Is Reddit Censoring the Spectator? | Hacker News Reader

Is Reddit Censoring the Spectator?

spectator.co.uk

54 pointsthinkingemote16 comments

Is it acceptable to explain what happened on ycombinator or is the information banned here too? This is all documented on the Reddit admin concerneds Wikipedia page. It is relatively common knowledge in the UK.

Reddit hired an admin.

a) the admin's father is a convicted peadophile, he tortured a child in the house he shared with said admin.

b) the admin hired her father (post conviction) as her election agent.

c) the admin claimed not to know the full details of her fathers prosecution for torturing a child.

d) the admin was suspended from a UK political party after her partner tweeted peadophilic fantasies.

Is it not unsurprising that this created a disastrous situation for moderation and PR on Reddit? How on earth did Reddit not see this coming?

* Edit: Apologies the text should read post charge, pre convinction.

Reddit claims this was a mistake, but note how this moderator was later suspended for asking questions: https://www.reddit.com/user/dramasutra2020

seems like there was either an automated process which scanned the content of submitted posts across the entire site as Reddit claims, or it was the over zealous actions of a human employed by the site. The second is more believable.

Scanned, automated or manual, for what though?

Reddit claims the auomated process was to stop doxxing - in other words reddit seems to be claiming they have a bot which scans the content of posts for an employees name.

If it was automatic the trigger seems to be just the mention of a name, which then triggers a pretty nuclear response.

You still get auto banned for mentioning the name of a reddit admin, someone who not only works at reddit but was involved in political parties so you would assume they are considered a political figure. Some default subreddits have opted to go private in protest. They are seeing it as blatant censorship.

Off the top of my head I don't know who that someone is but presumably it's not a common name like "John Smith".

Aimee Challenor, someone with a wiki page even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Challenor

By what logic would mentioning the name of an already-public figure - you know, by way of being a politician - be "doxxing"?

By way of a really dumb algorithm with really dumb governance.

It surprises me how much bad stuff is allowed to run without oversight.

It’s perfectly cool to experiment with code and try new things to see if it works. It’s stupid to do that with real things like the “Article Banner” or whatever Reddit has.

I’m sure there’s lots of complexity but I suspect there’s a decision being made to let things run and they haven’t set up the right checks and balances to see if it’s working.

If an established account has a submission flagged and blocked that should be really rare and either require a human to check it out, or to allow it and flag it for review.

Reddit gets tons of spam, I’m certain, but it’s probably not from real accounts or from sources that have a long history of their content being submitted without flags.

If a newspaper’s article is blocked automatically because the rule is too stupid, that’s too high impact of a failure condition.

My suspicion is that because Aimee is transgender, they expected anti-transgender comments about her and were thus more eager with "anti-doxxing" filters.

Reddit's response can be found here: https://np.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/mbqgx2/a_clarifi...

> We’re seeing a number of good questions regarding where our policies around public information, personal information, and harassment intersect. While we’re unable to comment on specific employment details, we do want to address a few of these questions, especially around what is or isn’t allowed to be posted. A few answers:

    May we allow articles about an admin's personal and professional history?

Yes, articles are allowed to be posted on Reddit as long as they do not spread private information or invite harassment against others.

    May we allow proper names of admins?

It depends on the context - posting of any personal information, including names, coupled with harassment of any sort may result in action by us. Some admins are public figures by virtue of their job, so those names are okay. Other employees may have chosen to explicitly link their usernames to their real life, that’s also okay. Some employees may have taken pains to not associate themselves with their specific usernames for safety reasons, in which case linking their names to their account is not ok.

    Can we allow wikipedia pages if they mention the names of admins?

As long as it’s not being posted in conjunction with other rule breaking content, nor as a springboard for harassment.

    If we approve this kind of content can we be banned?

We know mods make mistakes and it’s only a problem if we see it becoming a pattern. If we see that we will talk to you before further steps are taken. That said, we sometimes make mistakes too, as we did in this instance. When we do so, we will correct the situation as quickly as possible.

Nevertheless, there have been instances where mods have been removed from their positions or suspended over repeatedly ignoring site wide rules or encouraging others to break them.

    Given that this person is a public figure, why is this standard in place? They ran for public office and have been covered in the media.

Our intent was never to remove any and all mentions of this admin’s name. Just an overzealous automation when attempting to prevent doxxing and harassment.

    Ok, so why did you suspend the mod last night just for posting the name of an admin? (this is not a quoted question, but a sentiment we’re still seeing here so wish to address)

As we mentioned, this was an error on our part and quickly rectified with the mod team in question. We also communicated clearly with them while we were in the process of resolving this.

The Spectator itself is evidently censoring the Spectator, seeing as how the article is paywalled (and Firefox doesn't seem to recognize it as something Reader Mode can pick up, so there goes my usual trick).

EDIT: disabling JS did the trick.

Censoring? I suspect they are trying to make some money so that they can pay their contributors and staff and therefore continue to exist as they have done since 1828 as the oldest weekly magazine in the world.

Ah, right, I forgot Hacker News is a No Tongue In Cheek zone. My apologies. I'll try to be more plain and boring in the future.

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