Reddit CEO Admits To Editing User Comments Amid Pizzagate Malarkey (cnet.com)

Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, today admitted to editing several comments that criticized him on the site. He made the admission on Reddit, where he posts under the username Spez. CNET adds: Huffman got a lot of flak from members of the The_Donald, a subreddit for supporters of President-elect Donald Trump, after Reddit banned the Pizzagate subreddit. Pizzagate was dedicated to a debunked conspiracy theory linking Hillary Clinton to a paedophile ring. In response, he edited comments reading "fuck Spez" to instead be directed at moderators of the The_Donald subreddit. "I messed with the "fuck u/spez" comments, replacing "spez" with r/the_donald mods for about an hour. It's been a long week here trying to unwind the r/pizzagate stuff," he wrote. "As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a pedophile constantly." Huffman added: "Our community team is pretty pissed at me, so I most assuredly won't do this again."

Comments

Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Debunked by who?

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well by Snopes of course! The obviously Non-Partisan fact checkers of the world who would NEVER lie for The Clintons.

Re:Debunked?

[serviscope_minor]

Debunked by who?

Wrong question. If there's no evidence then it's automatically debunked.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

And we all know snopes is complete lies.
I mean, just look at the debunking of Trump's "republican voters are the dumbest" quote. Obviously that's a true story, just look up.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

By anyone who looks at it. A pizza restuarant posting pictures of kids does not make it a pedophile ring. Hell they were so far lost they were convinced the birthday bracelet biden made for obama had a slice of pizza on it. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cp... If you can't see that that's a piece of cake you really aren't in touch with reality.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

> there's no evidence
but #pizzagate is collecting exactly that

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was some child pornography involved. For instance a LARPer posted CP on the pizzagate subreddit himself. What was the source? who knows! He claimed it came from we the pizza but it was just as likely to be his own personal stash.

Re:Debunked?

[clampolo]

By anyone who looks at it. A pizza restuarant posting pictures of kids does not make it a pedophile ring. Hell they were so far lost they were convinced the birthday bracelet biden made for obama had a slice of pizza on it. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cp... If you can't see that that's a piece of cake you really aren't in touch with reality.

The question isn't whether or not it is true. The question is a message board deciding what is true and deleting things they disagree with.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Debunked by who?

The Clinton/Podesta PR team.

The Pizzagaters have not proven the "pedo ring" theory yet but they have proven that Clinton's friends have an unusual taste for artworks of kids being tortured or placed in sexual poses, one of Clinton's friends was caught smuggling children out of Haiti who the local police confirmed were not orphans, and a person in Haiti who expressed an interest in investigating that story turned up dead a few days later. Imagine the media reaction if this could all be tied to Trump or another high profile GOPer. The art would be on TV until that person no longer had a career.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was deleted because people were using it to harass people in the real world, some users were even making up stories about unrelated restuarants and posting child pornography to go with those stories.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

There openly admitting they were on a witchhunt and when it was pointed out they would say "It's not a witch hunt when there are actual witches involved"

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're

Re:Debunked?

[wisnoskij]

I think by debunked he means that no one has explicitly proven it. That is why it is a conspiracy and not a court battle.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

House of Cards is a TV show

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing was debunked from the start. Basically they (and by "they" I mean 4chan and reddit) started from the conclusion and then worked their way backwards until they found something that supported the conclusion.

So, of course they found something that kinda, sorta supports their conclusions. Then again, regardless of topic, if you start from a conclusion, cherry pick "evidence" to support whatever the hell you want, and then paint your evidence in the worst/best possible light, you can always build a more or less coherent "thread" that supports your narrative.

It's when you look at the big picture that it all falls apart. But it takes SO MUCH effort to dispel this crap because the narrative is so well presented that people actually believe it. Confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance also kicks in: if you already believe X, any evidence that reinforces that believe, no matter how absurd, it taken at face value. Any evidence in contrary is either painstakingly scrutinized or dismissed off-hand.

If you've ever had a discussion with a supporter of anti-vaccination, homeopathy or a very hardcore religious person (you know, the kind that believes that the Earth is 2000 years old and that dinosaur bones were put here to "test our faith", thankfully, a minority) for example, you know what it's like.

They are so far out of it that you need a Hubble telescope to find them. It takes SO MUCH EFFORT to have a reasoned discussion with them that you are likely to give up. But you can't, because then they interpret that as sign that they are right.

It's all incredibly tiring and pointless. And for what? 4chan probably just did it "for teh lulz" anyway.

Re: Debunked?

[Cryacin]

This isn't unique. Slashdot is run by VERY NICE PEOPLE.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. The poster stated it was "debunked" that means that it has in fact been categorically refuted with evidence. This has NOT happened and completely different than being a set of unsupported allegations. Secondly the Clintons' connections with Epstein is already a substantial amount of evidence, certainly rising above your "no evidence" standard.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try Hillary, enjoy your "pizza".

Re:Debunked?

[Rei]

1) Alefantis is not a "friend" of Clinton; he's just a supporter. He's never met her.

2) The art in his restaurant is weird, but it's not "kids being tortured or placed in sexual poses"

3) The case in Haiti was 10 Baptist missionaries from Idaho trying to rescue children after the earthquake without permits. The missionaries had previously planned to build an orphanage and school in the Dominican Republic. There are Podesta emails that mention Silsby, but in the context of current events and how the US government should handle what had become an international diplomatic issue between the US and Haiti (aka, Hillary's job). Example here. Silsby is in no way a "friend" of Clinton.

You all have a strange way of declaring everyone to be a "friend" of Clinton.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually does not, the data on vaccines is clear and unequivocal. Vaccines have minor linkages to some diseases and zero linkages (that have currently been identified) to autism. Those issues have been extensively studied and documented. This situation is COMPLETELY different and the evidence is currently being assembled. There is no "confirmation bias" involved in identifying that Bill Clinton visited Epstein's pedo sex island on many occasions, that a close Clinton friend was caught smuggling children out of Haiti, etc. That YOU are attempting to claim that this situation is "debunked" while evidence is still being gathered and analyzed simply shows that you have an agenda and the truth is not it. Get over yourself. If there is nothing there then it will go away. If there is substance present then the investigation should continue. If you were even remotely intellectually honest you would be able to refute any claims made in the future based upon the evidence gathered. You are not however intellectually honest and are doing the typical progressive shutter the debate before it occurs (because you know you are likely to lose the debate once it does occur).

Re:Debunked?

[Rei]

Of course you would say that, "Anonymous Coward". We all know that members of Anonymous launched #OpTrump to try to attack him, clearly on behalf of Clinton, and here you are, choosing to post in their name. So now that we know you're a personal lifelong friend of the Clintons, probably helping in the murder of Vince Foster, the question becomes: why is Slashdot supporting your part in the Clintons' conspiracy? How much are the Clintons paying them?

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on Trump, you have more important things to do than posting on Slashdot

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. That's why the very first post of this thread was by someone calling into doubt if it was debunked or not. Because ALL anonymous cowards are secretly Hillary agents and paedophiles. And Mac users.

Re:Debunked?

[Rei]

Exactly.

As for the first post, it's just standard Clinton-style disinformation. They're everywhere, trying to throw you off from the plot.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot to include "climate change-disbelieving"

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying ponies and lollipops Batman, I think we've hit bottom

Re:Debunked?

[retchdog]

no, that's your question. it's not even the article's question, since no information was deleted; an admin for the site pranked metadata associated to a group on his site which he found silly. many people, including myself, don't consider this particularly newsworthy. i first saw this happen online in the 1990s, and it's probably happened since the second day there was usenet, and will keep happening until the end of civilization.

much more interesting is the availability of a service whereby you can get autistic nutcases to fabricate arbitrarily ridiculous conspiracy theories for you, and then promote them to other nutcases and gullible idiots. this used to cost quite a bit of money and time and have very high barriers to entry, but is now accessible to anyone.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

so you wont mind if slashdot edits your comment to say something racist then links it to your linkedin?

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Public notice: "Rei" is a well known friend of the Clintons.

Re: Debunked?

[retchdog]

i didn't say it was good behavior; i said it wasn't newsworthy.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

their'e

Re:Debunked?

[Mashiki]

It was deleted because people were using it to harass people in the real world, some users were even making up stories about unrelated restuarants and posting child pornography to go with those stories.

