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Exchanging child pornography is illegal in the United States (as well as in many other countries). There's nothing unreasonable about stating in your TOS that y

by kijin 15y ago

Exchanging child pornography is illegal in the United States (as well as in many other countries). There's nothing unreasonable about stating in your TOS that you can't have a subreddit the very existence of which breaks the law. Sure, people can try to reopen these subreddits under different names, but once the rule is in the TOS, they can be reported on and shut down as a matter of routine. The same applies to warez. Like it or not, you can't operate in the U.S. while allowing your users to post links to warez. /r/trees is not the same, and I hate slippery-slope arguments predicting its demise. Exchanging actual marijuana is illegal in many parts of the United States. Exchanging information about marijuana is not. You could download kiddie porn on /r/jailbait, and the fact that those images are actually hosted on imgur is unlikely to convince any court. But you wouldn't download marijuana on /r/trees, would you? If /r/trees or /r/atheism ever gets banned, it will be the result of a completely different kind of pressure. It won't be a straightforward extension of reddit's current policy on kiddie porn. Reddit may or may not be dying, but its latest change of policy on kiddie porn will probably have little to do with its fate.

alecco 15y ago
What are you talking about? Reddit had a very strong stance aginst CP already. And there's a lot of rules broken on /r/trees so it's far from safe. Like meetups to exchange or people giving tips. That's not legal in US and happens quite often there. Same with /r/atheism, a lot of their content can be labeled hate speech under US law. (IANAL)
- tptacek 15y ago
  There's no such thing as "hate speech" under US law. You can, for instance, proudly march down the streets of Skokie in Klan regalia bellowing about the need to "exterminate the Jews", safe in the knowledge that the First Amendment implications of doing so have already been litigated. There are (dubiously) "hate crime" laws, but they pertain to violent crime. In a similar vein, I'm not so sure about your legal analysis about "arranging meetups" and "providing tips" on marijuana forums. The reason mj forums don't want people arranging meetups probably has more to do with not creating an easy venue for sting operations. (Disclosure: it's sad it took Reddit this long to apply this rule, and more than a little repulsive to see people up in arms about it.)
  - alecco 15y ago
    You keep editing your post. My original "I stand corrected" is now out of it's meaning and it makes no sense to keep editing my answer. I expected better of you, tptacek.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      I didn't edit it to change the meaning of your comment. On this particular thread, I'd like to make sure my comments are as clear as I can make them: Reddit did the right thing, and the only complaint I can make is that they took too long and their reasoning wasn't great.
      - alecco 15y ago
        IMHO, they did the right thing in the wrong way for the wrong reasons at a very troubled time for the community. Also now there's blood in the water so I doubt this will be the end of it.
  - mbreese 15y ago
    Well, while you can walk down the streets of Skokie and shout "exterminate the Jews", you can't walk down the street in Winnetka and say "exterminate that Jew". I think that would fall under fighting words, which isn't protected.
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    Why is it "repulsive" to see people in arms about it? The construction of that last line, that is supposed to appeal to reasonableness, is unfair from it's very phrasing. You, as many have sought to do in this issue, try to portray ANYONE who disagrees with the decision or rationale for the decision as a pedophile or a pedophile apologist. It's disingenuous and rude. I don't agree with the decision because it's apparent that it was a simple reaction to pressure from, well, lots of different places. I disagree with it because there isn't a solid brightline defense of this decision in light of other subreddits that they not only tolerate, but openly endorse. To write a post discussion the speech implications of this decision and to end it with "repulsion" of those who disagree is insulting.
- kijin 15y ago
  You're right, "latest change of policy" is not the best way to characterize Reddit's stance on CP. But breaking rules in a subreddit is different from having a subreddit where the only possible means of participation is to break the law by posting links to CP. If everybody obeyed the rules in /r/trees, that subreddit might still contain interesting content. If everybody obeyed the law in /r/jailbait, that subreddit simply could not exist. It's a fine difference, but it makes all the difference. Also, FYI, the U.S. Constitution offers very strong protections for hate speech. It's not like some other countries (cough Germany cough Canada cough) where you can get fined for uttering racial slurs.
