Reddit CEO admits he secretly edited comments from Donald Trump supporters

Keep smoking that good stuff, SV.

Or, if he really has to do personal one-offs, fudge things so that he in particular doesn't get notifications as a result of mentions in specific subforums (e.g. /r/the_donald).

Actually going and mucking with the content of other users' posts (as opposed to hiding or deleting them wholesale for TOS violations) seems pretty unsavory, and more importantly it demonstrates that the capability to do so is trivially available. That's going to be a difficult cat to stick back in the bag.

The new part is that people started calling him a pedo supporter for banning /r/pizzagate last night, which was an anti-pedophile sub subject to much controversy over allegations of doxing, while allegedly allowing pro-pedophile subs to exist.

So /u/Spez took it out on the admins of /r/The_Donald, which is where most of the discussion was gathered after the /r/pizzagate ban due to a sticky post about it moving to Voat's /v/pizzagate where it quickly became a featured sub.

I don't remember which was the alleged pro-pedo sub nor have I visited that sub myself to see what was there, I just saw many angry comments mentioning some sub (pedochat? something like that) while watching the subreddit drama unfold. So basically this is another bit of mod drama and another influx to Voat.

As for unprofessional vs. nefarious, I think many people are upset that this is something a single rogue admin can do. At better run places, no one person would hold all the keys. And given how someone's reputation could be ruined by a bit of invisible editing, leaving one to get hounded by SRS or whomever, well it's hard not to be uncomfortable that it's apparently something an admin could just do on a lark.

That said, I hope the story is more complicated than that (he likely does have some very special access, etc.), but it really only exacerbates the trust issues they have over there, which is about the last thing they need.

The context as I understand it involves some ravenous hordes of conspiracy-theory redditors promulgating fake news stories and doxxing innocent people. However, by changing the text of these users comments, whatever their actions, and by admitting to it, Steve has opened the floodgates. Now there is no question -- in the minds of these users -- that the site is truly "against them" and willing to not only censor them but to rewrite history as they see it. They can no longer trust anything they read on the site.

But what is worse is the effect and message this sends to normal users. How can, for instance, any person safely participate in an AMA now? When the real possibility exists to have their words changed out from under them, and no way to prove they aren't in fact the author? And from that, why would anyone post anything potentially personally identifiable, if (in their mind) some disgruntled admin could modify what they said to include false yet humiliating or criminal things (e.g., throw in racial epithets, link to porn, admit adultery / drug use) that might eventually link back to them. And how far does this go? Can admins send PMs under the name of other users? What else? To me at least, the scary thing is that Reddit posts that only obliquely reference personal information have already been used as the basis for surveillance and legal action [1]...

And taking one final step back, from a business side this drama goes beyond just being unprofessional. Reddit posts are now often linked to from news articles. How can the media trust the source they link to? If the content of posts are 'up for grabs' to be edited by admins in the minds of users and the media (even if they aren't in reality), then one of Reddit's functions that is growing in importance -- that is, news-making -- may be stymied.

Harming trust is extremely dangerous for social platforms. And when it is the CEO themselves doing the harm, it could very well border on being suicidal for the site.

[1] https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/58hae4/what_is_a_...