Removed by Reddit | Hacker News Reader

Removed by Reddit

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51 pointsperihelions26 comments

I think it is acceptable and laudable to include the name of a police officer engaged in unjustified brutality. Call if doxxing if you like, but in a case like this it has the potential to bring accountability, and to righteously damage his employment prospects. A policy that uniformly bans such identification, particularly by a public official with so much power and such broad immunity, helps perpetuate the injustice.

I don't think we'd be better off if we never heard the name "Derek Chauvin".

Maybe I'm missing something nuanced here but to me this seems very simple. Police are public servants. Imagine if we couldn't name politicians for their behavior. ("Someone voted for a law you don't like? Posting pictures of them is not allowed!")

Notice we're just talking about any behavior here; good or bad doesn't matter. The actions of a public servant on the job should be subject to scrutiny by the public, particularly when behaving publicly (as opposed to confidentially. For example we don't necessarily want to leak undercover/spy information)

This cop isn't some private security worker who is innocent until proven guilty. By becoming a public servant, you are held to a higher degree of scrutiny. If you don't like it, no problem! The answer is equally as simple: quit and work in the private sector, end of story.

any nontrivially size social media needs to be concerned by the virality of negative conduct of its viewership, regardless of the righteous nature, particukarly because its quite easy for outsiders to manipulate the context.

I completely agree with the outsider manipulation part (e.g. how it affects US elections), what im not clear on is how this affects clear speech

correction: I said "clear" and meant "free"

Here is what occured after the incident. (I am not in support of reddit's action, just providing context.)

> John Pike was subsequently fired, despite a recommendation that he face disciplinary action but be kept on the job. As of August 2014, Alex Lee was no longer listed in a state salary-database as working at UC Davis.

> In October 2013, a judge ruled that Lt. John Pike, the lead pepper sprayer, would be paid $38,000 in worker's compensation benefits, to compensate for “[the] suffering he experienced after the incident”. Apart from the worker's compensation award, he retained his retirement credits. The three dozen student demonstrators, meanwhile, were collectively awarded US$1 million by UC Davis in a settlement from a federal lawsuit, with each pepper-sprayed student receiving $30,000 individually.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper_spray_incident

Here is the legal declaration by John Pike "detailing harassment and threats to him after he was identified as an officer who was involved in the Incident."

https://localwiki.org/davis/Declaration_of_John_Pike

Disclosing the name of a public figure is not doxxing.

Are scions of politicians public figures?

Yes and no. Realistically and unfortunately, they are, but ideally, they shouldn't be, unless they choose to participate on the public stage.

Would trading on their political parents’ connections and or fame be a form of “participation”? (I would think a majority fall into this category).

I believe this is the picture that got removed (corroborated by [1]): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper_spray_incide...

According to the associated Wikipedia article, the officer pictured is UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike, and according to the Reddit comments the picture may have been taken down because UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike's name was in the post title.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/o2d4fc/removed_by_red...

Yes, it is the UC Davis student protest incident [2011].

According to Google's cache and Reddit's stale search cache, the submitted title was "Officer John Pike pepper spraying peaceful protesters at the University of California Davis", which linked to the URI "https://i.redd.it/nz021m4fex571.jpg" (the same photo you've linked).

https://www.google.com/search?q=https://www.reddit.com/r/pic...

The post has been restored by Reddit, and the Internet Archive has captured the restored post.

Statement from a Reddit rep: https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/o2d4fc/officer_john_p...

/u/redtaboo:

"Hey everyone! We've restored this image and post. The removal was done in error. Neither the image, nor the name of the officer involved are against our content policies.

We're sorry for any confusion caused for users or moderators, but we greatly appreciate the moderators handling of this while we looked into what was happening."

Please consider downloading an ArchiveTeam Warrior to help archive Reddit faster, for both preservation and accountability purposes.

https://tracker.archiveteam.org/reddit/ (instructions at top of that link, real time progress below banner)

> Removed by reddit on account of violating the content policy.

I hate these removal notices that pretend to give a reason but really don't and just link to the rules. Removed something for a reason? Stand by the reason. And if they can't stand by it, then don't remove the post.

The whole reason Reddit has worked at all was because it eschewed auto moderation in favour of human moderation.

If something breaks a law, fine. But if it doesn't, favour the moderation team.

In either case, a removal should cite which flags were triggered.

Its likely the name of the officer in the title triggered the removal. shrug.

Removals tend to appear very odd, because of the inconsistencies which pop up.

Reddit changed their removal policy recently so that the title+content is no longer visible once removed. Previously the title and content was usually still visible if directly linked to, but the post was delisted from the subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/nzvq2t/limiting_...

It's annoying when controversial changes like this is downvoted to oblivion in /r/changelog or /r/modnews so that most users won't see it.

It was the UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident

> Since the incident the school has spent considerable (upwards of $175,000) to kill off traces of the incident on the internet.[22] The success of which is unknown though the memes are still visible and referenced to this day.

I suspect some money may have been involved in Reddit’s decision.

Good luck with that. It has a Wikipedia entry:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper_spray_incide...

That’s what I am quoting actually. I intended to cite but on mobile and messed up.

Thank you for linking the old.reddit.com version of this post. What a sight for sore eyes.

The post has was restored by reddit and an admin responded with their explanation of it being human error.

This will sound a bit flippant or trite, and I'm sorry about that - but this really was just a human error when handling multiple reports on the post. The person reviewing misunderstood what they were seeing, didn't realize the significance of the image and erred believing the name was PII.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/o2d4fc/officer_john_p...

Wasn't this old news? Why is it popping up again?

This particular reddit post was made 12 hours ago.

That's my point. What made them repost it now?

I don't know. It's hard to tell the motivations of posts like these, are the users just karma farmers, is it a faux-authentic account that is semi-automated to seem real?

Like, who thinks to themselves to put this kind of click-baity, no-context image up on Thursday evening? It seems so fake.

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