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    Way back in my 888chan raiding days, we took special pleasure in tormenting Kimmo Alm and his legion of pedopals over at anontalk. We regularly got hosts to dump him, payment processors to drop him, and when that failed (or we were just bored), we'd DDoS him. We'd have months-long trolling sessions where we would get ourselves promoted to wiseguys, then wreak havoc on the site in whatever manner struck our fancy. This is a fairly long-winded way of saying I am not a supporter of pedophiles or CP. That being said, none of the jailbait subreddits had any CP on them. Those who claim that this was a move against child pornography and child exploitation are being disingenuous. There was no child porn nor exploitation. What there was was suggestive pictures of minors. The content was distasteful, not illegal. Now, I firmly support reddit's right to ban those subreddits on whatever grounds they choose. What's more, I think it was the right move to make. I am disheartened, however, to see people conflate the content that was removed with child porn. The images on those subreddits were largely pulled from facebook and the like. Yes, there were a couple subreddits devoted to the so-called "model" agencies where clothed children were photographed in suggestive poses, and I find that creepy and distasteful in the extreme, but it is not porn, any more than the Victoria's Secret catalog is porn. It doesn't do anyone any good to use disingenuous language to conflate the issues we're talking about. Reddit got rid of about a dozen creepy and distasteful, but fully legal subreddits devoted to suggestive pictures of clothed minors. Despite my misgivings about censorship and free speech, I support this decision. That does not, however, mean that I am willing to use dishonesty to make those subreddits seem worse than they were, or argue that this was a decision about preventing child exploitation. It simply wasn't. This was about removing subreddits that the majority of redditors found distasteful and a black mark on reddit. It was about avoiding another PR boondoggle like the one that followed Anderson Cooper's report. That's all. It need not be any more than that for it to still have been the right decision.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  >Like meetups to exchange or people giving tips Never once have I seen this. I've seen ONE meetup and it was in a state where medical use is legal and even then, there's no law against conspiring to meet up to talk about and or consume marijuana. "conspiracy to get high". Give tips about what? Stupid ways to make a bong out of a gatorade bottle? Scandalous! >Same with /r/atheism, a lot of their content can be labeled hate speech under US law. I just spit onto my keyboard a bit. Besides the fact that hate speech is not illegal, I can't think of anything that is purely hateful enough to be deemed hate speech in that subreddit.
baddox 15y ago
The whole point of this policy shift is that it's no longer about child pornography, just like the jailbait banning wasn't about child porn. The post makes it clear that they've always followed the law regarding child pornography, but that they're now voluntarily banning all suggestive or sexual content involving minors (so, not just child porn). Their main excuse is that they don't have the resources to moderate on a case-by-case basis, and I guess they think a subreddit-by-subreddit basis will require less manpower. Still, I strongly suspect this isn't purely about legality. Reddit has come under fire (first, in the press regarding jailbait, and more recently by somethingawful users) for having content that's not necessarily illegal, but rather just creepy. Most of the top comments on this post share this interpretation, and most seem to approve of banning creepy content. If other commenters are to be believed, it also appears that many of the banned subreddits contained fairly "standard" pornography and either had strict "no minor" or "no nudity/sex" policies.
- kijin 15y ago
  The fact that the admins are painting their policy with a broader brush doesn't mean that the policy is any less about child pornography than it was before. If "creepy" was the new standard, /r/creepy and /r/wtf should be on the chopping block, too. If "no nudity or sex" was the rule, /r/nsfw wouldn't have survived. What a subreddit's policy says is less important than what actually gets posted there and/or what people expect to find there. Would you go to /r/truejailbait, /r/lolicon, or /r/preteen_girls expecting to find pictures of adults in non-revealing outfits? No, the expectation is that those subreddits will contain child porn or something similar.
