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Reddit in Crisis

I just went to look at the Splatoon subreddit only to find that it had been made private.

Apparently, one of the well-known and liked staff was dismissed, and the mods are now taking the power they have over subreddits and turning them private en masse.
 
I don't Reddit, so I'm not sure what the significance of this is. It may just be a large temper tantrum that will be resolved as soon as the mods of all of the newly-made private subreddits are banned and replaced with ones under the gun of knowing they can't make their subreddits private.

Or could this be a (dare I say it) successful "boycott" that could make a major site and culture rethink its HR decisions?

Or you could just use Voat

Apparently, one of the well-known and liked staff was dismissed, and the mods are now taking the power they have over subreddits and turning them private en masse.

It's quite disappointing that people are being this childish over something so small. Shutting down popular subreddits is far more detrimental for the site itself than just a single staff member leaving.
Ah well, knowing reddit it'll be over with soon enough. The sheer amount of subreddits going private really surprises me, though.

I'm surprised the Reddit entry isn't trending today.

It's been made a private entry.

Entry currently WIP but hot enough for me to mark it as researching. Solid info is helpful.

Peacock Roy:

Entry currently WIP but hot enough for me to mark it as researching. Solid info is helpful.

The lead moderator of /r/iAmA posted a detailed description of why they decided to set their subreddit to private. Link

Here is /r/OutOfTheLoop's post about it as well. Link

It looks like Chooter, or Victoria, was responsible for a lot of the communication between the moderators of certain subreddits and the Reddit administration. When the moderators were given no information about Victoria's firing, or who her replacement would be, they did not know how to confirm certain information for their subreddits, or how to vet celebrities who post on the website.

But voat has:

Actual people who resemble the strawman "sjw" sterotype.

White supremacists

Pedophiles

And conspiritards.

Also the servers are shit at taking load

It’s quite disappointing that people are being this childish over something so small.

It is not just this. This is another questionable decision after years of abuse by the administration, and people who have been with the admins all the way are starting to protest.

Reddit introduced shadowbanning to interfere with spambots. Then regular users started getting shadowbanned. This was never supposed to happen. Then it started happening more often and for more trivial reasons.

Reddit had strict rules against brigading. SRS was allowed to break them. There are rumors that the admins helped SRS take over subs by banning their moderators, leaving them "abandoned" so SRS could claim them. SRS now owns most of the major subs.

Reddit banned /r/jailbait, a pedo board that was not breaking any rules and did not have any obscenity but made people uncomfortable.

Gamergate blew up when Reddit administrators killed a front page story about a questionable DMCA claim against Zoe Quinn made against Mundane Matt. The admins deleted over 20,000 comments and shadowbanned a shitload of people for participating in the discussion, then claimed that every single post in the conversation was an act of harassment. Reddit then banned any discussion of Gamergate from all other subreddits except for KotakuInAction, probably to use it as a honeypot for data collection and opposition research.

When the Gamergate email campaigns to advertisers started having an effect, Reddit forbid KiA and only KiA from posting the contact addresses of corporations or linking to these businesses' contact page. Reddit administrators launched their own email campaign a week later for some political activist cause.

And within the past few months,

Reddit hired Ellen Pao as CEO and the site began officially backing away from its core founding value of free speech. Pao was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying she would impose a political test on job candidates.

SRS began coordinating its bans of users across the 400+ subreddits that SRS owns, began banning users for posting in subs that SRS is at war with, and began banning users for using the modlog bot.

Reddit banned the FrontPageWatch bot that populated /r/undelete.

Reddit gave the Gamergate treatment to discussions of the Salt Lake City day care, causing that to blow up out of proportion.

Reddit admins deleted comments from a NotTheOnion post about the "diversity officer" Bahar Mustafa "kill all white men" incident.

Reddit banned all links to the Imgur competitor Slimgur until the complaints became numerous enough that they felt they had to allow it.

And within the past few weeks,

Reddit banned the popular sub /r/fatpeoplehate for banning Imgur's CEO and made up a bullshit reason about harassment, then sent its bullshit out in a press release. As far as anyone can tell, fatpeoplehate never harassed anyone and never broke any of Reddit's rules.

Reddit shadowbanned all of the moderators of fatpeoplehate and other subs that appeared to protest the ban of fatpeoplehate, and shadowbanned the moderators of /r/punchablefaces for failing to filter out submissions of Ellen Pao during the protests.

