12 ms·

Reddit Just Banned the Subreddit Where People Were Posting Celebrity Nude Images

53 points by kanamekun 12y ago

luma 12y ago
Reddit is no different than anything else here in America. If you want to post pictures stolen from phones? Totally OK[1], unless the people in those pictures have money and thus lawyers. When the lawyers show up, Reddit will happily pull any material pertaining to the people with money, and leave everything else as it was. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/photoplunder http://www.reddit.com/r/photoplunder
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  It seems Hunter Moore would disagree with you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Moore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Moore
- ck2 12y ago
  What you are saying is people with a voice can defend themselves which bothers those that want to do whatever they want, but dis-empowered people, too bad so sad. I really don't get why anyone thinks this whole event is even remotely okay, they should have banned it from day one, the pictures were obtained illegally and definitely not posted with permission, and yes they should apply that rule to all of Reddit. Reddit doesn't owe anyone imaginary "free speech" rights, they aren't a government entity but a privately held company.
  - madeofpalk 12y ago
    > Reddit doesn't owe anyone imaginary "free speech" rights, they aren't a government entity but a privately held company. This. They're doing themselves a disservice by taking the 'free speech' route.
- Dolimiter 12y ago
  No please, don't turn this into a "people with power" can do anything rant. Reddit removed the sub because they were overwhelmed with DMCA notices. If the other sub you mentioned was also flooded with DMCA notices then it would get removed too.
  - AH4oFVbPT4f8 12y ago
    Instead of posting to /r/thefappening what if they were just posting to /r/pics or /r/aww ? You think they would shutdown a subreddit with millions of subscribers?
  - true_religion 12y ago
    Actually they'd just ignore it if it all came from one person. If it came from multiple people, that'd be a case of "people with power get what they want" as a collection of even ordinary people is a powerful and wealthy force on its own.
miguelrochefort 12y ago
Censorship precedes demise. Surprisingly, it seems like people never learn. Censorship never is a solution, yet it eventually gets used by even those with the best intentions toward free speech. I wonder what will need to happen for people to realize that censorship is a band-aid, not a cure. Whenever we try to censor/hide something, we should instead find ways for the world to still function properly once that knowledge is made public. In any case, I respect what the "leakers" did (transparency is good), and I respect Reddit's choice to do whatever they want with their property even though I don't agree with their decision. Like others have mentionned, time to find a platform that is not so sensible to censorship.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  > I respect what the "leakers" did (transparency is good) What? You're not being serious are you? Are you actually saying that no one should have any sort of privacy?
  - wcummings 12y ago
    Yeah... radical transparency isn't leaking nudes. That's just breaking the law.
    - miguelrochefort 12y ago
      What is good doesn't necessarily correlates with what is legal. I'm totally aware that it's illegal, but that doesn't mean I can't support it.
      - wcummings 12y ago
        In what was is this good for anyone?
        miguelrochefort 12y ago
        Were there not any demand for these? Demand alone demonstrates it's good for at least a few people. Generally speaking, transparency makes the world better and more efficient. You might not be able to see what good it does, but the positive effect is certain. Privacy and secrecy is just ignoring the problems. We must see them in order to fix them, and that's why transparency and communication is so important.
dicroce 12y ago
In protest you should all switch to using digg.com.
- flavor8 12y ago
  ...which is actually not _terrible_ in its current guise, now that there are no comments.
madeofpalk 12y ago
Pretty appalled in the larger communities reaction during all of this. /r/thefappening is a subreddit whose sole purpose is to host copyrighted pictures, some of which may be underage. It's amazing and disgusting to see the lengths these people are going to do defend their so-called 'right' to shame and embarrass others online. Just because something isn't strictly illegal doesn't give them a free pass to go at it. Edit: If you're going to downvote, please comment and explain why. I can't think of why a sane person (or, one that's been on HN long enough to be able to down vote) would disagree with Reddit's decision to ban /r/thefappening and it's content.
- thesimon 12y ago
  But they are not hosting them, but only linking to them on other sites (e.g. imgur) which under US law is fine.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    They host thumbnails.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - madeofpalk 12y ago
    I'm not trying to make a legal argument here. It's immoral and I fully support Reddit's decision to do what they want on their own site. I'm just disgusted at the lengths (awarding/taking away imaginary internet points) people are going to to 'defend their right' to do something which is not even questionable - any sane person would agree in that the content on that subreddit is wrong.
  - themartorana 12y ago
    Is it? I thought all the torrent search engine shut-downs, napster and its ilk, etc., had pretty much proven that linking to illegal content hosts was in fact illegal.
- trynumber9 12y ago
sergiotapia 12y ago
This is the point for me where Reddit jumped the shark. Not to mention the entire Zoe Quinn fiasco: http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ckbg4fh http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t... Meanwhile subreddits like pics of dead kids are allowed because of 'free speech' while some random breasts causes everybody to lose their minds. I've been using Reddit since 2006 - time to switch over to a new website for sure. --- Comment I saw: >They decided to get their page hits, reddit gold, and publicity from the subreddit and then cash out just in time for the Sunday morning news to splash out the headline "REDDIT BANS NAKED CELEBRITY LEAKS". They're trying for the good press for Sunday and for the week. Well done, admins. lo and behold...
- 4ad 12y ago
  Indeed. While I despise the original leaker, and support law-enforcement efforts to catch him/her, and think pretty poorly about the people who made this subreddit, it's not reddit's place to police the issue.
  - madeofpalk 12y ago
    It's not Reddit's place to police their own site?
- Sharlin 12y ago
  The difference is mostly that the owners of said breasts have expensive lawyers.
- clarry 12y ago
  What's the alternative site?
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Usenet news.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  /r/watchpeopledie /r/CandidFashionPolice /r/greatapes /r/whiterights /r/sexyabortions and more are all reasons the admins there are hypocrits. likely its that they want celebs to like them thereby convincing themselves they are on equal footing, not an usual mental leap for people in the press or similar
vasco 12y ago
4chan is still open
- sschueller 12y ago
  Is 4chan hosted in the United States?
  - opendais 12y ago
    Yes. Its also routed through Cloudflare [US company] and owned by a US citizen [moot].
    - krenoten 12y ago
      The ephemerality of its content significantly eases the pressure to censor there.
      - iamshariq 12y ago
        Heard the word "ephemerality" for the first time. Had to look it up. Turns out it means almost the same as "temporary". Thanks for upping the vocab.
        _delirium 12y ago
        Has a slightly stronger connotation than "temporary", sort of... extra-temporary, such that it only exists in a fleeting sense. Th term is also used in cryptography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeral_key https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeral_key
      - opendais 12y ago
        Well, ya. If content generally vanishes before the DMCA notice arrives via US Mail... ;)
waitwhatt 12y ago
Crappy article. Much better to link to the post by reddit sysadmin alienth.
- bilalhusain 12y ago
  Seconded. Here's the link http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t...
stopcodon 12y ago
And they do this while putting out a doublespeak public statement saying they don't do things like banning subreddits (but reserve the right to), and were not legally required to in this case. Read it here: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-for-his-own.html http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-f... Here's the comments from their blog post: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_responsible_for_his_own_soul/ http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_re... The admins are getting called out in nearly every top-level comment for folding to media attention and celebrity lawyers, when other objectively worse subreddits are actually granted the "hands-off" approach the site claims to use. Presumably because the victims can't afford legal teams or make headlines like celebrities can when their privacy is violated. The leaks were despicable and I understand any business taking steps to avoid involvement in their distribution, but you can't expect a user-base like reddits to tolerate the administration saying one thing and doing the exact opposite in certain cases where there's bad press involved. Edit: Here's a follow-up post from the sysadmin alienth in response to the backlash from their decision: http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t...
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  From what I understand, Reddit admins were getting tonnes more takedowns than usual (for underage pics etc), which was becoming a cat-and-mouse game, and took the pragmatic approach of just banning the whole subreddit. The Reddit communities reaction this whole thing has been pretty sickening - enough for me to block it in my hostsfile. This was just the law straw I guess.
  - colmvp 12y ago
    Prior to this, I've also seen them take down specific subreddits that linked to CP, so I don't think this purge is that out of the ordinary for them.
    - iancarroll 12y ago
      Jailbait was alive for a long time...
sqrt17 12y ago
Reddit banned the subreddit because some of the nude images were images of underaged celebrities. underage = banned, also on reddit
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Retr0spectrum 12y ago
  This was not the case. The subreddit moderators were actively removing all underage images, just like any other subreddit.
  - revelation 12y ago
    In fact, the Reddit admins notified the moderators of that particular problem long before they banned the subreddit. Can you spell "the moment you lose DMCA safe harbor provisions"?
- nyrina 12y ago
  Simply not true. The subreddit mods had already told people in a announcement not to post anything of McKayla Maroney and that if any posts containing images of her existed, that they would delete the posts and ban the people posting that. The subreddit ban came after all of this.
bane 12y ago
The top comment in the thread is absolutely, 100% correct. http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ckbga2v http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t... (lists of disturbing-to-absolutely horrid subs follow in the replies, subs that have been allowed to be part of reddit for a very long time). The thing that bothers me more than any other thing is that they "haven't figured out" what to do with all the gold that was purchased. Really? Based on the communications form the admins, I think the problem is that they're making these decisions by committee rather than setting a policy and having a benevolent dictator enforce it. This makes the decisions like this seem arbitrary, hypocritical, unethical and bending to pressure from rich victims while not doing anything for poor victims. Reddit has serious site wide moderation issues. I think the manpower needed to meta moderate a site as big as reddit has been greatly under appreciated. Every time a sub gets shut down, 3 pop up to replace it. Without full-time admins tracking this stuff, it's just going to continue to house and distribute this kind of stuff and the every once in a while decision to shut something down due to legal pressure is just going to continue to inflame the users. edit so here's the answer from the admins as to what should happen with the lists of reprehensible subs, like pictures of dead children, or people fucking dogs http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ckbh5we http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t... I'd probably suggest they contact the image host to see if it violates their TOS and can be taken down. Some (but not all) image hosts may honour such requests, depending on the circumstances. edit here's an AMA with the mod of the fappening sub http://www.reddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/2foon3/on_sunday_i_created_rthefappening_the_fastest/ http://www.reddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/2foon3/on_sunday...
