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Comment by bpchaps | Hacker News Reader

I once had to raise a huge security risk to Comcast and resorted to a reddit post after very little luck raising it through official channels. It was a pretty sobering experience to how reddit users use downvotes for things they didn't understand or disagreed with. A lot of the downvotes came from folks who angrily commented that I was too vague. Giving specifics is just reckless, and if anything, I probably gave way too much information. Any less vague and it would have been out in the open.

Some official folk from Comcast eventually showed up and almost immediately got it fixed (!). Afterwords, there were posts about how "reddit saved the day again". The customer rep who helped out ended up getting more upvotes than any of my posts. I really don't get it.

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I'm near expert level in one or two categories. Its difficult to post about my views because they're academic and involve history, the debate, popular consensus, etc. My comments just get downvoted because the hivemind just wants simple answers. Those simple answers are easier to digest, easy to know if you agree or disagree, etc.

This is also why /r/askhistorians is so heavily moderated. If you just let it run itself the top comments would be low-effort junk like "Tesla god; Edison devil" and other nonsense with almost no discussions that go counter to the grain or discussion of the many shades of gray between "good and bad" and "right and wrong."

>Afterwords, there were posts about how "reddit saved the day again".

I feel sorry for the people who post incredible things, especially some of the short story writers, but the press narrative becomes "Reddit did it again!" It wasn't "reddit" it was a single author. I really wish there was more of an emphasis on individual contributions there and the people behind the usernames.

Anyone can complain about a security vulnerability or so forth. However, in getting it fixed, it is reddit that did it, because the "doing it" was getting the high-profile attention of someone who could fix the problem, which requires a reddit-level audience.

Similarly, if a newspaper publishes something about how a local company hurt a customer, it's the clout of the newspaper that "did it", not the customer.

>Anyone can complain about a security vulnerability or so forth.

The skillset to find a unknown security issue is rare. The skillset to post to reddit is common. I think you're wrong here. The author deserves the credit, not the site.

>Similarly, if a newspaper publishes something about how a local company hurt a customer, it's the clout of the newspaper that "did it"

Because the reporter is an employee of the newspaper and like all employees is part of the organization, so its easier to credit the organization. How is reddit like a newspaper? They aren't his employer. Its more like publishing something to the classified sections of a paper than being a reporter. It would be crazy to credit the paper for its classifieds.

If the information was noticed after being stapled to electrical poles, should Comed be given the credit? Hell no. Just because reddit is where the ack happened, that doesn't mean it was reddit who "did it". It just happened to be the place where it worked. It feels pretty unfair to give reddit the creddit here. It would have been significantly easier to either sell it or ignore it. Fuck both of those options.

FWIW, the disclosure sparked the discussion about a bug bounty program and a strong interest to reorganize their methods of raising security issues. I'm told both will go public, "soon". Whatever that means.

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