  - baddox 15y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, the high-profile subreddits under scrutiny didn't contain child pornography regularly or at all. The jailbait one was depicted on Anderson Cooper's show as having pictures likely grabbed from Facebook: e.g. teenagers in swim suits. There was also mention of a single commenter claiming to have more revealing pictures of an underage ex-girlfriend (which sounded like they would have qualified as child pornography), which prompted other commenters to ask him to privately message them with links. I was under the impression that this was the most illegal thing on that subreddit, and that the main problem was that people thought it was creepy to have pictures of minors in swim suits. More realistically, I think the banning was more about the news segment, since everyone already knew about that subreddit. > What a subreddit's policy says is less important than what actually gets posted there and/or what people expect to find there. What's the line? What if someone posts a single nefarious link on /r/nsfw, or for that matter, something completely unrelated like /r/askscience? It seems like you're proposing that outlier illegal content should result in the banning of a subreddit if the subreddit is "creepy," but not if the subreddit is "normal." > the expectation is that those subreddits will contain child porn or something similar. You're hinting at the important problem of defining child pornography. Are pictures of minors in swim suits child pornography? Sure, it's creepy to think about adults surfing for those pictures, but is it even borderline illegal? I don't think so. I think reddit has every right to ban whatever they want (although it seems to go against the stated purpose of their site), but it seems a bit disingenuous to claim that it's at all about legality unless it truly is.
Alex3917 15y ago
"Exchanging information about marijuana is not." Except for that now the Obama administration is trying to charge anyone who speaks out in favor of drug reform under the RICO laws, which carry a possible death penalty. Some Montana legislator was just charged a couple weeks ago.
- wnoise 15y ago
  [citation needed]
  - Alex3917 15y ago
    http://coloradoindependent.com/111645/pro-marijuana-montana-legislator-investigated-by-dea http://coloradoindependent.com/111645/pro-marijuana-montana-... Apparently she hasn't been charged yet, she's currently being investigated, but it seems that RICO is the framework that they are considering using to charge her.
    - Steko 15y ago
      This and your above comment constitute a wildly inaccurate extrapolation based on what's in your article.
      - Alex3917 15y ago
        How so? If this case sets a precedent that anyone who speaks out in favor of marijuana can be prosecuted as part of a criminal conspiracy, then by defition they would be eligible for the death penalty because that's how RICO works- you can get charged for any crime committed by someone else in your 'organization', regardless of what that crime is or what penalty it carries. I don't see how that's an extrapolation.
        Steko 15y ago
        There's no "case" here. You've extrapolated from a single question from a single investigator to a nonexistent death penalty case and pinned it all on an imaginary Obama administration mandate to charge everyone involved in medical marijuana advocacy. That's not the story here.
sixothree 15y ago
One of the reasons for removing /r/jailbait originally was that users were trading illegal files behind the scenes. I've heard of the same thing in /r/trees; Eg. seed exchanges and more.
- streptomycin 15y ago
  > One of the reasons for removing /r/jailbait originally was that users were trading illegal files behind the scenes. FWIW, that's just speculation. I think a more plausible explanation is the bad publicity from CNN.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  What? Where on earth do people hear these ludicrous things? Besides, what you've described is not illegal.
mistercow 15y ago
> There's nothing unreasonable about stating in your TOS that you can't have a subreddit the very existence of which breaks the law. That's not what they did. What they did was to say that suggestive content featuring minors is prohibited. I feel like a broken record, but I guess I need to keep reiterating this: Romeo and Juliet is suggestive content featuring minors. > You could download kiddie porn on /r/jailbait No you couldn't. Nothing pornographic or illegal was ever allowed on /r/jailbait. It might have gotten posted a few times, but the submitters would have been banned.

