I was ready to be on board with this just because Gawker is such a mess, but anyone that follows r/SubredditDrama knows of Violentacruz and r/creepshots just shouldn't exist. I find it surprising that Reddit moderators are going so far as to do this for the sake of someone that is putting hundreds, if not thousands, of women at risk of being stalked or otherwise victimized by the type of people that think there's nothing wrong with posting pictures them to gawk at or make fun of. I really wanted a site like Reddit to work and be able to function without too much politics or this kind of childish crap, but this is really taking the cake and encouraging me to build out another alternative.
There was a great discussion on the implications a subreddit like r/creepshots can have on r/TwoXChromosomes last week. I haven't visited the site yet today, but I'd imagine they just alienated their entire female userbase (myself included), as if the users of that site didn't do enough of that already.
There aren't really any good players here (Adrian Chen is also a horse's-ass). Anyways, these subreddit moderators are trying to protect their community, regardless of who is being targeted.
For people looking for more background on the drama:
Also note that Saydrah, who appears to be defending him a bit, was a long-time reddit mod (also was an active 2Xer and is pretty pro-women's-rights). She used to be much more active but someone doxed her a couple years ago and found out she was a social-media marketer (including consulting on reddit promotion) and the reddit community turned on her pretty quickly. She was personally harassed and some members of her family were as well. Part of the female community on reddit also turned on her a bit (though not so agressively) when she posed -- in a non-provocative fully-clothed manner -- in the Reddit calendar in 2009.
If I recall correctly the reason the female community turned on Saydrah was not the photos she posted, it was because she tried to manipulate the female community into backing her up by using some really sleazy stuff. She said her gender was the reason behind the situation and nobody agreed and tore her apart for it.
There's a post somewhere, I'll try and locate it. I was an active redditor during the drama.
What is exactly wrong with taking pictures of clothed people on public places without their knowledge? I thought this happens all the damn time. Before the collective PC hysteria I saw /r/creepshots mostly as an oddity. Strange people doing strange things.
If /r/creepshots gets banned it will be just another step towards suppression of completely legal speech, because of emotional hyperventilation that has no basis in reality.
Because it is targeting people for the sole intention of harassing them at a global level. The TwoX thread had a few stories of people finding out second-hand that they were posted on there, how demeaning it was and how powerless they felt to do anything about it. They then had to deal with the repercussions of other friends/family/co-workers coming across it and all of the sleezy or insulting things said in the comments about them. No one deserves that.
Now think if the picture was taken at or around their workplace and what could happen. I can only imagine that there are bottomfeeders out there who went out of their way to try to locate where one of these women was.
While doxxing someone isn't the answer, something needs to be done so that bullies/trolls get the help they need and we can prevent something terrible from happening to one of the people posted.
All I see is suppression of free speech because it made somebody feel bad. Nothing actually illegal.
I'm pretty sure I can't just relate to how this makes women feel. If somebody took my pictures without me knowing about it and a thread about the picture talking "nice ass" "what a handsome guy" it would just raise my self-esteem.
Of course I would think these women (or gay men) would be weird and a little sad, but nothing more.
Freedom of speech is not meant to protect someones feelings. It is in fact because of the opposite. It is meant to protect speech that can hurt someones feelings. Sure, they can be judged by the content of that speech but they should still be allowed to say it.
Only exceptions I can see to this are hate speech and child porn.
You might think that's flattering, but I don't care what those people think about me and I definitely didn't ask them for their opinion -- whether or not it's in my favor. Do women like cat-calls from neighborhood windows and construction workers? No, it's rude and it implies that I exist for their enjoyment.
At the end of the day, in an era where facial- and location-recognition software are becoming more and more the norm, I don't need threads about my "nice ass" being tied to my face and my whereabouts on an open forum where anyone with a grudge against me personally or just somebody that hates my face could go and start drama without my presence and ability to defend myself.
In nearly every single thread with a picture of someone, there is a comment or two asking "Does this person live in X?" or "Is their name Y?" A (somewhat humiliating) photo of an acquaintance was posted and made it to the front page, and it seemed like everyone knew a girl that looked like her and named names, trying to work together to solve this unwanted mystery.
In the worst scenarios, you'll get exes that go off the rails and start listing off details about them before a mod finds the post. Privacy is a right, not a privilege, and while the lines blur and it becomes more of an ethical issue between who you trust with images/information you post online, it should still be treated from the perspective that gawkers should find their kicks elsewhere.
