5 ms·

Reddit Readies For ‘Inter-website War,’ Major Subreddits Ban Links to Gawker

41 points by iProject 14y ago

omgsean 14y ago
Violentacrez is a scumbag and the fact that redditors are willing to stand behind him as some sort of show of reddit brotherhood is a large part of the reason why I don't go there much anymore.
- danielweber 14y ago
  0. Violentacrez sure seems to be disgusting, based on his online persona. 1. If you stand for free speech, you are going to be defending assholes and thugs and people who say disgusting things. We don't need free speech for people who emit rainbows. The ACLU defended the KKK's right to march, not because they thought the KKK was a bunch of nice guys or that the KKK would ever return the favor if the ACLU were in trouble. 2. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing that isn't allowed on reddit. Either they have the policy that doxxing is horrible or they don't.
  - eli 14y ago
    I absolutely believe the KKK has a right to march. But I also wouldn't participate, even as a spectator.
    - girlvinyl 14y ago
      What about publicly naming and shaming KKK members who did participate?
      - Evbn 14y ago
        Sure, but not by posting that info on Reddit with a link to the shamee's Reddit username. This is one of the only rules of Reddit, and it is for your protection, so people don't say "girlvinyl is KKK member and here is her legal name and address".
        girlvinyl 14y ago
        Right. It wasn't posted on reddit, it was posted to tumblr.
      - danielweber 14y ago
        Depends on your policy. You can have a policy of "we are not allowed to publish personally identifying info of anyone." You can have a policy of "we are allowed to publish personally identifying info of anyone at will," but you need to realize that it will also affect people you like as well as people you don't like. What doesn't work is "we are allowed to publish personally identifying info of people that a sizable minority of the community thinks sucks."
  - girlvinyl 14y ago
    Re: Freespeech. No one is asking the government to censor reddit. Users are taking things into their own hands because the private company that owns reddit refuses to moderate completely inappropriate material. The system is working just as it should.
    - prodigal_erik 14y ago
      Free speech is meaningless if anyone sufficiently unpopular can be unmasked. This guy's life would probably be in danger over thoughtcrime.
    - potatolicious 14y ago
      This is a fairly typical position - i.e. private corporations are under no obligation to protect free speech, therefore censorship in a private context is okay. Which is an argument that flies legally, but not morally depending on what you believe. If you believe in free speech, then using the fact that your website is private to censor others is not a violation of the law, but it certainly seems like a violation of your own declared ideology. Which is to say, you would support free speech until it got inconvenient. Reddit as a community seems to place a high value on free speech, so while they're under no legal obligation to keep things open, it would be a violation of its own declared ideology if they started censoring. Note that I don't miss the creepy subreddits at all, but if you're one of the people on /r/politics, /r/atheism, or whatever who are quoting Voltaire all the time, it seems hypocritical to call for censorship.
      - girlvinyl 14y ago
        The speech of these users is still free, but there are consequences to what they say. For example, the consequence here is that their creepshots results in others naming them and exercising their own right to speech as well. I'm also not at all calling for censorship. As I said, the creeps want their free speech and are getting it, as well as others exercising their rights too. I do think it is quite unfair that the tumblr with names was deleted, but again, Tumblr has a right to police their site as they see fit. Ultimately, I think it is exploitative of the reddit corporation and their masters to allow completely disgusting and clearly immoral content. This is 2012. The internet isn't the wild west anymore.
  - rmc 14y ago
    If you stand for free speech… There are numerous different defintions of free speech. Some countries draw the line in different places. E.g. in the USA, you cannot say "shout fire in a crowded theatre", and there are various laws against revelaing some USA military knowledge. All "right to free speech" laws have limits, as they should. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing Here's a thought, in the EU, we have data protection/privacy law. It's illegal to release personal details of people unless it's within the law. I wonder is doxing illegal?
    - rmrfrmrf 14y ago
      I'd hope that a woman's underwear and vagina are just as protected under that law as some scumbag's address and phone number.
    - Millennium 14y ago
