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Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

I almost can't believe you're serious here, but I'll reply sincerely.

Suppose dang edited your post to say "I like to get drunk at work", and there it is for the world to see. You never said that, but anyone looking at Hacker News would see:

"qup 10 minutes ago: I like to get drunk at work."

No, that's absolutely not OK! Now, consider that spez could just as easily edit some old Reddit comments someone wrote years ago to say something horrendous. Do you often go back to verify that all your old comments are unchanged? I certainly don't.

I have no way of knowing exactly which comments spez edited, or how significantly he changed them. And honestly, the not knowing is simply inexcusable. All we know is that he has tampered with the production database, not how often or how much.

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> All we know is that he has tampered with the production database, not how often or how much.

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

A phrase that eerily yet accurately sums up (or some would believe to sum up) lots of public discourse these days.

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus is a Latin maxim meaning "false in one thing, false in everything". At common law, it is the legal principle that a witness who testifies falsely about one matter is not credible to testify about any matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsus_in_uno,_falsus_in_omnib...

https://twitter.com/InternetHippo/status/870010013900611584

Before: I have no evidence that spez tampers with anyone's reddit comments in production

After: I have evidence that spez tampered with ONE reddit comment in production.

The new status quo does not increase the likelyhood of "I have evidence that spez may be inexplicably tampering with old reddit comments habitually" being more true.

And thinking that it does shows a poor understanding of human behaviour and nature, especially under stressful emotional circumstances.

I'm serious. Who doesn't like to get drunk at work? I do (it's only happened once, but it's one of my best memories).

Dang can edit my comments. (He does have to edit comments sometimes, I'm sure, but for reasons you approve of.) I would find it annoying. Until this comment thread, though, I'm not sure I would have considered that dang would get fired for it.

I don't think I nor anyone should be held accountable at work for comments made on Hacker News. If I lost my job over dang editing my post, I would think I worked for a really shit company and nobody went to bat for me. Basically, I would continue believing the interaction on the forum was totally unimportant, and I would be dumbfounded by the idiocy of my manager for elevating it to that a fireable offense, particularly after I let them know I did not make that comment.

FWIW, nobody needs to worry about me. I do not have a boss.

What situation do you think dang would need to edit a comment that a deletion wouldn't work?

HN isn't partnering with the CIA to catch some Russian spy by modifying a comment so that the drop is in a monitored location. He's just going to delete the comment if it contains something it shouldn't.

> I don't think I nor anyone should be held accountable at work for comments made on Hacker News.

> FWIW, nobody needs to worry about me. I do not have a boss.

Great, but now bring it back to real life, because a ton of people are held accountable at work for comments made on social media and do have a boss.

A ton of people deal with all kinds of shitty problems at work, and the answer to most of them isn't to petition to fire some random dude that nobody in the situation has ever met who works for some other uninvolved company. The answer is to fix the shitty internal process that lets powers-that-be stalk and fire people for social media posts.

Bringing it back to real life: I don't fire my people for what they say on the internet.

> Who doesn't like to get drunk at work? I do (it's only happened once, but it's one of my best memories).

This is the saddest thing I've read all week and my uncle just died.

It wasn’t the first time he did it, it was the first time he got caught.

> Suppose dang edited your post to say "I like to get drunk at work"

You're generalizing the action described in the article to something that feels very different to me. Yes, his actions fall under "editing comments"; yes, your hypothetical falls under "editing comments"; yes, I think that his actions make him more likely to do something like your hypothetical; no, I don't think that we should treat his actions like your hypothetical because they are different.

> Reddit CEO Steve Huffman today admitted that he had edited Reddit user comments that criticized and insulted him, wielding his power to anonymously change references to his own username, and replace them with moderators of the pro-Donald Trump subreddit, r/the_donald.

> Huffman — who posts on the site as "spez" — admitted to the transgression after being called out by users of r/the_donald, saying he was inspired to edit the comments after a spate of insults emanating from the pro-Trump subreddit. "I messed with the “fuck u/spez” comments, replacing "spez" with r/the_donald mods for about an hour," Huffman said, indicating that the only thing he secretly altered was the target of the insults.

I think there are two distinct things getting mixed up.

Should he have been able to? No, that's a concerning setup for the reasons you say.

How bad is what he actually did, from what we actually know? For about an hour, comments that said "fuck spez" after he banned the pizzagate sub were changed to "fuck $the_donald_mod_name".

I just don't find that a big deal. It's not like editing your comment to say you drink at work.

Again, all we know is that he has lied about what users have said in comments. We just don't know to what degree. For me, not knowing that is completely unacceptable.

If he only made those changes and solemnly vowed never to do it again, fine, shouldn't have done it but whatever. But who besides him can say for sure?

> Again, all we know is that he has lied about what users have said in comments

You mean changing fuck spez to fuck $mod?

> We just don't know to what degree

Well I'm not sure what auditing they have, and I know there's public databases of all Reddit comments. It's been a while and I'm not aware of other claims.

My point was more that you two were arguing at crossroads. You seemed more concerned about what could have happened, and they were talking about what has evidence.

The problem is that it is impossible to prove he has never done that other times. He played his hand that he is willing to put words in other people's mouths basically just for entertainment, so why should we believe he hasn't done it in much more important cases?

Again that's one of the two things being discussed. My main point was that there were two things being discussed rather than one.

> He played his hand that he is willing to put words in other people's mouths basically just for entertainment, so why should we believe he hasn't done it in much more important cases?

I find this logic a bit backwards. Willing to do something when the stakes and impact are low to annoy someone trolling you is very different from changing comments in important situations.

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