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He changed a 'F U CEO' (upvoted by 1.6k users) comment to 'F U unpaid reddit moderator', without any indication that the comment was edited. Very juvenile and
by dhruval 10y ago
He changed a 'F U CEO' (upvoted by 1.6k users) comment to 'F U unpaid reddit moderator', without any indication that the comment was edited.
Very juvenile and unprofessional way of dealing with the situation, really erodes trust in the platform (simply deleting the comment would have been a better response).
Would maybe expect this from the founder of a young fledgling startup, but the 33 year old CEO of a company like Reddit ought to know better.
- kordless 10y agoIt's well within his power to change a comment. What's not cool is that he changed it to a lie. If he's the CEO, he's paid.
- JorgeGT 10y agoOne thing is to visibly edit a comment like they do in StackExchange. Impersonating a user is a very different thing.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bigtunacan 10y agoIt's an abuse of power and ethics and is a line that shouldn't be crossed. It is much more honest and within reason to take steps like deleting posts, suspending or even outright banning users.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoWhile an abuse of power, I'm not sure I see the outrage. It's Reddit. It's an Internet forum run by a private corporation. The users in question abusing spez have zero right to their speech on the platform. You have zero recourse if Reddit edits your comments. Nuke /r/the_donald, nuke the users and hellban their IPS of those who sent abusive messages, and let's move on. Bask in the irony when I say, "Drain the swamp"
- stale2002 10y agoThe issue is that is is hypocritical and completely against what reddit claims to stand for. Reddit CLAIMS to be a Bastion of free speech. But in reality, is this true? The answer seems to be NO.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoThere is no bastion of free speech online, anywhere. All forums are privately operated. Free speech ends when it's become harrasment. What happened to spez calls for digitally curb stomping the offenders. This is no different from Twitter having to cull accounts harassing others.
- RyanZAG 10y agoThere is a massive difference between Twitter banning accounts, and Twitter transparently editing accounts to harass someone else. It would be like you posting a Twitter message that says "I hate Donald Trump" and Twitter transparently changing that message to "I hate Tim Cook" so that anybody reading your timeline thinks you're someone you aren't. See the problem now? Now imagine if Twitter's management was taken over tomorrow and this actually happens. Would you not be a little bit outraged?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- 69mlgsniperdad 10y agoOk. How would you feel if Zuckerberg secretly edited your Facebook status, and swapped his name out with someone else's, because what you said about him was kind of mean?
- toomuchtodo 10y agoI'm absolutely fine with it. It's Facebook, nothing of value.
- cookiecaper 10y agoYes. Twitter gets shit for borderline bans, but can you imagine if they went in and edited the person's tweets instead? There'd be a riot. These platforms are not just a playground anymore. Politicians come on and make on-the-record statements on them, the news sources stories off them, etc. Integrity of the record is critical. Reddit jeopardizing that platform is very bad for them and erodes their credibility enormously. I can see major figures declining to perform AMAs anymore based on the uncertainty that someone at the company will get triggered, jump in, and change their stuff.
- SilasX 10y agoIt generally shouldn't be. It's my understanding that once you take on the investment and corporate governance that Reddit has, you'll have "need to know" controls in place that prevent the appropriation of company resources for personal use -- so even the CEO doesn't have the kind of unrestricted database access needed to do this kind of thing.
- yuhong 10y agoTo he honest, he was one of the founders of Reddit.
- harryf 10y agoAnd here he is boasting about knowing "all your dark secrets" at TNW - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lALKRayDLuk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lALKRayDLuk - meant in jest but shows incredibly poor judgement as a CEO
- alexc05 10y agoMark Zuckerberg had a similar indiscretion as a young man.
- Domenic_S 10y agoSure, but Zuck was what, 18? Spez could conceivably have a 18-year-old kid at his age.
- Melk 10y agoSpez isn't emotionally adept to handle the abuse you get as a reddit CEO. Yishan wrote before that he was good at the technical side of the job but he's neither a strong businessman nor a community leader.
- Fricken 10y agoAnybody can go through the comment history of any redditor and know their dark secrets. I don't mind Reddit fucking up. If they were competent they would have monetized the users a long time ago and it would be an broken mess that feeds daily spam to my inbox like every other social media platform. Reddit is too valuable to take seriously.