      Common misconception. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre is not a crime. The crime is causing a panic without cause: if you've got a good cause (for example, if there really is a fire) then you've done nothing wrong. The crime in releasing classified documents is in the breach of trust, not in the leak itself. Libel and slander are types of fraud: the crime comes from the falsehood, not the statements themselves. Free speech should be absolute and sacrosanct, but this doesn't mean it should protect people from breaking the law. The folks in creepshots and its kin are in fact doing something against the law, and they should be shut down accordingly. This is not a free-speech issue.
      - rmc 14y ago
        But don't you see, that's the point. There are limits on "free speech", you just declare something as illegal. This kind of thinking is how many other countries have laws banning certain speech, which USA courts would probably view as protected. E.g. in EU you have the right to privacy, so there are various laws that say you cannot report things about some people without their consent. That sort of thing might be protected in USA. But the EU say "Wrecking someone's privacy is a crime, and we have free speech". Saying "All speech is protected, but if there are some laws then the thing doesn't count as speech and hence isn't allowed to be protected", is misleading, because loads of countries follow that rule, but have different free speech rules. Every country decides where to set it's limits, the USA is almost certainly the one that has a few limits as possible, but it has limits, it has set the line somewhere/
  - thwest 14y ago
    Regarding point 1: You are absolutely misguided. I have no obligation to defend them disgusting things until it is the government that is prosecuting the speech, rather than the community. We have a moral obligation to protect free speech from government intrusion. We have an equal or greater moral obligation to personally confront the KKK, and sexual predators in order to enforce moral standards within our community. The government's job is to make sure we both get to speak, and don't kill each other over the disagreement. The first amendment has nothing to do with protecting KKK members from public shaming and expulsion for the views they profess.
    - danielweber 14y ago
      I wasn't talking about the government. "You" wasn't "you, thwest." It was to the reddit admins and their own desire to have a community of free speech. Once they, the reddit admins, decide that they, the reddit admins, want a community of free speech, then they, the reddit admins, are going to find themselves supporting the rights of assholes to speak.
      - thwest 14y ago
        If the reddit admins want to shoulder the same burden as the government in regards to free speech, I still believe in community self-policing of reddit by users. The admins won't shut down assholes, but neither shall they shutdown shaming of assholes.
  - koeselitz 14y ago
    >> 2. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing that isn't allowed on reddit. Either they have the policy that doxxing is horrible or they don't. I guess the question is whether that is a sensible policy. It may make sense to protect anonymity - I can see that - but does it make sense to protect nothing else? Is anonymity really the only true community value?
  - tzs 14y ago
    > If you stand for free speech, you are going to be defending assholes and thugs and people who say disgusting things. Violentacrez's speech rights do not automatically trump the privacy rights of his victims. His ideas and opinions can be communicated via speech that does not violate the rights of others, and so when balancing his speech rights against their privacy rights I'd favor the privacy rights.
    - danielweber 14y ago
      This is true. I was mostly offended by the "he's a bad person so who cares about his rights" argument.
  - watty 14y ago
    Free speech? Free speech would be not banning Gawker and allowing Gawker to doxx the scumbag. Free speech, right?
- Peroni 14y ago
  Anyone who attempts to defend the guy's actions on Reddit is an idiot and it was only a matter of time before someone brought their anger into the real world HOWEVER an individual is one thing, a reputable, established company is a totally different situation. Sure they are media and sure the media loves a witch hunt but the bottom line is that their actions are threatening and it's blatant blackmail. In my opinion their actions are as disgusting as their targets online activity.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Implies that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are idiots.
- thedrbrian 14y ago
  Who is violentacrez?
  - rmc 14y ago
    A reddit user who deleted their reddit account. They used to be moderator of some pretty sleazy subreddits like r/creepshots r/incest, etc,.
  - Peroni 14y ago
    A prominent Reddit user who has been on the site for years and accumulated shit tons of karma and a proportionate amount of controversy. He established really questionable subreddits such as /r/jailbait and /r/incest and was extremely upfront about his motivations (claims it was more about exercising his right to free speech than being a pervert). The fact that he deleted his account is considered a big deal in the reddit world given his "reddit fame" and the fact that he was always willing to defend/justify his actions and never back down from said defence.
