😂 amazing act of malicious compliance! fuck spez
that comment section is incredible, the reddit shills have nothing to defend this and they’re still trying. "it was years ago, it was an accident, it was just a prank bro (literally! they’re saying oh well, it was a joke. unironically!!!). what the fuck, and it took them this long to notice the post? reddit is in over their heads, and without mods cleaning up for them their community is fucked.
Don’t think he actually was a mod for it, you used to be able to just add people as mods without them having to accept.
Fuck spez anyways of course.
Exactly. And manufacturing fake grievances only serves to discredit the legitimate ones.
It would be fair to say that he and Reddit leadership not only provided a platform for deplorable communities like r/jailbait to flourish, but benefitted from them financially, while claiming that they can’t do anything about it because freeze peach.
Here’s the direct quote from the General Manager of Reddit:
I don’t want to be the one making those decisions for anyone but myself, and it’s not the business reddit is in. We’re a free speech site with very few exceptions (mostly personal info) and having to stomach occasional troll reddit like picsofdeadkids or morally quesitonable reddits like jailbait are part of the price of free speech on a site like this.
Eh… If I logged on to my Workplace account (Facebook for corporations) and saw that I was made moderator of a Jailbait community would I:
A) Do nothing for years
Or
B) Immediately remove myself and investigate that community to see if additional action needs to be taken
🤔
Do we know he did nothing for years, though? Like, I’m not checking /jailbait is still up on Internet Archive to see how long he was on their mod roster, I don’t want to end up on that list, but I’ve never seen anything that indicates he remained on their list for any particular amount of time.
Didn’t do shit about the community as an Admin, for sure. That took way too long from all of Reddit. But that’s also separate from the recent narrative that he stayed as a mod for rather a while or was a willing and active mod there.
It’s hard to say exactly what actually happened because all we have are account from users who were active back then, but I can’t seem to find any archives of the moderator list. Some old Reddit users say that it was indeed possible to add people as moderators without their consent
(something I noticed recently that you can also do on Lemmy, hope it gets fixed soon 🙊), and apparently this was commonplace. Beyond user accounts it’s unclear when and how he was added as moderator, for how long he was a mod or how active he was on the sub.I tried looking for some archives of the subreddit and spez’s account, however I didn’t find anything that helpful. I only found two archives on archive.is from 2010 and 2011 (which I’m not gonna link here for obvious reasons), and the moderator lists didn’t include spez. I also tried looking at archives of his userpage to see if he was listed as a moderator of the subreddit, but it looks like Reddit only added the list of moderated subreddits to the userpage after r/jailbait had already been banned.
Some old Reddit users say that it was indeed possible to add people as moderators without their consent
Can confirm, that’s how I got put on the modlist at /DoesAnyoneElse for a spell. Someone figured I’d be a good hand on deck, hit the “add” button, and suddenly my mod queue was filled with a lot more bullshit than it was the day prior. I had to go hunting through their modmail to figure out if I’d been added deliberately or in error.
Just …
I tried looking for some archives of the subreddit and spez’s account, however I didn’t find anything that helpful. I only found two archives on archive.is from 2010 and 2011 (which I’m not gonna link here for obvious reasons), and the moderator lists didn’t include spez.
That also checks out with my recollections. I was pretty involved in some of the calls to get /jailbait taken down when it first came to site community attention, so while I’m open to being wrong - I feel pretty confident that it would have been something we’d talked about at the time if he’d been there particularly long or was particularly active.
As a somewhat separate point, I think VA - head mod there, among other places - would absolutely have burned Spez on the way out if Spez had that sort of clearly voluntary connection to the sub. Reddit had encouraged him to be there, then hurled him under the bus the moment national press caught wind of the sub’s existence.
I’m a Reddit user of 16yrs and can safely say: He didn’t just “doi nothing”. Reddit and Steve himself actively promoted and supported the sub AND the main moderator (violentacrez). The mod had a “Pimp” badge added to his profile specially for him. He also had a golden Reddit Snoo trophy sent to him personally.
The original and main mod had a couple of AMAs that were often commented in by admins like Spez and Ohanian.
