A chatroom log between Reddit's staff and volunteer moderators over whether or not to ban links to critical articles that leaked controversial users' real names. Update: Reddit's top admin says the Gawker link ban “was a mistake on our part.”
A leaked chat log between Reddit employees and volunteer moderators over whether or not to ban links to Jezebel and Gawker because of articles the sites published that gave out Reddit users’ personal information reveals Reddit’s official hands-off approach to handling censorship.
Quick backstory: This Wednesday, Jezebel ran an article about a controversial subreddit called Creepshots where men posted pervy photos of women in public and the anonymous Tumblr, "Predditors" (now password-only), which listed real names of those men. The same day, it came to light on Reddit that a powerful moderator involved in Creepshots's real name would be revealed in an upcoming profile on Gawker. Revealing other users’ real names and personal information is a huge sin on Reddit, and many Reddit moderators voluntarily chose to ban any links to Gawker media sites as retribution for the crime of releasing Redditors' info.
In the IRC chat log, posted anonymously in a Pastebin text document, appears to have taken place on Thursday, mainly addressing the Jezebel article. Volunteer moderators ask Reddit employees including general manager Eric Martin for help in banning the offending material and to take further action.
The admins tell the moderators that they have done a site-wide ban to the predditors tumblr link, much to the moderators’ relief. However, the moderators want it taken a few steps further, since the Jezebel article links to the Tumblr, they want the Jezebel article blocked as well:
redtaboo: ok, spladug the jezebel article links to it though
spladug [Reddit Admin]: that's not exactly something we can fix, redtaboo
redtaboo: you can remove that article
MillenniumFalc0n: ...couldn't you ban that specific jezebelle article?
solidwhetstone: is reddit going to be making a public statement any time soon?
Kemitche [Reddit admin]: would we then have to remove articles that link to the jezebel article?
sodypop: The Jezebel article also contains personal information other than the predditors site, right?
Solidwhetstone: either to the members or the public?
Kemitche: and articles that link that articles that link to jezebel?
GuitarFreak: why not just ban the whole site?
The moderators do not appear offended by the article being critical --they’re appear to be only worried about the personal info link. At no point in the chat do they discuss the content of r/creepshots or the right of people to post those photos; they're intently focused only on the issue of user info being revealed. They are intensely fearful of being "doxxed” – having their real names and other personal information (“pi”, as they refer to it), such as the workplace, address, or family members' names revealed:
