"Distasteful" subreddits that consist of compromising photos of teenagers taken without their knowledge are to be tolerated. That's "free speech", the highest ideal at Reddit.
Meanwhile, "doxxing" of the people who traffic in those photos is forbidden. That's not "free speech", it's something else.
However, journalism that happens to disclose identities of Reddit trolls... that's not necessarily "doxxing". It's a fine line.
There is no intellectual clarity to these lines at all; they're simply gerrymandered around the proclivities of the most active Reddit users. I guess that's fine, but it's hard to pretend that there's any important ideal being defended by their management.
Reddit didn't sit down and have a long debate and discussion about what is good and what is bad.
Instead, Reddit has only banned things when they have been dragged kicking and screaming to that point, and then they ban the things in a pretty narrow way.
Doxxing has a pretty bad history on reddit; I forget the exact time when it became against the rules, but a bunch of shitstorms had started up by people forming internet mobs to chase after people they thought did something wrong.
So they banned doxxing.
Similarly, Jailbait was only banned after Anderson Cooper started talking about it on the news. There didn't seem to be a long discussion of what was and wasn't allowed and what makes consistent policy; instead it seemed (as an outsider) to be "what rule can we make that blocks jailbait and its clones and as little else as possible?"
When you see the historical reason, it's clear why the stopped doxxing while tolerated creepshots: they hadn't made a rule about the latter.
The people that hated creepshots saw all this and decided on the obvious strategy: make creepshots as unpleasant as possible for everyone involved. I think it's a pretty bad way to set policy, but it's the only path that reddit had laid out, so they took it.
In the end, reddit probably should have a policy board that decides what is and isn't allowed and have long debates and discussions (partially in public) about how to set up a sane policy.
The problem seems to be that Reddit sees itself as a platform to host numerous small communities while everyone else sees it as a single community.
Generally it seems like a bad idea for a platform to be too restrictive about what can be discussed (though I'd argue banning some types of content wouldn't be too controverisal) while allowing a community to run completely unrestricted seems quite irresponsible.
"doxxing" of the people who traffic in those photos is forbidden. That's not "free speech", it's something else.
Reddit has long had a problem with people posting identifying information of reddit users or people involved in videos/pictures/articles shared on the site. This has almost always devolved into harrassment. So, strangely, reddit has a kind of reverse Nymwars situation where you are not allowed to personally identify anyone but yourself.
1) You can't ban content just because it offends someone, there wouldn't be much content left, if any. Is religion distasteful? Violent images of war? Gay marriage?
And it's not like a user is forced into subreddits to view content they don't like. The whole point of the site is for individual users to make decisions on the type of content they are viewing and participating in.
2) "doxxing" isn't some random rule they came up with to protect people who post 'distasteful' photos. AFAIK it's been a long-standing issue to prevent users from rallying users to harass other users outside of the site, whether it's justified or not. Instances in the past have seen people twist facts about a story to make someone out to be a bad buy, post that person's personal information and then that person is harassed via phone calls, emails, letters about some non-existent offense they are accused to have perpetrated.
I'm not sure the specifics on the Gawker ban issue though, so I can't speak to that.
> You can't ban content just because it offends someone,
> there wouldn't be much content left, if any. Is religion
> distasteful? Violent images of war? Gay marriage?
That's a slippery-slope argument, and it's ridiculous in this case. Reddit isn't being pressured to ban any and all offensive content; they're being pressured specifically about sexually-suggestive photographs of underage girls, created without consent.
In fact, Reddit already has rules against this sort of content. From their user agreement: "You further agree not to use any sexually suggestive language or to provide to or post on or through the Website any graphics, text, photographs, images, video, audio or other material that is sexually suggestive or appeals to a prurient interest."
So what the pressure is really about is Reddit ignoring their own rules to benefit one of their personal friends, and a small horde of terrible people defending this decision by pretending that teenage upskirts are free speech.
That's a slippery-slope argument, and it's ridiculous in this case. Reddit isn't being pressured to ban any and all offensive content; they're being pressured specifically about sexually-suggestive photographs of underage girls, created without consent.
Haven't they already decided not to allow the pictures of underage girls? I could be wrong, but I thought that had happened a while ago with the closing of /r/jailbait or some similar subreddit.
> Haven't they already decided not to allow the pictures
> of underage girls? I could be wrong, but I thought that
> had happened a while ago with the closing of /r/jailbait
> or some similar subreddit.
They close particular subreddits when they become widely featured, such as /r/jailbait on CNN or /r/creepshots on Gawker.
They do not ban the users who posted such content, and do not take measures to prevent them from re-creating the same subreddit under a different name.
As a point of order: the admins did not kill creepshots. People who didn't like it got the personal info of a mod and blackmailed him into shutting it down.
Several clones of creepshots popped up and most of them got shut down pretty quick, so it looks like reddit has some kind of new rule but they haven't told the community what it is.
I'm pretty sure there were jailbait-clones set up that got shut down, too.
You further agree not to use any sexually suggestive language or to provide to or post on or through the Website any graphics, text, photographs, images, video, audio or other material that is sexually suggestive or appeals to a prurient interest.
I like the rest of your argument, but this rule exists only on paper. This is lots of porn on reddit, both people posting self-shots as well as (almost assuredly pirated, but that's a separate discussion) professional porn.
In anticipation of the relentless quibbling about what is or isn't "sexually suggestive", I opted to use the word "compromising". Having said that: a Google search for this term finds pictures of teenage girls often with their faces blurred; it's pretty clear what the point of the photos are: to objectify girls and young women. That the objectification is happening as much for the amusement of adults as for their direct sexual gratification doesn't change things up too much for me. Maybe it does for other people.
