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An update on the recent issues surrounding a Reddit employee
- CodeGlitch 6y agoIt's good that Reddit has admitted fault here, and said person is no longer employed by them.
- Shivetya 6y agothey did so only once their more popular subs went dark depriving users of content. So its not really them being on the side of good by admitting fault but being forced to admit fault if anything I will not be surprised if reddit's management does not take steps to prevent moderators from doing that again, taking popular subs private.
- jtylr 6y agoI just wonder why nobody thought to Google her name between the 9th March (when "extra protections" were first put in place) and now.
- CodeGlitch 6y agoThey probably did but didn't want to be the one to say anything at the risk of being accused of transphobia.
- spacekitcat 6y agoThat feels like a bold and possibly dangerous thing to say without evidence.
- draw_down 6y agoCome on
- _-david-_ 6y agoHow is it bold and dangerous? A decent chunk of people accused any person who criticized this person as transphobic. This has happened with other LGBT people so there is a history of this happening in the past.
- spacekitcat 6y agoI think you’ve just made that up.
- jimbob45 6y agoThis is 2021. Talking about transsexuals has become like saying the name Voldemort. Choosing to associate with these people puts your livelihood at risk. At this point, I actively avoid liberal groups.
- bavent 6y agoIt’s 2021 and somehow disgusting viewpoints like this still exist. Amazing.
- fieryscribe 6y agoThe former Reddit employee in question accused the Green Party in the UK of transphobia, after they discovered she hired her own father as an election consultant, under an alias. At the time, he had been charged with rape and child abuse, and has since been convicted. This is all public information.
- pseudalopex 6y agoDoesn't seem like the accusation stuck. And it would be very easy to point out she did it before.
- masonic 6y agoDoesn't seem like the accusation stuck. Are you unclear on the definition of "convicted"?
- pseudalopex 6y agoRead their first sentence again.
- askl56 6y ago> 'On March 9th, we added extra protections for this employee, including actioning content that mentioned the employee’s name or shared personal information on third-party sites, which we reserve for serious cases of harassment and doxxing.' So they didn't vet them but knew to protect their identity at all costs?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pseudalopex 6y agoI imagine they reported being harassed or doxxed.
- dkthehuman 6y agoContext for those like me out of the loop: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22348255/reddit-moderator-blackout-protest-aimee-knight-uk-green-party https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22348255/reddit-moderator...
- geoduck14 6y agoOH WOW!
- generalizations 6y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26557175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26557175
- happytoexplain 6y agoIs this cancel culture?
- CodeGlitch 6y agoI would say cancel culture is usually applied when group A doesn't like the politics of group (or individual) B, and has them de-platformed. In this case politics weren't involved, and the people performing the de-platform were from all ends of the spectrum.
- zelon88 6y agoSoooooo, free market capitalism?
- darkwizard42 6y agoNo, and I think you know why, but I'll bite. This is a consequence for past actions. If you are involved in the kind of things this employee was involved with then you deserve no right to being employed by a private company and certainly no right to have others ignore that in their interactions or discussion of you.
- daveoc64 6y ago> This is a consequence for past actions. If you are involved in the kind of things this employee was involved with then you deserve no right to being employed by a private company and certainly no right to have others ignore that in their interactions or discussion of you. Can't you say that about anything and anyone though? Every instance of someone being "cancelled" is really just the "consequence" of their past actions.
- darkwizard42 6y agoI think I agree with that. "cancel culture" is just the catchy phrase being used today to imply that the past actions weren't so bad and weren't deserving of the subsequent response. In this case...I don't think someone who has definitive links to pedophilia and already been kicked out of two organizations for those links probably shouldn't be employed in a position at Reddit where they are working with youth. Should she never get a job again ever? No! But probably not one with children or youth...
- darkwizard42 6y agoIf they were able to add extra protections for this employee, they surely must have done a Google search at the least to see why... and then promptly realized the controversy/issues with keeping an employee with this kind of history in charge of subreddits like /r/teenagers The end result is fine, removing the employee for failing even a cursory background check in relation to their work, but how on earth did this slip through? Will all employees have their background reviewed more thoroughly? This strikes me as classic "we got caught, sorry" instead of proactively taking steps to prevent this from happening again.
- harryf 6y agoI don’t know much about how Reddit mods and Admins are organised but I have been an active Reddit user for 15 years (which is scary to admit). What’s clear is these days the popular parts of Reddit are very much “controlled discourse” which largely follow the same narratives as mainstream media. I think the tipping point was Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign, where Reddit showed it could have a significant impact on voting. After that it slowly merged with mainstream media Opinion. What enabled some of that could well have been the vetting (or lack of) of admins / employees who in turn have some ability to influence who the moderates big subreddits.
