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For a couple years around a decade ago I moderated a decent-sized but not massive subreddit and the frequency of child porn reports on there was chilling. It wa

For a couple years around a decade ago I moderated a decent-sized but not massive subreddit and the frequency of child porn reports on there was chilling. It was every week at least. This was not at all a sexual sub, not even adjacent to porn or titillating images or anything. Reddit was more permissive than they should have been for a lot longer than they should have been and may not be representative. But even accounting for that, it really opened my eyes to how common it can be. This is also what turned me against free speech fundamentalism in the end. Every attempt at getting this addressed was shot down in the name of free speech and anti-censorship. Every time it was actually improved caused what felt like an internet-wide backlash against the changes.

commandlinefan 5y ago
> shot down in the name of free speech and anti-censorship Not to defend the material in question in any way - but the people who expressed concern... were right. As soon as Reddit gave mods the tools they needed to expunge the really terrible stuff from the site, those tools were almost immediately used to ban completely unrelated conspiracy subs.
- throwanem 5y ago
  I think lots of folks would consider that an entirely worthwhile tradeoff. Would you like to try to argue that it's not?
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Why stop the tradeoff. Without the internet these things could not spread. Shut it down. People can take photos without permission from the government. Stop selling camera and charge camera resellers. Would you like to argue where your line is?
    - throwanem 5y ago
      Somewhere short of enabling revictimization so that r/thedonald doesn't have to pay for hosting.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  Um do you want to try again at not defending it? My information is very out of date but I'm curious how you know how unrelated they were. My more-than-lay understanding is that the trading didn't happen in the open. Users used questionable comments, line-toeing images, and "jailbait jokes" to find each other and then swapped in DMs or off-site entirely. Reddits mods have always had a rich grapevine. In my time I never once heard of a sub getting banned that didn't have a months or years long reputation for turning a blind eye to that. Possibly that completely changed after I left, sure.
  - newguynewphone 5y ago
  - notch656a 5y ago
    You can ban all speech and it would end the spread of these images altogether, at least to the extent the law can be policed. The ends don't justify the means.
    - jakelazaroff 5y ago
      Okay, but we didn’t ban all speech, right? The collateral damage was mostly weird conspiracy theory subreddits and hate-based communities like r/fatpeoplehate. Given how it actually shook out, I think the ends absolutely justified the means.
      - psyc 5y ago
        Criticisms of pragmatism don’t typically depend on failure to achieve the ends.
      - ipaddr 5y ago
        Until 'weird' and different becomes systemically shutting out minorities. People justify a lot of things they shouldn't
        5y ago
- doctor_eval 5y ago
  Again the conflation of freedom of speech versus the freedom to be heard. Freedom of speech means that the government can’t put you in jail for saying something stupid. Censorship of privately owned online forums is entirely up to the forum. There is no high principle at stake there. In fact, censorship of this kind of forum is itself a kind of speech - so forcing someone to publish what you want them to publish, is also a form of suppression.
- tenuousemphasis 5y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. Mods (not Reddit employees) can't ban subreddits, because they only have control over their own subreddits. The admins (Reddit employees) did ban subreddits, but it had nothing to do with the new tools the admins gave to subreddit mods.
hedora 5y ago
The older I get, the more I believe the issue is with centralization (which the DMCA had a huge part in establishing). What if there were no redit servers, and each subredit was self hosted? What would the incentive be for people to post child porn on some small independently run server? As the subredit owner, you could just censor whoever you wanted, with very little global internet drama. Tools for autoflagging posts could still exist. Over-censored forums would piss off users, and be easily replaced. Similarly, under censored ones would lose users / get busted. This all worked fine pre-internet. Editors would decide who and what would be posted. It still works for things like audio fiction podcasts, where "slush readers" filter submissions, and money / reputation are exchanged when stuff gets published. In addition to leading to much better moderation than the big Internet sites, it creates jobs for domain experts. The main problem is that it doesn't scale to a $1B/mo business that investors can siphon money off of. Instead, it's best structured as an ecosystem of small botique businesses.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > What would the incentive be for people to post child porn on some small independently run server? But... that's precisely what the article is about? > The Korean agent showing Janczewski around eventually pointed the phone’s camera at a desktop computer on the floor of Son’s bedroom, a cheap-looking tower-style PC with its case open on one side. The computer’s guts revealed the hard drives that Son seemed to have added, one by one, as each drive had filled up with terabytes of child exploitation videos. > This was the Welcome to Video server. > "I was expecting some kind of glowing, ominous thing," Janczewski remembers, "and it was just this dumpy computer. It was just so strange. This dumpy computer, that had caused so much havoc around the world, was sitting on this kid’s floor."
  - otterley 5y ago
    The banality of evil, indeed.
  - crtasm 5y ago
    > But... that's precisely what the article is about? The incentive in this case was profit from/access to more CSAM. GP is referring to how most subreddits/forums do not have that incentive.
rubyist5eva 5y ago
> This is also what turned me against free speech fundamentalism in the end. Every attempt at getting this addressed was shot down in the name of free speech and anti-censorship. The solution is to put these vile pieces of sludge in prison forever, or execute them - not turn against liberty. This is a red herring for at least morally questionable people.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  If executing people fits with your conception of liberty I think we have very different understandings of liberty, and what "morally questionable" means.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    - rubyist5eva 5y ago
      Hey man, bullets are pretty cheap.
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    I have no objection whatsoever with executing people that torture our most vulnerable for sexual gratification. Liberty means the freedom to do what is right. Child exploitation isn’t even in an adjacent universe to that.
    - worik 5y ago
      > I have no objection whatsoever with executing people that torture our most vulnerable for sexual gratification. I have a problem with you executing people. There are plenty of hypothetical people whom we could agree deserve execution. The problem is: Who has the power? What else will they do with it? If the subjects of that power are kept alive then there is a chance to "put right" injustices, if not then not. That is the problem with execution as a "tool of justice"
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throw_m239339 5y ago
> This is also what turned me against free speech fundamentalism in the end. Every attempt at getting this addressed was shot down in the name of free speech and anti-censorship. Every time it was actually improved caused what felt like an internet-wide backlash against the changes. Child porn never add anything to do with "free-speech". I'm sorry but trying to link the 2 as they are somehow related issue is completely absurd. Reddit still has plenty of child porn, revenge porn and child grooming subs, so much that Reddit now keeps modlists hidden cause the depraved people Reddit hires as "supermods" apparently need that kind of protection to continue their misdeeds. I hope one day that depraved website and its depraved admins and "supermods" get its day of reckoning, in a court of law.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Child porn never add anything to do with "free-speech". Well, they are related in that the tools needed to combat one can also be used to combat the other. If I can delete a post because [I believe] it contains child porn, I can also delete a post because it's saying something I don't like.

