Misleading. At the point he was made a mod, the invite system didn't exist so you could just make people mods whenever you wanted. He might not have even noticed depending on how active his inbox was or how active he was.
The better questions would be why it wasn't banned after being nominated for subreddit of the year, and only got the axe after international attention via the Anderson Cooper segment.
Its not that he loved the subreddit, his (and by extension reddit corp) sociopathic ass simply views all that stuff as page views whether its memes, cp, or whatever. MBA cancer looking at everything as numbers.
Reddit, and the early 2000s Internet culture that spawned it had a more absolute view of free speech than the modern consensus. Reddit's rules were pretty much limited to:
Don't post things that are actually illegal to post
Don't break Reddit
The introduction of any other sitewide rules was controversial with the userbase at the time, and not because the average user was a creep who wanted to see teenagers in bikinis. People predicted (correctly) that other topics like piracy and darknet markets would eventually end up banned as Reddit tried to become more palatable to advertisers. People remain concerned that pornography will be banned or severely limited.
Its not that he loved the subreddit, his (and by extension reddit corp) sociopathic ass simply views all that stuff as page views
Let's be fair to spez; there's plenty to criticize him for, but he did not work at Reddit between roughly 2008 and 2016 when the jailbait controversy came up.
Are the intestines the straps? If the intestines are the"rod" wouldn't that make them sausages rather than just intestines since they are filled with something?
Really? I think the opposite. He said this in a profoundly stupid way, but what he is saying is that reddit is still the largest collection of human generated content. And not just the sanitized stuff you post on Facebook or LinkedIn, but your actual political opinions, your fears, your hobbies, the totally real secrets you posted to the weekly "What is your darkest secret" AskReddit post, your porn preferences, etc. And that is likely very valuable.
Oh no, go tell my wife I’m sleeping around on her. Go tell my friends I’m into bdsm. I don’t have dark secrets, I have aspects of my life that I display discretion in announcing. Dark secrets sound fucking exhausting.
I don’t want to be spied on not because I have something to hide but because I don’t want anyone looking. In the same way I’m not hiding what’s under my clothes, but you still can’t look.
Probably all those throwaway accounts that people create to post comments that they don't want attached to themselves in any way. I doubt many people took enough precautions to prevent Reddit from identifying them as alternate accounts though.
Same IP address(es), same OS/browser/app, same configuration? Easy match.
I mean, they got me, that's for sure. I used to cycle accounts pretty frequently to dodge stalkers, but even a dedicated user could've figured me out just by matching the different subs I posted to. I eventually stopped posting in my local subreddits because of this, but even so, I talked about a lot of seemingly-common things that in aggregate could identify me pretty accurately. And that's even without the data that only Reddit admins would have access to, like browser fingerprinting and whatever tracking mechanisms I wasn't able to block (or the mere fact that I did block them).
For example, millions of people use the same phone model as I do, but how many of those also share my hobbies? How many of those play the same types of games? And how many of those use my same general writing style? How many times did I throw in an idle comment referring to a city I'd traveled to, or hinted at where I grew up? Oh my god, did I call Coke "soda"?! Information is leaking everywhere!
Heck, I wouldn't be shocked if someone could match my Lemmy account to my Reddit account(s). It'd take a crazy stalker with a lot of time and skill, but with the ever-increasing power of AI, it'll probably be easy for any schmuck to do within a couple years, never mind major governments and corporations. There's a ton of information that's hidden in plain sight, and it won't stay hidden forever.
Man, if I started getting nsfw recommendations on my sfw account, I'd be pissed. What else could he even want to practically/legally use that info for?
Do these people proclaiming Reddit's data as a "treasure trove of human-generated information", or Spez claiming "We know your dark secrets" not realize that most of what people say online is at least partially a lie? Most Reddit comments were either low-effort echolalia parroting old memes or outright bullshit of the, "Yeah, that happened eyeroll" variety.
Yes they know the deep dark secret that I absolutely cannot stand conservative values and microtransactions. So many deep dark secrets that I expressed on Reddit.
Think it's more of an allusion to lurking habits, active times, metadata, stuff not related to public posts. I'd imagine the average user has plenty of stuff they've browsed through that they wouldn't want their family / co-workers, etc. to know.
Anything I have done, that hasn't run out its statute of limitations, I never post online. So I am good. Not that they could have pinned anything i put on reddit to a specific person with any certainty anyways.