Not quite true. People there weren't harassing people, nor were they doxing them. There was a non-doxing/harassment rule like on most subs. What's interesting is that members of the /r/pizzagate mod team have claimed that the administration were unbanning people, who were being banned by the subs mods. Those people who were being banned included those who were doxing, and posting CP. On top of this, that subreddit had already broken open a massive CP ring on twitter. Last count ~7000(I've seen numbers as high at 14k) or more accounts. Twitter's response so far has been to ban the people who found the accounts. Some of those CP accounts have been banned but most have not.

This entire thing stinks. On top of that with Spez deciding to pull this bullshit, they've also likely lost their safe harbor provisions. On top of that, toss in the absolutely weird shit in the podesta emails, including wording that seems to indicate some kind of pedophile stuff going on? They may have found something, they might not have. But reddit turning around and banning the sub is going to toss more fuel on the fire.

Re:Debunked?

[Calydor]

How do you even ...

Re:Debunked?

[AmiMoJo]

No, he didn't delete anything. He edited some insults directed at himself.

It's still bad, but it's not like he was trying to stop people posting their conspiracy theories. The more I think about it the more stupid it seems. Wow, the site owner can edit posts, what a shock.

Reddit isn't some highly respected debate forum that claims to be totally non partisan and allow absolutely any content.

Re:Debunked?

[LiENUS]

The same evidence exists to show donald trump is a pedophile as well. Hell he's even openly commented on how pretty epstein's younger girls are.

Re:Debunked?

[Zeio]

I've been on gab.ai, 4chan, 8ch and voat.co. You really should research this yourself and ask yourself why there is a boatload of evidence and those bringing it to light are being ddosed. Why is twitter blocking those who report vile content while keeping the vile content up and running. Why is reddit admitting to very dishonest practices and shutting down subreddits for TOS violations that didn't occur or if they did were getting policed by mods.

If you are doing research and you see illegal exploitative content please report it. Be also aware that a large number of illegal and abusive content is on honeypot servers to flypaper the criminally insane that deal in child exploitation.

Links to submit reports and information on reporting crime:

https://report.cybertip.org/

https://www.justice.gov/action...

https://www.fbi.gov/investigat...

I would also like to see Proof Of Life on Julian Assange and people should be asking WikiLeaks to prove its not a compromised honeypot to catch whistleblowers.

There is a conspiracy here - there is a lot of legitimate investigative content being summarily deleted and there is a vast effort in the main stream media all the way down to slashdot to just shut down conversation on the topic. Shutting down the conversation is potentially obstructing justice. If we have not crossed the precipice justice will be done so no amount of deleting will stop karma from hunting down those who exploit children.

Whats most disturbing is places that hold content and evidence of whats doing on like 4chan and wikileaks are being DDOSed by STATE ACTORS. When certain content and conversations arise brutal state sponsored DDOS attacks have been employed.

Whats even more curious is why with all the contention during the election with the FBI wikileaks and the like this pizzagate/twittergate/whereisassange stuff seemed to be what triggered a desperate, widespread, worldwide and massive response to stop information about this coming to light.

This isnt just goofy numerology there is a lot of bizarre stuff going on. I've been enjoying the internet since inception and I've never seen this - such universal efforts to shut down a conversation about a real concern about a network of child-abusers in operation.

Do your own research. Decide for yourself. Ask yourself why voat and gab.ai are getting massive amounts of refugees from reddit and twitter OVER THIS ISSUE.

Many places where one would go to get information on whether there is truth to any of this dont attempt to document and display factual information they simply shut down all discussion. Something is wrong. Where there is smoke there is fire. And we need to know if Julian Assange is alive and if WikiLeaks is a safe place to blow the whistle.

Re:Debunked?

[serviscope_minor]

Ask yourself why voat and gab.ai are getting massive amounts of refugees from reddit and twitter OVER THIS ISSUE

Because reddit has realised that angry, toxic crazies are making it miserable for the more sane majority, so they're finally not letting them have the run of the place. All those people are off to voat. I do not have a problem with that.

Re:Debunked?

[Xenographic]

> Alefantis is not a "friend" of Clinton; he's just a supporter. He's never met her.

There were various fundraisers over there so I'd be careful on the "never met her" part, I'm not 100% sure on that either way. Anyhow, it's the Podesta brothers' connection that's the usually the focus, there really isn't much about Hillary in any of this. There's the Bill Clinton Epstein connection, but you'd be right that there's almost nothing about Hillary personally.

> The art in his restaurant is weird, but it's not "kids being tortured or placed in sexual poses"

WARNING: INCREDIBLY NSFW & DISTURBING IMAGES: http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/pizzagate-4chan-uncovered-sick-world-washingtons-occult-elite/amp/

Weird is a hell of an understatement. I'm going to let people make up their own minds, but don't say I didn't warn you. Podesta also has quite a few pedophile friends for some reason. Why would you want to remain friends with a child molester / ex-Republican speaker of the house? Maybe it's purely a political connection, but you don't normally see many Democrats eager to remain friends with disgraced Republican pedophiles in this day and age.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that some guy didn't go on the pizzagate subreddit and claim to have hacked "we the pizza"'s website and post cp as proof? Even the mods of pizzagate said it happened.

Re:Debunked?

[Dutch Gun]

Reddit isn't some highly respected debate forum that claims to be totally non partisan and allow absolutely any content.

True, but Reddit has no value or purpose in life other than for people to go online and post messages. The Reddit CEO showed incredibly poor judgement, and what the heck do companies pay CEOs six or seven figure salaries for if not for their good judgement?

So... a firing offense? Let's just put it this way: If I posted unauthorized comments about the online game I worked on, let alone editing other users' posts, at the minimum I'd be reprimanded, and I might very well get fired. Were I on the Reddit board, I'd have to consider his continued employment very carefully. If he's doing great work as a CEO, this might be overlooked. If he was performing marginally, this might be the excuse to replace him.

Re:Debunked?

[Xenographic]

That depends on what a person is claiming. Is there evidence that could lead to criminal charges? I haven't seen that and I haven't seen people claiming there is. I'm sure someone probably wrote something somewhere by now, but after as much as I've read, it can't be anybody important.

But if you're asking why people are upset about this, it's because they've found some very weird and disturbing crap. If you click, don't say I didn't warn you!

WARNING: NSFW / DISTURBING CONTENT: http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/pizzagate-4chan-uncovered-sick-world-washingtons-occult-elite/amp/
IF YOU LOSE YOUR LUNCH DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU.

Now, it's true that you can find some unhinged conspiracy writings about this with no proof. And a few jokers have made up things. For example, there is no hidden zip file in that one image, I hex edited the damned thing myself and there's no zip marker where they claimed it was.

But there's plenty of real stuff to creep people the hell out, so don't expect this to vanish any time soon.

Re:Debunked?

[ironbastard]

Until you can identify an actual victim, or a victim's family, this is at the same level of tin foil nonsense as claiming Sandy Hook or the Boston bombing were all crisis actors.

Re:Debunked?

[AK Marc]

Reality. That and everyone who's ever looked into it. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11...

Re:Debunked?

[Mashiki]

Because reddit has realised that angry, toxic crazies are making it miserable for the more sane majority, so they're finally not letting them have the run of the place. All those people are off to voat. I do not have a problem with that.

Really? Because they sure do seem to be catering to those angry, toxic crazies that are there. You know the ones, in /r/shitredditsays /r/circlebroke /r/offmychest and so on. Those same subs that have a history of doxing and harassing people. Oh I get it, you're okay with the insane angry left-wingers that attack people for perceived insults and slights, while engaging in witch hunts.

Re:Debunked?

[newbie_fantod]

it has in fact been categorically refuted with evidence

You ought to know by now that it is impossible to categorically refute anything since all evidence has become suspect.

Re:Debunked?

[Rei]

There were various fundraisers over there so I'd be careful on the "never met her" part, I'm not 100% sure on that either way.

Yes, he's raised money for her. And? You have a strange conception that "raising money for a political candidate" means "personal friend of said candidate".

None of the people pushing the conspiracy theory has ever put any evidence that they've ever met. He denies having ever met her. But I guess that just means it's a secret friendship and all the more evil, right? ;)

Re, the "pictures of kids" - the Snopes article says: "However, the photographs that the Instagram account purportedly hosted were instead, apparently, taken from the pages of various people who "liked" the restaurant's page on Facebook ... Some of the photographs were apparently taken from random web sites"

(Apparently according to your page, Podesta is a cannibal also? Seriously people?)

The "children tortured" reference on that page is because A) Podesta owns a painting by Biljana Djurdjevic, and B) Biljana Djurdjevic has also painted an unrelated painting of a child hung on a wall; therefore, C) Podesta supports the torture of children. Clearly, it all makes sense! Djurdjevic has also painted a guy trying to get a thorn out of his foot, a dentist using laughing gas, people sewing in their underwear in the middle of a forest, and an overweight guy wearing floaties in a bathtub. Clearly Podesta's plot is to use laughing gas to drug everyone, scatter thorns around so they can't run away, steal their clothes and enslave them deep in forests while fattening them up to make into soup in giant bathtubs!

Re:Debunked?

[king neckbeard]

And the ideal that BOTH of them could be involved with pedophiles is nuts, right? It's not as if they have spent significant amounts of time together, or that they both belong to the status of elites that can basically get away with murder (somewhat literally in the case of Ted Kennedy). Show me a billionaire or politician that ISN'T a pervert and you've got an actual news story.

Re: Debunked?

[retchdog]

oh neat, a mod storm. which sub-degenerate wing of 4chan is this, i wonder?

Re: Debunked?

[king neckbeard]

8th biggest US site (according to Alexa rankings) altering user comments isn't newsworthy? If I'm an investor, I might be concerned that the CEO is trolling in a way that could endanger safe harbor provisions.

Re:Debunked?

[king neckbeard]

Politicians like Clinton don't let things like 'being a war criminal' stand in the way of her friends and proud endorsements, so are pedophiles really all that much worse?

Re:Debunked?

[ShanghaiBill]

they would say "It's not a witch hunt when there are actual witches involved"

That makes no sense. If I go rabbit hunting, is it not a rabbit hunt if there are actual rabbits involved?

Re:Debunked?

[0100010001010011]

Reddit doesn't understand that they built their brand on angry, toxic crazies.

Re:Debunked?

[AmiMoJo]

The reason Twitter banned a few of the people posting this conspiracy theory is that they were harassing the owner of the pizza place in question.

Re:Debunked?

[AmiMoJo]

Oh, I agree this this was a big mistake. My only point was that we shouldn't expect too much of Reddit.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling something a witch hunt is used to reference the salem witch trials. Meaning that they're chasing something that doesn't exist. When people would call pizzagate a witch hunt the nutters following it would say "well look at spirit cooking, that means theres actual witches here!"

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing's been debunked, but a lot of really powerful people (the Clinton family included) have literally everything to lose of someone starts pulling on the strings, so guess what's gonna happen...the machine will go into overdrive to discredit anyone talking about this and marginalize the story. The mainstream media will treat it as accepted fact that another "conspiracy theory" has been "debunked" and that "everybody can stop paying attention to it." You know the fake news you keep hearing about lately? Crushing legitimate investigations into the wrong people is a prime example of that.

Re:Debunked?

[jandersen]

You all have a strange way of declaring everyone to be a "friend" of Clinton.

Heh, yeah - by such loose standards, mr Trump must be a friend of Clinton, because I have seen a picture of him beside the Clintons, with a big smile on his face (well, I assume it was his face - it would have been a strange scenario otherwise)

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are doing research and you see illegal exploitative content please report it.

That didn't go so well for Pete Townsend. I strongly advise against reporting anything illegal you stumble across on the web. You will be guilty by association. Just pretend you never saw it and move on.

Re:Debunked?

[Noah Haders]

I've never seen any doxxing or harassment I r/offmychest.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

eben

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eben
^

Re:Debunked?

[0100010001010011]

NSFW / DISTURBING CONTENT

As someone that fired up a VPN just to browse that I'm very underwhelmed.

Is this part of 'trigger society'? I've seen worse stuff linked from Slashdot without a warning. If you're over 30 and grew up on the internet there's really nothing there.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this the same means by which leftist people assume all Trump supporters are every flavor of bigot?

Re: Debunked?

[Hognoxious]

Eben Emael? Where half a million Belgians *in a fort* surrendered to a German marching band and a dog, without firing a shot?

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much insults. The posts he edited was claims that he enjoyed child pornography.
Instead of editing the posts he should have sued the poster for libel.
He would have been better off and the poster who is complaining would be worse off and he would have avoided the backlash.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except! You're just reading blogs and online reports- not doing real in person investigation. The police, FBI have looked into this and have found nothing.

No different than me saying that I am investigating you Zeio of using poison to murder your elderly neighbor, and that even though the police have an autopsy report saying otherwise, I and others believe that they're in your pocket and the report is false.

Re:Debunked?

[110010001000]

Trump IS a friend of the Clintons. You do know that Trump was a Democrat at one point? He is a NYC Democrat.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish you had used more credible sources than rags like The Daily Star, and gamergate crap like oneangrygamer that's citing such great news places as The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, and Breitbart as a legitimate places for news rather than the slanted cesspools of sensationalized garbage like they are.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see, publicly denouncing alleged criminals?

All it would take is one errant typo, and now you're harassing people.

Re: Debunked?

[kangsterizer]

I LIKE CMDRTACO
TIMOTHY NEVER POSTED TERRIBLE STORIES

Apparently that's too much caps to post. Even admins can't post with caps.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what are you Eben Upton?

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that too. Man, he even cooked and ate her cat after he had sex with it.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the people that want to hide something make up a story that rabbits don't exists.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to say that pedophiles are fairy tale creatures?

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that those in the Main Stream Media debunking this "used up" all their credibility by repeatedly lying.

Well that and they didn't actually go through all the evidence and actually explain beyond a reasonable doubt that it isn't what it is. They just said it wasn't with not one actual fact or source. Well to be completely fair they often link to another story that says the same thing with no actual debunking.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying on his plane ONCE (and not going to the island) is quite different from going to the island dozens of times, and refusing secret service protection for some trips.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that, my friend, is why you belong in North Korea, not the land of the free.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The art in his restaurant is weird, but it's not "kids being tortured or placed in sexual poses"

WARNING: INCREDIBLY NSFW & DISTURBING IMAGES: http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/pizzagate-4chan-uncovered-sick-world-washingtons-occult-elite/amp/

Weird is a hell of an understatement.

Did you actually bother to read that article? It says that one of those artworks appeared on the walls of his restaurant. Everything else came from Instragram accounts which "liked" Comet Ping Pong (which he has little or no control over) or are works by artists who the author claims (without proof) are in some way connected to the restaurant (They eat there sometimes? They know someone who works there from college? Who cares?)

That article is pretty stupid. You think we're going to listen to someone who can't even manage to read it?

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know right? Catholic priests would never fuck little boys and then cover for each other! Oh wait, this was about politicians, who are so much more chaste than clergy. The very notion is just RIDICULOUS!

Re: Debunked?

[bestweasel]

"4Chan effectively unearthed a strange network of high-powered people who, through art, events and social media, actually celebrate a culture that revolves around death, torture, cannibalism and ⦠child abuse." (From that "shocking" NSFW page).

It reminds me of the panic in the 80s where various medics and social workers (often Christian) decided that Satanic rituals involving all that stuff was going on and lots of families' lives were ruined until it was discovered that the allegations were nonsense (alright have it your way, until it was covered up and the witnesses killed and eaten). They were trained professionals too, not random denizens of the internet. You could also go back to the Salem witch trials.

These stories originate with those who actively want to harm the targets, whether they believe it themselves or not is immaterial: they're accepted by others who happily suspend disbelief to take them at face value and those who are gullible enough to believe in cannibalistic congressmen, angels or Trump's promises.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

No like they argued it seriously wasn't a witch hunt because hillary is a witch and they were going to prove it. not a metaphorical witch, a takes communion with the devil witch.

Re:Debunked?

[smooth wombat]

But being in Epstein's little black book isn't a big deal? Hanging out with Epstein at his underage parties isn't a big deal?

Re:Debunked?

[Megol]

I don't know where you learned to read but really... You are making a strawman only using your handwaving instead of straw. It doesn't work very well.

Re: Debunked?

[Megol]

The proper comparison would be editing a person X posting something racist directed at person Y to be directed to person Z. A huge difference and even more so when person Z is the one responsible for moderating where person X posted.
 

Re: Debunked?

[0100010001010011]

As an investor you might be concerned that they may be liable now for anything users post.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they used the term witch, not pedophile. they were arguing hillary was a "communes with the devil" witch, they even specifically said not nature witch like wiccans, and they were going to prove it by proving pizzagate.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know he hasn't deleted or edited anything else.
Unless you were checking. Like people are going to be doing from now on.

Hey it's no big deal. I'm sure the CEO of your bank edits accounts all the time right?
It's just some stupid database. Not everyone uses them. It's fine.

Re:Debunked?

[DerekLyons]

But if you're asking why people are upset about this, it's because they're completely unhinged and hallucinating.

