Reddit CEO formally apologizes for editing posts, reveals site is cracking down on toxic users

midian182

Posts: 9,662   +121
Staff member

One week after confessing to surreptitiously editing certain posts on the site that targeted him, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has formally apologized for his actions and promised to take a more aggressive stance against trolls and poorly behaving communities.

In a message posted under his spez username, Huffman said he was sorry for compromising users’ trust in Reddit and swears not repeat his actions. Some members of the r/the_donald community had targeted Huffman using his Reddit name, resulting in him changing the “spez” part of the posts with the names of moderators from the Trump-supporting subreddit.

It was through his editing privileges as an engineer that Huffman was able to change the comments. He said the company is updating its internal controls to prevent such a thing happening again in the future, though he never went into specifics.

Huffman’s post also addresses the problem of trolls on Reddit, particularly those within r/the_donald. “The United States is more divided than ever, and we see that tension within Reddit itself,” he wrote. “The community that was formed in support of President-elect Donald Trump organized and grew rapidly, but within it were users that devoted themselves to antagonizing the broader Reddit community.”

As part of its plan to tackle abuse on the platform, Reddit has identified hundreds of its “most toxic users” and will warn, suspend, or ban them. Huffman also threatened to take privileges from communities whose users continue to “cross the line” – probably another reference to r/the_donald - which could result in an outright ban if things don't improve.

The company has now stopped posts stickied on r/the_donald from appearing on the r/all page, which shows the most engaged threads from across all of Reddit. Huffman said the sticky feature is being used by members of the subreddit to circumvent organic voting and slingshot posts into r/all. Additionally, users can now filter r/all by excluding specific subreddits, which will stop their posts from appearing.

Not surprisingly, some members of r/the_donald and several other communities aren’t happy with Huffman’s actions. They say the filtering is a form of censorship, and are demanding that the CEO resign.

Permalink to story.

 
So maybe:
r/donald are called toxic trolls.
r/hillary is probably highlighted for its fantastic forward thinking members and
r/bernie people are just ignored or forgotten about.

How well reddit reflects real life.
 
All in all posts that aren't funny, aren't documented or don't have some valid arguments have no real use on the Internet.

I visit a lot of forums and most of the topics are 10% real questions and real answers and 90% low-grade attempts at being funny or witty. Point is forums are places where people come to relax and see how others react to their presence. Forums should be built around this and offer the chance for its users to have threads split into relevant and off-topic, look-at-me, I'm-so-witty entities.
 
It's funny. Reddit says moderators should use stickies to help manage the subreddit and highlight good posts. A sub like the donald is so active, the mods would update their stickies every few hours. Without that sort of constant moderation, a lot of good posts would be lost in the sea of activity.

So for using stickies as intended, they're being punished. Or at least, that's the reasoning given. Kinda sucks that a site supposedly about free speech is censoring a mainstream political group.
 
Back