    - Adirael 14y ago
      It's not very clear for me with all the drama around, but they were threatening him with revealing his real identity, didn't they? It's easy to defend and justify stuff being anon.
      - Peroni 14y ago
        You're right about the anon bit but my own personal view is that unless someone has committed a crime (that can be proved beyond doubt) then posting people's real world identities is fucked up.
        Adirael 14y ago
        It is, I just found it funny, being he the Person he is on Reddit. The only enforced rule across different subreddits I remember is not posting personal info.
  - 14y ago
mnicole 14y ago
I was ready to be on board with this just because Gawker is such a mess, but anyone that follows r/SubredditDrama knows of Violentacruz and r/creepshots just shouldn't exist. I find it surprising that Reddit moderators are going so far as to do this for the sake of someone that is putting hundreds, if not thousands, of women at risk of being stalked or otherwise victimized by the type of people that think there's nothing wrong with posting pictures them to gawk at or make fun of. I really wanted a site like Reddit to work and be able to function without too much politics or this kind of childish crap, but this is really taking the cake and encouraging me to build out another alternative. There was a great discussion on the implications a subreddit like r/creepshots can have on r/TwoXChromosomes last week. I haven't visited the site yet today, but I'd imagine they just alienated their entire female userbase (myself included), as if the users of that site didn't do enough of that already. Edit: Can I get explanations for the downvotes?
- rjh29 14y ago
  I don't know if this is a new thing, but /r/creepshots appears to be a banned subreddit.
  - Peroni 14y ago
    There's a few banned subreddits. /r/Jailbait is probably the most high profile banning.
  - girlvinyl 14y ago
    It isn't banned, it was deleted via "Blackmail" according to the subreddit owner.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    I'd rejoice, but history has proven that there's either another one lurking in obscurity or we'll see something similar crop up once the pitchforks are put back down.
- fein 14y ago
  In regards to Violentacrez: Every community has shock jocks. I'm not condoning any of the actions, as that shit truly is creepy on an inhuman scale, but one should understand that without the community support, the guy has nothing. The ultimate issue is not that an individual like Violentacrez exists, but instead that the community enables it. > me to build out another alternative. you could also just fork reddit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit https://github.com/reddit/reddit
untog 14y ago
I'm in two minds about this, mainly because I have an utter lack of sympathy for both sides. I'm a regular redditor, and in all honesty I wasn't aware of any of any of this drama- I don't go to any of the creppy, weird subreddits mentioned, and have long since removed /r/politics from my front page. So, "Reddit" isn't readying for anything- just some overly militant subreddits.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Ditto, I've only heard very minor murmurs about this, having unsubscribed from all of the default subreddits save /r/gaming. /r/politics, /r/atheism, etc, are just cesspools of ignorance as bad as the people they lampoon daily. I'm also having a hard time drumming up sympathy for Gawker - they have consistently and repeatedly proven themselves to be complete unprofessionals, have zero journalistic integrity or credibility, and have some of the worst, borderline libelous "reporting" I've seen on any major blogs. It's like Violentacres and Gawker are built for each other - morally I'd consider them in the same ballpark.
  - thwest 14y ago
    I don't think it is useful to frame this as forums drama (which it certainly is on the surface), but as community self-policing. Yes, /r/politics, /r/atheism and Gawker are pretty similar, featuring shallow identity politics in easily consumable outrage-of-the-day snack packages. But /r/politics and /r/atheism aren't the targets. Did you see /r/jailbait, /r/upskirt, /r/CreepShots, etc before they were taken down? Do you really put child porn, upskirt photos, and trading strategies for creeping on unsuspecting women in public in the same moral ballpark as shitty journalism? /r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and shame the participants. Sexual predators need to be confronted globally in any forum they are present in, and community confrontation is exactly what most of the offenders need. The presence of Gawker in the affair is a small price to pay to help reduce sexual violence.
    - potatolicious 14y ago
