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Reddit CEO admits to altering user comments that were critical of him

(www.reddit.com)
668 points wildmusings | 3 comments | 24 Nov 16 00:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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JorgeGT ◴[24 Nov 16 01:04 UTC] No.13027099[source]▶
And without an "edited" mark, which means that any comment of any user can be covertly modified by an admin. Very concerning since Reddit comments have provoked even Congress hearings: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/296680-house-pan...
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dhruval ◴[24 Nov 16 01:29 UTC] No.13027240[source]▶
He changed a 'F U CEO' (upvoted by 1.6k users) comment to 'F U unpaid reddit moderator', without any indication that the comment was edited.

Very juvenile and unprofessional way of dealing with the situation, really erodes trust in the platform (simply deleting the comment would have been a better response).

Would maybe expect this from the founder of a young fledgling startup, but the 33 year old CEO of a company like Reddit ought to know better.

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yuhong ◴[24 Nov 16 01:48 UTC] No.13027345[source]▶
To he honest, he was one of the founders of Reddit.
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harryf ◴[24 Nov 16 02:19 UTC] No.13027499[source]▶
And here he is boasting about knowing "all your dark secrets" at TNW - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lALKRayDLuk - meant in jest but shows incredibly poor judgement as a CEO
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Fricken ◴[24 Nov 16 03:18 UTC] No.13027742{3}[source]▶
Anybody can go through the comment history of any redditor and know their dark secrets.

I don't mind Reddit fucking up. If they were competent they would have monetized the users a long time ago and it would be an broken mess that feeds daily spam to my inbox like every other social media platform. Reddit is too valuable to take seriously.

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1. flashman ◴[24 Nov 16 04:06 UTC] No.13027970{4}[source]▶
But they have your upvotes, saved links, private messages, and at least some idea of which outbound links you've clicked (you can turn some of that off).

It's like an ISP knowing a significant portion of your web browsing behaviour.

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2. oneeyedpigeon ◴[24 Nov 16 13:02 UTC] No.13030082[source]▶
Of course they have that data - you have chosen to send it to their website. It would be physically impossible for that website to run if the data could not be read. Obviously, it's preferable if only 'the right people' can read it, but it's much safer to assume that isn't the case.

If you're concerned about the outbound link issue, disable javascript. A cursory look at the page source should convince you that that's the only way they can track outbound clicks.

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3. flashman ◴[24 Nov 16 22:33 UTC] No.13033208[source]▶
The parent commenter was saying anybody can go through your comment history, and by extension admins have no special access to 'dark secrets'. I was pointing out that that's just not true.