[UPDATE] Major Reddit communities going private in mass protest

[ProjectBox153]

Note: I'll be adding more information as I get it. This is still a developing story, after all. 

 

Update

Reddit has let go of the staff member in question. For more information see this post from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez).

 

Summary

Over the past 24 hours many subreddits have been made private in a wave of mass protest. This comes after Reddit admins were allegedly suspending accounts for mentioning a controversial UK politician. When confronted with this and after facing direct criticism, Reddit responded by claiming that their actions were taken to protect the safety and privacy of their employees. Many people have found this more than a bit suspicious, and soon began a wave of mass protest. The protest had already slowly started before Reddit responded, but the number of subreddits participating has skyrocketed since. 

 

Quote

Quote

"More than 200 subreddits have set their status to private in the past day, including the 27 million-member forum r/Music, as well as large boards dedicated to Apple Mac computers and the games Among Us and Pokémon Go."

"However, she was previously at the center of two investigations from both parties, which caused Reddit users to begin questioning her involvement with the site after it was claimed that she had been hired by the company."

 

Thoughts

This is still very much a developing situation, but it's already had a massive impact on Reddit communities. Moderators have been getting endless modmail from users asking to be approved. Discussion about this has been going on nonstop, and it looks like it will be continuing for a while. It's important to think about how companies like Reddit can react when faced with controversy. This has happened on Reddit before, and I'm sure it'll happen again. 

I've also been in contact with several moderators who are taking part in this event, and we've all been in agreement: Reddit needs to acknowledge this. They don't need to try and shift the blame to bad automation like they attempted at first.

 

Sources

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22348255/reddit-moderator-blackout-protest-aimee-knight-uk-green-party

https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/677190-reddit-private-community-aimee-challenor-censorship

https://redd.it/mbmthf

 

Note to the mods:

Although part of the focus of the protest is on a political figure that is not the main point of the protest. The main point is that Reddit will knowingly cause issues in communities, and that they'll try to defend people accused of terrible acts. This isn't just isolated to Reddit. Similar situations have happened on other websites, and it's something that needs to be addressed in one way or another. The rise in technology has brought us these forums, and it has also brought us these issues.

[rcmaehl]

Update:

 

 

Summary

Over 200 Subreddit communities with over 30 million members have set themselves private in protest over a new Reddit Admin

 

Quotes

Quote

...Reddit communities have locked down to protest Reddit’s handling of a controversy. More than 200 subreddits have set their status to private..., including r/Music, as well as... Apple Mac computers,... Among Us and Pokémon Go. Moderators are demanding a statement about Knight, whom Reddit... hired. ...The current controversy exploded yesterday, when Reddit banned a UK politics subreddit moderator for linking to an article that mentioned Knight. Reddit reversed the ban and posted an explanatory statement, saying it was fighting a harassment campaign against an employee. “Earlier this month, a Reddit employee was the target of harassment and doxxing,” “Reddit activated standard processes to protect the employee from such harassment, including initiating an automated moderation rule to prevent personal information from being shared. The moderation rule was too broad, and this week it incorrectly suspended a moderator who posted content that included personal information.” ... “our intent was never to remove any and all mentions of this admin’s name.” Reddit’s statement failed to satisfy several moderators. One popular comment reads. “I don’t condone doxxing virtually anyone, but what you’re describing isn’t doxxing. It’s posting the name of a public figure.” Knight was a [Political] Party spokesperson and a candidate for deputy leadership. But she was suspended in 2018 amid an inquiry involving her father David. “On reflection, I can understand that it was unacceptable for me to appoint my dad as my election agent when he had been arrested. I can now understand the potential risks of that decision,” Knight was also suspended by [A separate political party]. To some Reddit members, Knight’s alleged hiring echoed a years-long controversy. Reddit moderators are largely volunteers, in contrast with Reddit’s paid administrative staff. And moderators have had a frequently tense relationship with the company. ...Several moderation teams said they planned to keep their subreddits private until Reddit either responds directly about Knight’s employment or fires her.

 

My thoughts

Considering the subject matter of the controversy, I can understand why subreddits are up in arms over this statement. Regardless, Reddit is in a lose-lose situation on their part. They will heavily upset their community if they keep Knight, but if they let them go, they may face a discrimination lawsuit or other actions by Knight. Reddit set themselves up in this situation, and they're unfortunately going to have to make some tough decisions.

