Reddit Just Banned the Subreddit Where People Were Posting Celebrity Nude Images
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A long time ago, there were users that would appear in the comments of every top post and they were almost always jokes. There were submitters that would reach the front page consistently. These people had essentially learned how to game Reddit, finding the right jokes and right material for their audience. And because of that, over the past couple of years it has became a race to the bottom in almost every subreddit and every comment. RES makes Reddit usable to some extent, but my filters filter out 75% of r/all, and what's left isn't very engaging.
The website has obviously outgrown me, and I have started spending most of my time on other sites now (sometimes even Digg). And it doesn't matter that Reddit lost me as a heavy user, cause I'm a nobody and Reddit will still get millions of views, just that Reddit meant a lot to me. It was the first website where I actually learned stuff. My Wikipedia usage went through the roof, reading up on things that people were talking about that I had no idea existed. Long articles and even handed discussions, occasional humor. I didn't comment or post a lot but I looked forward to getting lost in it. I miss it a little.
While I agree with them at least for the decision or ban this subreddit, I'm appalled by the communities reaction to it.
That, and the circle jerk of reddit (mostly my local subreddits), lead me it being the first site I've banned with /etc/hosts http://i.imgur.com/Womisb3.png
And in two years, will their complaints be the same as ours?
I occasionally see HN users pop along who say, "well, HN just isn't what it used to be," and I look at their user page and find that their account is three years old. It's possible that they're on their second or third account, but context usually implies that they've just been using the site for around three years.
Ditto on Reddit. I was a regular reader of the site before it had comments. There's a frequent complaint among Reddit's users that it's not as good as it used to be, and usually the reasons they give for that are all things that have happened in just the last couple or few years. If you say for example, "yeah, Reddit really declined when pun threads became popular", most folks don't know what you're talking about it.
It makes me wonder if it's a psychological phenomenon, that things look inherently more valuable when they're new. That might be one explanation for the recent popularity of all of these social networks that focus most of all on what's new. (Facebook, HN, Twitter, Reddit... these all work fundamentally different from traditional online forums.)
I really don't get why anyone thinks this whole event is even remotely okay, they should have banned it from day one, the pictures were obtained illegally and definitely not posted with permission, and yes they should apply that rule to all of Reddit.
Reddit doesn't owe anyone imaginary "free speech" rights, they aren't a government entity but a privately held company.
This. They're doing themselves a disservice by taking the 'free speech' route.
It's amazing and disgusting to see the lengths these people are going to do defend their so-called 'right' to shame and embarrass others online. Just because something isn't strictly illegal doesn't give them a free pass to go at it.
Edit: If you're going to downvote, please comment and explain why. I can't think of why a sane person (or, one that's been on HN long enough to be able to down vote) would disagree with Reddit's decision to ban /r/thefappening and it's content.
I'm just disgusted at the lengths (awarding/taking away imaginary internet points) people are going to to 'defend their right' to do something which is not even questionable - any sane person would agree in that the content on that subreddit is wrong.
Two admin messages with vastly different theses:
First was the yishan post[1]. The TLDR of that one was, "we don't police subreddits/morals/etc." The problem with that post was that it was a ticking time bomb waiting for any inconsistency with the admins handling of subreddits to be scrutinized and vilified. The yishan post should have never been written. The reddit masses felt their intelligence was being insulted.
The second post by alienth[2] has a much better message. The TLDR of that one was "we're getting overwhelmed by DMCA takedowns". Reddit admins can then drive the point home that they know other subreddits such as /notfamousstolenphotos are questionable but at least those are not getting bombarded by DMCA notices. They can then go on to stress that they just don't have the manpower (technical team and legal team) to address (fight) all of the DMCA notices to keep /thefappening up.
Reddit was basically a victim of a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack by way of DMCAs instead of ip packets. It's great that reddit has some lofty ideals of being "hands off" but it also has to have the manpower to uphold those ideals. I suppose reddit could ask volunteers to work for $0 salary and review all the DMCA takedowns coming in but that would be a logistical nightmare.