- vesinisa 6y agoExactly. They went to extensive lengths to set up complex filtering to suppress linking any information about this employee's background. Yet, at the same time, they claim that the employee's background came as a surprise to them. It's bordering on self-contradictory.
- darkwizard42 6y agoLike surely the employee must have mentioned to HR something along the lines of "people are harassing me, it should stop" and HR might go "okay we will look into that" and someone should have looked into it to see what all the controversy was about...like even a little?
- 6y ago
- kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y agoI haven't been on reddit in 3 months and I have no idea whats going on. I could not possibly care less.
- jfoutz 6y agoYou did take the time to comment, so there's probably a little room for less caring. Sorry for the pedantry, but it is hn, so possibly ok.
- kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y agoYou are correct I did care enough to state how little I cared, but I will submit for the record that I care so little I didn't even read the article.
- ALittleLight 6y agoSad to see a website that once felt kind of indie succumb to obvious corporate-speak and lies like this.
- hackflip 6y agoAs an early adopter from the Digg exodus, I haven't really enjoyed Reddit in the past 2 years or so.
- xtracto 6y agoHey fellow Digg exile! I completely agree. One thing I mentioned somewhere else: It is quite interesting to see both this and the Stallman FSF issue developing in parallel: In one side (reddit drama) There's uproar trying to "cancel" a person for whatever beliefs/actions they did. On the other side (Stallman/FSF) there's an uproar against cancelling the person for their beliefs/actions. Sure, both are different population, but it kind of shows the diversity of thought and reasoning in both cases. Personally I try to be neutral with regards to these type of moral judgments. My question is: Did they something illegal in their country? then throw the book at them as strongly as possible. Otherwise... well, my morals are not compatible with US population morals, nor with Iran's population morals, nor with French population morals so I reserve any judgement for myself.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pubby 6y agoLast year two of reddits biggest users (and mods) were accused of being Ghislaine Maxwell. The accounts were u/maxwellhill and u/anutensil. It shocked me how quickly those stories sunk, and how some of the stories derided it as conspiracy-minded drivel. Well, it's been almost a year since, and the accounts still haven't posted since Ghislaine was arrested.
- akhilcacharya 6y agoI genuinely don't understand why a wanted criminal, famous socialite and multimillionaire thought (at the time) to be in hiding outside the country and known by nearly everyone would spend her time posting links to Reddit accruing millions of comment karma. It straight up does not make sense, and neither does whatever relationship that has to what just happened. It's a total non-sequitur. It doesn't help matters that they were fairly well known as power user even before [0]. It's the lowest and least creative form of conspiracy theories - really superficial pattern recognition. [0]: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/reddit-maxwellhill-moderator-technology-flaw/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/reddit-maxwellhill-moderator-...
- oliwarner 6y agoThat's what they want you to think.
- geoduck14 6y ago>I genuinely don't understand why a wanted criminal, famous socialite and multimillionaire thought (at the time) to be in hiding outside the country and known by nearly everyone would spend her time posting links to Reddit accruing millions of comment karma Did you know that Donald Trump had a Twitter account?
- mdoms 6y agoDoes UK have at-will employment? If she had been an employee in my country it's very unlikely that reddit could legally fire her like this.
- daveoc64 6y agoGenerally speaking, an employee in the UK can be dismissed for no reason at all within the first two years of employment.
- franciscop 6y agoAt-will employment is pretty much a US-only thing within western countries (barring the testing period). I believe there was another EU country a bit lax, but otherwise most countries require a valid reason to fire someone. I cannot find the source for the life of me, but it was pretty telling.
- geoduck14 6y agoI haven't seen any reason given for Reddit firing her. I've seen various reasons why people question her judgement - but nothing from Reddit about the "why".
- thepasswordis 6y agoAm I getting some details wrong here? Reddit hired a person who condoned and supported the glorification of child rape. Then gave this person private and privileged access to moderate discussions among at risk teenagers. Has there been an investigation into what discussions they may have had with the children that use this site? Keep in mind that this is being done while these kids are being presented (on reddit) with hard core gore, porn, etc. Reddit tried to ban people from pointing this out, and it was only after what appears to be a site wide protest that they have removed them from their privileged access administrative team. Does it actually get worse than this? This seems like a criminal level of negligence, and then a conspiracy to cover it up. Unreal.