- themartorana 12y ago
  The co-founder of reddit apparently also subscribes to the guilty victim ideology. It's not the job of reddit to understand the plight of the victims of any stolen content - it's their fault, after all... From parent's linked thread: "Anytime they take an image and put it in a digital format—whether it’s an email to one person, whether it’s in a tweet, whether it’s on Facebook, whether it’s an MMS—they should assume that it is now public content. They should assume it is everywhere. And that’s the warning that parents need to be giving their kids, and that’s the useful thing CNN could have reported on, instead of making up a bunch of jibber-jabber about reddit." Edit: formatting.
jasode 12y ago
Reddit admins could have garnered more sympathy and understanding if they framed their actions purely in terms of site reliability and manpower instead of any weights about the morals of various subreddits. Two admin messages with vastly different theses: First was the yishan post[1]. The TLDR of that one was, "we don't police subreddits/morals/etc." The problem with that post was that it was a ticking time bomb waiting for any inconsistency with the admins handling of subreddits to be scrutinized and vilified. The yishan post should have never been written. The reddit masses felt their intelligence was being insulted. The second post by alienth[2] has a much better message. The TLDR of that one was "we're getting overwhelmed by DMCA takedowns". Reddit admins can then drive the point home that they know other subreddits such as /notfamousstolenphotos are questionable but at least those are not getting bombarded by DMCA notices. They can then go on to stress that they just don't have the manpower (technical team and legal team) to address (fight) all of the DMCA notices to keep /thefappening up. Reddit was basically a victim of a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack by way of DMCAs instead of ip packets. It's great that reddit has some lofty ideals of being "hands off" but it also has to have the manpower to uphold those ideals. I suppose reddit could ask volunteers to work for $0 salary and review all the DMCA takedowns coming in but that would be a logistical nightmare. Reddit could try to maintain a stance similar to Kevin Rose Digg AACS encryption keys[3] but I don't think they have the resources to do it. In any case, the yishan post has already poisoned the well and any subsequent message to clarify the admins' predicament is getting tainted by it. [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_responsible_for_his_own_soul/ https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_r... [2]http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t... [3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Their messaging is incoherent because they are trying to capture all the good feels from supporting "free speech" while navigating the legal minefield that comes with their size. Never mind that they categorically ban certain types of speech (doxing, stuff that is illegal). I suppose if you summarize their messaging as "we ban inconvenient speech" it isn't all that incoherent, but that isn't a terribly pleasing stand to take.
lsiebert 12y ago
They banned it because it. A. was eating major bandwidth, setting site records and breaking things. B. Had underage images The fact that the underage images were of a celeb were not part of the decision, except in so much that celebrity nudes were creating massive traffic.
lbsnake7 12y ago
Reddit has completely nose dived the past couple of years. Both from a administrative sense, and a content sense. When they first started the gold program, to quiet the uproar that some users would have more power than others, they said that everyone would get the features of gold, just after a little while. They did that the first couple of times but now they don't. They recently started an IAMA app (why?), which is essentially just a PR machine. They have very inconsistent admin policies, censoring some stuff not censoring other things. A long time ago, there were users that would appear in the comments of every top post and they were almost always jokes. There were submitters that would reach the front page consistently. These people had essentially learned how to game Reddit, finding the right jokes and right material for their audience. And because of that, over the past couple of years it has became a race to the bottom in almost every subreddit and every comment. RES makes Reddit usable to some extent, but my filters filter out 75% of r/all, and what's left isn't very engaging. The website has obviously outgrown me, and I have started spending most of my time on other sites now (sometimes even Digg). And it doesn't matter that Reddit lost me as a heavy user, cause I'm a nobody and Reddit will still get millions of views, just that Reddit meant a lot to me. It was the first website where I actually learned stuff. My Wikipedia usage went through the roof, reading up on things that people were talking about that I had no idea existed. Long articles and even handed discussions, occasional humor. I didn't comment or post a lot but I looked forward to getting lost in it. I miss it a little.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  As someone who has been on reddit since 2008, I'm in exactly the same shoes as you. While I agree with them at least for the decision or ban this subreddit, I'm appalled by the communities reaction to it. That, and the circle jerk of reddit (mostly my local subreddits), lead me it being the first site I've banned with /etc/hosts http://i.imgur.com/Womisb3.png http://i.imgur.com/Womisb3.png
  - marvin 12y ago
    I still don't get it. Been on reddit since 2006 and it is still by far the best platform for online communities. The level of discussion is unparallelled, if you are specific with what subreddits you subscribe to.

