8 ms·

Reddit transparency report, 2014

158 points by soundsop 12y ago

secfirstmd 12y ago
Glad to see they put up a fight as much as possible (or say they do atleast).
ipsum2 12y ago
"As of January 29, 2015, reddit has never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information. If we ever receive such a request, we would seek to let the public know it existed." Is this the warrant canary? Has this been around before?
- doughj3 12y ago
  > Has this been around before? I would imagine not, considering this is their first transparency report.
- thesimon 12y ago
  Nope https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/2fser0/shouldnt_reddit_have_a_warrant_canary_or_a_dead/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/2fser0/shou...
- danielweber 12y ago
  https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/34#issuecomment-49910725 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/... Moxie saying "Every lawyer we've spoken to has confirmed that [having a warrant canary] would not work." Which isn't surprising. When the government tells you not to communicate something, you aren't allowed to communicate it. Not not not not communicating it isn't some clever loophole.
  - nacs 12y ago
    In that same issue you linked, there's a link to the EFF's Warrant Canary FAQ ( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq ) that disagrees with what Moxie/WhisperSystems is saying. I'd take the EFF's word over WhisperSystems'.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      Note that WhisperSystems is actually concerned with the legality, because it's their own necks on the line, and they don't want to put their own neck on the line for something that their own legal counsel says won't work. While the EFF is . . . well, they don't promise to bail you out of jail and pay all your court costs and go to jail for you. The EFF is an advocacy organization, begging people to believe in magic beans, by telling everyone that magic beans work. If one of them does and finds out it doesn't work, what is the EFF going to do then? Say "I'm sorry" really nicely? The hired lawyers' viewpoint is easy to see. If the government orders you not to communicate something, then you aren't supposed to communicate that information. Doing it in a really roundabout way is still communicating it.
      - atmosx 12y ago
        That's a little bit playing with words but if next year same day, this post doesn't re-appear on Reddit then automatically: * They don't communicate anything to users * Users understand a gag-order was issued * They didn't break any laws To an interested party, a hint such as this, should be enough to act as an alarm. On the other hand if they force the party in some way to release a statement then I guess the users are toasted.
        danielweber 12y ago
        * Users understand a gag-order was issued Right there? Communication happened. All these attempts to say "well, I'm not really communicating" are just flopping on the beach. You have information, and because of your action, a third-party now has that information. We'd call that communication any day of the week.
  - duaneb 12y ago
    Wouldn't this essentially translate to the government forcing the company to mislead the public? This is different from forcing the company to be silent—that is perhaps understandable. But I would love to understand the rationale behind the government forcing a company to post a false notice with no benefit to anyone but the government itself.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      Saying "the government is forcing me to lie!" is ignoring your agency is establishing the canary.
    - jsprogrammer 12y ago
      >This is different from forcing the company to be silent—that is perhaps understandable. How is this understandable? The US constitution prohibits it.
  - click170 12y ago
    Instead of not communicating it. What if you block people from viewing something else as a consequence of receiving a request. Eg there is a public mailbox folder that can be checked by anyone online and there is an email filter that directs all mail with keywords typically found in requests to that folder. When a request is received you would of course be forced to block access to the mailbox as soon as you were aware of the takedown, but losing the ability to check that the mailbox is clean is the warrant canary. There would always be a small window between when the email arrived and was visible and when the company saw the request and blocked access.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      Okay, I'm getting this pattern by people who want to make warrant canaries work: 1. You receive warrant you aren't allowed to tell friend about. 2. ??? 3. Friend now knows you got a warrant! How clever! It doesn't matter what stuff you cram into #2. I'm sure you want to talk to the court at great length about how #2 means you didn't communicate. Courts have dealt with this nonsense for a long time. It's called "distinction without a difference."
      - jsprogrammer 12y ago
        What if you stuff the first amendment to the US constitution in there? It's only one sentence, and very blunt: >Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...
        s_kilk 12y ago
        It should be evident by now that that one sentence is effectively meaningless in the US.
        jsprogrammer 12y ago
        Has it been tested in court in relation to NSLs?
  - ikeboy 12y ago
    Apple disagrees. http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-omits-warrant-canary-from-latest-transparency-reports-patriot-act-data-demands-likely-made/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-omits-warrant-canary-from... And I think they have at least one lawyer.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      Here's what you know: Apple used to have a warrant canary, and now doesn't. I could put a warrant canary on my website, and then remove it. What does that prove?
  - Angostura 12y ago
    How does the government prove that you're communicating something when you've never explicitly said 'this is a warranty canary, it's ommission next year means that something is up'. Take Apple. It had something that was assumed to be a warranty canary. It's no longer there. People made assumptions. Has Apple done anything wrong?
