The divisiveness that has hovered over the election of Donald Trump as America's next president has spilled over Reddit. This came after its CEO Steve Huffman admitted that he has edited the comments of pro-Trump users.
Editing Reddit Insults
In a Reddit post, Huffman claimed to have modified the insulting posts directed at him him. Using his power to change references to spez, his user name, Huffman used the names of the moderators of r/the_donald subreddit as replacements. This subreddit is identified with pro-Trump Reddit community.
"I messed with the "f*** u/spez" comments, replacing "spez" with r/the_donald mods for about an hour," Huffman said. "As the CEO, I shouldn't play such games, and it's all fixed now. Our community team is pretty p***** at me, so I most assuredly won't do this again."
Reddit And The Pizzagate
The controversy seems to have stemmed from Reddit's decision to remove a subreddit called r/pizzagate, which was being devoted to the discussion of a conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, a purported pedophile ring and a Washington DC pizza parlor called Comet Ping Pong. The fake news item, which has been doing the social media rounds of late, has been the subject of a New York Times report published last Nov. 21.
Reddit was prompted to act after users began posting personal information of people involved in the purported Hillary Clinton-run cabal to be fair to the personalities getting vilified by the conspiracy theory.
"We all get outraged by the ignorant things people say and do online, but witch hunts and vigilantism can hurt innocent people, and personal information found online (and elsewhere) is often false or out of date," a Reddit Help entry states.
Some right wing posters took umbrage and began directing insults at Huffman, crying censorship while at it.
CEOs Taking Heat
"It's been a long week here trying to unwind the r/pizzagate stuff," Huffman said. "As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a pedophile constantly."
Previous CEOs at Reddit have all seen their share of online insults and abuse. The public would probably recall the case of past interim CEO Ellen Pao, who had to endure immense amount of anger and harassment for her actions and policies such as the closing of offensive subreddits like r/fatpeoplehate. Pao was forced to leave after the so-called Reddit Revolt launched against her for firing a well-liked AMA handler.