      > "/r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and shame the participants." I really, really heavily disagree here. /r/ShitRedditSays is very much the opposite end of the spectrum from /r/creepshots (et al), and having the pendulum swing completely in the other direction is, IMO, just as bad. Look at the content of /r/ShitRedditSays. Like, really look at it as a whole with a critical eye - you have a few truly egregious things getting called out, then you have people getting into a populist rage-fest over inane stupidity, and you also get a very large chunk of simply harassing people for going against groupthink/being controversial. /r/ShitRedditSays is exactly the sort of censorship we don't want - i.e., an organized cabal of users who enforce their ideology on everyone else by means of harassment, ad hominem attacks, labeling, and drumming up massive populist outrage. Go up against /r/srs? Congrats, you are now a misogynistic racist gay-bashing bigot, regardless of what you actually said. Once /r/srs readers hook onto a thread all semblance of discussion stops. Silent downvotes plunge posts into oblivion with nary an explanation, combined with a litany of outraged replies, name-calling, and ad hominem attacks. They're not the objective observers they think they are - like every other subreddit they have evolved their own groupthink and notion of what is acceptable and not, and it happens that they've settled into a fairly narrow definition of acceptable content (whereas /r/creepshots have a very very wide definition of acceptable content). No, just no. /r/ShitRedditSays is not the solution to /r/creepshots and the like. You go from an open community with a fringe, disturbing element... to a closed community that toes the party line, or else.
jasveer 14y ago
TIL: community of millions of users has representative sample of population.
HyprMusic 14y ago
What always worries me is how accurate these dox are? What happens if they wrongly accuse someone? The internet is very unforgiving and it could literally ruin someone's life. They shouldn't be taking vigilante actions like this, especially endorsed by a company like Gawker. Although I disagree with the concept of these subreddits, this should be reported to the police - or worst case confront the users first. There seems to be little indication of this. Take a look here, someone has already apparently been attacked because of these: http://www.reddit.com/r/CreepSquad/comments/11b39y/modpost_last_night_following_the_publishing_of_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/CreepSquad/comments/11b39y/modpost_l... Gawker has proved time & time again that it is a vile, ruthless company, I really wish this is an internet-wide ban.
- saryant 14y ago
  I'm not a fan of Gawker either but as of right now there's no proof provided in the link you posted. While it's possible, it's still just something one guy posted on Reddit.
  - HyprMusic 14y ago
    Agreed, hence why I put "apparently". Regardless of whether there's physical abuse, having your name wrongly sprawled all over the internet calling you a pervert could still ruin someone's life. To be honest, even if you share the same name there could be negative repercussions. People are going as far as disabling their facebook accounts to keep their personal and professional life separate - at least you have a degree of control on facebook. There's no control over what people associate your name with on the internet.
- Evbn 14y ago
  The name of the company is Gawker. Ruining lives is how they make their money. Their most famous article is by an intern who went on a date with a guy and then publicly ruthlessly mocked him for having different (prosaic) hobbies from her.
- rmrfrmrf 14y ago
  > What always worries me Concern troll red flag. These people run multiple subreddits dedicated to ruining lives for sexual gratification and celebrity. I couldn't give less of a crap about what happens to them.
peto123 14y ago
I am also a redditor and some of the subreddits are a really high-quality communities. What I don't understand is, why the reddit owners allow even the most disgusting and inhumane stuff to be posted, as long as it isn't illegal. I am not sure if it is just because of the personal preference of the owners, or they do not want to waste time with enforcing at least basic civility, or is it some inherent part of the reddit's success that anything not illegal is allowed to be posted there? It is actually an interesting moral question: Is someone allowed to publicly deanonymize someone else?
engtech 14y ago
I was confused because I thought violentacrez was some how related to the now-defunct mommy-blogger-hating blog http://www.violentacres.com/ http://www.violentacres.com/ Just a coincidence, I guess. And that just goes to show you the danger of writing anonymously on the Internet, the next person to use the same nickname as you might be a drama-causing pedo. Does anyone know if there's some source for "violent acres / violet acres" that they're both riffing off of?
- citricsquid 14y ago
  Violentacrez original reddit name was violentacres and was based off of the original one (the person you linked).
- danielweber 14y ago
  That was the start. One really weird thing at the beginning was that reddit loved the story (probably made up) of violentacres purposefully causing a car crash, but in other threads with different contexts, they would consider people purposefully causing a car crash as completely bad, no other information required.