- darkwizard42 6y agoI believe Reddit's initial reason for banning was an overstep to prevent harassment of said employee. However even a cursory search engine query would have pointed out very bright red flags that should have immediately led to an internal decision. Of course instead they put in place this ban logic on March 9 and waited till public discourse exploded to take action on March 24...
- dekhn 6y agoThis is a "fire your head of HR" level of problem and you can be sure this will be brought up to the board (I just looked up the board. it's only 4 people, basically product marketing folks).
- chippy 6y agoIts interesting that the job description for an admin position at Reddit advertises that the company will and has tools to scrub successful employees personal information from the web at large. https://boards.greenhouse.io/reddit/jobs/3005811 https://boards.greenhouse.io/reddit/jobs/3005811
- IndySun 6y agoReddit "...We built a relationship with her first as a mod and then through her contractor work on RPAN. We did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her..." No background vetting was required, the episodes in her life that led to the sacking are public knowledge, not deep dark secrets, and one would have thought they would have cropped up during the relationship building. I do not know what RPAN is.
- vesinisa 6y agoThis story has once again disappeared from the HN front page. The same happened yesterday to at least three stories about the same incident. Is there a rule/policy towards removing content about plunders by startups originally funded by Y Combinator? Preciously rejected discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26557175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26557175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26556187
- yodon 6y agoHN heavily penalizes stories where the comment threads have large amounts of conflict and upvote/downvote wars. The automated lowering of the article rank has nothing to do with HN caring about the subject matter of the article and everything to do with HN's software penalizing the combative nature of the discussion about the article. HN does this because it helps maintain the high level of discussion seen elsewhere on the site.
- curtisblaine 6y agoThis, and the other stories, have been captured on https://rejected.substack.com/ https://rejected.substack.com/ - a newsletter / repository of stories that were prevented to reach the front page or silently pushed off.
- morpheos137 6y agoThis may be an unpopular opinion but I think we need to re-think the value of pseudo-anonymity on the net. Free speech means so much more when it is attached to your real identity. In real life your identity is attached to your speech in almost all cases. Why not online too? Advantages: -less trolling and extremism in general, people would be less likely to say outlandish things if their comments or submissions were attached to the real identity and reputation. -less vile content. People would be less likely to post gray area porn on forums like reddit if they had to use their real identity. -transparency in moderation. If Ghislaine Maxwell is moderating /r/worldnews/ users have a right to know. In general users have a right to know who is moderating popular forums. Disadvantages: -perhaps more people would be subject to in real life harassment but this is doubtful if the harassers are also obligated to use their in real life identities on line. Where harassment becomes illegal it is no longer a "moderation" problem. If you write a letter to your local newspaper and it is published under your real name, as they always are, if somebody threatens to attack you over it, that is a legal matter, not a matter for the paper. It should be the same on line... -perhaps fewer people would be willing to discuss unpopular opinions online if they feared retaliation from a "cancel culture" mob. The key problems with reddit as a general forum of forums for online discussion, I believe, are: pseudo-anonymity and lack of transparency in users, mods and admins encourages abuse. lack of democratic selection or accountability for mods and admins encourages mods who are at odds with a community's general members. If we believe in democracy off-line why not online too. upvote downvote turns everything into a lowest common denominator popularity contest. I could go on...but I don't get paid for this...like most of reddits mods and users don't get paid. There is value to be extracted in user generated text content but reddit is doing it wrong...the site is become more and more extreme of an echo chamber and alienating more and more of its potential user base. Mods are expected to work for "free" so this encourages special interests and disordered people to become mods... It seems to me reddit is a dumb idea...run by dumb people. I don't get how it became so big with so little competition. What is the barrier to entry to set up a forum?
- pwinnski 6y agoFacebook tried this, and it did not go well for many good reasons. But also, inasmuch as people are tied to their real identities on Facebook, your first listed advantage doesn't seem to hold up. On many websites, I see people using their real names for trolling and extremism, saying outlandish things pretty frequently. Any political post on fivethirtyeight.com should serve as but one example. Not everybody values their online reputation as much as you might. Many people think nothing of using their real name to heap scorn on and revile people they consider "others," like those of a given political party or ethnicity or religion. I know PennyArcade once hypothesized that anonymity was key to greater internet nastiness, but it doesn't seem like anonymity is actually that essential. On the other hand, many people rely on pseudo-anonymity to avoid harassment, to shield themselves from stalkers such as ex-partners, and so on. Many people lack the sort of legal documentation such a policy would seem to require. Trying to enforce anything like "RealID" results in excluding many voices from the conversation, while not actually doing much to reduce the toxicity.