- thekevan 10y agoNot if you always post with the realization that the one day you could be doxed, no matter how anonymous you think you are being. If I can dark secrets, I don't upvote, comment on them or include them in my comments on reddit.
- MicroBerto 10y agoThis is an offense worth firing someone over in a "real" company...
- 27182818284 10y agoFacebook, etc terminated those with power for doing things like stalking on an ex-girlfriend. This seems similar. It is an abuse of power, and frankly, we don't know if this is the first time it has happened—it simply might have been the most extreme case
- Dylan16807 10y agoThis is not similar to stalking.
- bobzimuta 10y agoYeah it's worse. Using a privileged position to discredit opposition under the cover of "lolz."
- CmdrSprinkles 10y agoNo... it really isn't. This is abusing power to attempt to manipulate public opinion on a message board. Stalking is a horrible invasion of privacy that has a tendency to escalate into violence. And even when it doesn't, it results in drastically increased anxiety and fear for the person being stalked if they find out.
- lttlrck 10y agoSomeone could certainly suffer anxiety and fear if their public messages were altered in the appropriate manner. And it could escalate.
- Dylan16807 10y ago"in the appropriate manner" But if we focus on the manner that actually occurred, the only additional harm vs. a reply of "no u" is to reddit's reputation.
- ajkjk 10y agoHow differently would you be reacting if he hadn't admitted it, apologized, explained that he was reacting impulsively under pressure and stress, and fixed the changes? I'm worried that the answer is "not at all", which seems weird.
- davemel37 10y agoProbably the most useful piece of advice I ever read (readers digest about 20 years ago) was... "Never Ruin an Apology With an Excuse." I read Steve's apology and to be honest it was more dismissive and excusing than it was a real apology. So, it shouldn't surprise you that he isn't being cut the same slack you would expect after a sincere apology.
- ajkjk 10y agoI don't know. What if he actually buckled under prolonged stress and frustration? What could he have said differently to make that reason more .. reasonable?
- davemel37 10y agoI am not discounting how difficult and stressful his situation might be, and I am not saying I would have acted any better... But, This is exactly my point. His reason doesn't matter. Reasons aren't relevant to apologies. When you are apologizing, you are admitting wrongdoing...defending yourself in the same breadth is essentially saying you didn't do anything wrong in the first place. Every time I have to apologize I am tempted to throw in a reason/excuse and everytime I remind myself of that quote and stick with just "I'm sorry" I end up with a better result than when I tag on a reason... That being said, if you read his post...he actually doesn't apologize at all. He even goes so far as to say he wont do it again (only) because it upset the community team, not because it was wrong to do. He also claims he fixed it. He might of changed back the comments...but he certainly didn't fix anything.
- tripzilch 10y ago
- ozgune 10y agoI met Steve several years back while going through YC. He's a much calmer and nicer person than most founders I've met, myself included. If I read this Reddit thread without knowing him, I would have deemed him unprofessional and maybe even upvoted some of the comments. When I read the thread knowing who he is, I'm thinking "I can't imagine how stressful it must be to run Reddit. He made one mistake in a bad day, apologized for it, and now everyone's talking about it. Steve's way nicer and more professional than I am, so I would probably have messed up big time in his shoes."
- icelancer 10y agoThis is a mistake that has profound implications. Not just your average mistake like "I broke the build and didn't tell anyone" nonsense.
- yarou 10y agoYou're being awfully charitable. It's on the order of magnitude of royal fuck-up. How can any user expect to be safe on Reddit anymore? This is the sort of situation that irrevocably damages trust. What's the guarantee that this won't happen again? What bothers me more is that this sort of functionality exists in the first place. All it would take is one compromised admin account, and boom, you can rewrite somebody's entire comment history without it being logged anywhere.
- thecatspaw 10y agothe functionality is probably a UPDATE comments where id=x set content="newcontent"
- iguana 10y agoOperationally, the CEO should probably not have write access to a master DB.
- thecatspaw 10y ago
- ineptech 10y agoOddly, I find juvenile-ness of this rather reassuring. Anyone who is using mod powers for surreptitious reasons (swaying public opinion, or discrediting opponents) has too much to hide to also use them for a silly prank. Of course it was still dumb and he shouldn't have done it. But it's hard to credit the people saying this is evidence of more sinister revelations yet to come.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]