/r/creepshots was almost exclusively photos of women, very few of whom were obviously underage, in public places.
The extent to which these photos were "sexually suggestive" was largely in control of the women concerned. If you're going to wear low-cut tops, yoga pants, etc. then a photo of yourself taken in public may be interpreted as sexually suggestive.
Contributors to the subreddit were just posting things they had seen in public. What's wrong with that?
Since when did people need consent to post pictures they took, legally, of people in public, where these people have no expectation of privacy, then post them on the Internet with words to the effect of "I find this person physically attractive, I would like to have sexual relations with this person"?
I can sexualize whatever I like, thank you very much.
Some countries recognise the right of privacy. In which case, it is illegal to distribute personal information (like photos) of people without their consent.
You'd think maybe posting photos of minors without their consent might also have been a rule to prevent long-standing issues. But, no?
What is the long-standing issue that you would be preventing though? It's creepy and wrong to be sure, but say banning a specific subreddit with that content, what is the result of that action?
With doxxing you have documented cases of people being harassed based on people finding out their true identity. So banning doxxing helps to prevent situations where people are harassed outside of the site for the things they do on the site.
> With doxxing you have documented cases of people being harassed based on people finding out their true identity. So banning doxxing helps to prevent situations where people are harassed outside of the site for the things they do on the site.
And banning posting candid sexually suggestive photos of kids helps to prevent the subjects of the photos from getting harassed at school when someone finds the photos online. I don't see why that should be any less important than trying to prevent harassment of people who take and post those photos.
At least the person who gets harassed over posting the photos is getting harassed for something he actually deliberately did, whereas the kid might be getting harassed for accidentally showing some cleavage or some underwear. Or maybe it is ultimately the kid's fault for not dressing like a Saudi woman when in public.
Interrogate the assertion that those photos are "creepy and wrong". Why are they creepy and wrong? I think you'll find the answer to your question in there.
Interrogate the assertion that those photos are "creepy and wrong". Why are they creepy and wrong? I think you'll find the answer to your question in there.
Thinks that you don't like are creepy. Browsing photos on facebook is creepy. Watching anime is creepy. Two males kissing or merely being gay is creepy. Why would anybody give a fuck if you think something is creepy?
No, that's not my argument. The creepiness of these particular photos was his assertion, and I suggested that he interrogate his assertion about why they were creepy (and "wrong") to help see why these photos are in particular problematic.
I was specifically not litigating the enforceability of "creepiness" standards.
For what it's worth: Watching anime isn't creepy. Two males kissing isn't creepy.
- no candid shots (where the subject is clearly not aware of the picture)
There's plenty of lines that could be drawn there. Various people have played stupid that no combination of these rules simply couldn't work, but this isn't a brand new problem no one has wondered about before.
What is compromising? Photos of feet? Completely harmless to most people, for some better than tits. There is also a hair fetish. And probably there are a way more. Only post pictures of people wearing burkas?
I don't know what these pictures were like because I had never been on creepshots, but if they were taken in public, there isn't really anything (legally) wrong with them.
The lawfulness of those photos has been disputed. But either way, posting the name, phone number, and employer of someone posting photos to Reddit is also not against the law.
I think if you read my comment carefully you'll discover that I didn't say "child pornography" or "sexually suggestive content featuring minors".
Are you suggesting that "child pornography" and "sexually suggestive content featuring minors" is the bright line, and that anything on the privacy spectrum that doesn't cross that line should be defended? That's the implication I get from your comment, but I'm happy to be corrected.
That's not a real argument. Are you seriously suggesting that there is no line to be drawn about what people can and can't post to Reddit? My guess is you don't support the posting of child pornography and snuff films.
You built a straw man and said, "Are you suggesting this straw man?" You've done this with several comments now.
It's entirely up to a private website to run itself in any manner it deems fit, and if you can't find "intellectual clarity" when the rules are posted then why do you even comment?
No, I surmise that you think I'm attacking a straw man because you saw the words "child pornography" and assumed (incorrectly but reasonably, given the hyperbole in this particular controversy) that I was equating creepshots and jailbait with child pornography.
I was in fact not doing that. I was suggesting that the principle on which your argument rested --- that we should tolerate all content in order to defend free expression --- was probably counterfeit. I was saying that you did have a problem with child pornography, not that you accept it and were thus a suspect participant in this conversation.
If you say "reddit can run itself any way it wants," that's true, but it doesn't lend itself to useful conversation. 'tptacek is also free to comment on what he sees as inconsistent moderation rules on HN (as long as HN tolerates it, etc etc turtles all the way).
Finally - some discussion. The moderation on reddit, outside of the rules, is run by volunteers. The rules set by admin are clear so why does tptacek have an issue with clarity?
The rules appear to be "free expression above all else until someone makes an argument against some particular form of free speech that a small group of Reddit moderators find compelling". I do not think that is a clear standard.
Alright, then, let's rephrase that a bit: "Distasteful" subreddits that consist of compromising photos of PEOPLE taken without their knowledge are to be tolerated." I'm not sure why a rule against minors suddenly makes this okay.
The Internet is a bastion of free speech. Under the guise of pseudo-anonymity, people are free to post whatever content they see fit, and people on the receiving end generally understand that it's just the Internet; it's not serious business.
It is an escape from real life, where you don't have to kowtow to political correctness, fear the tyranny of the majority, and ultimately, and hide your true identity.
'Doxxing' is thus a direct attack on Internet culture.
Under the guise of pseudo-anonymity, people are free to post compromising photos of children for the amusement of their pseudo-anonymous peers?