    - danielweber 12y ago
      prove that you're communicating something when you've never explicitly said Because courts aren't that dumb. Blackmail is illegal, too, and frequently the person demanding blackmail doesn't explicitly say "give me money or I publish this evidence." (It's legal to publish information, and it's legal to get paid not to publish it, but it's illegal to demand money not to publish it.) I don't know what happened with Apple.
  - Lawtonfogle 12y ago
    If they act in such a way that they must continue to act the same way to prevent knowledge from being transferred then I could see the courts ruling they must continue to act in such a way even if it would involve lying. The only ways around this is for the information that a warrant was received to be sent before it is received (to give an example that doesn't violate causality, a person stream 100% of everything they see/hear, so that between the time of receiving such a warrant and realizing what the warrant actually is the information that it has been received was already sent out). And even then I see the courts ruling against them because the courts will argue the spirit of the law was violated.
- cryoshon 12y ago
  Ah, I am glad that my comment to one of the administrators a couple of years ago regarding NSLs finally landed in the right place.
- RankingMember 12y ago
  Perhaps one situation where spam could be the solution. Notify everyone that contacts your main contact email that all emails received and sent are also copied to some watchdog organization. That way, when your already-in-place system copies an NSA info request, your culpability is lessened. That's my theory for how to deal with this kind of shadiness anyways - infinite sunshine.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Pretty sure the NSA doesn't just send you an email.
    - RankingMember 12y ago
      Sorry, I meant broader than just email. Any communication that's not spoken gets archived and mirrored. All mail/legal requests get scanned and mirrored.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    How do you think requests to keep things secret are sent? If it's important enough to order you to keep it secret, they aren't going to send it via email.
- sixothree 12y ago
  That statement to me reads like the canary has died.
patrickfl 12y ago
awesome, would love to know what sub-reddits received the illegitimate takedown requests. Can anyone take a stab at which ones?
- Kalium 12y ago
  This is limited to data Reddit HQ legal has dealt with. The subs in question may not even be aware. The admins often play their cards close.
  - a_bonobo 12y ago
    This is correct - the top question in reddit's comments to this post asks this [1], and the admins answer that the mods could report these takedown requests as reddit Inc. does not collect them. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2u3sqp/reddits_first_transparency_report/co4uh8w http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2u3sqp/reddits_first_t...
- noobface 12y ago
  Spacedicks had all of them
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- samspot 12y ago
  I'm willing to bet video-game emulation communities are in that list.
- m3rc 12y ago
  The celebrity leaked nude stuff had a lot of DMCA flying around, pretty sure they even nuked a couple subreddits to comply with some of it
  - sesutton 12y ago
    I imagine a lot of them were for image thumbnails since reddit actually hosts those.
baseten 12y ago
There is little need for government takedown requests when the moderators of many subreddits are paid shills of various stripes. There are a few subs like r/undelete and r/undeleteshadow and r/longtail dedicated to snapshotting this sort of thing. Among the duplicate submissions that are legitimately deleted you can find some real gems.
- motbob 12y ago
  When one views reddit moderation decisions through an anti-corporate/governmental lens, circumstantial evidence of mods being paid off seems to be everywhere. But there is not a single piece of direct evidence to suggest that mods are being paid by large organizations (corporate or otherwise) to manipulate reddit content.
  - RyJones 12y ago
    I got stickers and a certificate of moderate appreciation from reddit itself for moderating /r/answers. You should know I'm totally beholden to corporate interests now - those stickers were very nice.
  - colordrops 12y ago
    Reddit has both explicit ads, such as paid placement at the top, and side bar ads, as well as Reddit Gold, but these are not extensive enough to support costs and make a decent profit. Reddit has nearly 200 million users and has taken almost 50 million in investment, and there is a lot of pressure to utilize the user base for marketing purposes. Along with traditional explicit advertising models, internet marketing usually involves more subtle techniques such as seamless paid content interleaved with user content, as you see on Facebook and elsewhere. Subtle and invisible marketing is especially important on Reddit, as forum users are not tolerant of paid content, as evidenced by the collapse of Digg, so the operators of Reddit have to keep up the impression of Reddit being pristine and untouched by marketers. But Reddit has to make revenue, as they are a business and not a charity. Reddit employees are mods of many of the default subreddits, and often post content to those boards that bubbles to the top of the front page. The evidence trail is direct, as you can directly view an employee's posts on their profile page. It would be absurd for Reddit to not use modern internet marketing techniques to generate revenue. Not only does Reddit support marketing through posts, but they also control the narrative of Reddit. Just live television before it, advertisers are very sensitive to the content carried on the medium that their advertisements are part of, and use their dollars to influence what can and can't be said in that channel. The same goes for Reddit.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
hackuser 12y ago
Does Reddit allow anonymous users (e.g., via Tor)?
thissideup 12y ago
This is worthless as social sites, like Reddit, are one of the most heavily propagandized and manipulated places on the internet. It's a tool for disseminating information and talking points.