So you're pro-doxxing, then, right? Addresses and phone numbers are public record anyway, right? Why should I care if a submitter "feels bad" about his personal info leaking onto the net?
I have two exceptions to free speech: child porn and hate speech. Doxxing is dangerously close to hate speech. Its only purpose is to root out the guy or girl who made a controversial statement and punish him or her for making it. Without anonymity it is often difficult and dangerous to express reasonable, but truly controversial ideas.
In regards to Violentacrez: Every community has shock jocks. I'm not condoning any of the actions, as that shit truly is creepy on an inhuman scale, but one should understand that without the community support, the guy has nothing.
The ultimate issue is not that an individual like Violentacrez exists, but instead that the community enables it.
I'd rejoice, but history has proven that there's either another one lurking in obscurity or we'll see something similar crop up once the pitchforks are put back down.
I'm in two minds about this, mainly because I have an utter lack of sympathy for both sides.
I'm a regular redditor, and in all honesty I wasn't aware of any of any of this drama- I don't go to any of the creppy, weird subreddits mentioned, and have long since removed /r/politics from my front page. So, "Reddit" isn't readying for anything- just some overly militant subreddits.
Ditto, I've only heard very minor murmurs about this, having unsubscribed from all of the default subreddits save /r/gaming. /r/politics, /r/atheism, etc, are just cesspools of ignorance as bad as the people they lampoon daily.
I'm also having a hard time drumming up sympathy for Gawker - they have consistently and repeatedly proven themselves to be complete unprofessionals, have zero journalistic integrity or credibility, and have some of the worst, borderline libelous "reporting" I've seen on any major blogs.
It's like Violentacres and Gawker are built for each other - morally I'd consider them in the same ballpark.
I don't think it is useful to frame this as forums drama (which it certainly is on the surface), but as community self-policing. Yes, /r/politics, /r/atheism and Gawker are pretty similar, featuring shallow identity politics in easily consumable outrage-of-the-day snack packages.
But /r/politics and /r/atheism aren't the targets. Did you see /r/jailbait, /r/upskirt, /r/CreepShots, etc before they were taken down? Do you really put child porn, upskirt photos, and trading strategies for creeping on unsuspecting women in public in the same moral ballpark as shitty journalism?
/r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and shame the participants. Sexual predators need to be confronted globally in any forum they are present in, and community confrontation is exactly what most of the offenders need. The presence of Gawker in the affair is a small price to pay to help reduce sexual violence.
> "/r/ShitRedditSays is right to eliminate these communities from Reddit and shame the participants."
I really, really heavily disagree here. /r/ShitRedditSays is very much the opposite end of the spectrum from /r/creepshots (et al), and having the pendulum swing completely in the other direction is, IMO, just as bad.
Look at the content of /r/ShitRedditSays. Like, really look at it as a whole with a critical eye - you have a few truly egregious things getting called out, then you have people getting into a populist rage-fest over inane stupidity, and you also get a very large chunk of simply harassing people for going against groupthink/being controversial.
/r/ShitRedditSays is exactly the sort of censorship we don't want - i.e., an organized cabal of users who enforce their ideology on everyone else by means of harassment, ad hominem attacks, labeling, and drumming up massive populist outrage. Go up against /r/srs? Congrats, you are now a misogynistic racist gay-bashing bigot, regardless of what you actually said. Once /r/srs readers hook onto a thread all semblance of discussion stops. Silent downvotes plunge posts into oblivion with nary an explanation, combined with a litany of outraged replies, name-calling, and ad hominem attacks.
They're not the objective observers they think they are - like every other subreddit they have evolved their own groupthink and notion of what is acceptable and not, and it happens that they've settled into a fairly narrow definition of acceptable content (whereas /r/creepshots have a very very wide definition of acceptable content).
No, just no. /r/ShitRedditSays is not the solution to /r/creepshots and the like. You go from an open community with a fringe, disturbing element... to a closed community that toes the party line, or else.
Reddit's defaults are pretty bad -- I think a huge upgrade would be when a first time visitor registers, they are shown SFW r/all and then similar to signing up for Pinterest, asks about your interests, then displays a list of several subs that might be most relevant to your interests. As a rock climbing, coffee loving Seattleite who loves to learn about science, r/climbing, r/coffee, r/seattle and r/askscience are great!
And the Gawker network is after one thing, pageviews. So the more controversy they conjure up the better.
Violentacrez is a scumbag and the fact that redditors are willing to stand behind him as some sort of show of reddit brotherhood is a large part of the reason why I don't go there much anymore.
0. Violentacrez sure seems to be disgusting, based on his online persona.
1. If you stand for free speech, you are going to be defending assholes and thugs and people who say disgusting things. We don't need free speech for people who emit rainbows. The ACLU defended the KKK's right to march, not because they thought the KKK was a bunch of nice guys or that the KKK would ever return the favor if the ACLU were in trouble.
2. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing that isn't allowed on reddit. Either they have the policy that doxxing is horrible or they don't.
There are numerous different defintions of free speech. Some countries draw the line in different places. E.g. in the USA, you cannot say "shout fire in a crowded theatre", and there are various laws against revelaing some USA military knowledge. All "right to free speech" laws have limits, as they should.
It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing
Here's a thought, in the EU, we have data protection/privacy law. It's illegal to release personal details of people unless it's within the law. I wonder is doxing illegal?
Common misconception. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre is not a crime. The crime is causing a panic without cause: if you've got a good cause (for example, if there really is a fire) then you've done nothing wrong. The crime in releasing classified documents is in the breach of trust, not in the leak itself. Libel and slander are types of fraud: the crime comes from the falsehood, not the statements themselves. Free speech should be absolute and sacrosanct, but this doesn't mean it should protect people from breaking the law.
The folks in creepshots and its kin are in fact doing something against the law, and they should be shut down accordingly. This is not a free-speech issue.
But don't you see, that's the point. There are limits on "free speech", you just declare something as illegal. This kind of thinking is how many other countries have laws banning certain speech, which USA courts would probably view as protected. E.g. in EU you have the right to privacy, so there are various laws that say you cannot report things about some people without their consent. That sort of thing might be protected in USA. But the EU say "Wrecking someone's privacy is a crime, and we have free speech". Saying "All speech is protected, but if there are some laws then the thing doesn't count as speech and hence isn't allowed to be protected", is misleading, because loads of countries follow that rule, but have different free speech rules.
Every country decides where to set it's limits, the USA is almost certainly the one that has a few limits as possible, but it has limits, it has set the line somewhere/
Re: Freespeech. No one is asking the government to censor reddit. Users are taking things into their own hands because the private company that owns reddit refuses to moderate completely inappropriate material. The system is working just as it should.
This is a fairly typical position - i.e. private corporations are under no obligation to protect free speech, therefore censorship in a private context is okay.
Which is an argument that flies legally, but not morally depending on what you believe.
If you believe in free speech, then using the fact that your website is private to censor others is not a violation of the law, but it certainly seems like a violation of your own declared ideology. Which is to say, you would support free speech until it got inconvenient.
Reddit as a community seems to place a high value on free speech, so while they're under no legal obligation to keep things open, it would be a violation of its own declared ideology if they started censoring.
Note that I don't miss the creepy subreddits at all, but if you're one of the people on /r/politics, /r/atheism, or whatever who are quoting Voltaire all the time, it seems hypocritical to call for censorship.
>If you believe in free speech, then using the fact that your website is private to censor others is not a violation of the law, but it certainly seems like a violation of your own declared ideology.
I support free speech but I certainly wouldn't allow the KKK to march through my backyard.
The speech of these users is still free, but there are consequences to what they say. For example, the consequence here is that their creepshots results in others naming them and exercising their own right to speech as well. I'm also not at all calling for censorship. As I said, the creeps want their free speech and are getting it, as well as others exercising their rights too. I do think it is quite unfair that the tumblr with names was deleted, but again, Tumblr has a right to police their site as they see fit.
Ultimately, I think it is exploitative of the reddit corporation and their masters to allow completely disgusting and clearly immoral content. This is 2012. The internet isn't the wild west anymore.
It's Reddit mods (volunteers) who started the banning only on their SubReddits. The admin and real staff haven't done anything (except ban /r/jailbait I suppose).
One of the great things about the internet is that you can pretty easily and cheaply start your own website if you don't like how the one you're using is being run.
Actually, I don't think the contents of /r/creepshots are actually legal - or at least, not a large portion of it.
Upskirts, panty shots, and the such are not legally protected, even if they are done in public. As a street photographer myself I'm quite familiar with the difference.
Which is to say, much of the content on /r/creepshots wouldn't pass legal muster, let alone the morality test.
It wasn't about censorship by the government, it was about censorship within reddit.
For better or worse, the reddit admins want free speech, in which the admins don't prohibit anything that isn't illegal in the US. The one exception, which they apply in a viewpoint-neutral basis, is doxxing. The policy is "no doxxing," not "no doxxing unless you really really hate someone."
Now, you can say that the doxxers were doing their version of protest. Civil disobedience, I guess, because they think that reddit's approach to free speech is wrong. We now have two mutually exclusive philosophies in conflict, and reddit will need to choose one of them.
While we are at it, lets also unmask people with blogs about living a closeted gay life, conservative profs trying to become tenured, girl geeks blogging about sexism in their workplace, and other such inappropriate material.
The point isn't that they're analogous, the point is once you start drawing lines where it's ok to doxx people, you're on a slippery slope.
Oh, it's ok to do it to violentacrez, but not to someone slightly less creepy? Are you in favor of the slightly less creepy guy? What about someone talking about drugs online? Hacking?
I'm not usually a 'principle-above-the-particulars' kind of guy but when it comes to free speech and privacy online, you've gotta keep it absolute.
The point is that getting upset at being doxxed is hypocritical when you're invading the privacy of multiple women. The fact that people who post there feel that they have the 'right' to have a safe haven for posting disgusting and degrading photos is craziness.
Sure, the guy's an asshole and can't really expect better. But doxxing is vigilantism. In your own words, would you agree with everyone else's definition of "disgusting and degrading photos", and endorse any vigilantism against such?
Direct action is always a product of anarchy. If Reddit wants to run an anarchistic community, why shouldn't it be "policed" by vigilantes? What right-protecting organization is out there now to moderate subreddits? IMO this situation is different from the other hypotheticals out there due to the fact that the moderators were knowingly encouraging the violation of privacy of others.
The point is when you get to decide who deserves anonymity online, other people with different opinions than yourself do too. There are plenty of people out there who would consider being gay just as morally damaging.
lets also unmask people with blogs about living a closeted gay life
Actually if that person is publically and actively opposing gay rights (e.g. political who blathers on about how bad gay people are and shouldn't have rights, and then is caught with a prostitute of the same gender), then yes, those people should be doxxes.
Neal Stephenson has a great quote on this (from the Diamond Age):
"You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices. It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others--after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism?
"Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others' shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices..."
Yes that's a good point. However consider it from the perspective of a LGB community member. LGB people are broadly of the belief that one should come out when one's ready, and no-one should out someone without their permission. However that shouldn't apply to people who are actively working against the LGB community, the people who get up on stage and say "These people (LGB) are not full human beings" (as the Pope said recently). Those people should be outed.
> If you stand for free speech, you are going to be defending assholes and thugs and people who say disgusting things.
Violentacrez's speech rights do not automatically trump the privacy rights of his victims. His ideas and opinions can be communicated via speech that does not violate the rights of others, and so when balancing his speech rights against their privacy rights I'd favor the privacy rights.
>> 2. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing that isn't allowed on reddit. Either they have the policy that doxxing is horrible or they don't.
I guess the question is whether that is a sensible policy. It may make sense to protect anonymity - I can see that - but does it make sense to protect nothing else? Is anonymity really the only true community value?
Regarding point 1: You are absolutely misguided. I have no obligation to defend them disgusting things until it is the government that is prosecuting the speech, rather than the community.
We have a moral obligation to protect free speech from government intrusion.
We have an equal or greater moral obligation to personally confront the KKK, and sexual predators in order to enforce moral standards within our community.
The government's job is to make sure we both get to speak, and don't kill each other over the disagreement. The first amendment has nothing to do with protecting KKK members from public shaming and expulsion for the views they profess.
"You" wasn't "you, thwest." It was to the reddit admins and their own desire to have a community of free speech. Once they, the reddit admins, decide that they, the reddit admins, want a community of free speech, then they, the reddit admins, are going to find themselves supporting the rights of assholes to speak.
If the reddit admins want to shoulder the same burden as the government in regards to free speech, I still believe in community self-policing of reddit by users. The admins won't shut down assholes, but neither shall they shutdown shaming of assholes.
You can have a policy of "we are not allowed to publish personally identifying info of anyone."