53 points by kanamekun 12y ago

luma 12y ago

Reddit is no different than anything else here in America. If you want to post pictures stolen from phones? Totally OK[1], unless the people in those pictures have money and thus lawyers. When the lawyers show up, Reddit will happily pull any material pertaining to the people with money, and leave everything else as it was. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/photoplunder http://www.reddit.com/r/photoplunder

madeofpalk 12y ago
It seems Hunter Moore would disagree with you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Moore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Moore
ck2 12y ago
What you are saying is people with a voice can defend themselves which bothers those that want to do whatever they want, but dis-empowered people, too bad so sad. I really don't get why anyone thinks this whole event is even remotely okay, they should have banned it from day one, the pictures were obtained illegally and definitely not posted with permission, and yes they should apply that rule to all of Reddit. Reddit doesn't owe anyone imaginary "free speech" rights, they aren't a government entity but a privately held company.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  > Reddit doesn't owe anyone imaginary "free speech" rights, they aren't a government entity but a privately held company. This. They're doing themselves a disservice by taking the 'free speech' route.
Dolimiter 12y ago
No please, don't turn this into a "people with power" can do anything rant. Reddit removed the sub because they were overwhelmed with DMCA notices. If the other sub you mentioned was also flooded with DMCA notices then it would get removed too.
- AH4oFVbPT4f8 12y ago
  Instead of posting to /r/thefappening what if they were just posting to /r/pics or /r/aww ? You think they would shutdown a subreddit with millions of subscribers?
- true_religion 12y ago
  Actually they'd just ignore it if it all came from one person. If it came from multiple people, that'd be a case of "people with power get what they want" as a collection of even ordinary people is a powerful and wealthy force on its own.

miguelrochefort 12y ago

Censorship precedes demise. Surprisingly, it seems like people never learn. Censorship never is a solution, yet it eventually gets used by even those with the best intentions toward free speech. I wonder what will need to happen for people to realize that censorship is a band-aid, not a cure. Whenever we try to censor/hide something, we should instead find ways for the world to still function properly once that knowledge is made public. In any case, I respect what the "leakers" did (transparency is good), and I respect Reddit's choice to do whatever they want with their property even though I don't agree with their decision. Like others have mentionned, time to find a platform that is not so sensible to censorship.