Reddit added filters to /r/all to prevent protests from reaching the front page.

An increasing number of accounts were shadowbanned for denouncing Pao or for discussing the fraud allegations against Buddy Fletcher.

Reddit shadowbanned a user named Orbitrix for discussing Gamergate outside of KotakuInAction.

Reddit administrators removed a post about the Trans-Pacific Partnership from the front page.

/r/news banned all discussion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and started banning from the sub any users who submitted stories about it.

After users started moving to Voat, somebody DoSed Voat and social engineered their ISP and PayPal to cancel Voat's service without warning.

And now Reddit fires a key employee with no replacement and for no stated reason, and this happens coincidentally right after Jesse Jackson's AMA included some harsh critics asking him about his scandals. All of this together suggests that Reddit has some deeply ingrained problems.

There's only so much drama, BS, and Shinnanigan Bannings you can do to people before they finally have it and do something drastic.

Oh, and if you think banning thousands of mods who know the people in the community they post in, and replacing them won't affect the community, you're mistaken. I frequent the bioware forums, and they tried something similar as well, replacing all mods with "bot mods" since they were known as Bioware Mod 1 through 5, and routinely spoke about being a paid third party account with multiple people taking shifts at the helm, much like bots.

Needless to say, the shitposting on biowares site hasn't decreased, but escalated. To the point where a majority of threads in any of its boards are either about who should be the next waifu on the games roasters, or why the company is the worst ever. :P

Same things gonna happen to reddit if they just up and ban everyone, and try to replace them like nothing ever happened.

Snapzu was also hit by a traffic surge.

Don't you just love to wake up to the smell of an internet shitstorm?

Did the remaining mods just not know what to do with the subreddits? Like what is there reasoning here? Are they trying to burn Reddit to the ground?

"SRS was allowed to break them. There are rumors that the admins helped SRS take over subs by banning their moderators, leaving them “abandoned” so SRS could claim them. SRS now owns most of the major subs."

First of all you sound like a typical conspiritard

Second off, srs never broke them. From SRS's offical sidebar, "Do not downvote any comments in the threads linked from here!"

Voat was never DDOSed, it's servers could not handle the load of angry body-shamers

"Bullshit reason about harassment". Yeah, not. People from fph were recorded telling somebody on /r/suicidewatch to kill himself. They brigaded /r/grandtheftautov when a picture of two slightly overweight people who met on gtav was linked there.

People were harassing the daycare, sending pizza, etc.

Also /r/jailbait had links to actual child porn being passed around. Voat had a jailbait board and people stated that to paypal because that was against there ToS.

"Protests?", the protests were nazi flags being posted in a circlejerk-esque "Vote this up when people search x they'll get this"

All the mods of fph were banned because they were creating subs to evade the ban on fatpeoplehate.

TL:DR: You got it all wrong. 90$ says you posted on fph and kia

I really do not give a shit about reddit. Let that cespool of cancer bury itself in its own filth.

did this warriortang guy legitimately try to justify /r/jailbait? jfc

In a word? Yes.

It's like a lot of defiance protests recently. People would rather crash and burn the whole thing, then deal with the status quo.

Not that I can blame them. Reddits admins sound a lot like youtubes admins. Incompetent, trigger-happy with deletes and bans, almost never able to be contacted, no accountable or means to contest their decisions, and using the small team excuse to get away with being so bad at proper administration.

TheBigCon4800 The Avalanche User wrote:

First of all you sound like a typical conspiritard

So you have no response and you resort to name-calling.

Second off, srs never broke them.

SRS organized brigades over IRC. Logs were sent to the admins and nothing happened.

Voat was never DDOSed

Voat reported being hit by three DoSes separate from the load of new users. An SRS admin took credit for one of them.

People from fph were recorded telling somebody on /r/suicidewatch to kill himself.

Which reflects poorly on those people, but not on the other 150,000 subscribers.

People were harassing the daycare, sending pizza, etc.

Baphomet harassing the daycare does not justify Reddit banning discussions about it.

Also /r/jailbait had links to actual child porn being passed around.

And those users could be banned and reported to the police without taking extraordinary action against a sub that complied with ToS. Or they could have changed the ToS. Instead they banned a compliant sub because they were getting bad press about it.

