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Worth pointing out that Reddit voluntarily doxxed at least one of its commenters to this plaintiff — when no court order required it to do so. This Ars writeup

Worth pointing out that Reddit voluntarily doxxed at least one of its commenters to this plaintiff — when no court order required it to do so. This Ars writeup neglects to mention this, and leaves the implication that Reddit consistently defended its users' anonymous speech in this dispute: it did not. https://torrentfreak.com/filmmakers-request-identities-of-reddit-users-to-aid-piracy-lawsuit-230218/ https://torrentfreak.com/filmmakers-request-identities-of-re... - "However, Reddit decided to share information about “ben125125”, while protecting the other users. As shown above, “ben125125” responded to a thread about piracy warnings and specifically mentioned RCN. That wasn’t as obvious in the other comments and Reddit feels that disclosing their identities goes too far." edit: The linked court order also mentions this (page 3, lines 6–7)

dporter 4y ago
The way I read it, the only reason Reddit didn't hand over the information on the other users was that the comments didn't specifically mention RCN. If all the users had mentioned RCN, it seems like Reddit would have handed them everything they wanted.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- price 4y ago
  No; read the decision, or Reddit's filing. Three of these seven users did talk about RCN. Reddit defended their privacy too.
musha68k 4y ago
The failure that is Reddit is the failure of the web.
- roncesvalles 4y ago
  That's interesting because I consider Reddit to be one of the great victories of the Internet.
  - RoyGBivCap 4y ago
    With their blatantly sexist and racist policies, and their Free Speech bait & switch I vehemently disagree: From reddit a employee: "Our rule1 protects groups that are attacked based on a vulnerability, which doesn't pertain to white people or men as a group." Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/NgOxEg0.png https://i.imgur.com/NgOxEg0.png What is rule 1? "Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned." (https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) So in practice, according to one of their employees it's actually: "Remember the non-white male human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking non-white people or women. Everyone except white people and men have a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate against non-white people or women will be banned." And this is absolutely born out in their repeated banning of male-centric subs, while the most toxic community I've ever seen remains, because it's wildly sexist against the correct gender. And there are multiple "fragile white redditor" type subs also, but all other "fragile <race> redditor" subs were instantly banned. And the bait & switch: "We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it." — Reddit FAQ 2005 "We've always benefited from a policy of not censoring content" — u/kn0thing 2008 "A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it," he replies. [reddit]'s the digital form of political pamplets." — u/kn0thing 2012 "We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal." — u/reddit 2012 "We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it - but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on reddit. Now it's just reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse (cat pictures are a form of discourse)." — u/yishan 2012 "Neither Alexis [u/kn0thing] nor I created Reddit to be a bastion of free speech" >— u/spez 2015
- cmh89 4y ago
  The saga of Violentacrez and /r/jailbait showed that the folks who run Reddit have zero integrity.
  - trehalose 4y ago
    I hadn't heard of this guy, so I just looked him up. He ran a subreddit for sharing photographs of children for the express purpose of jerking off to, and the CEO of Reddit at the time (Yishan Wong) defended that? That's bad indeed.
    - Eisenstein 4y ago
      That was back when reddit was 'absolute free speech' oriented and nothing the guy posted was illegal.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      On the flip side, the knee jerk reaction "think of the children" has resulted in many awful policies which do more aggregate harm than good. It is useful to have someone defend things which are distasteful but not illegal. When we snuff out a particular bit of speech we should have to think about it, however briefly.
      - ALittleLight 4y ago
        I don't think so. The legal and moral principle of free speech is meant to protect different political, scientific, philosophical, etc. views. It's not meant to protect a pedophile's right to sexualize children. What do we lose by censoring those people?
        pixl97 4y ago
        Everybody has a group they consider 'those people'. It is at least best we have a discussion before banning any of 'those people' before we realize that the people in charge consider 'those people' whatever group you are in.
        4y ago
- lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
  Reddit is one part of the web. It's a privately controlled company. It should never have accumulated as much importance as it has. We need to design the next Reddits so they're credibly neutral parts of the internet with their own, distributed controls.
mnky9800n 4y ago
Reason number 151 on today's "why not to use Reddit" list.
kjkjadksj 4y ago
Reddit only requires a username and password. What info are they even collecting for doxxing purposes? Is this outlined in the terms of service?
- jsyolo 4y ago
  IP address, DMs, probably lots more.
- ribosometronome 4y ago
  I'm looking at the sign-up process for Reddit now, and it seems to have a "Continue with Apple", "Continue with Google" and "Continue with e-mail" options. Even with Apple's e-mail obfuscation, there's still an e-mail associated with newer accounts, I think.
  - RoyGBivCap 4y ago
    If you don't verify your email a lot of the site is unavailable to you. This is not disclosed on sign up.
    - computerfriend 4y ago
      They suspended my account, reactivated it and then suspended it again for not having an associated email address.
      - quikoa 4y ago
        Same for me and my account is >5 years old and never had any problems.
    - bink 4y ago
      I've never verified an email on reddit (or even provided one) and I haven't noticed any issues. What do you lose access to?
      - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
crossroadsguy 4y ago
It makes me wonder what hn/dang is going to do if a law enforcement agency (a country’s Govt representative) asks info on an hn user? What all HN collects and keep (email is optional, yes)? Has it ever happened?
- throwaway2990 4y ago
  Discussion of China is routinely censored probably to avoid losing money from there.