madeofpalk 12y ago
> I respect what the "leakers" did (transparency is good) What? You're not being serious are you? Are you actually saying that no one should have any sort of privacy?
- wcummings 12y ago
  Yeah... radical transparency isn't leaking nudes. That's just breaking the law.
  - miguelrochefort 12y ago
    What is good doesn't necessarily correlates with what is legal. I'm totally aware that it's illegal, but that doesn't mean I can't support it.
    - wcummings 12y ago
      In what was is this good for anyone?
      - miguelrochefort 12y ago
        Were there not any demand for these? Demand alone demonstrates it's good for at least a few people. Generally speaking, transparency makes the world better and more efficient. You might not be able to see what good it does, but the positive effect is certain. Privacy and secrecy is just ignoring the problems. We must see them in order to fix them, and that's why transparency and communication is so important.

dicroce 12y ago

In protest you should all switch to using digg.com.

flavor8 12y ago
...which is actually not _terrible_ in its current guise, now that there are no comments.

madeofpalk 12y ago

Pretty appalled in the larger communities reaction during all of this. /r/thefappening is a subreddit whose sole purpose is to host copyrighted pictures, some of which may be underage. It's amazing and disgusting to see the lengths these people are going to do defend their so-called 'right' to shame and embarrass others online. Just because something isn't strictly illegal doesn't give them a free pass to go at it. Edit: If you're going to downvote, please comment and explain why. I can't think of why a sane person (or, one that's been on HN long enough to be able to down vote) would disagree with Reddit's decision to ban /r/thefappening and it's content.

thesimon 12y ago
But they are not hosting them, but only linking to them on other sites (e.g. imgur) which under US law is fine.
- DanBC 12y ago
  They host thumbnails.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  I'm not trying to make a legal argument here. It's immoral and I fully support Reddit's decision to do what they want on their own site. I'm just disgusted at the lengths (awarding/taking away imaginary internet points) people are going to to 'defend their right' to do something which is not even questionable - any sane person would agree in that the content on that subreddit is wrong.
- themartorana 12y ago
  Is it? I thought all the torrent search engine shut-downs, napster and its ilk, etc., had pretty much proven that linking to illegal content hosts was in fact illegal.
trynumber9 12y ago

sergiotapia 12y ago

This is the point for me where Reddit jumped the shark. Not to mention the entire Zoe Quinn fiasco: http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ckbg4fh http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t... Meanwhile subreddits like pics of dead kids are allowed because of 'free speech' while some random breasts causes everybody to lose their minds. I've been using Reddit since 2006 - time to switch over to a new website for sure. --- Comment I saw: >They decided to get their page hits, reddit gold, and publicity from the subreddit and then cash out just in time for the Sunday morning news to splash out the headline "REDDIT BANS NAKED CELEBRITY LEAKS". They're trying for the good press for Sunday and for the week. Well done, admins. lo and behold...

4ad 12y ago
Indeed. While I despise the original leaker, and support law-enforcement efforts to catch him/her, and think pretty poorly about the people who made this subreddit, it's not reddit's place to police the issue.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  It's not Reddit's place to police their own site?
Sharlin 12y ago
The difference is mostly that the owners of said breasts have expensive lawyers.
clarry 12y ago
What's the alternative site?
- DanBC 12y ago
  Usenet news.
Shivetya 12y ago
/r/watchpeopledie /r/CandidFashionPolice /r/greatapes /r/whiterights /r/sexyabortions and more are all reasons the admins there are hypocrits. likely its that they want celebs to like them thereby convincing themselves they are on equal footing, not an usual mental leap for people in the press or similar

vasco 12y ago

4chan is still open

sschueller 12y ago
Is 4chan hosted in the United States?
- opendais 12y ago
  Yes. Its also routed through Cloudflare [US company] and owned by a US citizen [moot].
  - krenoten 12y ago
    The ephemerality of its content significantly eases the pressure to censor there.
    - iamshariq 12y ago
      Heard the word "ephemerality" for the first time. Had to look it up. Turns out it means almost the same as "temporary". Thanks for upping the vocab.
      - _delirium 12y ago
        Has a slightly stronger connotation than "temporary", sort of... extra-temporary, such that it only exists in a fleeting sense. Th term is also used in cryptography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeral_key https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeral_key
    - opendais 12y ago
      Well, ya. If content generally vanishes before the DMCA notice arrives via US Mail... ;)

waitwhatt 12y ago

Crappy article. Much better to link to the post by reddit sysadmin alienth.