This just doesn't make sense. Why is the poster (who has deliberately decided to participate in an online forum) entitled to privacy, but the subjects of these photos aren't?
What are you referring to here? /r/creepshots had nothing to do with compromising photos of children.
At a stretch, /r/jailbait and the associated subreddits may have, but reddit took the decision to ban those a long time ago.
It makes perfect sense. Both posting photos of people in public on the Internet and 'doxxing' someone who does this are legal. However, the former is in compliance with Internet culture (the free sharing of information, no matter how controversial) and the latter is not. The latter is an attack on the Internet.
I feel like an easy way to win any argument involving the Internet is to just draw a line around your side of the argument, label the inside of that line "the Internet", and call the opposing argument an "attack on the Internet". I disagree that your argument makes perfect sense, but prefer not to repeat my argument.
You were seeking to draw a comparison between posting controversial content and doxxing, stating there is no "intellectual clarity" in the Internet steadfastly defending the former while rebuking the latter.
I provided that intellectual clarity for you, by explaining how these prima facie inconsistent views are actually entirely consistent with the principles of Internet culture.
No. You're playing a semantic game, by shifting the frame from harmful content (or a discussion about whether/why content is/can be harmful) to controversial content. Nobody is arguing about controversial content. At issue here isn't whether militant creationists can find a forum on Reddit, or hard-right anti-abortion activists, or "god hates gay people" picketers, or the Ku Klux Klan.
The content on /r/creepshots was not, generally speaking, illegal. I cannot fathom any way in which it was harmful. I'm sure you will disagree on this latter point, and I will be very interested to hear you articulate in what sense you thought it caused harm.
You don't win the game by slapping the word "harmful" on controversial content.
Surreptitious, candid, compromising photos of minors are harmful. They put a very public spotlight on people who have neither the life experience nor the cognitive development nor the emotional stability to handle it. The photos themselves are fed into the random social eddies an currents these people have to live in, which currents are made of similarly dysfunctional teenagers making a whole new set of bad decisions based on those photos. Every snarky, gross, nasty, or salacious comment posted on the public threads in which the subjects of those photos are objectified also feeds into the drama.
At the same time, the practice of causing this harm solely for the amusement of groups of anonymous Internet commenters provides social reinforcement not just for the continued posting of harmful photos, but also for the fundamental sick ideas that animate those photos: that teenagers are not developing human beings with their own rights to privacy and personal space and well being, but instead objects for the amusement of strangers.
We are just now beginning to comprehend how harmful peer-bullying is among teenagers. It seems to me that it shouldn't be difficult at all to wrap our heads around the harm caused by the bullying of teenagers by adults.
How you know that there is at least some force to these arguments is, you're arguing on a thread that isn't simply about banning the posting of these photos, but rather about why it's inconsistent to tolerate those photos while banning the mere naming of the people who post them.
Photos of women, predominantly of age, seen in public. Statistically, and by virtue of the photos being taken covertly, very few of the women featured would have known there was a photo of them floating around on the Internet.
Very rarely is a name put to a photo, and reddit specifically prohibited the posting of personal details on the site.
Even if the subjects did find out, so what? I'd be flattered if someone had taken a photo of me in public and posted it online saying they'd like to have sexual relations with me, that I have a nice ass, etc.
I'd be a little creeped out, but not to the point where I'd be calling for the banning of the activity.
There were very few on /r/creepshots from what I saw. Making the discussion about creepshots one about "compromising photos of minors" is disingenuous and grossly misleading.
I don't see how /r/jailbait is relevant to this discussion. violentacrez's involvement in that subreddit does not somehow justify his doxxing.
Besides, there was nothing wrong with most of the content on /r/jailbait either. Almost all of it was legal, rarely were any photos sexually suggestive, and actual child pornography was strictly prohibited.
Reddit only shut it down because the media furore over it was threatening to damage the reddit community as a whole.
I strongly disagree that there is anything misleading about discussing compromising- but- ostensibly- lawful photos of teenagers posted to Reddit by trolls, and submit as evidence the fact that you can't even write a comment about whether such photos were present without proceeding to justify those photos, as you did here ("Besides, there was nothing wrong with most of the content on /r/jailbait either").
Unfortunately, I do agree with you that the only reason anything actually happened on Reddit is that it hit the media, and the admins just want to avoid the wrong kind of media attention. It's unfortunate because there is a more important reason to ban subreddits like that: they exist in order to milk amusement from harm.
You're dragging /r/jailbait into the discussion because you think it adds weight to your argument. I'm saying it is no only irrelevant to the current discussion, but even if it were relevant, there was nothing 'wrong' with /r/jailbait.
/r/creepshots and /r/jailbait are completely different animals.
(a) There were photos of underage subjects on creepshots.
(b) The controversy we're discussing is the outing of the person responsible both for creepshots and for jailbait.
(c) The root comment in this thread isn't specifically about either subreddit, but rather "photos of minors". The distinction you're trying to draw between the subreddits isn't relevant to my point.
(d) It is nevertheless disingenuous to try at this point to back away from defending photos of minors after you've specifically attempted to justify them. The subtext in this little branch of the thread is that you do in fact think it's wrong to "censor" photos of underage children, so it's not productive for you to fall back on "creepshots wasn't about that".
If, by switching back to "creepshots isn't about underage subjects", you mean to concede the argument about the legitimacy of posting photos of underage subjects, just say that. Don't pretend that you're formulating a convincing argument by repeatedly moving the goalposts. It's not like I'm suddenly going to forget that you stuck up for "jailbait", or that there were in fact underage photos on "creepshots".
I think the content on both /r/jailbait and /r/creepshots was, with only a few exceptions, legal and harmless.