commandlinefan 5y ago

> shot down in the name of free speech and anti-censorship Not to defend the material in question in any way - but the people who expressed concern... were right. As soon as Reddit gave mods the tools they needed to expunge the really terrible stuff from the site, those tools were almost immediately used to ban completely unrelated conspiracy subs.

throwanem 5y ago
I think lots of folks would consider that an entirely worthwhile tradeoff. Would you like to try to argue that it's not?
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Why stop the tradeoff. Without the internet these things could not spread. Shut it down. People can take photos without permission from the government. Stop selling camera and charge camera resellers. Would you like to argue where your line is?
  - throwanem 5y ago
    Somewhere short of enabling revictimization so that r/thedonald doesn't have to pay for hosting.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
Um do you want to try again at not defending it? My information is very out of date but I'm curious how you know how unrelated they were. My more-than-lay understanding is that the trading didn't happen in the open. Users used questionable comments, line-toeing images, and "jailbait jokes" to find each other and then swapped in DMs or off-site entirely. Reddits mods have always had a rich grapevine. In my time I never once heard of a sub getting banned that didn't have a months or years long reputation for turning a blind eye to that. Possibly that completely changed after I left, sure.
- newguynewphone 5y ago
- notch656a 5y ago
  You can ban all speech and it would end the spread of these images altogether, at least to the extent the law can be policed. The ends don't justify the means.
  - jakelazaroff 5y ago
    Okay, but we didn’t ban all speech, right? The collateral damage was mostly weird conspiracy theory subreddits and hate-based communities like r/fatpeoplehate. Given how it actually shook out, I think the ends absolutely justified the means.
    - psyc 5y ago
      Criticisms of pragmatism don’t typically depend on failure to achieve the ends.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Until 'weird' and different becomes systemically shutting out minorities. People justify a lot of things they shouldn't
      - 5y ago
doctor_eval 5y ago
Again the conflation of freedom of speech versus the freedom to be heard. Freedom of speech means that the government can’t put you in jail for saying something stupid. Censorship of privately owned online forums is entirely up to the forum. There is no high principle at stake there. In fact, censorship of this kind of forum is itself a kind of speech - so forcing someone to publish what you want them to publish, is also a form of suppression.
tenuousemphasis 5y ago
That doesn't make any sense. Mods (not Reddit employees) can't ban subreddits, because they only have control over their own subreddits. The admins (Reddit employees) did ban subreddits, but it had nothing to do with the new tools the admins gave to subreddit mods.