 

Sources

Daily Dot

The Verge (quote source)

Game Revolution

Edited March 24, 2021 by rcmaehl
Add update

[Arika]

Controversial?? That's a bit of an over simplification 

 

Quote

previously suspended from the Green Party after selecting her father — later convicted of violent sexual assault on a child as her election agent in a 2017 political campaign

 

Quote

Knight was also suspended by the Liberal Democrats party when her now-husband appeared to post comments about having fantasies involving sex with children on Twitter

 

I think it's right for users and moderators to feel upset that someone that close to... Pedophiles, basically, has been appointed as a moderator. Reddit has had a long history of child sexualization so I have no idea why they didn't expect this back lash. 

 

She may be an employee, but why do they need to defend her? They don't defend any other promenent figures from harassment, hell even just regular users they don't care about

[Bombastinator]

I didn’t know Reddit even had human moderators.  It doesn’t look much like it.  It looked to me like it was all automated.  It probably is at least largely that way.  Reddit is so large I can’t see human moderation being an effective possible solution for them.  There’s just too much volume.  The concept of forums seems to only scale to a point, and Reddit passes that point long since.

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

I didn’t know Reddit even had human moderators.  It doesn’t look much like it.  It looked to me like it was all automated.  It probably is at least largely that way.  Reddit is so large I can’t see human moderation being an effective possible solution for them.  There’s just too much volume.  The concept of forums seems to only scale to a point, and Reddit passes that point long since.

There are moderators for each community, not for the entire site. AutoMod is important, but human moderation is still most certainly needed and effective. 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

There are moderators for each community, not for the entire site. AutoMod is important, but human moderation is still most certainly needed and effective. 

Not effective enough it seems to me.  I avoid Reddit when possible.  It seems fantastically toxic to me.

[ProjectBox153]

Just some more personal thoughts:

It's been very interesting watching this story unfold. It began yesterday afternoon, started gaining traction in the evening, and really took off last night. Then it exploded today to the point where a new post had to be made to keep track of all the subs going private. I don't know about anyone else, but this is very interesting to me. 

[Guest]

So. They went and made their subredits private? 

 

What does that do exactly? (I'm not a redit user, sry for my ignorance.) 

 

 

 

[Andreas Lilja]

1 minute ago, ShrimpBrime said:

So. They went and made their subredits private? 

 

What does that do exactly? (I'm not a redit user, sry for my ignorance.) 

 

 

 

Can't view / interact it says private.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Wow, Reddit manipulating things... Who could have imagined that, after their CEO admitted editing user comments because he was mad with them and wanted to make them look bad. It is just as trash as Twitter, Facebook (and pedos at Discord HQ).

I haven’t heard anything about discord except that it is apparently up for sale and there is a lot of general fear about who may buy it.   “Pedos” is a pretty strong accusation.   It’s one of the more heinous crimes possible for humans.  Arguably worse than murder in the eyes of many.

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, ShrimpBrime said:

So. They went and made their subredits private? 

 

What does that do exactly? (I'm not a redit user, sry for my ignorance.) 

Going private means no one can view the subreddits. No viewers means no ad revenue from those subs. No ad revenue means the admins will be forced to respond. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ProjectBox153 said:

Going private means no one can view the subreddits. No viewers means no ad revenue from those subs. No ad revenue means the admins will be forced to respond. 

 

2 minutes ago, Andreas Lilja said:

Can't view / interact it says private.

OK, but users would be able to see the main post of the subreddit or a headline/title of? Or be able to request to view? 

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, ShrimpBrime said:

 

OK, but users would be able to see the main post of the subreddit or a headline/title of? Or be able to request to view? 

They can't see any posts, they can only see the community description. Most of these have been changed to point to the post I linked to. And yes, you can request to join, but there's no point - there are no other users to interact with. 

For example, visit reddit.com/r/mac. You'll see the description (asking people not to request to join) and why it is private. 

[JLO64]

This is actually waaaay bigger than I thought it would be once I saw the list of subs that are currently set to private right now (link below).  The mega-subs aren’t as affected (r/pcmr is still public) but we are still talking about a significant chunk of the site.  I wouldn’t be surprised if over 50% of all Reddit users are in a sub that is now private.