bilalhusain 12y ago
Seconded. Here's the link http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t...

stopcodon 12y ago

And they do this while putting out a doublespeak public statement saying they don't do things like banning subreddits (but reserve the right to), and were not legally required to in this case. Read it here: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-for-his-own.html http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-f... Here's the comments from their blog post: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_responsible_for_his_own_soul/ http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_re... The admins are getting called out in nearly every top-level comment for folding to media attention and celebrity lawyers, when other objectively worse subreddits are actually granted the "hands-off" approach the site claims to use. Presumably because the victims can't afford legal teams or make headlines like celebrities can when their privacy is violated. The leaks were despicable and I understand any business taking steps to avoid involvement in their distribution, but you can't expect a user-base like reddits to tolerate the administration saying one thing and doing the exact opposite in certain cases where there's bad press involved. Edit: Here's a follow-up post from the sysadmin alienth in response to the backlash from their decision: http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t...

madeofpalk 12y ago
From what I understand, Reddit admins were getting tonnes more takedowns than usual (for underage pics etc), which was becoming a cat-and-mouse game, and took the pragmatic approach of just banning the whole subreddit. The Reddit communities reaction this whole thing has been pretty sickening - enough for me to block it in my hostsfile. This was just the law straw I guess.
- colmvp 12y ago
  Prior to this, I've also seen them take down specific subreddits that linked to CP, so I don't think this purge is that out of the ordinary for them.
  - iancarroll 12y ago
    Jailbait was alive for a long time...

sqrt17 12y ago

Reddit banned the subreddit because some of the nude images were images of underaged celebrities. underage = banned, also on reddit

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Retr0spectrum 12y ago
This was not the case. The subreddit moderators were actively removing all underage images, just like any other subreddit.
- revelation 12y ago
  In fact, the Reddit admins notified the moderators of that particular problem long before they banned the subreddit. Can you spell "the moment you lose DMCA safe harbor provisions"?
nyrina 12y ago
Simply not true. The subreddit mods had already told people in a announcement not to post anything of McKayla Maroney and that if any posts containing images of her existed, that they would delete the posts and ban the people posting that. The subreddit ban came after all of this.

bane 12y ago

The top comment in the thread is absolutely, 100% correct. http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ckbga2v http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t... (lists of disturbing-to-absolutely horrid subs follow in the replies, subs that have been allowed to be part of reddit for a very long time). The thing that bothers me more than any other thing is that they "haven't figured out" what to do with all the gold that was purchased. Really? Based on the communications form the admins, I think the problem is that they're making these decisions by committee rather than setting a policy and having a benevolent dictator enforce it. This makes the decisions like this seem arbitrary, hypocritical, unethical and bending to pressure from rich victims while not doing anything for poor victims. Reddit has serious site wide moderation issues. I think the manpower needed to meta moderate a site as big as reddit has been greatly under appreciated. Every time a sub gets shut down, 3 pop up to replace it. Without full-time admins tracking this stuff, it's just going to continue to house and distribute this kind of stuff and the every once in a while decision to shut something down due to legal pressure is just going to continue to inflame the users. edit so here's the answer from the admins as to what should happen with the lists of reprehensible subs, like pictures of dead children, or people fucking dogs http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ckbh5we http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t... I'd probably suggest they contact the image host to see if it violates their TOS and can be taken down. Some (but not all) image hosts may honour such requests, depending on the circumstances. edit here's an AMA with the mod of the fappening sub http://www.reddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/2foon3/on_sunday_i_created_rthefappening_the_fastest/ http://www.reddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/2foon3/on_sunday...

themartorana 12y ago
The co-founder of reddit apparently also subscribes to the guilty victim ideology. It's not the job of reddit to understand the plight of the victims of any stolen content - it's their fault, after all... From parent's linked thread: "Anytime they take an image and put it in a digital format—whether it’s an email to one person, whether it’s in a tweet, whether it’s on Facebook, whether it’s an MMS—they should assume that it is now public content. They should assume it is everywhere. And that’s the warning that parents need to be giving their kids, and that’s the useful thing CNN could have reported on, instead of making up a bunch of jibber-jabber about reddit." Edit: formatting.