You can have a policy of "we are allowed to publish personally identifying info of anyone at will," but you need to realize that it will also affect people you like as well as people you don't like.
What doesn't work is "we are allowed to publish personally identifying info of people that a sizable minority of the community thinks sucks."
Sure, but not by posting that info on Reddit with a link to the shamee's Reddit username. This is one of the only rules of Reddit, and it is for your protection, so people don't say "girlvinyl is KKK member and here is her legal name and address".
Anyone who attempts to defend the guy's actions on Reddit is an idiot and it was only a matter of time before someone brought their anger into the real world HOWEVER an individual is one thing, a reputable, established company is a totally different situation.
Sure they are media and sure the media loves a witch hunt but the bottom line is that their actions are threatening and it's blatant blackmail. In my opinion their actions are as disgusting as their targets online activity.
A prominent Reddit user who has been on the site for years and accumulated shit tons of karma and a proportionate amount of controversy. He established really questionable subreddits such as /r/jailbait and /r/incest and was extremely upfront about his motivations (claims it was more about exercising his right to free speech than being a pervert). The fact that he deleted his account is considered a big deal in the reddit world given his "reddit fame" and the fact that he was always willing to defend/justify his actions and never back down from said defence.
You're right about the anon bit but my own personal view is that unless someone has committed a crime (that can be proved beyond doubt) then posting people's real world identities is fucked up.
It is, I just found it funny, being he the Person he is on Reddit. The only enforced rule across different subreddits I remember is not posting personal info.
Stereotypical internet creep into all manner of "disgusting" things. Although his sexual preferences (and the content he posts) are very questionable, he's not a bad person. I think part of it is he enjoyed the drama, but at the same time he's just some guy with some interests that are beyond what most people deem acceptable.
What always worries me is how accurate these dox are? What happens if they wrongly accuse someone? The internet is very unforgiving and it could literally ruin someone's life. They shouldn't be taking vigilante actions like this, especially endorsed by a company like Gawker. Although I disagree with the concept of these subreddits, this should be reported to the police - or worst case confront the users first. There seems to be little indication of this.
These people run multiple subreddits dedicated to ruining lives for sexual gratification and celebrity. I couldn't give less of a crap about what happens to them.
Read my post. My concerns are with the wrong people being doxed. As far as I'm aware, Doxing is not a precise art - there's a huge degree of guess work. Guess work tends not to be right 100% of the time.
I'm not a fan of Gawker either but as of right now there's no proof provided in the link you posted. While it's possible, it's still just something one guy posted on Reddit.
Agreed, hence why I put "apparently". Regardless of whether there's physical abuse, having your name wrongly sprawled all over the internet calling you a pervert could still ruin someone's life. To be honest, even if you share the same name there could be negative repercussions.
People are going as far as disabling their facebook accounts to keep their personal and professional life separate - at least you have a degree of control on facebook. There's no control over what people associate your name with on the internet.
The name of the company is Gawker. Ruining lives is how they make their money. Their most famous article is by an intern who went on a date with a guy and then publicly ruthlessly mocked him for having different (prosaic) hobbies from her.
I am also a redditor and some of the subreddits are a really high-quality communities. What I don't understand is, why the reddit owners allow even the most disgusting and inhumane stuff to be posted, as long as it isn't illegal.
I am not sure if it is just because of the personal preference of the owners, or they do not want to waste time with enforcing at least basic civility, or is it some inherent part of the reddit's success that anything not illegal is allowed to be posted there?
It is actually an interesting moral question: Is someone allowed to publicly deanonymize someone else?
I was confused because I thought violentacrez was some how related to the now-defunct mommy-blogger-hating blog http://www.violentacres.com/
Just a coincidence, I guess.
And that just goes to show you the danger of writing anonymously on the Internet, the next person to use the same nickname as you might be a drama-causing pedo.
Does anyone know if there's some source for "violent acres / violet acres" that they're both riffing off of?
That was the start. One really weird thing at the beginning was that reddit loved the story (probably made up) of violentacres purposefully causing a car crash, but in other threads with different contexts, they would consider people purposefully causing a car crash as completely bad, no other information required.
There was a great discussion on the implications a subreddit like r/creepshots can have on r/TwoXChromosomes last week. I haven't visited the site yet today, but I'd imagine they just alienated their entire female userbase (myself included), as if the users of that site didn't do enough of that already.
Edit: Can I get explanations for the downvotes?