41 points by iProject 14y ago

Violentacrez is a scumbag and the fact that redditors are willing to stand behind him as some sort of show of reddit brotherhood is a large part of the reason why I don't go there much anymore.

danielweber 14y ago
0. Violentacrez sure seems to be disgusting, based on his online persona. 1. If you stand for free speech, you are going to be defending assholes and thugs and people who say disgusting things. We don't need free speech for people who emit rainbows. The ACLU defended the KKK's right to march, not because they thought the KKK was a bunch of nice guys or that the KKK would ever return the favor if the ACLU were in trouble. 2. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing that isn't allowed on reddit. Either they have the policy that doxxing is horrible or they don't.
- eli 14y ago
  I absolutely believe the KKK has a right to march. But I also wouldn't participate, even as a spectator.
  - girlvinyl 14y ago
    What about publicly naming and shaming KKK members who did participate?
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Sure, but not by posting that info on Reddit with a link to the shamee's Reddit username. This is one of the only rules of Reddit, and it is for your protection, so people don't say "girlvinyl is KKK member and here is her legal name and address".
      - girlvinyl 14y ago
        Right. It wasn't posted on reddit, it was posted to tumblr.
    - danielweber 14y ago
      Depends on your policy. You can have a policy of "we are not allowed to publish personally identifying info of anyone." You can have a policy of "we are allowed to publish personally identifying info of anyone at will," but you need to realize that it will also affect people you like as well as people you don't like. What doesn't work is "we are allowed to publish personally identifying info of people that a sizable minority of the community thinks sucks."
- girlvinyl 14y ago
  Re: Freespeech. No one is asking the government to censor reddit. Users are taking things into their own hands because the private company that owns reddit refuses to moderate completely inappropriate material. The system is working just as it should.
  - prodigal_erik 14y ago
    Free speech is meaningless if anyone sufficiently unpopular can be unmasked. This guy's life would probably be in danger over thoughtcrime.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    This is a fairly typical position - i.e. private corporations are under no obligation to protect free speech, therefore censorship in a private context is okay. Which is an argument that flies legally, but not morally depending on what you believe. If you believe in free speech, then using the fact that your website is private to censor others is not a violation of the law, but it certainly seems like a violation of your own declared ideology. Which is to say, you would support free speech until it got inconvenient. Reddit as a community seems to place a high value on free speech, so while they're under no legal obligation to keep things open, it would be a violation of its own declared ideology if they started censoring. Note that I don't miss the creepy subreddits at all, but if you're one of the people on /r/politics, /r/atheism, or whatever who are quoting Voltaire all the time, it seems hypocritical to call for censorship.
    - girlvinyl 14y ago
      The speech of these users is still free, but there are consequences to what they say. For example, the consequence here is that their creepshots results in others naming them and exercising their own right to speech as well. I'm also not at all calling for censorship. As I said, the creeps want their free speech and are getting it, as well as others exercising their rights too. I do think it is quite unfair that the tumblr with names was deleted, but again, Tumblr has a right to police their site as they see fit. Ultimately, I think it is exploitative of the reddit corporation and their masters to allow completely disgusting and clearly immoral content. This is 2012. The internet isn't the wild west anymore.
- rmc 14y ago
  If you stand for free speech… There are numerous different defintions of free speech. Some countries draw the line in different places. E.g. in the USA, you cannot say "shout fire in a crowded theatre", and there are various laws against revelaing some USA military knowledge. All "right to free speech" laws have limits, as they should. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing Here's a thought, in the EU, we have data protection/privacy law. It's illegal to release personal details of people unless it's within the law. I wonder is doxing illegal?
  - rmrfrmrf 14y ago
    I'd hope that a woman's underwear and vagina are just as protected under that law as some scumbag's address and phone number.
  - Millennium 14y ago
    Common misconception. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre is not a crime. The crime is causing a panic without cause: if you've got a good cause (for example, if there really is a fire) then you've done nothing wrong. The crime in releasing classified documents is in the breach of trust, not in the leak itself. Libel and slander are types of fraud: the crime comes from the falsehood, not the statements themselves. Free speech should be absolute and sacrosanct, but this doesn't mean it should protect people from breaking the law. The folks in creepshots and its kin are in fact doing something against the law, and they should be shut down accordingly. This is not a free-speech issue.