jasode 12y ago

Reddit admins could have garnered more sympathy and understanding if they framed their actions purely in terms of site reliability and manpower instead of any weights about the morals of various subreddits. Two admin messages with vastly different theses: First was the yishan post[1]. The TLDR of that one was, "we don't police subreddits/morals/etc." The problem with that post was that it was a ticking time bomb waiting for any inconsistency with the admins handling of subreddits to be scrutinized and vilified. The yishan post should have never been written. The reddit masses felt their intelligence was being insulted. The second post by alienth[2] has a much better message. The TLDR of that one was "we're getting overwhelmed by DMCA takedowns". Reddit admins can then drive the point home that they know other subreddits such as /notfamousstolenphotos are questionable but at least those are not getting bombarded by DMCA notices. They can then go on to stress that they just don't have the manpower (technical team and legal team) to address (fight) all of the DMCA notices to keep /thefappening up. Reddit was basically a victim of a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack by way of DMCAs instead of ip packets. It's great that reddit has some lofty ideals of being "hands off" but it also has to have the manpower to uphold those ideals. I suppose reddit could ask volunteers to work for $0 salary and review all the DMCA takedowns coming in but that would be a logistical nightmare. Reddit could try to maintain a stance similar to Kevin Rose Digg AACS encryption keys[3] but I don't think they have the resources to do it. In any case, the yishan post has already poisoned the well and any subsequent message to clarify the admins' predicament is getting tainted by it. [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_responsible_for_his_own_soul/ https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_r... [2]http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_to_talk/ http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t... [3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy

maxerickson 12y ago
Their messaging is incoherent because they are trying to capture all the good feels from supporting "free speech" while navigating the legal minefield that comes with their size. Never mind that they categorically ban certain types of speech (doxing, stuff that is illegal). I suppose if you summarize their messaging as "we ban inconvenient speech" it isn't all that incoherent, but that isn't a terribly pleasing stand to take.

lsiebert 12y ago

They banned it because it. A. was eating major bandwidth, setting site records and breaking things. B. Had underage images The fact that the underage images were of a celeb were not part of the decision, except in so much that celebrity nudes were creating massive traffic.

lbsnake7 12y ago

Reddit has completely nose dived the past couple of years. Both from a administrative sense, and a content sense. When they first started the gold program, to quiet the uproar that some users would have more power than others, they said that everyone would get the features of gold, just after a little while. They did that the first couple of times but now they don't. They recently started an IAMA app (why?), which is essentially just a PR machine. They have very inconsistent admin policies, censoring some stuff not censoring other things. A long time ago, there were users that would appear in the comments of every top post and they were almost always jokes. There were submitters that would reach the front page consistently. These people had essentially learned how to game Reddit, finding the right jokes and right material for their audience. And because of that, over the past couple of years it has became a race to the bottom in almost every subreddit and every comment. RES makes Reddit usable to some extent, but my filters filter out 75% of r/all, and what's left isn't very engaging. The website has obviously outgrown me, and I have started spending most of my time on other sites now (sometimes even Digg). And it doesn't matter that Reddit lost me as a heavy user, cause I'm a nobody and Reddit will still get millions of views, just that Reddit meant a lot to me. It was the first website where I actually learned stuff. My Wikipedia usage went through the roof, reading up on things that people were talking about that I had no idea existed. Long articles and even handed discussions, occasional humor. I didn't comment or post a lot but I looked forward to getting lost in it. I miss it a little.

madeofpalk 12y ago
As someone who has been on reddit since 2008, I'm in exactly the same shoes as you. While I agree with them at least for the decision or ban this subreddit, I'm appalled by the communities reaction to it. That, and the circle jerk of reddit (mostly my local subreddits), lead me it being the first site I've banned with /etc/hosts http://i.imgur.com/Womisb3.png http://i.imgur.com/Womisb3.png
- marvin 12y ago
  I still don't get it. Been on reddit since 2006 and it is still by far the best platform for online communities. The level of discussion is unparallelled, if you are specific with what subreddits you subscribe to.