 

https://www.reddit.com/user/Blank-Cheque/comments/mc9ave/list_of_protesting_subreddits/

 

[Guest]

Just now, ProjectBox153 said:

They can't see any posts, they can only see the community description. Most of these have been changed to point to the post I linked to. And yes, you can request to join, but there's no point - there are no other users to interact with. 

For example, visit reddit.com/r/mac. You'll see the description (asking people not to request to join) and why it is private. 

OK now I understand why they are doing it, add revenue.... 

 

Well, I don't know why people go to reddit. They have LTT forums  

At least these guys earn the money in good positive way. And no ads all over the place either!

 

[TexasGaint]

Well, Reddit is in the process of going public with an IPO. So I can see why they wouldn't want any negative press right now. It just so happened that a mod was affected in a major sub that this entire thing got attention in the first place. I doesn't help that Reddit Admins have been known in the past to look pass previous subs like r/jailbreak. What some people say was the largest collection of soft child porn on the internet until it got deleted after advertisers caught wind of it.

[Fasterthannothing]

I avoid almost all of Reddit now except small subreddits specific to my hobbies. I got tired of all the stupid stuff on the front page and the constant up vote/front page manipulation, brigading, and power tripping mods (their are a lot of terrible mods on Reddit). Reddit has turned into a not so awesome place anymore. I'm glad to see subreddits taking things into their own hands and hitting where it hurts their wallets. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, TexasGaint said:

Well, Reddit is in the process of going public with an IPO. So I can see why they wouldn't want any negative press right now. It just so happened that a mod was affected in a major sub that this entire thing got attention in the first place. I doesn't help that Reddit Admins have been known in the past to look pass previous subs like r/jailbreak. What some people say was the largest collection of soft child porn on the internet until it got deleted after advertisers caught wind of it.

What the hell is with all the pedophile crap. Why do people support Reddit in the first place? Why even read there? 

[Derkoli]

Well, it worked.

 

 

EDIT: Post link: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/mcisdf/an_update_on_the_recent_issues_surrounding_a/

Edited March 24, 2021 by Derkoli

[Arika]

21 minutes ago, Derkoli said:

Well, it worked.

 

EDIT: Post link: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/mcisdf/an_update_on_the_recent_issues_surrounding_a/

Good. But i think this actually shows they do NO background checks. her history of why she was removed from 2 parties isn't exactly hidden

[Yeroh]

I'm surprised that a site like reddit doesn't research its (potential) employees any better. The results are skewed given the reporting going on right now, but I had no trouble finding articles about the person in question from as early as 2018. Given reddit's relevance on the internet right now, you'd think they'd at least type in the applicants name into Google or whereever before hiring them.

 

33 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

What the hell is with all the pedophile crap. Why do people support Reddit in the first place? Why even read there? 

Reddit offers a forum for basically any topic since users can create (and moderate) them themselves. And since traditional forums are more or less dead in an age where content becoming more and more concentrated on a handful of sites, it shouldn't come as a suprise that people will use reddit to follow and discuss their hobbies in place of what would've previously been various different sites. It's convenient, because once you have one account, you can sign up for all of the forums that you're interested in. While you might have other options in some areas, such as the LTT forum for hardware or PC-related topics, that's not really the case for every topic. In these cases, reddit can be quite useful.

[Derkoli]

3 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Good. But i think this actually shows they do NO background checks. her history of why she was removed from 2 parties isn't exactly hidden

True. Even a literal 30 second google search brings up her Wikipedia article, which has it all on there. Why u/spez or another Reddit employee didn't do this is beyond me.

[FakeATF]

48 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

What the hell is with all the pedophile crap. Why do people support Reddit in the first place? Why even read there? 

Nobody said Redditors were smart. I've seen some pretty strange views on the platform. I'm honestly glad that I left pretty much every subreddit I once followed. The memes were dogshit, and the politics were supremely annoying. Poor content and a community of questionable IQ.

 

[Andreas Lilja]

1 hour ago, ShrimpBrime said:

What the hell is with all the pedophile crap. Why do people support Reddit in the first place? Why even read there? 

Idk because they killed the competition?

 

There are great subreddits out there.

[Fnige]

1 hour ago, Derkoli said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/mcisdf/an_update_on_the_recent_issues_surrounding_a/