies-donald-trump-the-donald-2016-11

http://mashable.com/2016/11/30/reddit-spez-pizzagate/#v.kos92vf5qV

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/23/reddit-huffman-trump/

https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/24/reddit-ceo-confesses-to-editing-comments-that-insulted-him/

http://mashable.com/2016/11/24/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-pizzagate-trolls/#Gp4OJUaGZmq0

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/reddit-huffman-apology/

http://gizmodo.com/reddit-ceo-caught-secretly-editing-user-comments-chatl-1789342358

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/25/reddit-ceo-admits-editing-posts-directing-obscene-/

 

[blu4]

People are dicks. You either get used to it or you won't make a good CEO of a message board with millions of users.

[eLucid]

Lolworthy to say the least.

[Nizkus]

4 minutes ago, Jorgen297 said:

He's done this over multiple years. It's appalling, especially since reddit account history has been used as information in court. He could technically edit in CP in people's comments through the database and leave no traces. He should step off immediately. 

But he has only been a CEO ~1.5 years

[ARikozuM]

In the context of ethics, it makes sense. Freedom of speech doesn't allow one to be a dick to private citizens, even on the internet. It would be one thing to call the government or a company out for a practice, but libel/slander, offensive or aggressive language towards a person, aren't covered by the freedom.

[TidaLWaveZ]

2 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

Literally nobody outside of r/The_Donald - which is a cesspool of bullshit and hate - was complaining about this at all. It was a harmless joke, which was somewhat funny, not some authoritarian act of censorship they are claiming it to be. 

 

Honestly if I were Spez I wouldn't have been editing comments, I would have quarantined or shut down that sub a long time ago. r_The_Donald literally exists to spam the front page with pro-trump propaganda, with mods that ban anybody who posts or comments anything which isn't strongly pro-trump.

I'm not a user but my understanding of the site is that it's main selling points are freedom of speech and lack of verbal censorship.

[silberdrachi]

Reddit has been a shitshow since the crap with /r/fatpeoplehate. They try to pretend by keeping r/the_donald (and others) around they are "containing" the trolls to one sub and by deleting/banning them it would spread it everywhere. But it just ends with them selectively trying to enforce very vague rules. In the end their user base is bearing the brunt of it with some really toxic environments and some legit doxxing of many users they feel are traitors or whatever.

 

Though personally i believe it has a bit more to do with the money involved. It seems that by a very wide margin that sub has generated a huge amount of traffic for them and i think on some level they are ok with all the attention it gets because it drives more interactions on their site. Im not saying thats the ONLY reason, but i feel like its an influencing factor on their decision to keep them around.

Comment sections after the elections have basically just made me stop using the site as anything more than a link aggregator (and funny cat picture generator)

[TidaLWaveZ]

2 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

But as far as I am aware individual subreddits are allowed to police themselves. The problem with r/The_Donald isn't that it's a pro Trump subreddit. It's that it's essentially a 4chan esque troll spam factory, the mods of which instantly ban anybody who doesn't play along. It is probably the most highly censored sub in reddit history. Just the other day they had a highly upvoted post calling other users snowflakes for not liking the fact that content from the sub makes it to the front page so often. After I pointed out the hypocrisy of this given the level of censorship that goes on in the sub, I was immediately permabanned. 

I really don't know how reddit works, I've only been on the site a few times from links.

 

For it to make it to the front page does it have to be voted highly? How are the mods chosen? Does the site support mods doing this sort of thing?

[ChineseChef]

To me, this issue is nothing about censorship, or trolling, mean words, or the prankness of the event.  If it had shown "edited by admin/mod/whatever", than no big deal.  The issue is that he changed it on the back end of the DB, so there was no "evidence" that it happened.  This wouldn't normally be a big deal, but Reddit user history and comments have been used in courts successfully in both the UK and Canada, and as character evidence in US courts.

 

Now, it should be common knowledge that those with admin access to the DB can make these changes.  But as long as there is no evidence of it, Reddit can always keep their hands clean.  Now that it has been shown that those with the power have abused it, the question is when else have they done it?  Who have they framed?  With more and more "social media" being used in legal situations, how many lives have been ruined by a petty or power hungry admin?

 

My other question is, if challenged, would this negate the "safe harbor" status of Reddit?  Since they have now shown they are willing to edit comments directly and secretly.  They can't claim to not be in control of what their users post, since they obviously are in control, and have shown their willingness to directly modify user's posts with evidence of such modifications.

 

The real issue here isn't so much WHAT they did, since any website admin can do that, the issue is THAT they did.  And combined with their usage in legal court systems.