by kijin 15y ago

alecco 15y ago

What are you talking about? Reddit had a very strong stance aginst CP already. And there's a lot of rules broken on /r/trees so it's far from safe. Like meetups to exchange or people giving tips. That's not legal in US and happens quite often there. Same with /r/atheism, a lot of their content can be labeled hate speech under US law. (IANAL)

tptacek 15y ago
There's no such thing as "hate speech" under US law. You can, for instance, proudly march down the streets of Skokie in Klan regalia bellowing about the need to "exterminate the Jews", safe in the knowledge that the First Amendment implications of doing so have already been litigated. There are (dubiously) "hate crime" laws, but they pertain to violent crime. In a similar vein, I'm not so sure about your legal analysis about "arranging meetups" and "providing tips" on marijuana forums. The reason mj forums don't want people arranging meetups probably has more to do with not creating an easy venue for sting operations. (Disclosure: it's sad it took Reddit this long to apply this rule, and more than a little repulsive to see people up in arms about it.)
- alecco 15y ago
  You keep editing your post. My original "I stand corrected" is now out of it's meaning and it makes no sense to keep editing my answer. I expected better of you, tptacek.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    I didn't edit it to change the meaning of your comment. On this particular thread, I'd like to make sure my comments are as clear as I can make them: Reddit did the right thing, and the only complaint I can make is that they took too long and their reasoning wasn't great.
    - alecco 15y ago
      IMHO, they did the right thing in the wrong way for the wrong reasons at a very troubled time for the community. Also now there's blood in the water so I doubt this will be the end of it.
- mbreese 15y ago
  Well, while you can walk down the streets of Skokie and shout "exterminate the Jews", you can't walk down the street in Winnetka and say "exterminate that Jew". I think that would fall under fighting words, which isn't protected.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  Why is it "repulsive" to see people in arms about it? The construction of that last line, that is supposed to appeal to reasonableness, is unfair from it's very phrasing. You, as many have sought to do in this issue, try to portray ANYONE who disagrees with the decision or rationale for the decision as a pedophile or a pedophile apologist. It's disingenuous and rude. I don't agree with the decision because it's apparent that it was a simple reaction to pressure from, well, lots of different places. I disagree with it because there isn't a solid brightline defense of this decision in light of other subreddits that they not only tolerate, but openly endorse. To write a post discussion the speech implications of this decision and to end it with "repulsion" of those who disagree is insulting.
kijin 15y ago
You're right, "latest change of policy" is not the best way to characterize Reddit's stance on CP. But breaking rules in a subreddit is different from having a subreddit where the only possible means of participation is to break the law by posting links to CP. If everybody obeyed the rules in /r/trees, that subreddit might still contain interesting content. If everybody obeyed the law in /r/jailbait, that subreddit simply could not exist. It's a fine difference, but it makes all the difference. Also, FYI, the U.S. Constitution offers very strong protections for hate speech. It's not like some other countries (cough Germany cough Canada cough) where you can get fined for uttering racial slurs.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  Way back in my 888chan raiding days, we took special pleasure in tormenting Kimmo Alm and his legion of pedopals over at anontalk. We regularly got hosts to dump him, payment processors to drop him, and when that failed (or we were just bored), we'd DDoS him. We'd have months-long trolling sessions where we would get ourselves promoted to wiseguys, then wreak havoc on the site in whatever manner struck our fancy. This is a fairly long-winded way of saying I am not a supporter of pedophiles or CP. That being said, none of the jailbait subreddits had any CP on them. Those who claim that this was a move against child pornography and child exploitation are being disingenuous. There was no child porn nor exploitation. What there was was suggestive pictures of minors. The content was distasteful, not illegal. Now, I firmly support reddit's right to ban those subreddits on whatever grounds they choose. What's more, I think it was the right move to make. I am disheartened, however, to see people conflate the content that was removed with child porn. The images on those subreddits were largely pulled from facebook and the like. Yes, there were a couple subreddits devoted to the so-called "model" agencies where clothed children were photographed in suggestive poses, and I find that creepy and distasteful in the extreme, but it is not porn, any more than the Victoria's Secret catalog is porn. It doesn't do anyone any good to use disingenuous language to conflate the issues we're talking about. Reddit got rid of about a dozen creepy and distasteful, but fully legal subreddits devoted to suggestive pictures of clothed minors. Despite my misgivings about censorship and free speech, I support this decision. That does not, however, mean that I am willing to use dishonesty to make those subreddits seem worse than they were, or argue that this was a decision about preventing child exploitation. It simply wasn't. This was about removing subreddits that the majority of redditors found distasteful and a black mark on reddit. It was about avoiding another PR boondoggle like the one that followed Anderson Cooper's report. That's all. It need not be any more than that for it to still have been the right decision.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
>Like meetups to exchange or people giving tips Never once have I seen this. I've seen ONE meetup and it was in a state where medical use is legal and even then, there's no law against conspiring to meet up to talk about and or consume marijuana. "conspiracy to get high". Give tips about what? Stupid ways to make a bong out of a gatorade bottle? Scandalous! >Same with /r/atheism, a lot of their content can be labeled hate speech under US law. I just spit onto my keyboard a bit. Besides the fact that hate speech is not illegal, I can't think of anything that is purely hateful enough to be deemed hate speech in that subreddit.

baddox 15y ago

The whole point of this policy shift is that it's no longer about child pornography, just like the jailbait banning wasn't about child porn. The post makes it clear that they've always followed the law regarding child pornography, but that they're now voluntarily banning all suggestive or sexual content involving minors (so, not just child porn). Their main excuse is that they don't have the resources to moderate on a case-by-case basis, and I guess they think a subreddit-by-subreddit basis will require less manpower. Still, I strongly suspect this isn't purely about legality. Reddit has come under fire (first, in the press regarding jailbait, and more recently by somethingawful users) for having content that's not necessarily illegal, but rather just creepy. Most of the top comments on this post share this interpretation, and most seem to approve of banning creepy content. If other commenters are to be believed, it also appears that many of the banned subreddits contained fairly "standard" pornography and either had strict "no minor" or "no nudity/sex" policies.