Neither subreddit was shut down because it was illegal or harmful. The former was shut down as a result of media hysteria, and the latter as the result of blackmail.
I don't think you know much about either subreddit, to be honest.
Not being a reader of either of this subreddits does not imply that I don't know anything about what was on them. Their contents have been reported by others for a long time.
>There is no intellectual clarity to these lines at all; they're simply gerrymandered around the proclivities of the most active Reddit users. I guess that's fine, but it's hard to pretend that there's any important ideal being defended by their management.
If that was true subreddits like r/shitredditsays would be banned for "doxxing" and harboring hostility towards reddit as a whole. All this noise is generating from that single subreddit and it would be so easy for reddit to make it disappear. But they don't.
Publishing private information of other people, not just those who "traffic in those photos", is forbidden because it the past it has led to real-life harassment. It's a pretty old and established rule.
While a horrible situation, I don't think her flashing herself to someone over a webcam counts as "covert."
(I shouldn't have to say this, but I'm obviously not saying that there shouldn't be social and legal consequences for the people who kept on posting her overt topless photos. Why aren't those draconian sexting laws we hear in other places being applied to them?)
You understand that bystanders like me puzzling their way through what's happening with Reddit and this "stand" that they're taking see surreptitiously taken photos of minors posted for the amusement of a creepy Reddit thread to also be private information about other people, right?
Do you just disagree that they're the same kind of information? Is that where the controversy is here?
There was a rule for doxxing: it was something like "personally identifying information about a person who didn't want that information revealed."
And creepshots largely didn't meet the definition of that rule, because no one knew who the people in the pictures were.
Now, you can certainly wish the rule were something that would have blocked creepshots and doxxing. Like "information about anyone that they don't want a bunch of strangers on the Internet reading."
Reddit has tried to turn over the decisions about what to allow to a rule-based system instead of having to have any human discretion involved. I can see the appeal in wanting that (any google search for "technical solution for social problem" will describe why people keep on trying it), but it leads to things that obviously look absolutely crazy to outsiders.
Reddit probably needs to grow up and have some human discretion involved. It is going to collapse under its own weight without that.
The controversy is not just around photos of minors, there's gore on reddit, too. It really is about distasteful content in general and not just one particular instance of it.
And yes, I do think that information inciting or enabling real-life harassment is different from just a photo taken in public without the accompanying additional info.
People have been able to track people and locations surprisingly little information.
What if those photos do leak information that could enable real-life harassement (like EXIF metadata, street sign, etc) . Can we trust the submitter to guarantee it never will? If it happens, who's to blame?
"No one could possibly monitor that" is the same argument the pro-creepshot people use to explain why you can't ban pictures of children or candid pictures. Apparently because they think the only way to solve that is to hire a PI to painstakingly investigate each and every submission.
Those are both nuts. You handle the issue the way adults handle the issue:
1. Say "you can't post X."
2. Count on the fact that most people won't post X once you tell them not to (on pains of account sanction, which are already in place for rules against things like spam).
3. Deal with the complains of false positives and false negatives on a case-by-case basis.
EXIF metadata is easy to automate. What if there is a logo of a local business reflected on a surface that most people barely notice.
Someone recognizes this, tracks the person down.
It's a bit over the top, but these things happen. If that exposes one of those underage girls, who is accountable?
Leaking real world information can be done in many and subtle ways. There are times where people think the image origin is untraceable, but it isn't. Will reddit take the heat? The poster? The mod?
> [...] surreptitiously taken photos of minors posted for the amusement of a creepy Reddit thread to also be private information about other people, right?
Taking a photo of someone in public and sharing it online does not constitute a breach of privacy. You do not have any expectation of privacy when you step out in public.
They might as well put up a sign that says "Management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone."
Or the more Orwellian, "All speech is free on Reddit. Some speech is just freer than others."
At least they'd be honest that they are just making the rules up as they go and your speech is as free as the next Anderson Cooper exposé or changing of the tides.
And so I finally deleted my reddit account. Goodbye "Six Year Club" Trophy!
Of course, reddit can happily decide to be a beacon for upholding free speech rights and can chose to allow distasteful subreddits. I am not going to argue with their right to do it.
But at the same time I don't wish to be associated in any way with that type of content.
EDIT: As there has been quite a strong reaction to me saying that I decided to delete my reddit account, I think it's worth me emphasizing what I said above about reddit being free to do as they please. I am NOT telling them how to run their site; I am merely stepping away from a community that has content that I dislike.
EDIT: I think the fundamental schism is that reddit sees itself as a collection of independent web sites (subreddits); the rest of the world is likely to see it as one place. A similar thing can be said about 4chan.org. If you ignore /b/ there's other interesting content, but in the public's imagination 4chan is /b/.
There's been a rash of reporting on cyber-bullying via Facebook lately - with some tragic cases of youngsters committing suicide from the despicable actions of their online torturers.
Do you intend to renounce your Facebook account also?
What reasonable person would associate you with this type of deplorable behavior because you are also a Facebook user?
If someone who is so ignorant that they would associate you with cyber-bullying simply because you're also a Facebook user, would you really care about the opinion of this person, and would their opinion actually matter?
There will always be a particularly ignorant portion of the population that will conflate membership in a group with the actions of a subgroup. This has been true for rock music, MySpace, Facebook, rap music, goths, homosexuality, and beyond. Why pander to these individuals and let their ignorance dictate your actions?
I can understand the angle of "I find this content disgusting, and I am disappointed that Reddit is not taking a hard stance against it" - if that's your position, I get you 100%. But the whole association thing I don't get.