[silberdrachi]

13 minutes ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

I really don't know how reddit works, I've only been on the site a few times from links.

 

For it to make it to the front page does it have to be voted highly? How are the mods chosen? Does the site support mods doing this sort of thing?

To get on the front page you need to get a specific amount of votes to time ratio to qualify. Each user has their own "front page" made of whatever subs they would like to see data from, but there is an "r/all" that contains the highest rated threads for the entire site.

 

Mods are chosen by other mods of that subreddit. Mods are supposed to be checks and balances for other mods, but they all have the same rights within that subreddit. The original one is the one who created that sub (anyone can create subs and be mods of them) who then can add other mods if they choose to, or not to.

 

The site itself doesnt support a lot of things that mods want, and admins rarely step in to enforce rules unless their hand is forced. Generally mods CAN edit/delete comments, but it will mark the comment as having that happened. In this case, because he was an admin, it didnt mark the comments as being edited (hence the controversy)

[Guest Kloaked]

37 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

Literally nobody outside of r/The_Donald - which is a cesspool of bullshit and hate - was complaining about this at all. It was a harmless joke, which was somewhat funny, not some authoritarian act of censorship they are claiming it to be.

 

It's only full of "bullshit and hate" if you're being brainwashed by the media, and you're wrong about only /r/the_donald complaining about it. It's happened in other subreddits, and other subreddits who don't even like /r/the_donald are not liking what spez has done/has been doing.

 

It's a circlejerk subreddit with a hint of seriousness every now and then when real world events are talked about; especially when /r/politics and other subreddits were censoring certain news posts and only /r/the_donald and /r/askreddit were actively talking about what actually happened in certain events involving extremist Muslim "refugees".

 

What spez did is not a harmless joke. If he did it to any subreddit that you frequent, or even edited something YOU said to make it say something that you didn't intend, you wouldn't like that now would you?

[TidaLWaveZ]

6 minutes ago, Kloaked said:

 

It's only full of "bullshit and hate" if you're being brainwashed by the media, and you're wrong about only /r/the_donald complaining about it. It's happened in other subreddits, and other subreddits who don't even like /r/the_donald are not liking what spez has done/has been doing.

 

It's a circlejerk subreddit with a hint of seriousness every now and then when real world events are talked about; especially when /r/politics and other subreddits were censoring certain news posts and only /r/the_donald and /r/askreddit were actively talking about what actually happened in certain events involving extremist Muslim "refugees".

 

What spez did is not a harmless joke. If he did it to any subreddit that you frequent, or even edited something YOU said to make it say something that you didn't intend, you wouldn't like that now would you?

 

Though I don't know about the actual contents in the subreddit, I will say that the sources of the articles involved are at least leaning left if they're not blatant liberal outlets because that's just about all that shows up on my google news. So it's not just /r/the_donald that doesn't appreciate this incident.

[Guest Kloaked]

4 minutes ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

 

Though I don't know about the actual contents in the subreddit, I will say that the sources of the articles involved are at least leaning left if they're not blatant liberal outlets because that's just about all that shows up on my google news. So it's not just /r/the_donald that doesn't appreciate this incident.

Most of what gets posted in the subreddit is just shitposts (as it's a circlejerk for the most part, like I said), but the rest is news about politics or any happenings in the US mainly. What's funny is a lot of users ended up liking t_d because /r/politics and other subreddits were censoring certain news information when it involved something that goes against their narrative (like a mass murderer being Muslim for example - they'll just censor the story and delete comments that point out that detail citing it as hatespeech).

 

The liberal or left-leaning outlets posting about this story are shills. During this whole election season they all shit on Trump for various uncalled for reasons and praised Clinton for the most asinine reasons - not like they're not allowed to, it's just they are blatantly creating a specific narrative and people take them for 100% truth. After the election was over and Trump won, those same outlets talked about how fake news was going around and blah blah blah. Huffington Post was one of those outlets talking about how fake news was bad and journalistic integrity is sinking. Not a week later they're at it again with their weak research (or lack of it) for their articles and are spinning the stories again.

 

They're only reporting on this story because they like what happened, and they know their usual readers will love what happened.

[Misanthrope]

Yeah all I can say is: Social media CEOs you should look forward to Press Secretary Dangerous Faggot Milo Yiannopolous.

[Guest Kloaked]

4 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

It's full of bullshit and hate if you spend 30 second reading any one of the posts.

Show me a screenshot of the hate you're talking about please.

 

5 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

What is posted there goes totally unchallenged because you're not allowed to challenge it.

Also wrong. I've challenged a post there before and I wasn't banned. Are you being an asshole when you talk there?