kijin 15y ago
The fact that the admins are painting their policy with a broader brush doesn't mean that the policy is any less about child pornography than it was before. If "creepy" was the new standard, /r/creepy and /r/wtf should be on the chopping block, too. If "no nudity or sex" was the rule, /r/nsfw wouldn't have survived. What a subreddit's policy says is less important than what actually gets posted there and/or what people expect to find there. Would you go to /r/truejailbait, /r/lolicon, or /r/preteen_girls expecting to find pictures of adults in non-revealing outfits? No, the expectation is that those subreddits will contain child porn or something similar.
- baddox 15y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, the high-profile subreddits under scrutiny didn't contain child pornography regularly or at all. The jailbait one was depicted on Anderson Cooper's show as having pictures likely grabbed from Facebook: e.g. teenagers in swim suits. There was also mention of a single commenter claiming to have more revealing pictures of an underage ex-girlfriend (which sounded like they would have qualified as child pornography), which prompted other commenters to ask him to privately message them with links. I was under the impression that this was the most illegal thing on that subreddit, and that the main problem was that people thought it was creepy to have pictures of minors in swim suits. More realistically, I think the banning was more about the news segment, since everyone already knew about that subreddit. > What a subreddit's policy says is less important than what actually gets posted there and/or what people expect to find there. What's the line? What if someone posts a single nefarious link on /r/nsfw, or for that matter, something completely unrelated like /r/askscience? It seems like you're proposing that outlier illegal content should result in the banning of a subreddit if the subreddit is "creepy," but not if the subreddit is "normal." > the expectation is that those subreddits will contain child porn or something similar. You're hinting at the important problem of defining child pornography. Are pictures of minors in swim suits child pornography? Sure, it's creepy to think about adults surfing for those pictures, but is it even borderline illegal? I don't think so. I think reddit has every right to ban whatever they want (although it seems to go against the stated purpose of their site), but it seems a bit disingenuous to claim that it's at all about legality unless it truly is.

Alex3917 15y ago

"Exchanging information about marijuana is not." Except for that now the Obama administration is trying to charge anyone who speaks out in favor of drug reform under the RICO laws, which carry a possible death penalty. Some Montana legislator was just charged a couple weeks ago.

wnoise 15y ago
[citation needed]
- Alex3917 15y ago
  http://coloradoindependent.com/111645/pro-marijuana-montana-legislator-investigated-by-dea http://coloradoindependent.com/111645/pro-marijuana-montana-... Apparently she hasn't been charged yet, she's currently being investigated, but it seems that RICO is the framework that they are considering using to charge her.
  - Steko 15y ago
    This and your above comment constitute a wildly inaccurate extrapolation based on what's in your article.
    - Alex3917 15y ago
      How so? If this case sets a precedent that anyone who speaks out in favor of marijuana can be prosecuted as part of a criminal conspiracy, then by defition they would be eligible for the death penalty because that's how RICO works- you can get charged for any crime committed by someone else in your 'organization', regardless of what that crime is or what penalty it carries. I don't see how that's an extrapolation.
      - Steko 15y ago
        There's no "case" here. You've extrapolated from a single question from a single investigator to a nonexistent death penalty case and pinned it all on an imaginary Obama administration mandate to charge everyone involved in medical marijuana advocacy. That's not the story here.

sixothree 15y ago

One of the reasons for removing /r/jailbait originally was that users were trading illegal files behind the scenes. I've heard of the same thing in /r/trees; Eg. seed exchanges and more.

streptomycin 15y ago
> One of the reasons for removing /r/jailbait originally was that users were trading illegal files behind the scenes. FWIW, that's just speculation. I think a more plausible explanation is the bad publicity from CNN.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
What? Where on earth do people hear these ludicrous things? Besides, what you've described is not illegal.

mistercow 15y ago

> There's nothing unreasonable about stating in your TOS that you can't have a subreddit the very existence of which breaks the law. That's not what they did. What they did was to say that suggestive content featuring minors is prohibited. I feel like a broken record, but I guess I need to keep reiterating this: Romeo and Juliet is suggestive content featuring minors. > You could download kiddie porn on /r/jailbait No you couldn't. Nothing pornographic or illegal was ever allowed on /r/jailbait. It might have gotten posted a few times, but the submitters would have been banned.