Very juvenile and unprofessional way of dealing with the situation, really erodes trust in the platform (simply deleting the comment would have been a better response).
Would maybe expect this from the founder of a young fledgling startup, but the 33 year old CEO of a company like Reddit ought to know better.
If I read this Reddit thread without knowing him, I would have deemed him unprofessional and maybe even upvoted some of the comments.
When I read the thread knowing who he is, I'm thinking "I can't imagine how stressful it must be to run Reddit. He made one mistake in a bad day, apologized for it, and now everyone's talking about it. Steve's way nicer and more professional than I am, so I would probably have messed up big time in his shoes."
This is the sort of situation that irrevocably damages trust. What's the guarantee that this won't happen again?
What bothers me more is that this sort of functionality exists in the first place. All it would take is one compromised admin account, and boom, you can rewrite somebody's entire comment history without it being logged anywhere.
And if he did this for "about an hour" as he said, he clearly didn't use ... WHERE content='fuck u/spez'
It seems likely there's code in the front end that gives him the ability to edit user's comments in his browser. That should not exist.
Instead, the CEO logged into the production DB and manually edited individual comments there?
Give them some credit, surely even Reddit staff aren't that terrible.
Recall when they were trying to sell "social media influencing" services to STRATFOR? [0] [1]
What tools did they create for that "product";
* An astroturfing account mgmt platform? Mass comment editing tool?
* Deep comment search tool?
* comment-graph showing cross /r/ posts by a user to develop a profile of the person?
* Tools to seek out what users from reddit were which users on FB, Google+, Youtube etc.
These all above are just the most obvious off the top of my head.
The schema for reddit comments is (at least when I last looked at it) is fairly simple and it would be easy to create such tools against that data.
Are there any third party services that allow for this.
Especially if you think about DLing the comment blob and then do these retroactively against all comments in the past to graph out the personal-profiles of each user....
BRB, need to head out to get more tin-foil.... for the Turkey! not, /r/conspiracy
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditcancer/comments/3818ti/nev...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5a3ofc/we_were_...
BTW next time add link to source instead of cancerous subreddits.
Really, when you think about it, changing user comments would probably be a really easy undertaking for any forum administrator with access to the database.
If it was a mistake resulting from inaction one could attribute that to stress.
This was deliberate action. I assume/hope that this special mode of editing (without the "edited" asterisk signifier) isn't just the default "edit" button Spez gets for every post if he's logged in, but that he had to jump through a few hoops and "are you sure" boxes to get there (or maybe was it direct DB editing).
There's some things you just don't do with admin powers, lines you don't cross, not even for shits 'n giggles. And apparently he doesn't truly believe that, because the amounts of stress that would make one cross those lines are way beyond ability to function as a person, let alone CEO of Reddit.
I think you misjudged his professionalism.
You comment that he's made just one mistake on a bad day. Perhaps this is just his most visible mistake, and he's been making these kinds of bad mistakes for the past month. It didn't take him 10 seconds to do this - he had to log in with full access to the reddit database and run unprotected queries against the live running copy. That's both shocking security, operations and basic common practice. For a childish insult.
And finally, he did not actually apologize for any of this. "I fucked up" is not the same as "I'm sorry".
If so, he deserves to be applauded. There are things a founder/CEO has to do you can't say.
http://www.theweek.co.uk/facebook/14625/are-users-dumb-fucks...
From that article:
During the conversation, Zuckerberg writes: "Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard, just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS."
When the friend asks him how he got the information, Zuckerberg replies: "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."
But publicly denying your platform[0] did not affect the recent election; After research have confirmed prior to the election that Facebook have a fake news problem.
Does not do his credibility any good.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11...
But if we focus on the manner that actually occurred, the only additional harm vs. a reply of "no u" is to reddit's reputation.
I'm worried that the answer is "not at all", which seems weird.
"Never Ruin an Apology With an Excuse."
I read Steve's apology and to be honest it was more dismissive and excusing than it was a real apology. So, it shouldn't surprise you that he isn't being cut the same slack you would expect after a sincere apology.
You tell them to roundly go fuck themselves and appeal to the people that agree with you, the opposition's feelings be damned.
The perceived sincerity of apology delivered to someone who is receptive to an apology can indeed be diminished by accompanying it with an excuse.
On the other hand, an apology delivered to someone who is categorically unreceptive to any apology can only be entirely futile. Since there is nothing to gain yet possibly something to lose, the rational course of action would be to not apologize.
Edit: since the latter example seems to be the controversial one, here is a popular scenario in which a significant number of individuals can always be characterized as being "categorically unreceptive to an apology": partisan politics.
It depends. Do i really regret what i did? Was it the wrong thing to do? Then i'll apologise, and try to get rid of all the excuses.
Was someone offended and want me to apologise, but when i look at it, i stick to my guns? Then FU strategy, no apology, i'll fight for my point all the way.
But, This is exactly my point. His reason doesn't matter. Reasons aren't relevant to apologies.
When you are apologizing, you are admitting wrongdoing...defending yourself in the same breadth is essentially saying you didn't do anything wrong in the first place.
Every time I have to apologize I am tempted to throw in a reason/excuse and everytime I remind myself of that quote and stick with just "I'm sorry" I end up with a better result than when I tag on a reason...
That being said, if you read his post...he actually doesn't apologize at all. He even goes so far as to say he wont do it again (only) because it upset the community team, not because it was wrong to do. He also claims he fixed it. He might of changed back the comments...but he certainly didn't fix anything.
It wasn't something you accidentally do when the stress gets too much all the while you really know and believe how wrong it is. They have rules about this.