    - rmc 14y ago
      But don't you see, that's the point. There are limits on "free speech", you just declare something as illegal. This kind of thinking is how many other countries have laws banning certain speech, which USA courts would probably view as protected. E.g. in EU you have the right to privacy, so there are various laws that say you cannot report things about some people without their consent. That sort of thing might be protected in USA. But the EU say "Wrecking someone's privacy is a crime, and we have free speech". Saying "All speech is protected, but if there are some laws then the thing doesn't count as speech and hence isn't allowed to be protected", is misleading, because loads of countries follow that rule, but have different free speech rules. Every country decides where to set it's limits, the USA is almost certainly the one that has a few limits as possible, but it has limits, it has set the line somewhere/
- thwest 14y ago
  Regarding point 1: You are absolutely misguided. I have no obligation to defend them disgusting things until it is the government that is prosecuting the speech, rather than the community. We have a moral obligation to protect free speech from government intrusion. We have an equal or greater moral obligation to personally confront the KKK, and sexual predators in order to enforce moral standards within our community. The government's job is to make sure we both get to speak, and don't kill each other over the disagreement. The first amendment has nothing to do with protecting KKK members from public shaming and expulsion for the views they profess.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    I wasn't talking about the government. "You" wasn't "you, thwest." It was to the reddit admins and their own desire to have a community of free speech. Once they, the reddit admins, decide that they, the reddit admins, want a community of free speech, then they, the reddit admins, are going to find themselves supporting the rights of assholes to speak.
    - thwest 14y ago
      If the reddit admins want to shoulder the same burden as the government in regards to free speech, I still believe in community self-policing of reddit by users. The admins won't shut down assholes, but neither shall they shutdown shaming of assholes.
- koeselitz 14y ago
  >> 2. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing that isn't allowed on reddit. Either they have the policy that doxxing is horrible or they don't. I guess the question is whether that is a sensible policy. It may make sense to protect anonymity - I can see that - but does it make sense to protect nothing else? Is anonymity really the only true community value?
- tzs 14y ago
  > If you stand for free speech, you are going to be defending assholes and thugs and people who say disgusting things. Violentacrez's speech rights do not automatically trump the privacy rights of his victims. His ideas and opinions can be communicated via speech that does not violate the rights of others, and so when balancing his speech rights against their privacy rights I'd favor the privacy rights.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    This is true. I was mostly offended by the "he's a bad person so who cares about his rights" argument.
- watty 14y ago
  Free speech? Free speech would be not banning Gawker and allowing Gawker to doxx the scumbag. Free speech, right?
Peroni 14y ago
Anyone who attempts to defend the guy's actions on Reddit is an idiot and it was only a matter of time before someone brought their anger into the real world HOWEVER an individual is one thing, a reputable, established company is a totally different situation. Sure they are media and sure the media loves a witch hunt but the bottom line is that their actions are threatening and it's blatant blackmail. In my opinion their actions are as disgusting as their targets online activity.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Implies that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are idiots.
thedrbrian 14y ago
Who is violentacrez?
- rmc 14y ago
  A reddit user who deleted their reddit account. They used to be moderator of some pretty sleazy subreddits like r/creepshots r/incest, etc,.
- Peroni 14y ago
  A prominent Reddit user who has been on the site for years and accumulated shit tons of karma and a proportionate amount of controversy. He established really questionable subreddits such as /r/jailbait and /r/incest and was extremely upfront about his motivations (claims it was more about exercising his right to free speech than being a pervert). The fact that he deleted his account is considered a big deal in the reddit world given his "reddit fame" and the fact that he was always willing to defend/justify his actions and never back down from said defence.
  - Adirael 14y ago
    It's not very clear for me with all the drama around, but they were threatening him with revealing his real identity, didn't they? It's easy to defend and justify stuff being anon.
    - Peroni 14y ago
      You're right about the anon bit but my own personal view is that unless someone has committed a crime (that can be proved beyond doubt) then posting people's real world identities is fucked up.
      - Adirael 14y ago
        It is, I just found it funny, being he the Person he is on Reddit. The only enforced rule across different subreddits I remember is not posting personal info.
- 14y ago

