The Verge - Reddit's balance of power: community values are tested as a troll is unmasked

Violentacrez apologizes: 'I was playing to an audience of college kids'

2012-10-18T23:24:30Z

Michael Brutsch — the man behind the controversial Reddit handle Violentacrez — has spoken to CNN, offering up an apology and an explanation for his actions on the site. Brutsch, whose public identity was outed by Gawker last week, said in an interview that he made a "huge mistake" in creating subreddits that served as places to share everything from rape jokes to pictures of pregnant women. "Well, I am to some degree apologizing for what I did. Again, I was playing to an audience of college kids," he said. "The audience was appreciative and supportive of the kind of gallows humor that I put out there."

The disclosure of Violentacrez's true identity led to a firestorm of controversy, with Reddit temporarily instituting a ban on G...

Reddit CEO addresses Violentacrez controversy: 'we will not ban legitimate investigative journalism'

2012-10-17T00:49:53Z

Reddit doesn't really dictate how its corner of the internet is run, but CEO Yishan Wong has some strong suggestions for dealing with recent events: "We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it," he writes, in a leaked memo posted today and obtained by Gawker. He's referring to the ongoing Violentacrez controversy, of course. Last week, that very same Gawker unmasked one of Reddit's most unsavory trolls, posting his real identity for all to see. Allegedly, it cost Violentacrez his job. At the same time, Gawker sister site Jezbel ran a story which suggested that naming names was the only way to combat distasteful content like r/CreepShots, a place where "technically legal" upskirt photos were...

Banned Reddit moderator fears 'cloak and dagger' handling of criticism

2012-10-16T19:01:07Z

Thanks to its 40 million loosely moderated users, Reddit has achieved massive growth with a minimum of regulation. Its hands-off approach is strongly libertarian, giving users a platform to say almost anything while treating anonymity as sacrosanct. But after the publication of a Gawker article outing Violentacrez, one of Reddit’s most controversial users, moderators and admins are increasingly having to decide where to draw the line when the two conflict — and how to deal with criticism of their policies.

At its most concrete, this conflict manifests in discussions about whether (and how) to ban either links to recent pieces on Gawker and Jezebel or the entire Gawker blog family. But it’s also present in the fabric of the...

Reddit user banned, then restored, as mods struggle with stories critical of the site

2012-10-15T20:30:02Z

Without a hint of irony, one or more of the moderators for r/technology, one of Reddit's largest communities, banned a user for submitting a report on the site's moderation problems last night. The submitter of the article, user CivAndTrees, told us they were banned from r/technology without warning or explanation. The action follows several efforts by Reddit's most prominent and secretive moderators to control the spread of information about leaked user Violentacrez, who was responsible for the creation of controversial subreddits containing hateful speech and sexual content involving minors.

"Reddit is getting bigger and bigger, and it seems some people are trying to control what is seen and not seen on this website."

"I received...

Reddit leaders deflect censorship criticism and defend hands-off policies

2012-10-14T16:54:20Z

Reddit prides itself on its decentralized meritocracy —"subreddits are a free market. Anyone can create a subreddit and decide how it's run," it says. So far this model has been very successful in launching sites: there are tens of thousands of subreddits on any imaginable topic, with an endless supply of new forums open for the taking, all which rise and fall based on the desires of the community. Reddit generally polices just five basic rules, one of which is "don't post personal information." Other rules include no spam, no cheating the system, and no child pornography — a rule that expanded just seven months ago to include "no suggestive or sexual content featuring minors" after a subreddit completely based on that kind of...