He obviously didn't believe that. Or that the rules don't apply to him.
> What could he have said differently to make that reason more .. reasonable?
Nothing, probably. He done fucked up, that's it. This is firing-on-the-spot material if he weren't CEO. If they have to keep him for being important as CEO in other ways maybe, at the very least they should take away all his toys and admin powers and uh oh yeah, BAN his reddit account. He can talk announcements through some communication team, but I don't think he should be really touching or modifying anything on the site any more.
Excuses and reasons are pretty irrelevant here. The last part is forgiveness, a dish best served cold :)
I don't mind Reddit fucking up. If they were competent they would have monetized the users a long time ago and it would be an broken mess that feeds daily spam to my inbox like every other social media platform. Reddit is too valuable to take seriously.
It's like an ISP knowing a significant portion of your web browsing behaviour.
If you're concerned about the outbound link issue, disable javascript. A cursory look at the page source should convince you that that's the only way they can track outbound clicks.
And since now we know that the CEO (at least?) has edited comments, users' comment history should be considered suspect..
I know someone in high school who joked about murdering someone and he's doing 25 to life for it now so I've learned to realize that someone joking about something is in no way proof that they wouldn't do it.
Also, in what way would he NOT be looking at dark secrets of people? Reddit makes money on selling packages of personally-identifiable information / and IPs so that you can pay them and be able to link reddit accounts to facebook accounts and google accounts and so on. People think they have some sort of anonymity on Reddit but if you pony up cash Reddit will strip anyone's away for you. And I'm sure he's looking at what he's willing to sell to others. If anyone posts something juicy but anonymous on Reddit, he's looking at their real name attached to their facebook account.
Of course it was still dumb and he shouldn't have done it. But it's hard to credit the people saying this is evidence of more sinister revelations yet to come.
It is much more honest and within reason to take steps like deleting posts, suspending or even outright banning users.
It's Reddit. It's an Internet forum run by a private corporation. The users in question abusing spez have zero right to their speech on the platform. You have zero recourse if Reddit edits your comments.
Nuke /r/the_donald, nuke the users and hellban their IPS of those who sent abusive messages, and let's move on. Bask in the irony when I say, "Drain the swamp"
This is one of the most bizarre statements I have ever read. You don't understand why people are outraged over abuse of power? Seriously?
> It's Reddit. It's an Internet forum run by a private corporation.
A forum used by users who are pretty much famous for taking a strong dislike to censorship.
> You have zero recourse if Reddit edits your comments.
Zero legal recourse. Plenty of recourse to make a big deal out of it online and damage Reddit's reputation and make others aware when the CEO makes it clear there are additional risks that people didn't expect with using their platform.
The only real problem I can see is that people (at least, here in the UK) have been charged with crimes relating to something they've posted on reddit. Clearly, that's ridiculous if there can be no expectation of proof of authorship.
Oh God, this tired distraction again? We know they have no "right to free speech" on a private platform. We know. Everybody knows. Reddit is not the government and can do what it wants. It could replace every instance of "/u/spez sucks" with "/u/spez is great!" and be absolutely within its rights. What we're saying is that such behavior would not be in the spirit of free speech and would raise questions about Reddit's claimed commitment to that principle, not that it's actually illegal.
> Nuke /r/the_donald, nuke the users and hellban their IPS of those who sent abusive messages, and let's move on. Bask in the irony when I say, "Drain the swamp"
Try to prevent the people whose views you don't like from speaking, eh? That certainly worked out well in the last election.
What I am pointing out is that the let's strategy in this election was suppression and abuse, and it resulted in President Trump. Maybe try a different approach next time!
Reddit CLAIMS to be a Bastion of free speech. But in reality, is this true?
The answer seems to be NO.
Free speech ends when it's become harrasment. What happened to spez calls for digitally curb stomping the offenders.
This is no different from Twitter having to cull accounts harassing others.
It would be like you posting a Twitter message that says "I hate Donald Trump" and Twitter transparently changing that message to "I hate Tim Cook" so that anybody reading your timeline thinks you're someone you aren't. See the problem now? Now imagine if Twitter's management was taken over tomorrow and this actually happens.
Would you not be a little bit outraged?
If it doesn't care about the principles of free speech (principles, not the amendment) then it should stop giving fake lip service to it.
Also, what you say isn't really true. 4chan does a good job of not censoring anything that isn't obviously illegal.
Any chat system built on top of the blockchain for that matter would actually be impossible to censor.
Or even just a simple email list, is in some sense an uncensored chat room.
Or text messages. Or phone calls.
All of these are in some sense, technology assisted chat services, run by private parties. And I'd describe them all as "bastions of free speech".
What if, to prevent harassment, your phone company listened to all of its customers phone calls and selective moderated them whenever you said a bad word? That is the equivalent.
I don't see it either when something happens on reality TV (direct analog). It's fine and dandy that reddit mods post about liberal values, which is purely political posturing, not technical or legal limitation. That kind of lip-service doesn't mean anything to me...insofar as I'm not counting on it being true any more than a politician making promises about their platform. I'm certainly not surprised (or outraged?) when there are cries for forgiveness after acting against those political statements.
Hint: try looking at the "abuse of power" part of your comment.
These platforms are not just a playground anymore. Politicians come on and make on-the-record statements on them, the news sources stories off them, etc. Integrity of the record is critical. Reddit jeopardizing that platform is very bad for them and erodes their credibility enormously. I can see major figures declining to perform AMAs anymore based on the uncertainty that someone at the company will get triggered, jump in, and change their stuff.