Tempest Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 So those of you that don't know, I spend a lot of time on Reddit, and I enjoy it a lot. Recently though, some incredibly disturbing news has broke: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/23/reddit-huffman-trump/ Essentially, the CEO of Reddit admitted to editing some user's comments. I was curious, for those you that use Reddit, or don't, what you think. Personally, I've immediately lost a lot of respect for the site, and while I didn't browse it for news, lost a lot of trust and credibility with the site as well. I'm certain this will be a huge issue over the coming days, and I'll be very curious to see what happens to Reddit in the coming months; comments from the site are being used as court evidence for fucks sake, and every one of those comments is potentially invalidated because it very well could have been edited by an admin. Moreso, this wasn't a small time admin either. This was THE CEO of Reddit, the man who runs the show, so him losing his cool and editing comments is utterly destructive to the company's reputation. I would not be surprised to see him step down, and a new CEO take his place, which would mean three CEOs in the last year. At the very least, they need to come out with an official announcement. Tomorrow. They need to start doing damage control ASAP. The PR team is gonna be stretched to the gills trying to talk their way out of this one. What are your thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shinoda Yagami Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 The timing is terrible too, the people were already on his back for banning r/pizzagate and now this one's gonna be taken as a justification of sorts for all their claims. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tartar Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 Meh, it's not like it's a major practice on Reddit for mods to exercise censorship, and this isn't representative of the site as a whole. One person did wrong, but I don't see why this hurts Reddit in any major way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pocky Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 Meh, it's not like it's a major practice on Reddit for mods to exercise censorship, and this isn't representative of the site as a whole. One person did wrong, but I don't see why this hurts Reddit in any major way. Here's the thing, it's the fuckin CEO for godsake. It hurts reddit in a major way because in a way, it instills fear into the users because it shows how any mods have the ability to change any words they don't like. For example, if i wrote some criticism about /u/moderatorofreddit, they could easily just edit it to "I love _" I think in my opinion, it also hurts the image of liberals per say, because this happened in /r/the_donald, it could show that liberals would rather censor bad things, but that's just me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironbound Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 One does not treat errors committed by the CEO of a company as being on par on magnitude or seriousness with those of any other person, Tartar. When a man in power commits an error, especially one such as this which is a serious breach of conduct, it's pretty damning. The company's image is blotted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NatJones Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 Anything that the CEO does affects the company as a whole, it smears the rep. Whereas some people wont mind, others may feel that their "freedom of speech" has been compromised, doesnt reflect good on reddit as a whole Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeonVermillion Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 CEO is the one that is responsible on where the company will be going, one wrong step, and you will drag the whole company with you from the articel itself the CEO of Reddit can mods the message or words, now if the CEO Reddit can do that, then there's a possibility the higher ups of Reddit can do it. Think about how scary this possiblity can be and how much it damage the user's trust on Reddit, and trust is probably the hardest thing you could get and the hardest to be repaired this and the r/pizzagate incident is going to destroy Reddit if they don't act fast. LIKE really fast, getting a new CEO isn't going to help a lot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tartar Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 (edited) I can understand that this was clearly a wrong move on Steve Huffman's part. But at the same time, I don't see Reddit losing any users to this. There are no viable alternatives to it and the communities that have developed there are unlikely to just migrate elsewhere. This will likely all be forgotten in a few weeks. I'm not saying that it should and that such things ought to be disregarded. But as reality has shown time and time again, such things don't really stay relevant. What exactly do you want to happen, for Steve Huffman to resign? I don't really see that happening. Edited November 24, 2016 by Tartar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted November 24, 2016 Author Share Posted November 24, 2016 Ellen Pao was forced to resign, because someone ..on her team fired everyone's favorite community manager... she didn't have much of a part of it, and the mods basically ended up shutting down the site. This is far more egregious than that and there will be backlash. Huffman was already on thin ice with the community, and many are unhappy with the direction he's been taking with, what with banning controversial subreddits, and other accusations. Maybe your average Reddit user won't care, but when the mods from r/askreddit or r/news decide to address their community about it, and shut down their subreddit as they've done before, you'll all of a sudden have a few million people caring. On top of that, Huffman just destroyed evidence used in court, and any good lawyer will be to dismiss it. And, I don't know the truth in it, but I've seen people claiming he also broke impersonation laws. I'm almost sure that there will be some significant backlash from the community. This is a huge blow to the already shaky repuation of the Reddit staff. EDIT: Well, not so sure how true the above is anymore... because the default mods seem to side with him. http://archive.is/ZmULb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironbound Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 Tartar, if a CEO of a company does a major breach of confidentiality like this, exceeding both what is ethical and what is legal besides crossing his own professional conduct as a CEO of a company, which is not a light position at all and which is consequently held to even stricter responsibility as a representative of the company's philosophy and behaviour...you can definitely bet that being removed from the post is likely the least of Huffman's legal and personal concerns. You are far too forgiving; the corporate system is not like that, even if the public or users of the company remain largely ignorant or unconcerned by the misdemeanour in question...which is also not likely to be the case here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HughJ Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 (edited) What's this? A failure of a CEO running Reddit, of all places? Astonishing! Nothing like this has ever happened before... Edited November 24, 2016 by HughJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hexagoen Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 Well. I guess we can add reddit being fucked up to our list of shit ruined in 2016. The CEO of a major company fucking up is no joke. Will this ruin the rep of reddit? Yes it will. Yet at the same time we cant keep dwelling on this. Remember although how prominent he is, its just one person in a site with thousands of communities in it. This should not make you think that reddit is going down the drain. One of the world's most prominent and famous sites is notr going to burn to the ground because of one man. Same things applies for pretty much every major thing that has happened in 2016. Brexit. The elections. People the world is not going to end. Stop overreacting about this and calm the fuck down. IM not saying these events will have major reprocussions on our lives. But honestly its not like world war 3 has started. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickCrash Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 Well. I guess we can add reddit being fucked up to our list of shit ruined in 2016. The CEO of a major company fucking up is no joke. Will this ruin the rep of reddit? Yes it will. Yet at the same time we cant keep dwelling on this. Remember although how prominent he is, its just one person in a site with thousands of communities in it. This should not make you think that reddit is going down the drain. One of the world's most prominent and famous sites is notr going to burn to the ground because of one man. That's where the opinions differ. The CEO of a company is its image to the outside world, as they are in charge of the company's direction. This includes financial and personell management, as well as inside monitoring. When their actions are at least ambiguous, the image of the whole company is shaken. Since a forum database works 100% in services, and the basis of a successful service is trust, you will see people involved leave or if they cannot yet leave, protest and be more skeptical about the management of the place. His actions of censorship and alteration are significant in a place of exchange of info and ideas. That not being his first admitted and widely covered malice further strengthens the need of his replacement. He causes direct harm to the company's followers, on whose 'productivity' it relies on to stay alive, and it also smudges the front of the company, thus alienating its current members and discouraging new ones. These are the most direct and obvious impacts of his behavior and the way their defense for it is formed on the company and all it includes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeonVermillion Posted November 24, 2016 Share Posted November 24, 2016 (edited) While it's true that Reddit won't go down easily, the trust and reputation they have is pretty much damaged, no matter how big or famous the company really is, the company will still have a very hard time to repair them. I'm pretty sure the user won't forget it that easily, remember they already make a mistake this month and they done it again. The user might forget these shit ever happening, but it will always be brought up by them once in a while Edited November 24, 2016 by LeonVermillion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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