dporter 4y ago

The way I read it, the only reason Reddit didn't hand over the information on the other users was that the comments didn't specifically mention RCN. If all the users had mentioned RCN, it seems like Reddit would have handed them everything they wanted.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
price 4y ago
No; read the decision, or Reddit's filing. Three of these seven users did talk about RCN. Reddit defended their privacy too.

musha68k 4y ago

The failure that is Reddit is the failure of the web.

roncesvalles 4y ago
That's interesting because I consider Reddit to be one of the great victories of the Internet.
- RoyGBivCap 4y ago
  With their blatantly sexist and racist policies, and their Free Speech bait & switch I vehemently disagree: From reddit a employee: "Our rule1 protects groups that are attacked based on a vulnerability, which doesn't pertain to white people or men as a group." Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/NgOxEg0.png https://i.imgur.com/NgOxEg0.png What is rule 1? "Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned." (https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) So in practice, according to one of their employees it's actually: "Remember the non-white male human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking non-white people or women. Everyone except white people and men have a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate against non-white people or women will be banned." And this is absolutely born out in their repeated banning of male-centric subs, while the most toxic community I've ever seen remains, because it's wildly sexist against the correct gender. And there are multiple "fragile white redditor" type subs also, but all other "fragile <race> redditor" subs were instantly banned. And the bait & switch: "We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it." — Reddit FAQ 2005 "We've always benefited from a policy of not censoring content" — u/kn0thing 2008 "A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it," he replies. [reddit]'s the digital form of political pamplets." — u/kn0thing 2012 "We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal." — u/reddit 2012 "We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it - but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on reddit. Now it's just reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse (cat pictures are a form of discourse)." — u/yishan 2012 "Neither Alexis [u/kn0thing] nor I created Reddit to be a bastion of free speech" >— u/spez 2015
cmh89 4y ago
The saga of Violentacrez and /r/jailbait showed that the folks who run Reddit have zero integrity.
- trehalose 4y ago
  I hadn't heard of this guy, so I just looked him up. He ran a subreddit for sharing photographs of children for the express purpose of jerking off to, and the CEO of Reddit at the time (Yishan Wong) defended that? That's bad indeed.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    That was back when reddit was 'absolute free speech' oriented and nothing the guy posted was illegal.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    On the flip side, the knee jerk reaction "think of the children" has resulted in many awful policies which do more aggregate harm than good. It is useful to have someone defend things which are distasteful but not illegal. When we snuff out a particular bit of speech we should have to think about it, however briefly.
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
      I don't think so. The legal and moral principle of free speech is meant to protect different political, scientific, philosophical, etc. views. It's not meant to protect a pedophile's right to sexualize children. What do we lose by censoring those people?
      - pixl97 4y ago
        Everybody has a group they consider 'those people'. It is at least best we have a discussion before banning any of 'those people' before we realize that the people in charge consider 'those people' whatever group you are in.
      - 4y ago
lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
Reddit is one part of the web. It's a privately controlled company. It should never have accumulated as much importance as it has. We need to design the next Reddits so they're credibly neutral parts of the internet with their own, distributed controls.

mnky9800n 4y ago

Reason number 151 on today's "why not to use Reddit" list.

kjkjadksj 4y ago

Reddit only requires a username and password. What info are they even collecting for doxxing purposes? Is this outlined in the terms of service?

jsyolo 4y ago
IP address, DMs, probably lots more.
ribosometronome 4y ago
I'm looking at the sign-up process for Reddit now, and it seems to have a "Continue with Apple", "Continue with Google" and "Continue with e-mail" options. Even with Apple's e-mail obfuscation, there's still an e-mail associated with newer accounts, I think.
- RoyGBivCap 4y ago
  If you don't verify your email a lot of the site is unavailable to you. This is not disclosed on sign up.
  - computerfriend 4y ago
    They suspended my account, reactivated it and then suspended it again for not having an associated email address.
    - quikoa 4y ago
      Same for me and my account is >5 years old and never had any problems.
  - bink 4y ago
    I've never verified an email on reddit (or even provided one) and I haven't noticed any issues. What do you lose access to?
    - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

crossroadsguy 4y ago

It makes me wonder what hn/dang is going to do if a law enforcement agency (a country’s Govt representative) asks info on an hn user? What all HN collects and keep (email is optional, yes)? Has it ever happened?

throwaway2990 4y ago
Discussion of China is routinely censored probably to avoid losing money from there.