There, fixed that for you.
 
They haven't "found" anything - they've made up a bunch of completely unhinged nonsense (of the "substance x in your food is one atom different from dangerous substance y!" level) practically from whole cloth. The only people "creeped out" by this are people already dangerously disconnected from reality.

Re:Debunked?

[lgw]

Twitter always claims that anyone they banned was banned for "harassment". It's such a convenient reason, always paints them as the good guys.

Re:Debunked?

[AK Marc]

the US mainstream media completely discredited itself in the recent election by coming out in full force backing Hillary.

An opinion piece on Hillary means every fact they give is false?

These sites have a huuuuuge audience, larger than the mainstream media,

That makes them MSM.

"Cheese Pizza" stands for CP, which means child porn in pedo slang.

So says the only pedo here.

If NYT is so obviously wrong, why couldn't you point to any facts to back up your unsubstantiated opinion?

Make up your own mind!

I did. That you refuse to accept reality doesn't mean I didn't think independently. NYT wasn't the first cite I found, but it was one of the larger from the MSM, rather than some conspiracy theorist's blog.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Debunked by who?

There's nobody left....

Re:Debunked?

[publiclurker]

exactly what, a collection of gullible idiots that need to lie about other people in order to pretend that there is someone that they are better than?

Re:Debunked?

[Xenographic]

You focused on the pics, but the emails are the weirder thing. Like the handkerchief with the pizza-related map and the talk of spirit cooking, which that site then shows various disturbing images of.

Re: Debunked?

[Kraven9]

Nope. Free speech is free speech, even if you want to be a *n1gger about it. Variations...like maybe coon or wetback or whatever other magic scary words or phrase triggers people, are also not necessarily said by me (this time it was). Welcome to the internet where people have had their mind warped into thinking what they read plus what they imagine, is USUALLY fact. How many people are too scared to have posted these sentiments? It's just sad. * Slashdot has a lameness filter for the proper spelling.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for Correcting the Record, Rei.

Check is in the mail!

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cheese Pizza" stands for CP, which means child porn in pedo slang.

So says the only pedo here.

You've obviously never spent any time on 4chan, I find it ironic that you ran to NYT after they themselves posted an article stating that they've been dishonest and not real journalists for the past X months.
Go back to your hugbox echochamber, you're wasting your time, normie.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't opinion pieces, jackass.

Every. Single. Fucking. Headline. was ridiculously biased bullshit, critical of Trump under any circumstances, and positive about Hillary without question. It was a joke.

They injected editorials into news without any regard for fact, decency, or the destruction of their own legitimacy, which was absolute. They raped and murdered journalism. It is dead.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Red herring makes straw men smell awful.

  The specious and right is on his way in which you these arguments show that you have the capacity of a gnat when it comes to confirmation bias

  What type of a fucktard uses snopes as credible? You might as well buy the New York Times

Re:Debunked?

[rtb61]

I have to say the picture if the picture of the suspects in the Madeleine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... disappearance are any where near accurate and the Podesto brothers were there, than they have some serious explaining to do, as would those in the US State Department who possibly covered up their presence (lets be honest, their taste in artwork is seriously questionable and would be a red flag for any police department, there is a limit and a headless body in gold matching one the Dahmer victim photos is in seriously bad and questionable taste). Any one who thinks that art is good is not better than me and is not better than most people on the planet.

Re:Debunked?

[serviscope_minor]

it's not just a convenient reason, it's also a good reason.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

And who is collecting evidence on Trumps escapades with a 12 year old?

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

you are LITERALLY, literally retarded and some one needs to kill you and your family.

you do not have a critical mind. you are blind. die. fast.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Everything on "VigilantCitizen.com" can be trusted, but every last thing on Snopes is a lie. Got it.

You're a special kind of smart, aren't you?

Re:Debunked?

[HornWumpus]

Townsend got busted when his CC # turned up in CP web site's databases. He never reported anything.

Re:Debunked?

[garbs]

This comment edited by CmdrTaco...oh wait he left here years ago right?

Re:Debunked?

[Mashiki]

I don't know where you learned to read but really... You are making a strawman only using your handwaving instead of straw. It doesn't work very well.

Facts = strawman. Up next: You'll claim that /r/worldnews /r/politics and so on, don't engage in so much censorship and banning of people for posting ideological wrong-think that they'd make the STASI proud.

Re:Debunked?

[lgw]

Sure, anytime you don't like someone's politics, just ban them for "harassment" and people like serviscope_minor will tell everyone "it's a good reason", and just assume you're telling the truth (oh, someone may need to claim harassment every so often as well). It's very convenient.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the ones that occurred when Trump was a 12 year old. I'm sure the left-wing media will find something and blast the news out with a megaphone.

Re: Debunked?

[eric_harris_76]

A limit to how many all-CAPS words a post can contain? Excellent.

I wish FB would do that.

Or not. All-Caps is a pretty solid indicator that a post can almost certainly be ignored.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought witch hunt meant attempting to punish someone for something you have no evidence of.

Re:Debunked?

[publiclurker]

stop pretending you have a clue son. Even you are forced to use weasel words in a lame attempt at pretending that your garbage doesn't stink. And, most people everywhere are better than something like you. either admit to your shame or make an effort to climb out of the gutter. Don't expect others to continue to debase themselves for your benefit.

Re:Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. This was all the way up to +5 , now its coward-modded down (using underrated). Its exactly the type of shadow nameless faceless moderation I expected.

Everywhere #pizzagate is, thread clipping, deletion shadowbanning down-modding and general bitch-slapping.

unreal.

Re:Debunked?

[BKX]

Did we look at the same series of images? Those certainly aren't "INCREDIBLY NSFW & DISTURBING" images. Some are just creative pictures and some are slightly odd artwork. There's nothing wrong with either. There's only one image that's even remotely NSFW, and it's pretty damn non-explicit You guys are crazy by blowing this out of proportion.In fact, the phrase "out of proportion" doesn't even do it justice, since it implies that some wrong was done and that it's less bad than you're saying it is, BUT no wrong was done. So, in reality, where I live, you've seen some art you don't like and decided that it should be criminal. Then you guys made shit up to justify it.

So, on behalf of sane people everywhere, shut the fuck up about stupid shit that's not your business and get a life.

Re:Debunked?

[kellenspapa]

That was my question exactly. Odd that a link wasn't provided.

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

The same fbi whom twice decided hillary should not be prosecuted...

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Continue to ignore everything in the podesta emails. Trustworthy media is dead, learn to think for yourself

Re: Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Axr1quoryEg

This is just one of the hundreds of clips of biden touching young girls. You seriously think he is innocent in all of this?

Re:Debunked?

[Rakarra]

I've been on gab.ai, 4chan, 8ch and voat.co.

Well there's a problem right there. Don't go to those shitholes, problem solved.

You really should research this yourself and ask yourself why there is a boatload of evidence

This is usually code for "people have checked out the evidence, found that it's nonsense and unsupported, but the tinfoil-hatters are SUPER-CONVINCED that there's something there, and they'll conflate actual problems (DDOSing of wikileaks, etc) with imaginary ones (#pizzagate) and in the process, try to put the imaginary ones on the same footing with real problems.

I would also like to see Proof Of Life on Julian Assange

I would like to see proof that you have a penis, and my belief that you don't have one is just as valid as your counter-assertion that you do, and to disprove me you are obligated to post photographic evidence, because clearly everyone with better things to do don't need to spend their time dancing to the tune of the Internet's crazy paranoids.

Re:Debunked?

[Rakarra]

Sure, anytime you don't like someone's politics, just ban them for "harassment" and people like serviscope_minor will tell everyone "it's a good reason", and just assume you're telling the truth (oh, someone may need to claim harassment every so often as well). It's very convenient.

Calling in death threats against employees and standing outside the joint slandering the owner, employees, and patrons because of a bullshit Internet meme isn't cool, and definitely counts as verified, documented harassment.

Re:Debunked?

[Rakarra]

You're right, it should have been moderated down as Flamebait, even if it is technically Overrated.

Re: Debunked?

[Rakarra]

So you're saying that some guy didn't go on the pizzagate subreddit and claim to have hacked "we the pizza"'s website and post cp as proof? Even the mods of pizzagate said it happened.

That just means the mods of Pizzagate are part of the corruption. They're in on it!

Re: Debunked?

[Rakarra]

Public notice: "Rei" is a well known friend of the Clintons.

She's also really good with the force, and those were clearly "jedi mind-tricks" to distract from the issue.

Re: Debunked?

[Rakarra]

It reminds me of the panic in the 80s where various medics and social workers (often Christian) decided that Satanic rituals involving all that stuff was going on and lots of families' lives were ruined until it was discovered that the allegations were nonsense

I'm old enough to remember the "satanic ritual abuse" hoax from the 1980s and that's immediately what I thought of when this Pizzagate nonsense came up.

Re:Debunked?

[Rakarra]

This comment edited by CmdrTaco...oh wait he left here years ago right?

That's exactly what he wants you to think, and exactly what he would say if he were still here!

And what else?

[nefus]

But what else has he edited and not fessed up to?

Re:And what else?

[mysidia]

In response, he edited comments reading "fuck Spez" to instead be directed at moderators

He let them off easy. He should have just deleted the comments and applied a 30 day shadowban to the users.

Re:And what else?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what else has he edited and not fessed up to?

Things that are more important than this.

Should I wear pants a few sizes larger so I have room to eat more?
My dogs ear smell funny, is that a problem?
What is that high pitch whine coming from my toilet?

Re:And what else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything and everything.

All comments are now suspect, well done admin.

Re:And what else?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's sick of Trump-supporting Nazis and wackjobs on his site, this "prank" might be a winning strategy. To some, it will seem like a harmless prank, it's not like "fuck spez" messages have a lot of value in them, but the wackjobs will be pissed off, and hopefully they'd leave reddit.

Re:And what else?

[Cederic]

Yes, he should. That's called moderation and is a reasonable activity for a site owner to undertake, in an open and transparent manner (which may preclude 'shadowban', depending how Reddit interprets/implements that).

Instead of destroyed any credibility Reddit may have had remaining by guaranteeing that you can no longer trust that anything posted there has any relationship to what the person identified as posting it intended to say. It may instead be pushing an agenda the CEO or one of his friends wants instead.

It's a grotesque betrayal of trust, an utter lack of ethics and completely fucking unforgiveable.

Re:And what else?

[AmiMoJo]

This happens over and over again. There doesn't seem to be a solution that actually works

4chan, of all places, lost its shit when the owner had to ban GamerGate. Reddit has been upsetting certain groups of users for years but the much hyped move to Voat didn't materialise. You can't post the n-word on Slashdot any more, probably for advertising reasons. YouTube similarly stopped certain videos being monetised. Twitter bans persistent trolls.

Run your own blog maybe?

Re:And what else?

[Alypius]

So how much pressure will Reddit's board of directors suffer to deep-six this assclown? Reddit's always been the taint of the internet, but now they've sacrificed their integrity. This is fraud, plain and simple, and I would not be surprised if an enterprising DA decided to take a look.

Re:And what else?

[Cederic]

You don't see the difference between banning and editing someone else's words?

It's a massive difference. It's the entire difference.

4chan made the choice to ban GamerGate. Their choice, and there were consequence but those were predictable and accepted. Reddit has been banning users and discussions for years, and that causes a lot of noise but most of the moderation is "We removed your comment" and the bans (shadow or otherwise) are simply preventing people posting, not changing what they say. Youtube and twitter similarly provide a "obey or don't participate" policy.

What this CEO has done is very different and very dangerous.

Interesting that Slashdot is now preventing posts containing certain words. I hadn't encountered that and I do think it's stupid and counterproductive. It's still infinitely better than changing the content of someone's post.

Re:And what else?

[Mashiki]

4chan, of all places, lost its shit when the owner had to ban GamerGate.

That's probably because the people in Gamergate were right. Never mind that mootles didn't have any problems with project chanology, until he got leaned on by them. And the so-called people who claimed they were "anti-harassment specialists" were the ones out there harassing, doxing, and doing the shit that they claim gamergate was. The "game journalism" industry is and was corrupt, several of those sites are now gone though. Having collapsed under their own corruption, many of the people involved in the "gamers are dead" articles are no longer writing in the industry. People like Sarkeesian have moved on to a new batch of suckers(just a fyi her dvd videos are only like 4 years late now and she hasn't even finished the project). But you can see that in the gamejournopros leaks exactly how corrupt. Not only were authors colluding, they were pushing particular political and social narratives. Shit like doritogate and kane & lynch were just the start. It took years for it to finally hit a breaking point. You know, much like how the brexit campaign or Trump's election.

But I'm guessing that you haven't learned anything from those two cases either.

Re:And what else?

[AmiMoJo]

GamerGate was using 4chan to organise their harassment. That's why it was banned, allowing it to continue would have made it impossible to keep the site going with hosting and ad revenue.

4chan gets a lot of traffic and can only get low paying ads due to its content. 8chan can only tolerate the harassment because it needs much less cash to keep going, being much less popular. The operator being outside US jurisdiction helps too.

Re:And what else?

[AmiMoJo]

Of course I see the difference. I wasn't taking about that, try to keep up. The point I made was that eventually every site lauded as the bastion of free speech on the internet commits some mortal sin against its users.

Re:And what else?

[Mashiki]

GamerGate was using 4chan to organise their harassment. That's why it was banned, allowing it to continue would have made it impossible to keep the site going with hosting and ad revenue.

You know, 2 years on you've yet to ever show proof of this harassment. But you'll happily claim that 3rd party trolls are "gamergate people" even when it's shown that yes, they're actually 3rd party trolls.

4chan gets a lot of traffic and can only get low paying ads due to its content. 8chan can only tolerate the harassment because it needs much less cash to keep going, being much less popular. The operator being outside US jurisdiction helps too.

And another bit where you don't have any idea of what you're talking about. I'm sure next you're going to claim that the owner of 4chan is really, really short on cash and needs money. FYI 8chan's owner is a US citizen and the site adheres to US laws.

Re:And what else?

[kuzb]

There's nothing open or transparent about how reddit admins "moderate"

Re:And what else?

[Anonymous Coward]

I briefly followed GG (as a casual observer). Is there a 'where are they now, 2 years later' post? It seems everyone forgot about gaming when Trump started running for president.

Re:And what else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Run your own blog maybe?

Do it. You can assume or expect that anyone else is interested in hosting your content, especially not if it is intentionally written to provoke without actually bringing any benefit to society like some provocative art might. (Spamming the n-word over and over again doesn't add anything to the discussion, it's just spam and only serves to drown out anything of value.)
They have all the right in the world to remove whatever content they don't want to spend resources on distributing.
It would be a strange world if one was forced to spend resources to distribute content one didn't agree with. (I'm sure the alt-right will agree with this basic idea of freedom.)

In the recent case of reddit the edited posts were of the nature that fits under libel law. The reddit CEO should have taken them to court instead of editing the posts.

Re:And what else?

[mysidia]

That's called moderation and is a reasonable activity for a site owner to undertake, in an open and transparent manner

Most websites DO moderation but NOT in a transparent manner. There's no time and resources for "Transparent manner"

(which may preclude 'shadowban', depending how Reddit interprets/implements that).

Shadowban is just Reddit's name for banning a user.

I believe at some time the site admins figured out that if they simply block an account from posting, then many trolls are likely to have registered a sockpuppet account, and just switch accounts upon discovering they're banned.

Shadowban makes it take longer by not revealing to the person they were banned, And they can post new comments to threads and such, But the banned users' comments do not appear for anyone else, and only the poster can see them.

Re: And what else?

[Anonymous Coward]

great post. Let us own our own speech even if you dont like it. Deleting is one thing but changing posts is a whole new can of worms.

Re:And what else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter bans persistent trolls.

in the meanwhile they don't ban terrorists and pedophiles and are owned by a saudi prince... coincidence? I think not!

Re:And what else?

[Mashiki]

I briefly followed GG (as a casual observer). Is there a 'where are they now, 2 years later' post? It seems everyone forgot about gaming when Trump started running for president.

You can check the timeline on one of the GG wiki's this is the one on KiA. You can also check the catalog for the GG thread on 8ch.net/v/(somewhat comprehensive moves fast) or 8ch.net/gamergatehq/(lot of information moves very slow) Lot of people are still there, but GG itself is in a holding pattern because nearly everything that was wanted, was gained. Now it sits waiting for the next outbreak. Though some people have moved from gaming to the media at large, and that's only a good thing. The vast majority of sites now have a ethics and guidelines policy. One of the big things GG wanted. The sites that were shit are gone, or continue to have declining numbers. The small sites they promoted as alternatives like techraptor and nichgamer have both recently broken the top 1k sites in the world.

Re:And what else?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you did indeed see the difference, then you would realize that editing individual users posts is an entire order of magnitude(or two) larger of a 'mortal sin' than banning certain words, deleting comments, and/or banning users.

