the functionality is probably a UPDATE comments where id=x set content="newcontent"
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.