Slashdot Mirror
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: I Screwed Up and I Want Reddit To Trust Me Again (cnbc.com)
The most anxious day of Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's life, he says, was showing up to work on the Monday after Thanksgiving this year. The week before, he had thrown the company into a minor political crisis. From a CNBC report: After weeks being antagonized by the users of Reddit communities like /r/The_Donald and /r/pizzagate, Huffman had covertly edited messages posted by other users that were critical of him, to instead be critical of those communities' leaders. On the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, Huffman said he conceived this as a prank, "in the spirit of fun." "I figured, I'm just going to mess with these bullies, and I actually have the capability of messing with them, so I'll do so," Huffman said. "I wanted to do something. I didn't do the right thing, but that was my mentality." Huffman says the aftermath of this "prank," users questioning whether their posts had ever been edited without their consent in the past, was "devastating," and that he knows it will take time to rebuild trust within the community. At an all-hands staff meeting on that anxious Monday, he apologized directly to Reddit's staff and said he wanted them all to be proud to work there.
I stopped going to Reddit a week before this happened. There was a palpable feeling to the website that a lot of views were no longer welcome. What happened to the freedom of speech?
I really can't say what happened to Reddit but I have some thoughts. If you go to the smaller sub reddits they are great. But anything with a large amount of people becomes ridiculously political. You can't even say anything or have a discussion without someone attempting to force you to find a source for every little thing you say.
People need to learn how to just talk to each other again. That is where my mind goes.
Throw all this BS with the people leading reddit into the mix and you're finding people are now realizing the internet has limits. Yeah we can unite behind causes easier but people are still people. Coming up with names like trolls and fake news isn't going to stop people from being people. They talk. They spread information and half the time it isn't accurate. How is that any different then what goes on in most groups at school, work every day?
If making relatively minor edits to a few inconsequential posts insulting him, then admitting it and repeatedly apologising and swearing he will never do it again isn't enough, then maybe it's not worth trying to regain the trust of people who feel that way.
It's the standard Reddit conspiracy theory. Something minor blow out of all proportion. Just like the last several times it's a sure sign that Reddit is dead and everyone is busy signing up for Voat.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
People who disagree with your political position are not "bullies" that you need to do something like this just because you have the capability.
What about Slashdot moderators who down-mod insightful, civil, fact-based posts as "Troll" just because they disagree with them?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
That was my first thought upon reading OP's post too. Huffmann may have actually done the world a favor. He's opened people's eyes to the possibility that this type of behind-the-curtain manipulation can happen; something the tech community has been trying for years without success to warn the general public about with respect to electronic voting machines.
If we're lucky, this will kick off a wave of forum sites coming up with clever hash systems allowing you to confirm that the message you posted on a forum has not been altered. And the best of these systems could trickle down into a way to confirm that a ballot you cast on an electronic voting machine has not been tampered with.
There's no point in pushing for an electronic voting machine when optical machines are superior, because they leave a paper trail. Granted higher costs in managing paper ballots are unavoidable, but I prefer that to an electronically rigged election.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
A few months ago, our CEO lost badge access to our main data center. That was his pride and joy, and now he needs an escort in, because his job doesn't involve any requirement to work inside the room.
If you are a content provider, you probably need one or two people who are capable of editing any post, so that you can fix problems. However, there is no way that the CEO should have that kind of power. The fact that the CEO can just randomly edit content anywhere on the site, without auditing or accountability means that there is a culture out of control.