Re:And what else?

[AmiMoJo]

The proof of harassment has been posted multiple times, and confirmed by GamerGate's own IRC chat logs. You just choose to ignore this evidence that has been posted multiple times.

http://archive.today/Ler4O
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth....
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

How long are you going to keep this pretence up?

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck u/spez

The First Rule...

[mrchaotica]

...of Usenet is of course, "you do not talk about Usenet." I'm breaking that. Sorry.

More importantly in this case, Second Rule of Usenet is "Usenet can't be subverted by its owner because, as a decentralized service, it doesn't have one." And that's why it needs to be supported instead of centralized shit like Reddit!

Re:The First Rule...

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm... the internet is decentralized. They moved their discussion board to Voat.
(not pissing on usenet but what non-problem are you talking about?)

Re:The First Rule...

[0100010001010011]

Voat, the site run by people that have never worked in a production environment ever.

It should scale from a 512 MB NGINX instance to full Amazon without anyone ever seeing a "Site's down" error message.

Re:The First Rule...

[Anonymous Coward]

He is talking about using Usenet as a chat forum like it was intended to. No admins, no overload, no bullshit Steve Huffman to edit posts.

Re:The First Rule...

[0100010001010011]

I've been meaning to play around with INN. The only thing missing is voting of some sort.

Re:The First Rule...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think in this case content is more important than smooth sailing.

If you're feeling generous though, why not dropping by and lending a hand?

Re: The First Rule...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the first time you say something someone with something to hide doesn't like, he driwns you in commercial speech (spam). Now your forum is gone.

Oh you are going to mod it? Cool, now he has someone to subvert, or he just gets mod himself.

Usenet is functional exactly because it is small. If it was large and threating, standard shit would work just fine.

Decentralized email became unuseful due to spam. Once enough of everyone was on a corporate plantation, it became possible to slurp everything wholesale. Private websites get ddosed until they cloudflare up, once that happens incoming connections can be logged wholesale.

The same thing happens everywhere. Maybe it is an accident. But it sure as fuck is consistent.

Re:The First Rule...

[mysidia]

Usenet can't be subverted by its owner because, as a decentralized service, it doesn't have one.

That's also its downfall.... too much spam and abuse, and there's no such thing as a team who can review posts, delete them, and block spammers.

On the other hand, each individual ISP /news provider can still censor content they don't want you to see, or tamper with posts; but there is just way too much spam/abuse for each news provider to create their own clean version.

Re: The First Rule...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand how Usenet works.

Re:The First Rule...

[0100010001010011]

You could set up your own network of usenet servers.

Re:The First Rule...

[Ash-Fox]

You could set up your own network of usenet servers.

Do you mean "NNTP servers"? As "usenet servers" would just mean you're still connected to Usenet in some way?

Re:The First Rule...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason people don't talk about usenet is because it's archaic and obsolete, and only luddites stuck in the 90s tend to still use it.

Re: The First Rule...

[xvan]

Yes he does, how would you avoid Usenet spam to keep a thread relevant?

Think of spam specially crafted only raise the noise threshold and effectively making it unusable, so it'd be harder to block than mail spam.

Re:The First Rule...

[0100010001010011]

Given the problem people seem to be having with most websites: Downtime, DDoS, Censorship Usenet is the perfect solution.

Re:The First Rule...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read that on thickipedia, did you? So does it follow that *an individual site* is decentralised? Shut the fuck up, you stupid ginger cunt.

Re: The First Rule...

[Rakarra]

I think many people here both understand how Usenet works, and why it went the way of the dodo well over a decade ago.

Re:The First Rule...

[Rakarra]

Downtime, DDoS, Censorship Usenet is the perfect solution

Usenet is more vulnerable to some of those problems. Large companies have the resources to fight DDoS attacks (usually) and Usenet is more vulnerable to DDoS attacks than regular websites (though not in the way you might think). The problem is that your totally unrestricted, no-rules, no filtered Usenet is quite vulnerable to the thing that killed Usenet for most people 15 years ago -- relentless, non-stop spam that bypasses filters, comes from way too many sources to filter out with IP bans, and that drowns out everything else. The onus would be on the end user to filter and honestly aside from sysadminy types who have yet to grow out of their "I can waste tons of time on this" phase, most won't be bothered. You can fix that with a moderated board, but at that point you're stuck with most of the problems the old website had and you don't really gain anything.

This great!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dems call all republicans racists because they are republican. Now the Republicans can fight back and call all Democrats pedophiles. In today's media led world there is in fact nobody who is not either a pedophile, a racist, or a nazi.

Do you like to brush you teeth and treat animals kindly? Hitler did that too. You must be a Nazi and want to kill 6 million jews.
Did you say hello to that black man? Well you did that in a patronizing way that did not reaffirm the individualism of your respective races, so you are a racist.

I am all for linking democrats to pedophilia because they like eating pizza. This makes a lot of sense to me.

Political argument is all about calling your opponent the most names. The guy who calls the other the most names wins the fight and go on to higher office.

The other aspect of political debate is editing your opponents message to make it say exactly what you meant for him to say. There is nothing wrong with what this guy did. He was just playing realpolitik. I mean why run a site like Reddit if you can't use it to establish a correct political environment and quash discussion.

Re:This great!!

[elrous0]

The Dems call all republicans racists because they are republican. Now the Republicans can fight back and call all Democrats pedophiles. In today's media led world there is in fact nobody who is not either a pedophile, a racist, or a nazi.

Don't forget when Dems tried to call Trump a pedophile too.

Yep, that's the level of political discourse these days, both sides seeing how far they can go to demonize their opponent as the worst human being on the planet. I think political discourse today has gotten worse than it was during the McCarthy era, and is rapidly approaching an 1850's level of vitriol. And the 1850's vitriol led to a civil war.

Re: This great!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is that you claim the criticisms of racism in the Republican party are just name-calling, and not the result of actual racism being pointed out. Racism and bigotry is something with a long history n this country, as is the defensiveness and denial about it. Not that any of the GOP's stalwart defenders ever get past screaming about the KKK being formed by Democrats, mind you. They've never heard of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party. Or the anti-Asian bigotry. Or anti-German. Or anti-Irish. And it has long been cloaked in claims of legitimacy, of concern, rather than the real sentiments driving it.

Of course, if you want to talk about criminal sex offenders, we could mention Dennis Hastert. Oh wait, we can't, he's a Republican. We're not allowed to mention their offenders.

Instead, let's go back to attacking Democrats for trying to destroy America. They even let a black man from Kenya set up in the White House. The fiends. Yeah, I remember the birther, Donald Trump.

Re: This great!!

[Anonymous Coward]

We should bring back pistol duels. I would pay to see politicians settle disputes!

Re:This great!!

[guises]

Don't forget when Dems tried to call Trump a pedophile too [snopes.com]."

Huh. Your link says nothing at all about democrats, and only uses the word pedophile in relation to someone else. The article seems to suggest that this was just some random woman trying to hit up Trump for money.

You should try just making an accusation like that without giving any kind of reference. Fact checking is passé after all, that's something the main stream media does. Gross unsubstantiated libel is apparently the new normal.

Re:This great!!

[elrous0]

I could literally give you over a hundred citations of Democrats and left-wing media citing and circulating this story as an indictment of Trump, bit I'll just give you a couple of typical examples from The Huffington Post and Esquire:

http://www.esquire.com/news-po...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The point is that both sides (and their media allies) have become guilty of smearing the other with the most despicable charges, often based on the flimsiest of evidence. It has almost become a defacto standard to call your political opponent a pedophile and/or rapist. And the left has also made it a routine to call Republicans racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc. And the right has also made it a routine to call its opponents criminal, treasonous, un-American, etc.

Discourse on both sides has devolved into a giant, very ugly screaming match. And that ain't good.

Re:This great!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, this story is just as much an indictment of Trump as the accusations against Bill Clinton are an indictment of him.

Very serious

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes this even more alarming is that in countries that don't have freedom of speech, such as the UK, users have been arrested and fined for reddit posts, so spez could pretty much get UK users jailed at will if he's this irresponsible and reckless. Perhaps if a mod of r/the_donald were muslim (unlikely, I know) and spez fabricated user insults towards them, this could be perceived as "Islamophobic", and they could be hauled away by police.
For example

Re:Very serious

[tehcyder]

countries that don't have freedom of speech, such as the UK

The UK doesn't have absolute freedom of speech. But then, neither does any other country.

Re:Very serious

[king neckbeard]

The UK has enough libel tourism due to restrictive legal views on speech that it's okay to say that the UK doesn't have freedom of speech (unless you live in the UK, of course).