Facebook does not publicly tolerate the use of their service to harass minors. Does this memo from the Reddit CEO sound like something Zuckerberg would say? It doesn't to me.
My understanding is that the overwhelming majority of "jailbait" images that were posted on Reddit came from Facebook by way of 4chan (or at least that's what violentacrez, the mod of the now closed /r/jailbait subreddit, claims). Yesterday Facebook suggested I Like the "Sexy Teenagers" group (which had 49k Likes). Facebook is hardly a good example of place that isn't allowing the sexualization of minors.
It would come down to whether Facebook had done anything about the problem or not. If Facebook had said "that's free speech and we're leaving it alone" then I would have been upset and wanted to take action (which might have meant deleting my Facebook account).
I do think a lot of the content that's been talked about is disgusting. I'm not disappointed that reddit is not taking a hard stance on the matter. They have decided to uphold a notion of free speech, but given that the site will be associated with this content in the mind of the general public I would rather not be part of it.
> given that the site will be associated with this content in the mind of the general public I would rather not be part of it
This is why pseudonymity is so crucial. Lack of it is a recipe for getting our civilization stuck on popular, noncontroversial ideas. There could be some validity to content you are pressured to publicly shun (though I acknowledge underwear pictures are not a good example).
Yes. And had I chosen to use a pseudonym on reddit rather than my real identity, then I doubt I would have deleted my account because I would not have felt that I was anyway associated with the content.
It looks like you're from the UK. Are you going to renounce your citizenship since your government has done such awful things as attacking countries like Iraq? By your logic, I should forever associate you with that decision and deride you for it.
If someone were to compile a list of distasteful websites using Cloudflare would it help you quit working there to prevent you being associated with that content?
I feel that CloudFlare is similar to a search engine, DNS provider, hosting company, domain registrar etc. in that we are providing a shared service and inevitably some users of that service will be things that I personally dislike.
As I mentioned above in an EDIT, the problem with reddit is that reddit sees itself as a group of subreddits which are different communities; everyone else sees reddit as a single entity. So, I don't want to be associated with the single entity that's supporting this content that I find distasteful.
I personally find these forms of witch hunts to censor free speech absolutely disgusting.
In my opinion people who support something like this, are in the same category as those who take up the forks and march against Google because of "certain" videos, that they feel offended by.
It is evidence of an absolutely intolerant, self-centered world view, that has in my view no place in a democratic society.
I'll be keeping my account, because there are several small subreddits I enjoy reading and participating in. That's the extent of my association with Reddit. I don't look at or comment on default subs, I don't make Reddit references in real life, I don't know who the current crop of Reddit 'celebrities' are.
There's a much better Reddit underneath all of the garbage that makes up 'default' Reddit. I don't really care what the public image of Reddit is, because nobody in real life knows or cares that I use it.
No, because I consider Google to be something closer to a 'common carrier' and it is to be expected that a great deal of material I don't like is accessible.
Does it mean that Google condones the material? I don't think so.
I've deleted my account for precisely the opposite reason.
Reddit sold out. Their latest statement on the /r/creepshots debacle is too little, too late. If they honestly believe in free speech, they should have weathered the /r/jailbait storm rather than giving into popular pressure.
Reddit is too big of a target to continue the free speech advocacy line. Back when it was a niche community that the press didn't care about, it might have worked, but not now.
I also considered this, but concluded it would be counter-productive.
These creepy subreddits have been allowed to exist for so long because users who disagreed decided to remain silent. They're only coming to light now because some Reddit users have decided to break their silence and speak out.
If you want to help clean up Reddit, then a six-year account is a useful asset.
It shouldn't be limited to minors. They had a field day with that old Gawker editor vs. Jimmy Kimmel video yesterday because she said people should understand that if they step outside of their house, they're subjecting themselves to ridicule. That is the exact same argument that r/creepshots supporters use.
I think you should be more embarrassed by this incredible overreaction than by any association with reddit, which has been responsible for huge fundraising events, record-breaking gift exchanges, AMAs from the POTUS, etc., etc.
If you're worried about your internet reputation, I feel like comments like this aren't helping.
Personally I don't feel strongly one way or another about the shutdown of creepshots and jailbait, but come on.
"We're not going to shut down distasteful subreddits, except the ones we already did! But no more! Honest!"
I guess I'll believe it when I see it. Reddit has no shortage of content that is just one viral blog post away from a PR shitstorm. This newfound (and if I may say, a bit late) respect for expression will be challenged sooner rather than later.
Since you're obviously a pretty thoughtful guy, I'm curious why you don't have a strong opinion about creepshots and jailbait. I've read the rest of what you said and inferred a sort of "pox on all their houses" message from it. Jailbait and creepshots seems like the kind of thing you'd normally have a problem with. Why don't you?
(I'm asking seriously, expecting to learn something about the situation from your response, not to make a point.)
I'm OK with it because I see it as a necessary evil - always considering the worst implementations of any new rules.
Right now we all have the same expectation of privacy - that is we have none if in public, and none if its a digitally distributed photo. That expectation does not shift based on one's age.
What if the non-consenting minor is Miley Cyrus? What if a compromising photo of police brutality has a kid in the background - can they force a take-down of my photo? Off the deep end, but I'm just pointing out that we are on a level playing field, and it's likely for the better.
We obviously make many concessions to our rights to protect children, but this is not one of them. E.g., as an adult male, I can't eat my sandwich in some NY parks unless I'm accompanied by a child. I just hope the children are grateful for my sacrifice ...
I have a lot of thoughts about this, but for the sake of coherence I'm going to be simplifying a few things, hopefully this remains readable.