158 points by soundsop 12y ago

Glad to see they put up a fight as much as possible (or say they do atleast).

"As of January 29, 2015, reddit has never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information. If we ever receive such a request, we would seek to let the public know it existed." Is this the warrant canary? Has this been around before?

doughj3 12y ago
> Has this been around before? I would imagine not, considering this is their first transparency report.
thesimon 12y ago
Nope https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/2fser0/shouldnt_reddit_have_a_warrant_canary_or_a_dead/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/2fser0/shou...
danielweber 12y ago
https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/34#issuecomment-49910725 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/... Moxie saying "Every lawyer we've spoken to has confirmed that [having a warrant canary] would not work." Which isn't surprising. When the government tells you not to communicate something, you aren't allowed to communicate it. Not not not not communicating it isn't some clever loophole.
- nacs 12y ago
  In that same issue you linked, there's a link to the EFF's Warrant Canary FAQ ( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq ) that disagrees with what Moxie/WhisperSystems is saying. I'd take the EFF's word over WhisperSystems'.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    Note that WhisperSystems is actually concerned with the legality, because it's their own necks on the line, and they don't want to put their own neck on the line for something that their own legal counsel says won't work. While the EFF is . . . well, they don't promise to bail you out of jail and pay all your court costs and go to jail for you. The EFF is an advocacy organization, begging people to believe in magic beans, by telling everyone that magic beans work. If one of them does and finds out it doesn't work, what is the EFF going to do then? Say "I'm sorry" really nicely? The hired lawyers' viewpoint is easy to see. If the government orders you not to communicate something, then you aren't supposed to communicate that information. Doing it in a really roundabout way is still communicating it.
    - atmosx 12y ago
      That's a little bit playing with words but if next year same day, this post doesn't re-appear on Reddit then automatically: * They don't communicate anything to users * Users understand a gag-order was issued * They didn't break any laws To an interested party, a hint such as this, should be enough to act as an alarm. On the other hand if they force the party in some way to release a statement then I guess the users are toasted.
      - danielweber 12y ago
        * Users understand a gag-order was issued Right there? Communication happened. All these attempts to say "well, I'm not really communicating" are just flopping on the beach. You have information, and because of your action, a third-party now has that information. We'd call that communication any day of the week.
- duaneb 12y ago
  Wouldn't this essentially translate to the government forcing the company to mislead the public? This is different from forcing the company to be silent—that is perhaps understandable. But I would love to understand the rationale behind the government forcing a company to post a false notice with no benefit to anyone but the government itself.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    Saying "the government is forcing me to lie!" is ignoring your agency is establishing the canary.
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    >This is different from forcing the company to be silent—that is perhaps understandable. How is this understandable? The US constitution prohibits it.
- click170 12y ago
  Instead of not communicating it. What if you block people from viewing something else as a consequence of receiving a request. Eg there is a public mailbox folder that can be checked by anyone online and there is an email filter that directs all mail with keywords typically found in requests to that folder. When a request is received you would of course be forced to block access to the mailbox as soon as you were aware of the takedown, but losing the ability to check that the mailbox is clean is the warrant canary. There would always be a small window between when the email arrived and was visible and when the company saw the request and blocked access.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    Okay, I'm getting this pattern by people who want to make warrant canaries work: 1. You receive warrant you aren't allowed to tell friend about. 2. ??? 3. Friend now knows you got a warrant! How clever! It doesn't matter what stuff you cram into #2. I'm sure you want to talk to the court at great length about how #2 means you didn't communicate. Courts have dealt with this nonsense for a long time. It's called "distinction without a difference."
    - jsprogrammer 12y ago
      What if you stuff the first amendment to the US constitution in there? It's only one sentence, and very blunt: >Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...
      - s_kilk 12y ago
        It should be evident by now that that one sentence is effectively meaningless in the US.
        jsprogrammer 12y ago
        Has it been tested in court in relation to NSLs?
- ikeboy 12y ago
  Apple disagrees. http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-omits-warrant-canary-from-latest-transparency-reports-patriot-act-data-demands-likely-made/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-omits-warrant-canary-from... And I think they have at least one lawyer.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    Here's what you know: Apple used to have a warrant canary, and now doesn't. I could put a warrant canary on my website, and then remove it. What does that prove?
- Angostura 12y ago
  How does the government prove that you're communicating something when you've never explicitly said 'this is a warranty canary, it's ommission next year means that something is up'. Take Apple. It had something that was assumed to be a warranty canary. It's no longer there. People made assumptions. Has Apple done anything wrong?
  - danielweber 12y ago
    prove that you're communicating something when you've never explicitly said Because courts aren't that dumb. Blackmail is illegal, too, and frequently the person demanding blackmail doesn't explicitly say "give me money or I publish this evidence." (It's legal to publish information, and it's legal to get paid not to publish it, but it's illegal to demand money not to publish it.) I don't know what happened with Apple.
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago
  If they act in such a way that they must continue to act the same way to prevent knowledge from being transferred then I could see the courts ruling they must continue to act in such a way even if it would involve lying. The only ways around this is for the information that a warrant was received to be sent before it is received (to give an example that doesn't violate causality, a person stream 100% of everything they see/hear, so that between the time of receiving such a warrant and realizing what the warrant actually is the information that it has been received was already sent out). And even then I see the courts ruling against them because the courts will argue the spirit of the law was violated.
cryoshon 12y ago
Ah, I am glad that my comment to one of the administrators a couple of years ago regarding NSLs finally landed in the right place.
RankingMember 12y ago
Perhaps one situation where spam could be the solution. Notify everyone that contacts your main contact email that all emails received and sent are also copied to some watchdog organization. That way, when your already-in-place system copies an NSA info request, your culpability is lessened. That's my theory for how to deal with this kind of shadiness anyways - infinite sunshine.
- sp332 12y ago
  Pretty sure the NSA doesn't just send you an email.
  - RankingMember 12y ago
    Sorry, I meant broader than just email. Any communication that's not spoken gets archived and mirrored. All mail/legal requests get scanned and mirrored.
- danielweber 12y ago
  How do you think requests to keep things secret are sent? If it's important enough to order you to keep it secret, they aren't going to send it via email.
sixothree 12y ago
That statement to me reads like the canary has died.