I’m at fifteen - same username - and my signup predates the subreddit system, I was definitely there at the time.
That’s why I’m expressing doubt - this telling isn’t really adding anything I wasn’t aware of, I just think you’re missing a few details and filling in the gaps with a more lurid narrative than would be strictly accurate.
Reddit and Steve himself actively promoted and supported the sub AND the main moderator (violentacrez). The mod had a “Pimp” badge added to his profile specially for him. He also had a golden Reddit Snoo trophy sent to him personally.
I never saw site Admin or Steve promote /r/jailbait, and I was one of the voices yelling at them to take it down, so I feel confident that I was genuinely paying attention to the issue while it was live and present. That a huge part why I’m asking for some more concrete confirmation that they did promote /r/jailbait, if it happened. I did see them honour VA and give him the custom award - for the sake of being specific, it was actually titled “Pimp Daddy” and it was related to his running some hundreds of different porn subreddits.
The original and main mod had a couple of AMAs that were often commented in by admins like Spez and Ohanian.
Reddit Admin made a huge deal about fussing over him because he personally oversaw that some 95% of NSFW subreddits were compliant with the law and with Reddit rules. The fact that “jailbait” and similar distasteful subs were included in that sure is shitty, but leaving out the context that VA collected NSFW subs, in large part because he didn’t trust who might otherwise want to run them, does leave this version as something that seems like it’s sacrificing strict accuracy for the sake of feeding the current anti-Spez sentiments.
He gave awards.
This doesn’t exactly answer your question, but Reddit did send the creator of /r/jailbait a golden trophy for his contributions to the website. Here is an interview about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks8xuYRPnWM&t=458s
This is some revisionist history he was certainly involved and chose to remain part of it and support that type of community because he thought it was funny and he is gross
Source? I am happy to shit on spez, but my sphincter’s aim must be true.
He awarded a unique “pimp daddy” trophy to the creator of the sub and was suspected to be active on there under an Alt account. He also publicly defended the sub as a demonstration of free speech as the ceo of reddit and it didn’t actually get removed until it became a big deal in the news and they got really bad PR. You can find out a little more from this post a couple of weeks ago.
Thanks. Direct link to the pimp daddy comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36298422
It’s not just that he allowed them to exist, he created a special one-of-a-kind “Pimp Daddy” trophy to award to the moderator of r/jailbait and r/creepshots.
https://old.reddit.com/r/TrophyWiki/comments/mohrlg/reddit_trophy_pimp_daddy/
There is some whitewash in the comments there: “[violentacrez] received the trophy because all the work he did to moderate the site…” as if he got the award for keeping things clean, but consider that he contributed the vast majority of those subreddits’ content himself by cruising social media for salacious pictures of minors to share while he was in his 40’s, and the award is named “Pimp Daddy.”
IIRC Violentacerz modded like 50 different porn subreddits, and he did a goob job by moderation standards so he was appreciated by the admins for being the overseer of the porny side of reddit.
It was over four hundred at his peak.
When they sent him the award and made a huge fuss over him, they were pretty open that it was largely due to him that the site had been able to keep NSFW content and not have it be a legal impossibility.
Good link, thanks.
People are trying to act like he got the award for only moderating jailbait are wrong.
r/pics is wide open to all kinds of fuck spez posts, or well written calls to resign, whatever you want with the current rules right now.
all it takes is John Oliver be featured in the image and title and you’re free to post anything (but no porn or gore). go nuts!
edit: because, the mods don’t act anymore, unless an admin tells them to, and by the time the admin sees a post on the frontpage, the damage is already done. it’s malicious compliance from the users and mods! if your title doesn’t trigger any blocked words, the admins have no idea what’s in your post until it’s too late.
pics has 30 million subscribers and 8k are online. it’s massive
but the mods can’t post the critical content themselves! they need others to do it, so they can turn a blind eye. the fluff is such a wasted opportunity. we def need a well written call for resignation trending imo, I mean wtf it’s what everyone wants and it’s what spez is trying so hard to suppress on reddit. I know people would upvote it if it’s good.
