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Comment by skilled | Hacker News Reader

The crazy thing is that this data probably doesn't have all that much value beyond emails/passwords, which are probably decently hashed anyway. Reddit might collect data, but it doesn't enforce an algorithm.

And I think mod tools (the automated ones) are also third-party only?

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EDIT:

I forgot that Reddit has private messaging and chat, so maybe that does have some value.

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Internal communication between CEO etc. would probably be more interesting.

Especially anything from his old days of modding jailbait

modding jailbait?

There was a literal subreddit. I think that he was added as a prank by the head mod but some are using it as an example of his immorality.

Yeah the mod thing is baseless. However I do think letting pedophiles hang out on your website doing pedophile stuff without taking an action about it is maybe immoral. I also think allowing white supremacists or other bigots to hang out and spread bigotry is immoral.

Yeah, I'm not arguing he is moral, just that the one argument is bad but, as you've pointed out, there are certainly better.

Reddit's CEO was a mod of a jailbait subreddit in the early days - the problem here is that it's impossible to prove whether he joined by himself or whether other mods have added him without his knowledge. As a mod you can add other users as mods and they don't need to agree to it.

Not for a long time. I believe that it used to be possible (it actually is on Lemmy, though you need to have posted there first), but nowadays on reddit, it sends a mod request.

It happened when it didn't ask for permission. He could've removed himself (and I suppose he eventually did) but I imagine that, as a joke, he was probably added as mod to thousands of subs, and couldn't be arsed to remove himself from all of them.

He could have removed himself, he’s not a random user but the CEO. I feel like that kinda removes the argument of ‘someone could have added him without his consent’.

That implies he was even aware that it happened, and again, we have no way of knowing that. If someone makes you a mod all that used to happen was that you get a message in your inbox, and he must receive thousands of messages all the time as he's being tagged in things non stop. Also he was literally a mod on thousands of subreddits, unlikely he added himself to all of them, or that he even reviewed the list.

Ah, you're right. Reddit does have private messaging, forgot about it.

If that is part of the data, of course

Not sure how much the internal messaging system is used on Reddit (personally never used the chat, DMS are very rare)

Internal communication between employees doesn't happen on Reddit chat.

> doesn't have all that much value beyond emails/passwords

I would bet that it has even lower value than that. They were only able to get 80gigs of data -- basically nothing compared to reddit's actual dataset. This means they probably didnt get anywhere close to any high value databases (or even low value).

Also, the fact that they dont even describe what type of data they managed to get a hold of tells me its probably not that meaningful. Reddit should definitely not be paying these extortionists regardless of what was swiped.

A list of user names -> emails is extremely juicy.

Private messages, especially involving admins and mods would be interesting but I'd imagine a lot of people, including famous personalities might have said sensitive stuff in private messages.

If I were the hacker, I'd edit maxwellhill to have email address ghislainemaxwell@gmail.com just for the shitstorm it'd create, context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29838084

Aside from that, email addresses to usernames might be valuable - you could identify high-value targets from finance, crypto, or luxury item subs.

Or you could just make lists of people who post on specific subs for targeted harrassment.

I'm pretty sure they do have an algorithm. Not sure how fancy it is, but my feed would prioritise subreddits i interacted with regardless of upvotes for a while. It was one of the things that made me slowly stop using the site beyond specific subreddits.

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