mnicole 14y ago

I was ready to be on board with this just because Gawker is such a mess, but anyone that follows r/SubredditDrama knows of Violentacruz and r/creepshots just shouldn't exist. I find it surprising that Reddit moderators are going so far as to do this for the sake of someone that is putting hundreds, if not thousands, of women at risk of being stalked or otherwise victimized by the type of people that think there's nothing wrong with posting pictures them to gawk at or make fun of. I really wanted a site like Reddit to work and be able to function without too much politics or this kind of childish crap, but this is really taking the cake and encouraging me to build out another alternative. There was a great discussion on the implications a subreddit like r/creepshots can have on r/TwoXChromosomes last week. I haven't visited the site yet today, but I'd imagine they just alienated their entire female userbase (myself included), as if the users of that site didn't do enough of that already. Edit: Can I get explanations for the downvotes?

rjh29 14y ago
I don't know if this is a new thing, but /r/creepshots appears to be a banned subreddit.
- Peroni 14y ago
  There's a few banned subreddits. /r/Jailbait is probably the most high profile banning.
- girlvinyl 14y ago
  It isn't banned, it was deleted via "Blackmail" according to the subreddit owner.
- mnicole 14y ago
  I'd rejoice, but history has proven that there's either another one lurking in obscurity or we'll see something similar crop up once the pitchforks are put back down.
fein 14y ago
In regards to Violentacrez: Every community has shock jocks. I'm not condoning any of the actions, as that shit truly is creepy on an inhuman scale, but one should understand that without the community support, the guy has nothing. The ultimate issue is not that an individual like Violentacrez exists, but instead that the community enables it. > me to build out another alternative. you could also just fork reddit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit https://github.com/reddit/reddit

untog 14y ago

I'm in two minds about this, mainly because I have an utter lack of sympathy for both sides. I'm a regular redditor, and in all honesty I wasn't aware of any of any of this drama- I don't go to any of the creppy, weird subreddits mentioned, and have long since removed /r/politics from my front page. So, "Reddit" isn't readying for anything- just some overly militant subreddits.

potatolicious 14y ago
Ditto, I've only heard very minor murmurs about this, having unsubscribed from all of the default subreddits save /r/gaming. /r/politics, /r/atheism, etc, are just cesspools of ignorance as bad as the people they lampoon daily. I'm also having a hard time drumming up sympathy for Gawker - they have consistently and repeatedly proven themselves to be complete unprofessionals, have zero journalistic integrity or credibility, and have some of the worst, borderline libelous "reporting" I've seen on any major blogs. It's like Violentacres and Gawker are built for each other - morally I'd consider them in the same ballpark.
- thwest 14y ago
  I don't think it is useful to frame this as forums drama (which it certainly is on the surface), but as community self-policing. Yes, /r/politics, /r/atheism and Gawker are pretty similar, featuring shallow identity politics in easily consumable outrage-of-the-day snack packages. But /r/politics and /r/atheism aren't the targets. Did you see /r/jailbait, /r/upskirt, /r/CreepShots, etc before they were taken down? Do you really put child porn, upskirt photos, and trading strategies for creeping on unsuspecting women in public in the same moral ballpark as shitty journalism? /r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and shame the participants. Sexual predators need to be confronted globally in any forum they are present in, and community confrontation is exactly what most of the offenders need. The presence of Gawker in the affair is a small price to pay to help reduce sexual violence.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    > "/r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and shame the participants." I really, really heavily disagree here. /r/ShitRedditSays is very much the opposite end of the spectrum from /r/creepshots (et al), and having the pendulum swing completely in the other direction is, IMO, just as bad. Look at the content of /r/ShitRedditSays. Like, really look at it as a whole with a critical eye - you have a few truly egregious things getting called out, then you have people getting into a populist rage-fest over inane stupidity, and you also get a very large chunk of simply harassing people for going against groupthink/being controversial. /r/ShitRedditSays is exactly the sort of censorship we don't want - i.e., an organized cabal of users who enforce their ideology on everyone else by means of harassment, ad hominem attacks, labeling, and drumming up massive populist outrage. Go up against /r/srs? Congrats, you are now a misogynistic racist gay-bashing bigot, regardless of what you actually said. Once /r/srs readers hook onto a thread all semblance of discussion stops. Silent downvotes plunge posts into oblivion with nary an explanation, combined with a litany of outraged replies, name-calling, and ad hominem attacks. They're not the objective observers they think they are - like every other subreddit they have evolved their own groupthink and notion of what is acceptable and not, and it happens that they've settled into a fairly narrow definition of acceptable content (whereas /r/creepshots have a very very wide definition of acceptable content). No, just no. /r/ShitRedditSays is not the solution to /r/creepshots and the like. You go from an open community with a fringe, disturbing element... to a closed community that toes the party line, or else.