All that you are saying, over and over again, is that large numbers of innocent people should be punished for the actions of a small number of people.

90$ says you posted on fph and kia

Never posted to either. Send the $90 to the Sanders campaign.

Captain Blubber wrote:

did this warriortang guy legitimately try to justify /r/jailbait? jfc

No, I called them a pedo board. Learn to read.

Oh, so it's exactly like Reddit

I'm not usually one to hit the doomsday button at the drop of a hat, but I really feel that we are witnessing Reddit's downfall. With just how much shit has been going on and the constant warring between users, mods, and staff, I feel this can just not hold up much longer. What an amazing moment in history we get to sit and bear witness to.

An entire AMA (at the time of that reading was at over 400 points) that was posted during this time was deleted. The fact it was deleted really creeped me out because it happened literally the moment after I finished reading and had refreshed the page. It has been archived luckily but in case that archive is removed and because posting the contents on Reddit might get me personally banned due to the fact that I cannot trust Reddit to not censor me, I am posting the AMA here. Cheers KYM, sorry if this post is long but it's for a good cause.

I am Dacvak, former reddit employee and leukemia fighter.

Hi everyone! I’ve been wanting to do one of these for a while now – a few years, actually! I figured now is as good a time as any, though in light of the recent events, I’ll gear this AMA more towards my time at reddit, versus my personal life (though you are absolutely free to ask about that, too.)
Back in 2011, I applied for a job at reddit. The job was actually /u/hueypriest’s (Erik Martin) former position as Community Manager as he stepped up to General Manager of reddit. In late 2011, after a series of interviews, I received a call from /u/hueypriest offering me the position of Community Manager. (Back then, there were seriously about 10 employees at reddit. It was a very, very small company.) I obviously accepted the position.
However, in early 2012, a week before I was supposed to move to San Francisco, I was unexpectedly diagnosed with leukemia. I spent the next six of seven months in the hospital and received four enormous rounds of chemo as well as a bone marrow transplant. During my treatment (the day after my birthday, actually), reddit had made a company blog post about my diagnosis, reaching out to the community to help me find a bone marrow donor. reddit had also made the choice to keep my position open until I was able to return healthy and able to work. I will forever be grateful for what /u/hueypriest and the rest of the company did for me back then.
Eventually I was cured of leukemia (or so I thought) and was finally able to begin working at reddit. About a year went by while I worked (mostly remotely) for reddit, until I was once again ready to move to their headquarters. Unfortunately, weeks before moving, I had relapsed and my leukemia came back, this time harder than ever.
Around this time (probably early 2014), former reddit CEO Yishan Wong and current General Manager /u/hueypriest had made the decision to not only keep my job open, but help me by continuing to offer me payment from the company until I was once again ready to return to work. (Much like when Erik Wolpaw of Valve was sick before he was able to work.) Again, I can not stress enough how grateful I am to Yishan, /u/hueypriest, and all of reddit for helping me out during the hardest part of my life.
It was only until recently, late 2014, that I was able to return to work (remotely). Unfortunately due to new practices at reddit, all of the working employees were mandated to work from San Francisco, so I wasn’t actually able to work until I was ready to move. In January of 2015, I was almost ready to move to reddit. I had even flown out to SF for a few days while all of the reddit employees met during a company-wide 3-day seminar.
During this time, I had sat down with Ellen Pao (current reddit CEO) to discuss my future at reddit and when I was able to move. I had told her that it would still be at least a month (but probably closer to 2 or 3) before I was finally able to move to SF, and she said she was 100% fine with that. We discussed my position, and ultimately determined that I would be returning to the Community Management team. I met some of the new members of the team, all was well, and then I flew home on day 3.
Less than a month later, in February of 2015, I received a call from Ellen stating that I was to be terminated in less than a week. When I asked what the specific reason was, she had roughly stated that “because of our discussion, you are too sick to properly fulfill your duties as Community Manager.” (At no point during our meeting was this stated – I had raised concerns about the stress levels of Community Management, but had ultimately decided that it was something I could easily manage.)
I pleaded with Ellen to let me stay, as I had been sick for over a full year now and the only thing that was on my mind was coming back to work – work I loved so very, very much. She finally stated that if I were to get permission from my doctor stating that it was okay for me to move to SF and begin work, that I would be able to come back. I stated this wouldn’t be a problem, and proceeded to contact my doctor to arrange this. Unfortunately, a day later, she had called and once again stated that I was fired, stating that work would be too demanding for my health (something that I still, personally, should have been decided by me and my doctor – not someone who I had effectively never worked with while she was CEO).
Edit: It is ABSOLUTELY worth noting that even though I was fired, in lieu of severance pay, I accepted one year of COBRA medical coverage paid by reddit. That was definitely generous and I am grateful to Ellen and reddit for helping me with that.
I honestly still don’t know why I was let go from reddit, but it was a devastating blow, especially because I was finally able to return to work after so much time. Though, the decision to keep my position open was ultimately Yishan’s and /u/hueypriest’s, not Ellen’s, so once they left, I guess the decision was her’s.
In my opinion, a great deal at reddit has changed since Ellen Pao has taken the helm. It used to be a company run by a tight-knit group of people honestly working towards the happiness and welfare of the community and its employees. The inner workings, while sometimes a bit convoluted and messy, were always with the best of the community in mind. I can say that with 100% honesty.
To be fair, I had only witnessed the current inner workings of reddit for a few months while Ellen took the helm, so I thing definitely might have changed since I left, though today’s situation doesn’t exactly shine good light on the current structure of reddit and its employees.
Victoria (aka /u/chooter) was, without question, one of the nicest, most passionate, most efficient workers at reddit, and I honestly can’t fathom why she would have been terminated. It was such an honor to work with her, and as many mods have already stated, she truly took her work to heart and tried to provide a service to the community. She was one of the most well-known admins and was just incredible at her job. Without her, there would be hundreds of incredible AMAs that would have never happened.
My guess as to why she was fired is as good as anyone else’s, but if I had to muster up some explanation, it would be that reddit is likely trying to turn AMAs into something they currently aren’t. (Perhaps sponsored AMAs? I don’t know.) Otherwise there would have been no reason to let Victoria go. Literally everyone at the company loved her, including me, and it’s an enormous shame to see her go.
Honestly, I don’t know why reddit is making some of the decisions they are, but I still wish the very best for those who currently work there.
Anyway, this is an AMA, so please feel free to ask me whatever you’d like. I’ll be happy to answer.
Presuming the archived version has not been removed for whatever reason, here is a link to the archived version.
I am Dacvak, former reddit employee and leukemia fighter.