 

5 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

While many media organisations, especially in the U.S., are biased towards particular political parties, simply dismissing any dissenting opinions as caused by "media brainwashing" does not qualify as a rigorous argument. 

I'm not saying dismiss every "biased" opinion entirely, I'm saying don't get your information all from once source since any outlet has a bias. While I'm mostly conservative, I don't get all of my information from Fox or Breitbart.

[apm]

1 hour ago, Sampsy said:

Literally nobody outside of r/The_Donald - which is a cesspool of bullshit and hate - was complaining about this at all. It was a harmless joke, which was somewhat funny, not some authoritarian act of censorship they are claiming it to be. 

 

Honestly if I were Spez I wouldn't have been editing comments, I would have quarantined or shut down that sub a long time ago. r_The_Donald literally exists to spam the front page with pro-trump propaganda, with mods that ban anybody who posts or comments anything which isn't strongly pro-trump.

you dont understand.

that proofs that he can do anything without that a single user notices. courts use reddit as evidence.

 

i see no reason why the donald should be banned, its mostly memes and news.

i havent seen anything hateful in weeks.

 

btw there are pedo subreddits, yes they are still there, existed for a long time and people want to ban the_donald..

pretty fucking retarded.

[PlayStation 2]

I'll keep any political view out of this and view this situation objectively: why did you do this, man. You ruined the integrity of your site because you don't like a particular subreddit.

 

As to all of the people bashing on t_d: gimme one good reason to ban it.

[silberdrachi]

4 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

As to all of the people bashing on t_d: gimme one good reason to ban it.

 

Define a good reason? There are quite a lot of reddit terms of service they have broken, including many that got other subs banned, like vote brigading and doxing.

 

Now i guess the question is, should those rules be applied site wide as a zero tolerance rule or should the admins be able to make decisions on what subs are allowed to exist and what subs arent. In the past the rules have been enforced very loosely and they let a lot of stuff slide. As the site has gotten more and more press, and in turn more advertisement attention, they have attempted to "clean up" the sites image. And one facet of that process was stricter implementation of their ToS.

 

What i am saying is there are a lot of reasons to ban a LOT of subs on the site, and im not even just talking about the donald sub or political party related bs that has sprung up recently. There are a lot of long running subs that feature literally illegal content that should be cleaned up. The issue now isnt what subs should be banned really, as how much of the rules should be enforced. And even if those subs are banned will it have any impact on the site (like the r/fatpeoplehate banning).

 

So how do you decide what is a good reason for deleting a sub?

[S w a t s o n]

Seeing a lot of slippery slope fallacy here. No he's not gonna edit in CP or other horrific things. Yes what he did was wrong, but dont imply that automatically means he's literally hitler going around terrorizing reddit. Everyone likes to call for a CEO's head as soon as they make a mistake. He admitted what he did pretty soon after he did it and really it's not resignation worthy imo. Just because someone did something you dont like doesnt mean they have to automatically lose their job.

[Guest Kloaked]

1 hour ago, Sampsy said:

Here are some nice examples (complied by somebody else). https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/comments/4rcgbm/the_donald_is_a_hate_group_summary_of_the_first/. 

Out of those examples, only two would be considered racist and/or sexist.

 

 

1 hour ago, Sampsy said:

 Insulting people who disagree with them by calling them "Cucks" - a person who allows others to have sex with their significant other - seems to be a sure fire way to win upvotes, and it's used very regularly, even in post titles.

Because that doesn't happen literally in every other subreddit? But because /r/the_donald does it it's not okay? You can make the argument that the subreddit touting that it's a bastion of free-speech is hypocritical given that they ban anyone who says they support the polar opposite of what the subreddit is about, and that's a fair one to make. But you seriously cannot act like /r/the_donald should be banned just for something that literally every other subreddit does and gets away with it.

 

1 hour ago, Sampsy said:

My first, and only post on the sub got me perma banned. The other day I commented on https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5f57tf/maybe_theres_a_lesson_here_snowflakes/ that this was being posted on the safest space on reddit (implying the hypocrisy of the post). I was immediately perma banned, which I thought proved my point pretty well. Given that people on the sub love to talk about how bad safe space culture is, and seem to use the word "cuck" in every other sentence I wouldn't have thought that counts as being an asshole. Plenty of other people have been banned for even more innocuous things such as simply asking for a source for an unsubstantiated claim.

The mods probably looked at your post history and decided they didn't want you there. They have a strong, albeit hypocritical rule against people like you - not to demonize you in any way as I can't judge you for anything as I don't know anything about you other than what we talk about here.