Good-bye reddit

[Anonymous Coward]

So the CEO of reddit got butt-hurt by some comments made about him so he changed them? There is no excuses for that.

It figures though. In the early days, the owners of reddit would post under several accounts so the site looked like it had a larger number of users than it really did. They probably still do, but for different reasons now.

Good-bye reddit. Please die a horrible death.

Re:Good-bye reddit

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively, oust the CEO and bring in some new blood. It's not like Reddit hasn't gone through exactly that not too long ago, and I'll remind you that a user revolt in the face of censorship played a direct role in Ellen Pao carrying herself out to the curb like the pile of trash that she was.

If there's a will, Reddit users can do some of the same shit again. If not, then "this decade's slashdot" can toil in the river of shit it's making for itself.

Malarkeygate? Redditgate? Editgate?

[Larsen E Whipsnade]

Spezgate?

Re:Malarkeygate? Redditgate? Editgate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speznas

Re:Malarkeygate? Redditgate? Editgate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whipsnadegate. Cowardgate. Metagate.

I hate when Facebook and Twitter do censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

But this example is kinda funny. I might troll people on my site too.

its not just an oopsie

[nimbius]

"Our community team is pretty pissed at me, so I most assuredly won't do this again."

Huffman might not know it, but hes just torpedoed reddit as a source of valid independent discussion by exposing the ability to not only edit posts he didnt author, but to inject a political message in his favour. Im sure Stalin is applauding from beyond the grave.

Re:its not just an oopsie

[0100010001010011]

Forget 'discussion' there are active investigations that use Reddit as evidence.

There are multiple celebrities and political figures that have accounts to do AMA. What if Spez was caught editing comments by the 'president'? (Ok, President's Social Media handlers).

Re:its not just an oopsie

[Anonymous Coward]

i did not know that reddit was ever a source of "valid" discussion.

it's a fucking cesspool.

Re:its not just an oopsie

[galenanorth]

For a while, I've been hearing about people talk about /r/the_donald as being highly botted in order to get posts to the front page of /r/all. Announcements rise really there, and nearly every post on /r/all is from the_donald. People think that the admins are going soft on them because the community brings in too much revenue. Reddit administration is definitely no longer neutral. A lot of important people have posted on Reddit. This is sad and a blow to the integrity of centralized, anonymous social media.

Re:its not just an oopsie

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh bullshit. He trolled a bunch of immature, neo-Nazi shitposters. Nothing of value was lost.

Re:its not just an oopsie

[Blue Stone]

>there are active investigations that use Reddit as evidence.

Maybe ... maybe that's why he did it!

Dun dun DUUuuuN!

A future career rubbing shoulders with the Clintons might be on the cards!

Re:its not just an oopsie

[guruevi]

He owns (or is at least the boss over) the joint including the databases. Anyone who suspects that ANY big wig at Google/Reddit/Microsoft cannot simply go in and change things as they see fit for profit, legal or political reasons is deluded. Most likely there are even a host of lower level employees that can do so unnoticed.

Re:its not just an oopsie

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! By definition it never was independent! In order to have a hope of being independent it needs to be decentralized. Where have all the nerds gone?

Re:its not just an oopsie

[0100010001010011]

I've been hearing about people talk about /r/the_donald as being highly botted in

What is the observable difference to a bot and a bunch of bored angsty teenagers doing something they were told not to do?

Re:its not just an oopsie

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you be posting on Slashdot and not be aware that every website operator in existence has the ability to edit posts they didn't author.

Re:its not just an oopsie

[jezwel]

Anyone who suspects that ANY big wig at Google/Reddit/Microsoft cannot simply go in and change things as they see fit for profit, legal or political reasons is deluded.

Data stored in services these companies run is used as legal evidence.
Reddit has publicly demonstrated that they can and will edit posts by users, and it cannot be determined if a user did or did not not post that content.
This can now be used to discredit any content on Reddit from admissibility from legal matters.

Re:its not just an oopsie

[Anonymous Coward]

Disregard what I just posted, I suck cocks.

Re:its not just an oopsie

[guruevi]

Yes, but that is the case for any singular silo of data. Unless you have the same set of data (or some form of verification) in more than one, independent data silos, there is no way of knowing for sure whether it is tampered with. You can use it to support a narrative, perhaps, but I wouldn't use it as 'evidence'.

As Hotwheels himself pointed out

[Anonymous Coward]

Reddit just lost its safe harbour protections.

Pizzagate must never be spoken of

[frovingslosh]

Pizzagate must never be spoken of

Remember the vast right wing conspiracy where the then First "Lady" had to tell us herself that there was absolutely no truth to the terrible lies that the right was saying about her husband, the honorable William Jefferson Clinton? And she certainly would know better than anyone if the rumors were true or not, she was not only right there but she was also the smartest woman in the country if not the whole world. It's just like that. Complete bunk. The perpetrators deny it and that should be good enough for anyone on the far left.

Admits

[ChoGGi]

but doesn't apologize...

Re:Admits

[thegarbz]

Not really relevant. Trust breached and an apology won't repair it. It's frankly not even worthwhile to do.

Re:Admits

[Anonymous Coward]

T_D doesn't deserve any apologies. Hive of lies.

Re:Admits

[Rakarra]

but doesn't apologize...

Just like Donald! Except often without the 'admits' part.

Who Cares?

[jvp]

Reddit: the armpit of the Internet. 4Chan being the asshole of it.

Re:Who Cares?

[slashdice]

Where does that leave slashdot? The dingleberry on the asshole? The hands spreading the asshole wide open, goatse style? The taint? The frumunda cheese? The sweaty nutsack?

Re:Who Cares?

[discord23]

Where does that leave slashdot?

The lint in the bellybutton

Re:Who Cares?

[ArchieBunker]

Slashdot doesn't even rank.

Re:Who Cares?

[Howitzer86]

...of a 400 pound basement hacker.

Re:Who Cares?

[yuriklastalov]

'Member when the "Slashdot Effect" was a thing?

Oh how the mighty have fallen. All thanks to DICE and Slashdot Beta. ... Actually, that shitstorm was a lot of fun. FUCK BETA!!!

Are you naive ?

[aepervius]

For all practical intent and purpose, all BBS and reddit like can be edtable by default. in fact you have to spend money to add security , encryption, and ensure non editability. Unless it is a selling point, you should always assume that everything is editable to match whatever goals political or not.

And..

[Nostalgia4Infinity]

This *should* be the end of Reddit. No post can ever be reliably attributed to it's author again.

Re:And..

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice post, Hemos!

Re:And..

[Anonymous Coward]

quite the opposite, actually... the morons on reddit and other "social" sites helped elect one of their own (a moron) to the highest office in the land.. they're just getting started

now where do i go to sign up for that one-way mars mission? lets get going already!

Re:And..

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true of literally every site on the internet. No way, an administrator changed data that a privately held corporation owns. Shocking. News at 11. And IT administrators have never been able to read your mail ever. Nope. That kind of thing has never happened before.

Re:And..

[Anonymous Coward]

This *should* be the end of Reddit. No post can ever be reliably attributed to it's author again.

If you are assuming Reddit (or any other platform that is not in your control) is reliable in the first place you are always potentially in for dissappointment.

Apology?

[Alypius]

I suppose this is what I get for not RTFA, but the CEO admitted to doing it, obliquely mocked the people pissed at him for doing it, and never apologized? So not only do we have social media moguls decrying "fake news" but now we have social media moguls actually manufacturing it.

Re:Apology?

[darkcrimson]

Fake news in my opinion would be a collective that sets out with the intention of misleading the people. What we have here is much, much worse.

With Reddit, we could see that the contributing authors were set out with the intention of sharing information. We know now that the CEO has been directly modifying that information. Therefore, there's no way to subjectively verify the information contained in Reddit hasn't been falsified in some way. That will work just fine for people with a narrative that aligns with the CEO. Tampering with information is the opposite of dissemination, in my opinion.

We need cryptography everywhere

[lucasnate1]

With digital signatures for messages, used EVERYWHERE, this would not happen.

Reddit management = hypocrites

[Anonymous Coward]

A while back, a bunch of trolls set up a subreddit to harass me, even creating a fake user with my real name to post rude & lewd comments. It pretty quickly got to be the top google result for my name, which then made it difficult to find a job when I was unemployed (who'd want to hire someone who acts like an ass online?). Reddit admins would do nothing about this, saying it was 'free speech' and if I wanted the harassment to stop, I'd need to take them to court.