I've been doing a lot of research for the Reddit meme page in regards to this blackout and some interesting stuff has come up. Multiple people under Ellen K. Pao that benefited the community and were well-liked were fired for questionable reasons, such as a worker with Leukemia, a man heading the Secret Santa that even did a Ted Talks for it, and most recently Victoria. If anyone has additional information to supply please feel free to request editorship on the Reddit meme page of KYM or simply post info here so it can potentially be added.

>a srs admin took credit for one

That was a joke, and still there was no ddos, it was the fact that voat's servers are shit.

>harassing the daycare does not justify leddit banning discussions about it

well yeah it kinda does

>And those users could be banned and reported to the police without taking extraordinary action against a sub that complied with ToS

So you are defending /r/jailbait? If those users were banned, it would still happen. It gave them a place to post CP!

>Which reflects poorly on those people, but not on the other 150,000 subscribers.

It's not just that. It's all of this (https://www.leddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/39c0n3/cmv_leddit_was_wrong_to_ban_rfatpeoplehate_but/cs27yt4) too.

/r/Pics is now automatically censoring any posts with the name 'Victoria' in them, no exceptions. I'd like everyone to discuss that now. Proof here.

I'm partial to it because most victoria pics were shamless karmagrabs

I think it's pretty obvious what's going on.

Ellen Pao is a 4chan Sleeper Agent, and has finally activated her protocols to destroy Reddit and end the one-sided fued once and for all. She's used the ban-note to get rid of any who'd be a problem for her, and then got rid of it in a convoluted plot that had almost no chance of working and was really overly complicated, and now has it once more in her possession.

An important leak just surfaced on reddit that displays a screenshot conversation between /r/kn0thing and the /r/science mods.

If you don't care, then don't comment.

Anyways, the change.org petition for Pao's resignation has reached over 130k signatures.

It's just the same "warriors of free speech" from the whole fph debacle. This just brought the admins into the spotlight.

Too bad online petitions never work.

The freedom of petition is considered to be the weakest of the 1st Amendment rights.

I used to visit reddit, but now I'm done with it.