Reddit could try to maintain a stance similar to Kevin Rose Digg AACS encryption keys[3] but I don't think they have the resources to do it. In any case, the yishan post has already poisoned the well and any subsequent message to clarify the admins' predicament is getting tainted by it.
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_r...
[2]http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t...
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy
Never mind that they categorically ban certain types of speech (doxing, stuff that is illegal).
I suppose if you summarize their messaging as "we ban inconvenient speech" it isn't all that incoherent, but that isn't a terribly pleasing stand to take.
Read it here: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-f...
Here's the comments from their blog post: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2foivo/every_man_is_re...
The admins are getting called out in nearly every top-level comment for folding to media attention and celebrity lawyers, when other objectively worse subreddits are actually granted the "hands-off" approach the site claims to use. Presumably because the victims can't afford legal teams or make headlines like celebrities can when their privacy is violated.
The leaks were despicable and I understand any business taking steps to avoid involvement in their distribution, but you can't expect a user-base like reddits to tolerate the administration saying one thing and doing the exact opposite in certain cases where there's bad press involved.
Edit: Here's a follow-up post from the sysadmin alienth in response to the backlash from their decision: http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t...
The Reddit communities reaction this whole thing has been pretty sickening - enough for me to block it in my hostsfile. This was just the law straw I guess.
http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t...
which explains the decision in greater detail. I think the reddit team is being held to an unreasonably high standard here. The subreddits were banned for generating a huge amount of legitimate DMCA takedown requests and not correctly moderating child pornography content, not because the subjects in the posted images were celebrities with money. There is a correlation, but not a causation. It's hard to run a media enterprise with millions of users, and I think reddit's ambition to be as hands-off as possible is almost unique and commendable.
http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t...
(lists of disturbing-to-absolutely horrid subs follow in the replies, subs that have been allowed to be part of reddit for a very long time).
The thing that bothers me more than any other thing is that they "haven't figured out" what to do with all the gold that was purchased. Really?
Based on the communications form the admins, I think the problem is that they're making these decisions by committee rather than setting a policy and having a benevolent dictator enforce it. This makes the decisions like this seem arbitrary, hypocritical, unethical and bending to pressure from rich victims while not doing anything for poor victims.
Reddit has serious site wide moderation issues. I think the manpower needed to meta moderate a site as big as reddit has been greatly under appreciated. Every time a sub gets shut down, 3 pop up to replace it. Without full-time admins tracking this stuff, it's just going to continue to house and distribute this kind of stuff and the every once in a while decision to shut something down due to legal pressure is just going to continue to inflame the users.
edit so here's the answer from the admins as to what should happen with the lists of reprehensible subs, like pictures of dead children, or people fucking dogs
http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/2fpdax/time_t...
I'd probably suggest they contact the image host to see if it violates their TOS and can be taken down. Some (but not all) image hosts may honour such requests, depending on the circumstances.
edit here's an AMA with the mod of the fappening sub http://www.reddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/2foon3/on_sunday...
From parent's linked thread:
"Anytime they take an image and put it in a digital format—whether it’s an email to one person, whether it’s in a tweet, whether it’s on Facebook, whether it’s an MMS—they should assume that it is now public content. They should assume it is everywhere. And that’s the warning that parents need to be giving their kids, and that’s the useful thing CNN could have reported on, instead of making up a bunch of jibber-jabber about reddit."
Edit: formatting.
There are two different reactions at work here. One is that people's photos shouldn't be stolen and re-distributed, and the other is that once you upload a photo to an online service, you shouldn't assume it's still private.
Both can be true at the same time.
The first is an idealistic argument. In an ideal world, you could trust every online service and every person to do the right thing; you could flash a bunch of money around in a bad part of a foreign place and not get mugged; you could be a woman and wear revealing clothing without being subject to abuse. These are noble ideals.