Why am I not surprised when a reddit admin is the target of harassment that they'd ignore their own rules and do whatever they want?

Yeah, they care about abused kids...

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as they think they can make Hillary a part of it. OMG! Just investigate it! What is wrong with the Right!?

Submitter believes the untruthful NYT?

[sethstorm]

Pizzagate was dedicated to a debunked conspiracy theory

[citation needed]

Re:Submitter believes the untruthful NYT?

[yuriklastalov]

MSM said it's bullshit, case closed. Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Submitter believes the untruthful NYT?

[Ksevio]

The NYT is a reputable news source with a long history of posting accurate information. Places reporting about pizza are typically conspiracy theory sites full of fully debunked stories. It's always hard to prove a negative, but in this case the burden of evidence falls on the pizzagate lovers.

Re:Submitter believes the untruthful NYT?

[sethstorm]

At this point, I'm going to believe TASS before the NYT.

Re:Submitter believes the untruthful NYT?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.snopes.com/pizzagate-conspiracy/

Re:Submitter believes the untruthful NYT?

[Anonymous Coward]

The NYT is a reputable news source

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Re:Submitter believes the untruthful NYT?

[Ksevio]

That's probably because you've been reading propaganda from the alt-right/white supremacists.

Online community hate

[backslashdot]

He actually cares about that? Personally I couldn't give a damn if the entire online community hates me. What power do they have? Remember the online campaign to find the boko haram girls? So far not one has been rescued. A few have escaped on their own, no thanks to facebook. And anyone remember the Joe Kony campaign of 2012? That dude is still out there in Africa doing his thing .. not brought to justice. The whole combine online community is less of a threat to anyone than my cat when he takes a dump.

Re:Online community hate

[Anonymous Coward]

The online community isn't a threat to people in third world anarchies/dictatorships. They can make your life hell if you live in the Western world, though.

That said, he wasn't protecting himself from being hated. In fact, what he did really had no possible outcome except to make things worse. Even though I can totally understand his motivations, he's not 14 years old. He's the CEO of one of the most popular websites in the world. That makes him a fucking idiot.

Wow /.

[Anonymous Coward]

When did this place turn into a haven for the 'alt-right'? Guess there really are no minorities/women in tech. =/

Baby's first privately owned board

[Anonymous Coward]

and they run off to another private board. Gee what could possible go wrong.

Thank you for using -gate

[Anonymous Coward]

Reddit CEO Admits To Editing User Comments Amid Pizzagate

Thank you for calling this a -gate issue. It tells me that this is not a problem at all. Because that is what the -gate suffix means. It means that you believe that the issue is too weak to stand on its own merits, and thus, is safe to ignore.

Now, if someone else would like to explain the situation without using the gate suffix, I am all ears. But to anyone using -gate, you are limiting the potential audience for your message.

Proven correct, not debunked.

[sethstorm]

exactly what, a collection of gullible idiots

Which refers to the people that believe NYT's non-dismissal.

The fascists aren't trump supporters. They're you.

[sethstorm]

Because reddit has realised that angry, toxic crazies are making it miserable for the more sane majority - yet choosing to defend the crazies from the sane majority of Trump supporters

You mean the crazies that have stolen cars just for being white owned ("We caught a Trump!") or vandalized for having a Trump sticker (where a silver Mustang was burned & spray-painted)? Or would you like to talk about the crazies in UNC Chapel Hill that called for actions against Pence?

There went your narrative with those pesky facts.

nyt reputable?? Bwahahahaha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Their own editor said they're going to try to be honest again after going way biased propaganda trash during the election.

Do you live on planet Earth? Get out much?

Spirit Cooking Debunked

[Anonymous Coward]

Spirit cooking debunked. Not that it will make the slightest bit of difference to someone living in the loonyverse.

Just breaking!

[easyTree]

Tech guy farts. More news at ten.

So he did a boo boo.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to say thank you for your courage coming forward publicly with your offense and opening the discussion on abuse of power. Hopefully others will learn from it and try to build a better system to combat this type of abuse.

Re:Debunked? Kanye West is proof

[Anonymous Coward]

if you went on a hunt for Pedophiles that leads to a nest of Satanists . .called cabal .. then you find out they are SpiritCooking with the kiddies
it is a shock - mostly becauase it is so wide spread. silence is due to blackmail or actual involvement see lady gaga J-Z and too many more!
watch this movie: Conspiracy Of Silence _ The Franklin Cover-up then read
  http///www.washingtonexaminer.com/three-people-died-in-illegal-human-experiments-carried-out-by-john-podesta-backers-firm/article/2551139
If you don't want to accept the news from the paper try reading the leaked email. there is waay more information here:
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/15162
On #Halloween Julian posted 3 pix of a pumpkin carved to be a UFO he left these hashtags
#Halloween #PodestaPumpkin #TrickOrLeaks #UFO #ETI #ExoPolitics #LobsterRissotto @johnpodesta
Let's find out who kidnapped #MadeleineMcCann more is posted : https://twitter.com/Annette143
see these videos: Calls - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9vwJXx7DR-3zSub4mwQNFg
If you see what Spirit Cooking is (Marina has plenty on utube) if you are not against it you Must be IN it.
the only thing evil needs to succeed is for people to turn their backs and allow it.

So... he was too busy to attend that one time?

[Xenographic]

A) It's funny you'd link to the Washington Post, because they've never fessed up about this:

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/2699

B) The primary excuse is "it's just art" and that Podesta wasn't able to attend that one, as if that somehow makes it better. Never mind Abramovi saying on Reddit that it's only art when done publicly and this was a private performance (but who knows, maybe an admin edited that in there...). And yes, Podesta appears to believe in that, how else do you explain the attachment on this email which is a reference to the myth of Osiris and the birth of Hecate?

I mean, just look at what even the WaPo acknowledges that Spirit Cooking is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EsJLNGVJ7E

When the allegation is that someone is into some really loony stuff, you don't really "debunk" that by saying yes, they are, but they weren't able to attend that one time.

Or to put it a snarky way, by modifying their headline: "No, John Podesta didn’t drink bodily fluids at a secret Satanist dinner, he was unable to attend that time. Marina Abramovi misses him."

Having a CEO edit blog/social media content....

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a CEO edit blog/social media content pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin for Reddit "common carrier" protections. Basically what this means is if you ever want to sue a Redditor for libel, slander or IP violations or any number of actionable civil suits, Reddit itself is both 100% fair game as a legal defendant and as an accomplice: they can no longer claim they are merely a common carrier without liability. They are now 100% aligned with the content with the CEO himself involved in editing user content. This means you can treat Reddit as a deep-pocket co-defendent!

Reddit lawyers must be be have major panic attacks right now.

The NYT has gotten it wrong before.

[sethstorm]

While you approve of places that support racists like the BLM and the SPLC.

The NYT's been fishwrap tier "journalism" for quite a long time.

Re:The NYT has gotten it wrong before.

[Ksevio]

That sounds like a pretty uninformed view to me. BLM and SPLC are organizations to help prevent racism and help people in poverty. That's their stated mission. There are of course a few racists that latch on to them, but nothing like the white supremacists that are actually writing the articles, not just being supported by the fake news sites, but actually working at them.

The fascists aren't trump supporters. They're you.

[sethstorm]

The angry, toxic crazies are you.

You mean the crazies that have stolen cars just for being white owned ("We caught a Trump!") or vandalized for having a Trump sticker (where a silver Mustang was burned & spray-painted)? Or would you like to talk about the crazies in UNC Chapel Hill that called for actions against Pence?

Interesting to see that facts get modded troll. But then they blew their modpoints.

Then it hasn't been debunked.

[sethstorm]

It's only been whitewashed by friendlies in the media.

Both have proven to be racist towards whites

[sethstorm]

BLM has committed acts of racism towards whites, if not sanctioning violence done in its name.
The SPLC harbors racist views by refusing to classify the BLM as a hate group. In turn, the SPLC smears their critics with such labels.

Martin Luther King Jr. would be disappointed to see such racism in this era, even if towards white individuals.

Re:Both have proven to be racist towards whites

[Ksevio]

"BLM has committed acts of racism towards whites" - As I said, there's definitely people that have used BLM as a cover for racism, but that's not the purpose of the group. We don't call Christians a pedophilia organization because of a few priests.

BLM isn't a hate group by any standard so it'd be pointless for SPLC to classify them along side the likes of the KKK or the alt-right.

Which website told you that these were the bogeymen you have to be afraid of? Were there also mentions of how white people are disadvantaged and Hitler wasn't so bad?