I do have substantial problems with the content of creepshots and jailbait, but I cannot divine a scheme to separate such content that wouldn't trample over other content I think is legitimate. In all the scenarios I've run in my head, the cure is always worse than the disease.
I can identify legitimate content that is not at all clearly separable from the contents of creepshots (less so jailbait), and this leads me to believe that not only would attempts to eradicate this sort of content lead to suppression of existing, legitimate expression, but also prevent the emergence of new, as of yet non-existent forms of legitimate expression.
That's all very vague and hand-wavy, so what follows will be some specifics. For the sake of clarity I'm going to assume you know nothing about photography as an art form - if you do, well, we'll be covering some familiar ground. I apologize if this is overly verbose or stream-of-consciousness, there's a lot of ground to cover:
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My other main thing outside of creating software is photography - particularly street photography, a genre with a long and colorful history, featuring some of the most well-known photographers of all time (Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Elliot Erwitt, Daido Moriyama, etc).
In a nutshell (and with some simplification), street photography is the candid capture of life as it happens. Feel free to Google any of the above names for an example of what I'm talking about.
It is wide celebrated, and may be the next-oldest form of photography after landscapes. Well known examples of street photography hang in the MoMA, Met, Louvre, and beyond. Most "mainstream" street photography is rather mild and inoffensive, but some of it is controversial in its content and the means by which it's obtained.
Many photographers despise his methodology, but the results are widely acknowledged to be very good. There is a never-ending ethical battle in the photographic community about the acceptability of it, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that this is legitimate expression.
There are some uncomfortable parallels between creepshots and street photography:
- The subject is frequently unaware. Candidness, after all.
- It is intentionally a (hopefully mild) breach of the subject's privacy. Someone's relaxing in a hammock, someone reading a book, two people conversing in a bar. Nothing that would constitute a legal breach of privacy, but perhaps a colloquial expectation of being unwatched while in public.
- Is is distributed widely mostly without the subject's consent or control. There are celebrated works hanging in the MoMA where the subjects are still unaware they've been photographed.
So, we can't use these criteria to filter creepshots-like content, or we wipe out 100 years of street photography (or be hypocrites), and even a large portion of paintings.
So what are the differences between street photography and creepshots-like content?
Deliberate sexualization of the subjects? Some street photography does this, particularly contemporary street that explores some of the more uncommon themes not seen in classical (pre-60s) street photography.
The children in the image later were extremely offended at perceived exploitation of their image. They were after all, incapable of consenting to the picture - and even if they did they certainly had no say in how it has been displayed and distributed. So sexualization or not, exploitation is both subjective and a poor place to draw the line.
So we've sort of exhausted ourselves here: unaware subjects, breach of social mores re: privacy in public spaces, consent, sexualization of subject, and potential/existing exploitation - all of which are inappropriate places to draw the line as they will all ban substantial existing legitimate content. Not to mention as of yet non-existent content along these lines.
So at the core of it, there does not appear to be an objective measure by which we can identify and eliminate content of creepshots' nature, not without hugely overstepping and eliminating work that both art aficionados and lay appreciators have agreed to be hugely worthwhile and relevant.
The only workable scheme appears to be "we will know bad content when we see it", which I suppose has been Reddit's MO thus far: allow it until enough of a stink is raised, but in general I highly dislike moral stances based around "well, we'll just know". Soft descriptors like "pervy", "creepy", etc, are also unreliable - especially when amateur attempts at street photography frequently (and unintentionally) come across as such.
So yeah, that's why I don't advocate for the banning of this sort of content on Reddit, even though I strongly dislike it. If anything, I may dislike this content more than most, since it makes my future work as a street photographer harder - this is every attractive woman's suspicious nightmare come to life, and content like this means I will face an uphill battle in the future doing my thing.
Hopefully this rambling mess makes some kind of sense.
This all makes great sense. Can I ask then: doesn't it drive you absolutely fucking batty when people abuse a privilege you depend on for your art? A privilege you're careful to respect, that anonymous shitstains publicly piss on solely to glean some tiny superficial shred of mirth out of? How protective of the privacy of those people do you feel?
Photography isn't my issue (but bullying, that does get my attention), but my work depends on other privileges that are routinely abused by others.
Yes, it's infuriating. Jailbait and creepshots bother me immensely as a photographer (forgetting the regular-human part for a second).
But what can you do about it? When I first started shooting street I didn't seek permission from anyone else either, and I'm quite certain I've come off as "the creep with the camera" in my hapless beginner stumbling. We don't have the right to restrict the privileges we need, and even if we had the right we'd have no idea how to implement such a restriction.
Hell, I probably still do. In fact, I know I still do on occasion.
As for privacy - street photography requires at least a little bit of instinctive amorality. Personally - and I've heard other photographers describe the same phenomenon - you train yourself to compose it and shoot it before the other side of your brain kicks in and says "but wait...".
Faster than the speed of your moral compass? :P
I curate very hard, both for my own sake as well as the subjects. Photography is a craft where it's very easy to make untoward implications merely by composing craftily. I scrub all results to make sure crafty composition never comes off negatively on the subject - unless the negative aspect existed as I shot the picture. A man angrily screaming at a police officer? I'll take that. A shot where it looks like someone is eyeing a woman's ass but isn't really? Nope.
I also retain copyright on all street photographs. I do not release any street photographs under any CC licenses - I trust my own judgment on where and how to show these photographs, but not others. It's something of a symbolic gesture though - once a JPEG is in the wild your control over it is limited at best.
The last part is no homeless pictures ever. There's a huge train of thought behind this one for the sake of brevity I won't expand on.
Perhaps I should've expanded... I agree with you totally.
What I think is that those who find the content distasteful should either to seek to lobby to make that content illegal, or ignore it. But seeking to force self-censorship is not the solution.