patrickfl 12y ago

awesome, would love to know what sub-reddits received the illegitimate takedown requests. Can anyone take a stab at which ones?

Kalium 12y ago
This is limited to data Reddit HQ legal has dealt with. The subs in question may not even be aware. The admins often play their cards close.
- a_bonobo 12y ago
  This is correct - the top question in reddit's comments to this post asks this [1], and the admins answer that the mods could report these takedown requests as reddit Inc. does not collect them. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2u3sqp/reddits_first_transparency_report/co4uh8w http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2u3sqp/reddits_first_t...
noobface 12y ago
Spacedicks had all of them
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
samspot 12y ago
I'm willing to bet video-game emulation communities are in that list.
m3rc 12y ago
The celebrity leaked nude stuff had a lot of DMCA flying around, pretty sure they even nuked a couple subreddits to comply with some of it
- sesutton 12y ago
  I imagine a lot of them were for image thumbnails since reddit actually hosts those.

baseten 12y ago

There is little need for government takedown requests when the moderators of many subreddits are paid shills of various stripes. There are a few subs like r/undelete and r/undeleteshadow and r/longtail dedicated to snapshotting this sort of thing. Among the duplicate submissions that are legitimately deleted you can find some real gems.

motbob 12y ago
When one views reddit moderation decisions through an anti-corporate/governmental lens, circumstantial evidence of mods being paid off seems to be everywhere. But there is not a single piece of direct evidence to suggest that mods are being paid by large organizations (corporate or otherwise) to manipulate reddit content.
- RyJones 12y ago
  I got stickers and a certificate of moderate appreciation from reddit itself for moderating /r/answers. You should know I'm totally beholden to corporate interests now - those stickers were very nice.
- colordrops 12y ago
  Reddit has both explicit ads, such as paid placement at the top, and side bar ads, as well as Reddit Gold, but these are not extensive enough to support costs and make a decent profit. Reddit has nearly 200 million users and has taken almost 50 million in investment, and there is a lot of pressure to utilize the user base for marketing purposes. Along with traditional explicit advertising models, internet marketing usually involves more subtle techniques such as seamless paid content interleaved with user content, as you see on Facebook and elsewhere. Subtle and invisible marketing is especially important on Reddit, as forum users are not tolerant of paid content, as evidenced by the collapse of Digg, so the operators of Reddit have to keep up the impression of Reddit being pristine and untouched by marketers. But Reddit has to make revenue, as they are a business and not a charity. Reddit employees are mods of many of the default subreddits, and often post content to those boards that bubbles to the top of the front page. The evidence trail is direct, as you can directly view an employee's posts on their profile page. It would be absurd for Reddit to not use modern internet marketing techniques to generate revenue. Not only does Reddit support marketing through posts, but they also control the narrative of Reddit. Just live television before it, advertisers are very sensitive to the content carried on the medium that their advertisements are part of, and use their dollars to influence what can and can't be said in that channel. The same goes for Reddit.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

hackuser 12y ago

Does Reddit allow anonymous users (e.g., via Tor)?

thissideup 12y ago

This is worthless as social sites, like Reddit, are one of the most heavily propagandized and manipulated places on the internet. It's a tool for disseminating information and talking points.