hedora 5y ago

The older I get, the more I believe the issue is with centralization (which the DMCA had a huge part in establishing). What if there were no redit servers, and each subredit was self hosted? What would the incentive be for people to post child porn on some small independently run server? As the subredit owner, you could just censor whoever you wanted, with very little global internet drama. Tools for autoflagging posts could still exist. Over-censored forums would piss off users, and be easily replaced. Similarly, under censored ones would lose users / get busted. This all worked fine pre-internet. Editors would decide who and what would be posted. It still works for things like audio fiction podcasts, where "slush readers" filter submissions, and money / reputation are exchanged when stuff gets published. In addition to leading to much better moderation than the big Internet sites, it creates jobs for domain experts. The main problem is that it doesn't scale to a $1B/mo business that investors can siphon money off of. Instead, it's best structured as an ecosystem of small botique businesses.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> What would the incentive be for people to post child porn on some small independently run server? But... that's precisely what the article is about? > The Korean agent showing Janczewski around eventually pointed the phone’s camera at a desktop computer on the floor of Son’s bedroom, a cheap-looking tower-style PC with its case open on one side. The computer’s guts revealed the hard drives that Son seemed to have added, one by one, as each drive had filled up with terabytes of child exploitation videos. > This was the Welcome to Video server. > "I was expecting some kind of glowing, ominous thing," Janczewski remembers, "and it was just this dumpy computer. It was just so strange. This dumpy computer, that had caused so much havoc around the world, was sitting on this kid’s floor."
- otterley 5y ago
  The banality of evil, indeed.
- crtasm 5y ago
  > But... that's precisely what the article is about? The incentive in this case was profit from/access to more CSAM. GP is referring to how most subreddits/forums do not have that incentive.

rubyist5eva 5y ago

> This is also what turned me against free speech fundamentalism in the end. Every attempt at getting this addressed was shot down in the name of free speech and anti-censorship. The solution is to put these vile pieces of sludge in prison forever, or execute them - not turn against liberty. This is a red herring for at least morally questionable people.

giraffe_lady 5y ago
If executing people fits with your conception of liberty I think we have very different understandings of liberty, and what "morally questionable" means.
- notch656a 5y ago
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    Hey man, bullets are pretty cheap.
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  I have no objection whatsoever with executing people that torture our most vulnerable for sexual gratification. Liberty means the freedom to do what is right. Child exploitation isn’t even in an adjacent universe to that.
  - worik 5y ago
    > I have no objection whatsoever with executing people that torture our most vulnerable for sexual gratification. I have a problem with you executing people. There are plenty of hypothetical people whom we could agree deserve execution. The problem is: Who has the power? What else will they do with it? If the subjects of that power are kept alive then there is a chance to "put right" injustices, if not then not. That is the problem with execution as a "tool of justice"

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throw_m239339 5y ago

> This is also what turned me against free speech fundamentalism in the end. Every attempt at getting this addressed was shot down in the name of free speech and anti-censorship. Every time it was actually improved caused what felt like an internet-wide backlash against the changes. Child porn never add anything to do with "free-speech". I'm sorry but trying to link the 2 as they are somehow related issue is completely absurd. Reddit still has plenty of child porn, revenge porn and child grooming subs, so much that Reddit now keeps modlists hidden cause the depraved people Reddit hires as "supermods" apparently need that kind of protection to continue their misdeeds. I hope one day that depraved website and its depraved admins and "supermods" get its day of reckoning, in a court of law.

tsimionescu 5y ago
> Child porn never add anything to do with "free-speech". Well, they are related in that the tools needed to combat one can also be used to combat the other. If I can delete a post because [I believe] it contains child porn, I can also delete a post because it's saying something I don't like.