I agree with you. But I would point out that if the people want to re-define unacceptable behaviour then through representation they already have the means, reddit and other sites will comply with the law.
I'm curious - do you support the removal of /r/jailbait and /r/creepshots? If so, do you really think Reddit harbors no other horrible stuff? If not, do you really think that letting those subreddits exist is a reasonable price to pay for "free speech"?
Thanks, that was really interesting insight into what's going on behind the scenes.
So it looks like most of this is being orchestrated by the group running SRS (ex-somethingawful?), trying to shake the foundations of reddit just to "see what happens"? I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
Excellent - happy to see Reddit supporting free speech and not giving into this mainstream media bullying campaign.
I wish more platforms would abide to the rule of law and not to a hypocritical rule imposed by professionally "i am outraged, there is something on the internet, that i don't like, this has to stop!!!" commentators.
I do not like articles on the Internet that purport to explain that the world is 9,000 years old, or that suggest that the Bible demands that women be subservient to men. I don't like articles that suggest that the world is ruled by a secret cartel of Jewish international bankers. I don't like articles that militate against taxes for capital gains or inheritances.
I tolerate all of these things because they are ideas. Stupid ones, yes, but ideas.
A photo of a minor taken without their consent and posted to a public forum for people to comment on is something worse than a blog post that tries to convince me that the world is 9,000 years old.
In my opinion the issue is relatively simple. If the content is illegal, then remove it. If it is not, then it stays.
It can not be the task of a platform provider to conduct an in-depth investigation on who agreed or did not agree on a picture being taken. Otherwise you would need to include with every picture some form of a weaver were all persons displayed state their real age and consent to the picture.
Well then you agree with the point I made, which is that you can't stand on the ceremony of "free speech" while forbidding forms of otherwise lawful speech that happen to challenge the mores of the group, such as the names and employers of pseudonymous members of the group.
Sure, I am all for removing illegal content. But I am absolutely against per-emtive attempts to censor the incredible diversity that Reddit has to offer.
Lots of platform providers explicitly decide to moderate things that aren't illegal. There are lots of perfectly legal things that HN won't let me discuss, as is their right.
A rule of "no candid photographs" isn't as impossible to set up as you think. Sure it will have some false positives and false negatives, just like filters on porn, on spam, on off-topic posts, and so on.
It depends on the type of community. Reddit positions itself as a platform infrastructure for a rich diversity of communities. HN has a relatively narrow approach, trying to keep discussions as focused and as on topic as possible. It is more or less a traditional forum, only that the rules are relatively clear and moderators (i.e. PG) don't overplay their authority.
I think the whole creepshots thing shows how hypocritical reddit is about free speech. I thought the Gawker article did a good job describing the hive mind attitude there of "my speech is OK, but you must burn for yours". And, naturally, they responded exactly as I would expect: banning that speech.
I don't envy reddit's admins regarding this topic. Their user base is extremely worked up over the notion of free speech, so any appearance of interfering will be seen in a horrible light. But things like creepshots and jailbait do horrible things for their reputation, which could leave it with a situation where it becomes another 4chan, which I don't think they want.
In the end, I agree with potatolicious: this commitment to free speech will last only until the next shit storm occurs.
Reddit was following an internally consistent rule pattern when banning links to Gawker.
(You can argue that following the rule pattern is stupid, like something that comes out of a large bureaucracy instead of a <10 person startup. I'd agree.)
this commitment to free speech will last only until the next shit storm occurs
Since reddit has shown the only times they ban anything is in response to shit storms, they have unwittingly set themselves up for more shit storms. AFAIK the people who hated creepshots got ignored when raising the question to the admins, so the only other option was to create a new shit storm.
Reddit probably thinks they are sticking to their guns, but by not having any kind of release valve beyond a shit storm, they're bringing them on.
I suppose my original comment was not clear. I meant the reddit community, not Reddit, the company. I think the Reddit admins are being reasonably consistent (or at least trying to be).
Banning the article that doxxes the guy is following their rule. Banning all of Gawker is something very different. It's a way for reddit's moderators to punish Gawker for "contempt of reddit".
by not having any kind of release valve beyond a shit storm, they're bringing them on
The "distasteful" content always bothered me but was something that was so disconnected from my normal use since I stay mostly in the programming and nyc subreddits...I see things like r/creepshots as being one of the downsides to the many upsides of how reddit is run, and one with no perfect solution.
However, this dampened my interest in Reddit quite a bit:
> Mr Wong described the decision as a mistake that was "not making Reddit look so good". The ban has now been lifted.
"As admins, we chose to recognise that opponents have the right to criticise us, to expose us, to tell a story about us - even if we don't like that story or we feel it's wrong."
However, individual subreddits can choose their own rules regarding what sites are blocked. One popular area, Politics, is continuing to block Gawker links.
It is sickening how quickly a site that is devoted to the extremes of free speech would turn into that they despise after an investigative piece...and all of this for someone who, besides administering the "distasteful" content in question, turned tail and deleted his account after being outed.
the issue is not (only) having distasteful content; the real issue is censoring links to content that embarrasses redditors, like the Gawker outing of the reddit creep, in a shockingly hypocritical display of a double standard.
you cannot "uphold the principles of free speech" by keeping creepy content under the "it's not illegal" moniker, and at the same time censor the outing of one of the moderators of said content - another perfectly legal action.
It seems to me that Reddit did the right thing here. How they got there is questionable, but I think they've got it right.
1) "No child pornography or sexually suggestive content featuring minors"
2) No doxxing internally, external links allowed
To stay viable, Reddit has to ban internal doxxing. There have been several instances in the past of false accusations combined with doxxing which have resulted in witch hunts.