 

1 hour ago, Sampsy said:

I'm not trying to imply anything about you personally - I don't know who you are and I haven't bothered reading a post history or anything to find out. But while you might not have meant to be dismissive, it's very hard to argue that the "biased media" argument isn't used to dismiss and ignore differing viewpoints on the sub.

Well like I said earlier, it's a circlejerk subreddit for the most part so they'll exaggerate a lot of things. However, a lot of the people there (won't say all of them) have fair arguments against the media, even their own trusted sources like Breitbart, Infowars, Fox, etc. They call out bullshit when they see it and it doesn't matter where it comes from. The problem is a lot of the bullshit they see is coming from left-leaning outlets like HuffPo, NYT and so on.

 

1 hour ago, Sampsy said:

No intelligent debate exists on r/The_Donald because every time something is posted that the users there don't like, the poster is labelled a brain-washed cuck and is banned. Even if the poster made a good point, pointed out a flaw in some logic, or provided a source disproving something it doesn't matter. If it doesn't follow the r/The_Donald's narrative of the world it must be brainwashing by the media in their mind.

Again, it's a circlejerk subreddit and they're allowed to do that regardless. The term cuck has transcended it's original definition (like the word faggot) and is a label for various types of people that all of the adjectives for it just got summed up into the word "cuck".

[ChineseChef]

42 minutes ago, Swatson said:

Seeing a lot of slippery slope fallacy here. No he's not gonna edit in CP or other horrific things. Yes what he did was wrong, but dont imply that automatically means he's literally hitler going around terrorizing reddit. Everyone likes to call for a CEO's head as soon as they make a mistake. He admitted what he did pretty soon after he did it and really it's not resignation worthy imo. Just because someone did something you dont like doesnt mean they have to automatically lose their job.

While I agree the likelihood is pretty low that the CEO himself will add CP to someones history in an effort to frame them, the problem is he has demonstrated a willingness to manipulate the DB from the back end.  Again, this wouldn't be a problem if people hadn't already been prosecuted and punished in courts of law based on Reddit/social media comments.  Who is to say how many people have access to the back end of the DB to make such changes?  How many of them are willing to frame someone they don't like?  We already know that NSA, FBI, police all regularly abuse their systems to stalk people and get revenge on them, there are news articles about it almost monthly at this point.

 

The mods/admins admitted to censoring and editing /pol, and some of the people were getting paid by CTR to do these edits.  It doesn't take much of a slippery slope to assume that these organizations already paying millions of dollars wouldn't pay some admin to sandbag a particular person who is being a problem for them.  How hard is it to find someone slightly extreme, someone who maybe supports Trump (or insert the public figure you dislike here), and modify their posts so they seem even more extreme and maybe dangerous?

[SansVarnic]

Sounds to m like this guy needs to step down.

If you have done it once it is easier to do again - human nature.

[Trik'Stari]

Perhaps, and this is just a thought.

 

Perhaps the CEO and employees of a company that provides a public forum of discussion, should not intervene in said discussion unless some law is actually broken.

 

I'm sorry but the whole "it's a private company" bullshit should not allow you to circumvent the 1st amendment when your company exists to offer a public forum for discussion and debate. You should not get to be "open to the public" but then claim the right to control what is said, simply because you disagree with what is being said.

 

That is censorship. You do not get to take advantage of the freedom of running a business, then deny other freedoms to those who use your business.

 

And please, do not bring up that bullshit XKCD meme, it fails to address the entire point and merely attempts to disarm/deflect with comedy.

[ARikozuM]

2 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Perhaps, and this is just a thought.

 

Perhaps the CEO and employees of a company that provides a public forum of discussion, should not intervene in said discussion unless some law is actually broken.

 

I'm sorry but the whole "it's a private company" bullshit should not allow you to circumvent the 1st amendment when your company exists to offer a public forum for discussion and debate.

1st amendment does NOT cover the verbal abuse of other private citizens. It only covers you when you speak (in a non-libelous/non-slanderous) of a company or the government.

[Trik'Stari]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

1st amendment does NOT cover the verbal abuse of other private citizens. It only covers you when you speak (in a non-libelous/non-slanderous) of a company or the government.

I said, unless a law has been broken.

 

Also, it has been well documented that "hate speech" is actually protected speech under the first amendment. That's why the KKK is allowed to hold peaceful rallies.

 

Are the KKK wrong and a bunch of assholes? Yes, but they've still got the right to have their opinions, however wrong and asinine they may be. You cannot allow the government to banish opinions based entirely upon morality. That's a slippery slope (an no, this is NOT a slippery slope fallacy because there is PLENTY of historical precedent) and eventually you just end up with "you disagree with me, that's morally wrong, off to the gulag with you".