jasveer 14y ago

TIL: community of millions of users has representative sample of population.

HyprMusic 14y ago

What always worries me is how accurate these dox are? What happens if they wrongly accuse someone? The internet is very unforgiving and it could literally ruin someone's life. They shouldn't be taking vigilante actions like this, especially endorsed by a company like Gawker. Although I disagree with the concept of these subreddits, this should be reported to the police - or worst case confront the users first. There seems to be little indication of this. Take a look here, someone has already apparently been attacked because of these: http://www.reddit.com/r/CreepSquad/comments/11b39y/modpost_last_night_following_the_publishing_of_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/CreepSquad/comments/11b39y/modpost_l... Gawker has proved time & time again that it is a vile, ruthless company, I really wish this is an internet-wide ban.

saryant 14y ago
I'm not a fan of Gawker either but as of right now there's no proof provided in the link you posted. While it's possible, it's still just something one guy posted on Reddit.
- HyprMusic 14y ago
  Agreed, hence why I put "apparently". Regardless of whether there's physical abuse, having your name wrongly sprawled all over the internet calling you a pervert could still ruin someone's life. To be honest, even if you share the same name there could be negative repercussions. People are going as far as disabling their facebook accounts to keep their personal and professional life separate - at least you have a degree of control on facebook. There's no control over what people associate your name with on the internet.
Evbn 14y ago
The name of the company is Gawker. Ruining lives is how they make their money. Their most famous article is by an intern who went on a date with a guy and then publicly ruthlessly mocked him for having different (prosaic) hobbies from her.
rmrfrmrf 14y ago
> What always worries me Concern troll red flag. These people run multiple subreddits dedicated to ruining lives for sexual gratification and celebrity. I couldn't give less of a crap about what happens to them.

peto123 14y ago

I am also a redditor and some of the subreddits are a really high-quality communities. What I don't understand is, why the reddit owners allow even the most disgusting and inhumane stuff to be posted, as long as it isn't illegal. I am not sure if it is just because of the personal preference of the owners, or they do not want to waste time with enforcing at least basic civility, or is it some inherent part of the reddit's success that anything not illegal is allowed to be posted there? It is actually an interesting moral question: Is someone allowed to publicly deanonymize someone else?

engtech 14y ago

I was confused because I thought violentacrez was some how related to the now-defunct mommy-blogger-hating blog http://www.violentacres.com/ http://www.violentacres.com/ Just a coincidence, I guess. And that just goes to show you the danger of writing anonymously on the Internet, the next person to use the same nickname as you might be a drama-causing pedo. Does anyone know if there's some source for "violent acres / violet acres" that they're both riffing off of?

citricsquid 14y ago
Violentacrez original reddit name was violentacres and was based off of the original one (the person you linked).
danielweber 14y ago
That was the start. One really weird thing at the beginning was that reddit loved the story (probably made up) of violentacres purposefully causing a car crash, but in other threads with different contexts, they would consider people purposefully causing a car crash as completely bad, no other information required.