But doxxing is pretty much the only defence the Internet has against legal yet hateful and harmful pseudonymous speech. So by drawing the line where they did, they've made witch hunts more difficult to pull off, but still possible.
They're also just bowing to the inevitable: they can't censor the Internet, so any attempt to do so will fail.
So did they do the right thing because it was the right thing, or just because it was inevitable? They really give the impression that it was the latter, so they don't come out of this affair smelling very good.
Reddit is a private business corporate entity, and not a legislative body of the government, but this back-and-forth about what is allowed on Reddit and what is not illustrates a famous saying about how laws are made: "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (1881), p. 1.
On my part, I decided not to get a second username on Reddit after being a very early adopted on Reddit, when there was a foul-up of the user database such that my user account data was lost. I figured a service that could foul up something like that (MSN did the same, years ago) was not ready for prime time, so I have never re-upped. I've never liked the immature, overly long rewritten titles on submissions, or most of the other juvenile behavior seen on Reddit. Yeah, I know, everyone would simply tell me to go look for a good subreddit. I tried that a few times, but decided that the subreddits also have their culture dragged down, even when they are about interesting topics and include thoughtful participants, by the general culture on Reddit. Rather than look for a subreddit, I try to invest in making Hacker News a better community. That works for me.
As an aside, I'm starting to doubt the inherent value of Internet anonymity in the first place.
There are obvious good uses for it: Wikileaks in its heyday comes to mind (that is, the time when they were actually a wiki, releasing leaks while keeping their sources safe, not going out of their way to create PR nightmares for the US government). But the vast majority of other widely-defended use cases for it seem to be people using it as a license to do nasty things like jailbait/creepshots. Even VA recognized that a compromise of his identity would mean professional ruination, even as he exposed himself and his family to that risk by revealing himself to people he thought he could trust.
While Reddit definitely shouldn't start trying to "solve" the problem, clearly the use of vigilante "doxxing" as a weapon against people they don't like isn't a real solution either. Is there even a good middle ground? "Do distasteful things on peril of Gawker running a story about you"?
The value of Internet (pseudo-)anonymity is not limited to the big, headline-grabbing incidents.
It underlies almost all the original content posted on the Internet. Simply put, if you had to attach your real life identity to everything you posted online, original content would dry up overnight.
People would no longer express their sincere opinions, they would no longer debate controversial issues. They would no longer seek help and advice for medical conditions, seek emotional support for their troubles, so on and so forth.
Simply put, if you had to attach your real life identity to everything you posted online, original content would dry up overnight.
Would it? People created original content long before they could post it online with an expectation of anonymity. There are a lot of people who use their real life identities online. Just as I am, right now.
I don't think it would dry up completely, but the flood of original content would turn into a slow trickle.
Once your real life identity is attached to anything you post, so many topics go off limits. You can no longer talk about your job, your education, your friends, your health, religion, politics, etc.
You can no longer talk about people behind their backs, or embellish stories for entertainment value.
You can no longer post a funny cat picture, or share a cool video, for fear of how it might change people's perception of you as a person.
The list of topics that end up off limits goes on and on.
You can no longer talk about your job, your education, your friends, your health, religion, politics, etc
You can still talk about all of those things (I do, all the time) but what you can't do is talk about those things without consequences.
I'm starting to think that the "never use your real name online" wisdom from 20 years ago has done our culture a huge disservice. The message I'm teaching my kids is "only post things online that you would be comfortable seeing on the front page of the newspaper"
What I mean by not being able to talk about them is that you can't express your honest opinions.
Most people probably think their boss is a jerk, that their colleagues are incompetent, that their company rips off their clients, so on and so forth. You can't say any of that with your name, and by extension that of your employer, attached to it.
The same applies to education. Teachers can no longer discuss teaching methods or lesson plans online, lest their pupils find out their teacher doesn't have a clue what they're teaching. Pupils can no longer criticise their schools online, or seek help with bullying.
The list of topics that people are willing to talk about pseudo-anonymously but not with their real name attached to their comments is endless.
> The message I'm teaching my kids is "only post things online that you would be comfortable seeing on the front page of the newspaper"
That's precisely the attitude I subscribe to, and it's why I don't have much sympathy for the teenagers who take photos of themselves scantily clad, put them on Facebook, only to have them end up on places like /r/jailbait.
What is it about this comment that you worry is so "controversial" or "dangerous" that you wouldn't consider posting it under your real name? (I'm not saying you should, I'm just curious.)
I was referring to posting in this thread generally, not that specific comment. Elsewhere in this thread I can be found defending /r/creepshots and questioning the harm caused by the subreddit.
I wouldn't want these opinions attached to my real life identity, not because I don't stand by them, but because people are fucking crazy.
I know there are people out there who would harass me relentlessly simply for saying /r/creepshots was harmless, no matter how much truth there is in the statement.
"There sure has been a lot of trouble lately for Reddit, and I'd like to talk about about that before I nip off for a spot of tea"
Other issues aside, this sentence uses several British expressions. Wong does not seem to be British. Is Wong acting British because he is talking to the BBC? Is the BBC paraphrasing? That quote just seems odd and contrived.
Meanwhile, "doxxing" of the people who traffic in those photos is forbidden. That's not "free speech", it's something else.
However, journalism that happens to disclose identities of Reddit trolls... that's not necessarily "doxxing". It's a fine line.
There is no intellectual clarity to these lines at all; they're simply gerrymandered around the proclivities of the most active Reddit users. I guess that's fine, but it's hard to pretend that there's any important ideal being defended by their management.