The second is a pragmatic argument. In the world in which we currently live, as a practical matter you don't want to trust online services and other people, and you should be careful about flashing money around in seedy unfamiliar places, and women get cat-called far too often.
They're two different statements, and we shouldn't assume that just because somebody argues from one means that they don't believe in the other.
Meanwhile subreddits like pics of dead kids are allowed because of 'free speech' while some random breasts causes everybody to lose their minds.
I've been using Reddit since 2006 - time to switch over to a new website for sure.
---
Comment I saw:
>They decided to get their page hits, reddit gold, and publicity from the subreddit and then cash out just in time for the Sunday morning news to splash out the headline "REDDIT BANS NAKED CELEBRITY LEAKS". They're trying for the good press for Sunday and for the week. Well done, admins.
lo and behold...
how about hubski (http://hubski.com/)
and more are all reasons the admins there are hypocrits. likely its that they want celebs to like them thereby convincing themselves they are on equal footing, not an usual mental leap for people in the press or similar
The fact that the underage images were of a celeb were not part of the decision, except in so much that celebrity nudes were creating massive traffic.
Turns out it means almost the same as "temporary". Thanks for upping the vocab.
underage = banned, also on reddit
Can you spell "the moment you lose DMCA safe harbor provisions"?
The subreddit mods had already told people in a announcement not to post anything of McKayla Maroney and that if any posts containing images of her existed, that they would delete the posts and ban the people posting that.
The subreddit ban came after all of this.
Surprisingly, it seems like people never learn. Censorship never is a solution, yet it eventually gets used by even those with the best intentions toward free speech.
I wonder what will need to happen for people to realize that censorship is a band-aid, not a cure. Whenever we try to censor/hide something, we should instead find ways for the world to still function properly once that knowledge is made public.
In any case, I respect what the "leakers" did (transparency is good), and I respect Reddit's choice to do whatever they want with their property even though I don't agree with their decision.
Like others have mentionned, time to find a platform that is not so sensible to censorship.
What? You're not being serious are you? Are you actually saying that no one should have any sort of privacy?
I'm totally aware that it's illegal, but that doesn't mean I can't support it.
Generally speaking, transparency makes the world better and more efficient. You might not be able to see what good it does, but the positive effect is certain.
Privacy and secrecy is just ignoring the problems. We must see them in order to fix them, and that's why transparency and communication is so important.
'At least a few people' have demand for child porn and enjoy it. Are you saying pedophilia is good?
[1] Please tell me which logical fallacy I'm using here
Given an objective question instead of a subjective one, I would have answered differently.
Someone can tweet that [some celebrity] was at [some location] at [some time], and little or no drama will occur. We just accept that this knowledge can't remain secret, and that's alright.
We should react the same way for all knowledge/data/information, including these pictures.
I understand that people react this way because it's "new", but we quickly will get used to it, as these leaks will become the new normal. Transparency just accelerates this shift, which is unavoidable in the long run.
The objective of transparency is access to knowledge and truth. By making my private keys public, I give the world the power to claim to be me, which is fraud. This leads to the spreading of false information, which is against what is good.
I wish I could share this information with you, but society currently makes it impractical by relying on the expectation that private key identification is reliable. I wouldn't be surprised if it were illegal for me to share such private keys.
If you won't practice what you preach, don't expect anyone else to.
You seek to deny everyone privacy. That does mean you should deny yourself privacy. But you won't.
Reddit, in this case, just makes communication more difficult, which is a bad thing in my book. But I can't directly blame them without knowing their motivations or if they were coerced (which I think they were).
Here's a good example: there are a few assisted suicide subreddits, do you feel those should be removed? Do you think the reddit admins are the people who should be making that judgement?
I'm not arguing whether or not what they did is legal. I'm simply communicating an ideal.
We should not ban encryption, although I see no reason to use it for anything.